I did not see any gators or gigantic snakes during this trip.
You didn’t see any fellow UF alumni? Are they like my school & flee the state upon graduation?
2.
dmsilev
Operation Pack Everything is done. I’m not sure how many boxes it came to, but it was a lot. Movers come on Friday; I’m camped out in temp space for the next month until it’s time to move myself.
Not Fun.
3.
Betty Cracker
@Yatsuno: Well, you got me there — I saw many fellow Gators. They tend to flee Gainesville, but many stick around in FL or leave and then eventually return.
Home or office? They’re moving my office this coming Wednesday. It’s not pretty.
6.
Big ole hound
During the big freeway fire in CA private drones kept fire fighting out of the area for 20 minutes. I hope they find a way to drop water on them during any emergency or put an identifier in them during manufacturing so the owners can be prosecuted the same as an arsonist. Enough of this shit. That fire went on to burn 40 houses.
7.
Ruckus
@gogol’s wife:
I’ve moved one of my own businesses and worked for a 90 person company that moved. Not one moment of that was fun. And in both cases the new digs were much nicer than the old.
8.
Betty Cracker
@Big ole hound: Seems like there would be a way to jam their signal or something. I guess not.
I mowed and weed ate in the brutal heat, did the grocery shopping and now I’m trying to get the old lady off the couch so I can take a nap!
11.
dmsilev
@gogol’s wife: Home. The office moving is coming, and is an entirely different order of magnitude of Suck. The office (lab, actually) move is why I’m here for another month, to manage the process. Last estimate was ~50 crates plus miscellaneous, spanning three semi trailers.
12.
Ruckus
@Big ole hound:
Same thought here. Have we gotten so, not sure of the word, but how about invasive, that we have to have pics of everything? And not just pics, but pics RIGHT NOW! Isn’t it enough that the news helicopters could/did show you everything while managing to stay out of the way of the firefighters? I could see feeds from several different news orgs on the internet.
13.
Amir Khalid
@RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac):
He never really got his groove back after his big scandal. It’s sad how far he’s fallen, isn’t it? But he might not be confident that he knows how to do anything else.
14.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
That sounds worse than the employer move even though I had to move several smallish trucks of my equipment. My business move on the other hand involved several truck loads of heavy machinery and wiring the new business. But your equipment sounds a lot more breakable.
15.
Scout211
We visited Everglades National Park in February of 2014. We saw both snakes and gators, of all sizes. Plus, some amazing birds.
We loved that place.
16.
Betty Cracker
@Ruckus: I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one or two of the drones belonged to a freelance photog.
17.
Betty Cracker
@Scout211: They are definitely in evidence during the cooler months.
18.
Josie
@dmsilev: I hate the part where you are all packed up and have to survive without stuff until the move actually takes place. Then, on the other end, you have to manage until everything is unpacked and in its place. I moved last fall 200 miles from my original home and still have not unpacked every single thing, mainly because I have no more space to put anything. I’m thinking EBay should be my next project. Good luck with the rest of your move.
19.
Germy Shoemangler
Mrs. Shoemangler was reading something about rare old wheat pennies being worth money.
I’ve been collecting them all my life, so I took out the old 1940s jeweler’s loop and looked them over. One from 1919. A bunch from the 1940s and 1950s. Nothing from 1943 (which apparently is the most valuable).
I think the loop actually might be worth more than the pennies.
20.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m in Boston, all dressed and ready for my friend’s surprise 70th birthday party (not a surprise that he’s having a 70th birthday, of course, and he knows something is in the works, he just doesn’t know any of the wonderfulness).
It is hot and muggy here. Thought I might have left that behind, but, sadly, no.
Tomorrow or Tuesday, before I head back home, I think I’ll visit the Science Museum of Boston. They have a very cool-sounding exhibit called “Micro or Macro?” which looks like fun: http://www.mos.org/exhibits/macro-or-micro. Have any of the Bostonian Juicers seen it?
21.
dmsilev
@Ruckus: Yeah, a lot of our equipment is small and fragile. Then there’s the big and not so fragile stuff. And of course the special-case headaches, like the two (weak) radioactive sources that have to be shipped separately with reams of paperwork documenting their nature and movements and so forth. Not to mention the renovations at the receiving end to make sure that the space is what we need it to be. For instance, I think I counted seven different types of power that we need to have run (single vs. 3 phase, various voltages, various levels of isolation and filtering).
