Nobody Cares: PRS

[Isabeau]

Crazy people.

A climate conspiracy theorist said the government deliberately lit wildfires. He just pleaded guilty to starting 14 himself


14 is just the ones they have evidence for.

I can see on his Facebook page (still up) that he supported the truckers and owns a truck, wear’s a baseball cap and sunglasses, and says things like “The government is responsible for etc etc. Wake up!”

 

[Free]

Pope Francis says sexual pleasure is 'a gift from God'

Pope Francis's sermon on lust followed criticism of an old book on sexuality by his head of doctrine.

www.bbc.com

So then why are priests refused the opportunity to unwrap it? (Unless it's with little kids... *cough*)

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Crazy people.

A climate conspiracy theorist said the government deliberately lit wildfires. He just pleaded guilty to starting 14 himself


14 is just the ones they have evidence for.

Always, always, ALWAYS projection.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

LGBT+ backlash in Oklahoma.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Let's talk about GenZ for a while. This here is Brittany Pietsch, a former sales employee of Cloudflare.

Her story is quickly told: she worked for ~3 months for the company starting in October 2023, two of them were onboarding and training. December 23 was the first real month. So far she got only positive feedback from here line manager and colleagues about her performance.

Then she suddenly got an unexpected surprise call from somebody high within the company, which a company director unknown to her and some HR assistant lead. Brittany's line manager was not part of that call. They then told her out of the blue that she's fired because of underperforming, meaning having no sale. But aside that claim they had no hard data or whatsoever to proof that.

This is what the whole thing looked filmed by her:

The whole video since then went viral. Many do sympathize with Brittany, while others are of the opinion it's basically her fault because she had no sales yet. Which is IMHO not the point, because when training took 2 months and you hired a person with a certain intention, evaluating her performance after only 1 month is real meh. But still many people do think that it's Brittany's own fault, which I disagree with.

It looks more like Cloudflare hired more people than they needed, or now have less money, so they are firing a round of them. Simple as that.

It became pressing enough for Cloudflare that their CEO tweeted something about it, which just adds fuel to the "hired more than they can pay" theory. What Matthew Prince is telling that CF only needs 3 months or less to evaluate if somebody is a good hire and fit for CF, or not. And that Brittany Pietsch is not, which doesn't mean that in general she's a failure, but only not a good match for CF and that's it. He considers the hiring of her as a failure, and the only mistake he thinks was made is not being more kind and humane during that call. Typical CEO bullshitty stuff.


Anyway, some people in response to that claimed that Brittany's line manager was not within that call is good evidence that he was fired before. And that this seems like a mass layoff, where the company is just making up some reasons to get rid off people, which is also why these people unknown to the employees are having that call.

What do you think about it? Was this a mass layoff with fabricated reason - underperforming - to avoid legal consequences, or the real deal? I think a mass layoff, and that she doesn't deserve the hate the now gets, instead she showed clearly some proper sales skills during that call being composed, polite and making her point clear.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Trump’s Not The Only Republican To Face Disqualification Over Jan. 6

Next month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether former President Donald Trump is an insurrectionist — and therefore, whether he’s legally permitted to run for office again.
But Trump isn’t the first politician to face that question — and not even the first since the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Congress.
In fact, at least seven other Republicans, from local officials to members of Congress, have faced similar legal challenges over allegations that they participated in or aided an insurrection after the 2020 election. The 14th Amendment disqualifies anyone who, despite having sworn an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution, “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Six current and former House members, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and former Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), have faced 14th Amendment challenges based on their actions leading up to Jan. 6.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

LGBT+ backlash in Oklahoma.

There's no way that survives a Constitutional challenge. But, oh, the damage it'll do in the meantime.

 

[Casey Pelous]

... oh, the damage it'll do in the meantime.

Which is the whole point of the exercise, it seems.

 

[Free]

Reno commissioner who insisted on religious invocations at county meetings walks out when Satanist gives opening prayer

Nevada's Washoe County Commissioner Clara Andriola thought it was a good idea to force her religious beliefs on others by demanding pre-meeting prayers. But when the founder of Reno Satanic, Jason Miller, gave the opening prayer at Tuesday's meeting with a hearty "Hail, Satan!" Ms. Andriola was so offended that she got up and left the dais. You see, in Ms. Andriola's world, "freedom of religion" means "you must worship my god and my god only."