22.
shell
Betty, not even any weird insects…
23.
dmsilev
@Josie: I’m doing the ‘furnished temporary space’ thing for a few months (one month at this end, probably three months at the other end), so at least I don’t have to worry about moving furniture etc. more than once. Does mean that all my books will be in storage until I’m in quasi-permanent housing, but I can live with that (three cheers for eBooks…).
We drove out into the Everglades a couple of times when we were in Naples (both accidentally and on purpose). We saw a gator when we stopped at a park for that purpose and a big ol’ one strolled across the parking lot and slid into the pond to pose for us tourists.
No offense, fellas, but I find it hard to feel sorry for a billionaire who has reached the inevitable end of a brilliant career, then gets on his $40million jet and flies home. He may not win any more golf tourns but he’ll make hundreds of millions more designing courses all around the world and still gets to bed supermodels any time he wants. Is he washed up? Sure looks like it. He’ll create a different kind of Tiger Inc. and carry on all the way to the bank.
@Betty Cracker: From what I read, the drones were operating in an area that is an open space for recreational drone use. The fact they were over the fire seemed coincidental. Police went to the area and all the operators brought their drones in, no charges filed. Although, they shouldn’t they have known better and brought them in when the fire started?
27.
Joel
The problem for golf is that Tiger was their last, best, hope for broad appeal. Now they got nothing.
@Capt Seaweed:
Ah. He designs golf courses too? And he’s still screwing around? Then I don’t feel sorry for him either.
30.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Me neither. Still, those news helicopters have to stay out of the way and are controlled by the FAA. Who as I understand it can set emergency air directives, setting minimum ceilings, closed areas, etc. Some have called for the drones to be shot down, but we are talking a very small moving target, in a situation where there usually isn’t room to maneuver well in a populated area (this one isn’t all that populated but those people in cars and on foot fleeing the fire….) Things falling out of the sky, like lead, drone parts, doesn’t sound like the way to go. I’m thinking if you get caught, jail time for interfering with a state of emergency, although I can see that the police would probably end up abusing this, and possibly partial responsibility for the losses, after all the firefighting had to cease for some time because of the drone owner’s actions.
Some Bixby pics and his diary (including pool shots). I know I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s still growing, but yes, when I had to loosen his halter I was.
Driven through the glades only, but kayaked through the Cypress preserve in Ft. Myers and that was great. Manatees, birds galore, snakes. Not too many bugs (must have been a lull).
He never really got his groove back after his big scandal.
It’s not just “after his big scandal”. If you remember, his big scandal happened while he was rehabbing from knee surgery. My suspicion is that his knees just aren’t the same, and that has more to do with his extreme falloff than the scandal itself.
35.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
on my to-be-read pile is “The Swamp”, by Michael Greenwald, who also wrote a book on the Stimulus that should have gotten a lot more attention from what actual liberal media there is. I think when it came out, he got about three minutes on the Ed Schultz show.
As I’ve said before, you make Florida look good. I want to tour the Everglades in one of them goofy boats, and spend a week or so on the Keys. In the off season
36.
CaseyL
Bite of Seattle is this weekend: food and music everywhere! I went yesterday with a friend to see Ochkam’s Razor (celtic hard rock) and go to the Alley (12 restaurants put together a platter of tasty bits, for charity).
Today I’m going there to see another friend play (blues), and probably stuff myself silly again. Great way to spend a weekend!
37.
Tenar Darell
@SiubhanDuinne: Happy 70th to your friend. Haven’t seen the science museum exhibit. Favor: Let me know if it’s really good, and I’ll add it to my list. Thanks!
38.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
Sounds like the major difference in my business move is the breakability of some of the items. Lots of precision stuff in my move but the big trucks and a forklift that takes up half the load capacity of a semi were the harry part. But that’s what experienced movers were very good at. Bastards made it look easy. Maybe it was. For them.
39.
Capt Seaweed
@Amir Khalid:
His career is most likely over, but he is still Tiger Woods. There is no limit to what he can accomplish off the course. I read somewhere that Nicklaus made way more money in the course design biz than he ever made playing. Jack had like 5 or 6 projects going at once and the money just tsunamied in. Tiger, I can see same same. I will say his game disappeared after getting clobbered with a 9-iron on the noggin by his wife, so he may not be the same Tiger mentally.
40.
dmsilev
@Ruckus: We had the good sense (and budget) to hire some pretty good professional movers and riggers. Would really really really not want to do something like this without that sort of support.
41.
shortstop
I know the ‘Glades aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m crazy about that place. The bird life, the open vistas, the quietness, the stars at night…love it all.
Just got back from kayaking. It was OK at 7 am. By 10 I felt like I was sitting in a pan of hot water. Mr. S fished while I found bits of shade to lurk in.
I saw 4 green herons, 2 blues, an osprey, a kingfisher and a hummingbird. Also eleventy billion turtles – snapping and cooter. Yes there is a turtle called a cooter.
Also a big ol’ catfish, that Mr. S. caught. Yuck.
@Germy Shoemangler: It really depends on the year and the condition and the mint and oh, are you asleep? A coin shop might give you 2-5 cents for each one.
43.
raven
@JPL: She moved, I got my 20 minute nap. I invited her back. She gave me the face.
44.
MattF
It’s often noted that there are words in German that signify things you can’t say in any other language. Apparently, judging from the headline on this article, there are English words that have the same status in German.
45.
Punchy
@Capt Seaweed: I think much of Jack’s success was that he was a genuinely nice, well-liked guy. I’ve heard for many years lots of Tiger anecdotes thats he’s completely the opposite. Asshole to the core. Not sure how much business he could drum up as an asshole.
46.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: I have not seen that exhibit, but the MOS is a great place any time. Used to have a family membership back when the kids were still living at home.
47.
Mack
@Capt Seaweed: I don’t at all disagree with you that Tiger will continue to have, as the kids say, mad bank. But in many cases, money is a secondary concern. Tiger was a FIERCE and dominant competitor, and he will just never be that again. He tried to bulk up too quickly, and ruined his swing.
48.
ThresherK
@Germy Shoemangler: Weren’t the 1943 pennies made out of (a lot of) zinc, making them not penny-colored?
I don’t know if that’s in addition to a few 1943s that are standard copper. If that is the case I’m sure there would be very few, and their value would be correspondingly higher.
Call me unpatriotic, but instead of Presidents and such, my taste in American coins runs to depictions of Liberty, like the Walking Liberty Half, Mercury (sic) Head Dime, and the Morgan Silver Dollar.
@MattF:
Apparently, Shitstorm is a more respectable word in German than in English. Respectable enough, in fact, for a serious, conservative-leaning newspaper like die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. I’m curious as to why Germans would prefer the loan word Shitstorm to the native Scheißsturm, though.
51.
Mack
Oh, and one reason I think Tiger won’t do well on the course design circuit is that so few are being built these days. It really is a dying sport. I play disc golf professionally, and the opposite is true. The sport isn’t quite mainstream, but the growth is unbelievable for a variety of reasons.
52.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: Possibly, being a loan word makes it more acceptable. Similar to schmuck, which is a fairly specific anatomical obscenity in Yiddish.
53.
FlipYrWhig
@Mack: Building something madly water-expensive like a golf course seems like an inherently losing proposition, even regardless of whether anyone wants to play the sport.
54.
gian
@Capt Seaweed:
There is some whispering that tiger’s decline and the rise of PED testing are more than simply coincidental.
It really is a dying sport. I play disc golf professionally, and the opposite is true.
The golf industry is going through a big contraction, largely due to rapid over expansion, but the game isn’t going anywhere. Get back to us when they replace the holes at St. Andrew’s with hoops, or baskets, or whatever you throw it to.
56.
Mack
@dr. bloor: LOL. Dying, I think, is an accurate enough description, but it is indeed a slow death. To your point, there is already quite a trend of ball golf courses being converted to disc golf (as well as other types of venues)
Weren’t the 1943 pennies made out of (a lot of) zinc, making them not penny-colored?
Steel, actually, with a coating of zinc. There were some 1943 copper pennies, but since they were minting errors, they’re very rare. If you find a 1943 copper penny in circulation, you should get it appraised, because it’s a coin that is often faked.
58.
Mack
There was quite an interesting piece done on “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” on how the golf industry in scrambling (no pun intended) to figure out ways to make the sport more appealing to younger people. One thing they are trying out is to increase the diameter of the hole by something like 600%.
Disc golf of course has no big money behind it at the moment, but that will change as the numbers continue to grow. It’s largely free to play, and the initial equipment investment is minimal.
The biggest growth over the past five years has been in youth and women’s divisions.
59.
Amir Khalid
@MattF: Schmuck is German for jewellery or decoration. I remember reading in a collection of Lenny Bruce comedy routines where Bruce (himself Jewish, and so presumably familiar with Yiddish) defined the Yiddish word as also meaning a fool, but nothing more indecent than that.
ETA: Google Translate also tells me that “schmuck” is Yiddish for fool.