But but I only wanted CHRISTIAN invocations!!!

She then asked the county's legal counsel – Nate Edwards of the district attorney's office – to clarify the county's requirements when honoring requests from groups wishing to deliver the invocation.

Edwards said that satanic invocations are part of a trend.

"The federal law is that you don't have to open your floor for invocations," he said. "If you do open your floor for invocations, then federal law is that you have to let everybody have a turn signing up. So I guess you take the good with the bad."

No they don't. Just watch.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

This was a 747 freight carrier that was flying out of Miami, originally bound for San Juan, PR. Just a few minutes after takeoff one of its engines failed and caught fire, and the plane had to turn around.

The issue probably looks a little worse than it is, because it's night time so you can see the glowing sparks flying out of it; but the 747 has four engines, so it wasn't in any immediate danger. It landed safely at Miami.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Aww. I love Mary's voice and the Shangrilas.

Shangri-Las lead singer, Mary Weiss, dies aged 75

 

[Essence Lumin]

Quite a picture for the article.

Black people are 2.9 times more likely than white people to be killed by cops, report says

 

[Soen Eber]

Let's talk about GenZ for a while. This here is Brittany Pietsch, a former sales employee of Cloudflare.

Her story is quickly told: she worked for ~3 months for the company starting in October 2023, two of them were onboarding and training. December 23 was the first real month. So far she got only positive feedback from here line manager and colleagues about her performance.

Then she suddenly got an unexpected surprise call from somebody high within the company, which a company director unknown to her and some HR assistant lead. Brittany's line manager was not part of that call. They then told her out of the blue that she's fired because of underperforming, meaning having no sale. But aside that claim they had no hard data or whatsoever to proof that.

This is what the whole thing looked filmed by her:

The whole video since then went viral. Many do sympathize with Brittany, while others are of the opinion it's basically her fault because she had no sales yet. Which is IMHO not the point, because when training took 2 months and you hired a person with a certain intention, evaluating her performance after only 1 month is real meh. But still many people do think that it's Brittany's own fault, which I disagree with.

It looks more like Cloudflare hired more people than they needed, or now have less money, so they are firing a round of them. Simple as that.

It became pressing enough for Cloudflare that their CEO tweeted something about it, which just adds fuel to the "hired more than they can pay" theory. What Matthew Prince is telling that CF only needs 3 months or less to evaluate if somebody is a good hire and fit for CF, or not. And that Brittany Pietsch is not, which doesn't mean that in general she's a failure, but only not a good match for CF and that's it. He considers the hiring of her as a failure, and the only mistake he thinks was made is not being more kind and humane during that call. Typical CEO bullshitty stuff.


Anyway, some people in response to that claimed that Brittany's line manager was not within that call is good evidence that he was fired before. And that this seems like a mass layoff, where the company is just making up some reasons to get rid off people, which is also why these people unknown to the employees are having that call.

What do you think about it? Was this a mass layoff with fabricated reason - underperforming - to avoid legal consequences, or the real deal? I think a mass layoff, and that she doesn't deserve the hate the now gets, instead she showed clearly some proper sales skills during that call being composed, polite and making her point clear.

If the line manager was not in on the call, the decision had already been made that she was a write-off and nothing would change if they were on the call or not, and having them more involved than they already were just adds more stress to a good employee because he was sure to be consulted beforehand. That kind of added stress just shortens the line managers useful life with the company. This is also why someone from corporate made the contact as they have no personal investment and have demonstrated balls of steel in prior situations, meaning they won't be affected as much.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Yes, it could be that way. For me this type of corporate culture though is despicable, because a line manager should know what's going on. If he cannot handle the stress that comes with that position, he should not be in that position, period.

When we in my British company had global mass layoffs a while ago (about 10% were to be fired), we were informed upfront by our CEO about what and why, and the company used a scoring approach to identify people to be laid off. And all off the times the line managers were involved, communicating with their people how many people in certain teams were found to be disposable, the whole thing took over a month.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

In a recent poll 2/3 of all Americans told that they are of the opinion that AI could do their job.