60.
opiejeanne
@Big ole hound: drones also interrupted firefighting at the Lake fire, over by the Jenks Lake cutoff. Forced the planes dumping water to land.
I have spent most of the weekend looking at houses and flats for sale in Lancaster just for fun. It looks like we should be able to find something nice in the downtown area for about 100,000 pounds which would be well within our budget. I am struck by how tiny they all are of course, but at this point in my life the smaller they are the easier they are to clean. I am all for that. I found one place that I wish I could buy today, a three bedroom Victorian terrace with stunning views across the River Lune within walking distance of down town. It will be so much fun being able to live our lives without the need to grab the car keys every time we leave the house. Of course three years is a long lead time but I am still having fun daydreaming about everything.
62.
raven
@Punchy: Bullshit. Tiger was focused and relentless and that’s what made him great. The old honky golf world didn’t like it but he made millions for everyone.
In Yiddish, “schmuck” is a term for the family jewels, ifyouknowwhatImean (FYWP puts those who use the anatomical term into moderation). Bruce cleaned it up for the goyim, but he knew he was sneaking it past the censors.
ETA: In English, the word “dick” has both an anatomical and a metaphorical meaning. Same with “schmuck” in Yiddish.
65.
PurpleGirl
On my third trip to Boca Raton, my friends took me to the Everglades and we took a tour from one of the private tour operators. The Everglades are so beautiful — the tour guide reminded us several times not to put our hads in the water, the the saw grass may look nice but it is dagerous and you can get your hand cut badly.
I once watched a show on TV about the Everglades being a slow moving shallow river. On the tour I could see that.
66.
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
I stand corrected. Serves me right for taking Lenny Bruce seriously.
The fact that Yiddish and German share some words probably misled you as well. The Yiddish meanings of German words are often different and sometimes mock or are a play on the German word and its meaning.
(I don’t know German, but I’m familiar with a fair amount of Yiddish since I’m a goy who grew up around people who knew it.)
68.
germy shoemangler
Tiger Woods on TV at the age of two with Mike Douglas and Bob Hope.
The golf industry is going through a big contraction, largely due to rapid over expansion, but the game isn’t going anywhere.
I guess it most likely differs from one part of the country to another, but there are definitely some struggling courses here in SoCal. The 2008 recession had a lot to do with it. If you lose your job, you are not going to spend any bucks on golf, and if you finally got a new job it was quite possibly substantially lower paying than the previous one. I would guess play on a lot of courses around here has dropped by 30 to 40 percent.
70.
Joel Hanes
Those of you who have seen the Everglades or have pictures should treasure them —
sea level rise plus the continued development in Florida pretty much dooms that biome in the relatively near future.
71.
fuckwit
Dropping this turd in the punchbowl without comment:
Once a robot can do everything an IQ 80 human can do, only better and cheaper, there will be no reason to employ IQ 80 humans. Once a robot can do everything an IQ 120 human can do, only better and cheaper, there will be no reason to employ IQ 120 humans. Once a robot can do everything an IQ 180 human can do, only better and cheaper, there will be no reason to employ humans at all, in the vanishingly unlikely scenario that there are any left by that point.
In the earlier stages of the process, capitalism becomes more and more uncoupled from its previous job as an optimizer for human values. Now most humans are totally locked out of the group whose values capitalism optimizes for. They have no value to contribute as workers – and since in the absence of a spectacular social safety net it’s unclear how they would have much money – they have no value as customers either. Capitalism has passed them by. As the segment of humans who can be outcompeted by robots increases, capitalism passes by more and more people until eventually it locks out the human race entirely, once again in the vanishingly unlikely scenario that we are still around.
I used to watch a show on my steam-powered television about the Everglades where they rode around in those airboats with the big fan on back. I kinda thought,as a kid, that they were something somebody made up. Do they still use those?
HitchBOT is equipped with a GPS, a camera, and software that allows it to have actual conversations with the people giving it rides. It can’t move though, so it relies on people to pick it up and take it to where it needs to go–in this case, the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
78.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy shoemangler: any words involving the activities that go on in his hotel/s (?) in a town on the Jersey shore?
three things:
1) Bought both Go Set a Watchman and Between the World and Me today, even though as a librarian I am or was on hold for both titles to check out from my library system. I simply couldn’t wait any longer.
I felt it necessary and appropriate to buy both, and shall review both. I think there may be some interesting parallels.