Two-thirds of Americans say AI could do their job

Advanced artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT have sparked fears that the new technology could soon replace many careers, and workers believe it, according to a new survey.

www.foxbusiness.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

In a recent poll 2/3 of all Americans told that they are of the opinion that AI could do their job.

Two-thirds of Americans say AI could do their job

Advanced artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT have sparked fears that the new technology could soon replace many careers, and workers believe it, according to a new survey.

www.foxbusiness.com

Since it seems more likely that 2/3 Americans base their opinion on what they've heard, or think they've heard, about AI taking everyone's jobs than that they've reached an informed conclusion based on a detailed analysis of AI's capabilities and how those might apply to their jobs, I'm not sure how much this tells us, other than that, no matter whether they're real or groundless, fears about AI taking people's jobs are likely to become a major concern in US politics.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Since it seems more likely that 2/3 Americans base their opinion on what they've heard, or think they've heard, about AI taking everyone's jobs than that they've reached an informed conclusion based on a detailed analysis of AI's capabilities and how those might apply to their jobs, I'm not sure how much this tells us, other than that, no matter whether they're real or groundless, fears about AI taking people's jobs are likely to become a major concern in US politics.

(This wins an award for longest single coherent and intelligible sentence of the month.)

Robotics has already gutted the manufacturing sector, with surprisingly little pushback. Instead, all that working class anger has been funneled into hating immigrants, minorities and "woke" culture. It's only now that the language version of robotics has been developed that suddenly everyone is paying attention.

What worries me most is that people think that AI is far more capable than it is, and that they will use it with decreasing amounts of supervision. Once I read how the damn thing actually works, I found it more frightening than before because I realized just how mechanistic and unthinking it is. There is no conceptual basis for what it regurgitates, it's simply weighted word associations. Quite useful in some situations, wielded by people who understand its strengths and weaknesses, but a loose cannon ball on deck when plugged into the wrong jobs.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

(This wins an award for longest single coherent and intelligible sentence of the month.)

Robotics has already gutted the manufacturing sector, with surprisingly little pushback. Instead, all that working class anger has been funneled into hating immigrants, minorities and "woke" culture. It's only now that the language version of robotics has been developed that suddenly everyone is paying attention.

What worries me most is that people think that AI is far more capable than it is, and that they will use it with decreasing amounts of supervision. Once I read how the damn thing actually works, I found it more frightening than before because I realized just how mechanistic and unthinking it is. There is no conceptual basis for what it regurgitates, it's simply weighted word associations. Quite useful in some situations, wielded by people who understand its strengths and weaknesses, but a loose cannon ball on deck when plugged into the wrong jobs.

Yes, but presumably the people who actually make the decisions to spend money on buying and training AI for their particular business application, or the people advise them, and whose jobs depend on giving good advice, will be generally be more aware of AI's limitations than are the general public.

At the moment, an organisation I'm involved is looking at various ways we might be able to use AI and, while we're certainly pretty impressed by what it can do, we're also very aware of its limitations, actual or potential, partly because we follow the news about what fun people are having by bamboozling AI bots and partly because we play with the demo models we're given and try to see if we can break them.

Training and testing AI for our purposes will involve a not inconsiderable investment of time and money, to which we're not going to commit until we're very sure it's not going to blow up in our faces.

I can't imagine we're being unusually cautious.

 

[Free]

Foobs.

 

[Beebo Brink]

I can't imagine we're being unusually cautious.

My sweet summer child....

On the contrary, I DO think you've been spoiled by working with an unusually sensible organization. I would love to believe that is the norm, but I very much doubt it.

My cynicism is fueled by my own work experience in a corporate business consulting firm that is on the Fortune 500 list. I watched executives enthuse about the future of block-chain technology, metaverses, cybercurrency, and NFTs, all without any acknowledgement of the serious concerns that were, at the time, already quite well known. In the last few months before my retirement, AI was all the rage and AI-generated content was already being used by various departments, with only the most formulaic cautions about reviewing the result. There was no comprehensive review or governance, much less training, people were just running with it.