2) Went to see Ant-Man. It was okay. Which is damning praise for a MCU installment. It could have been funnier in places, and it could have used a little more narrative – not exposition, but character development – as well. It’s not GotG-level of WOW THAT WAS UNEXPECTED but it was okay. One of its strengths was that it DID infuse itself well into the Avengers-verse in a way that didn’t feel shoe-horned.
3) I *really* gotta get this short story “Body Armor Blues” done today. I swear…
Get back to me when a robot can bag groceries as well as an 80 IQ human can. It’s a much harder task to program a robot to do fine movements while making decisions on the fly (do the eggs go on top of or under the gallon of milk?) than that article seems to realize.
I just peeled and chopped the maters, sliced the okra and kerneled the fresh corn! Won’t be long now!!
85.
Germy Shoemangler
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, I used the word for the activity. That’s what probably got me thrown into moderation, where I will die in the poisoned air outside this dome of life.
Also, too, I’ve seen various dirty hippie economists suggest that the response to increasing automation should be to reduce the average workweek, increase pay, and give people additional vacation time so people can still have jobs. Ain’t gonna happen with our current MoTUs in charge, but there actually is a way to solve the problem of humans being replaced by robots without forcing all the workers into abject poverty.
87.
Germy Shoemangler
@Iowa Old Lady: A robot congress would have more compassion that the current GOP gang
Yes, I think it’s from the Communist Manifest 2.0.
90.
Germy Shoemangler
Let me try again without the offending word:
@FlipYrWhig:
@Mack: Building something madly water-expensive like a golf course seems like an inherently losing proposition, even regardless of whether anyone wants to play the sport.
Isn’t Trump currently embroiled in an attempt to create a golf course in Scotland? Against the wishes of local residents?
A guy who creates gold-plated casinos, beauty pageants, and golf courses. I think he’s a worthless human being, no matter how much wealth he accumulates.
91.
PurpleGirl
@John Revolta: I went to the Everglades in or around 1995, and they were still using the airboats then. I think they are still using them because they are the best craft to get around in. The Everglades is shallow, so a boat needing a deep draft won’t work. Will someone let me know if my impression about the river depth is wrong.
92.
BBA
@Iowa Old Lady: Robots can handle most of it but still can’t froth at the mouth and fall over backwards.
I’m curious as to why Germans would prefer the loan word Shitstorm to the native Scheißsturm, though.
Someone else also asked that question, and I think they also answered it….
So what was wrong with Scheißesturm? Is it just that scatology in another language is acceptable in political and journalistic discourse whereas it wouldn’t be in one’s own?
That seems a persuasive argument to me, and is not confined to scatology.
Apparently it was voted the ‘Anglicism of the year’ in 2012.
But can robots, like conservatives, redefine who qualifies as a human being?
97.
Jeff
Been to the Everglades many times. An amazing place. We’d see alligators very often lounging around the waterways that run under the road. Several times saw enormous ones, in some cases lounging in the sun on top of each other. Check out a place called Shark Valley (no sharks, no valley) state park. So many ‘gators it was ridiculous. You can rent bikes and it’s like a 3 mile blacktop loop in the middle of nowhere. Several overlook towers you can climb. HIGHLY recommended.
98.
Ruckus
@PurpleGirl:
Well as I’m understanding it at some point in the reasonably near future the water level will rise, joining the Everglades and the Atlantic.
ETA Joining them into one rather large pond, not surrounded by land.
What I like about the Everglades is that there are microecosystems; a six-inch change in elevation means a totally different type of flora. I am glad to be able to drive fifteen minutes and be in the midst of them… of course with industrial strength Off! all over me.
100.
John Revolta
@Germy Shoemangler: @PurpleGirl: Trey cool. I’m going to FL this winter to see family- may have to try that!
but there actually is a way to solve the problem of humans being replaced by robots without forcing all the workers into abject poverty.
This is arguably the first or second most important social issue facing this society.
It disappoints me when I hear politicians who I like speaking as if they have a plan to create enough “new” jobs to solve this issue. They don’t because they can’t. When an economic system needs X fewer hours of labor to produce increasingly more economic output than the year before, there is a crises brewing unless the displaced labor has a place to fit in.
102.
OzarkHillbilly
I did not see any gators or gigantic snakes during this trip.
Heh. I just walked out my front door and almost stepped on a 4′ black snake. No gator but I have seen 3 fence post lizards and a couple of skinks. Does that count?
@PaulW: I read Watchman. It was dreadful, IMO. Looking forward to hearing your opinion.
105.
Phylllis
@PaulW: Just started Go Set a Watchman. Coates’ book is in the ‘next payday’ queue. Try to keep the book buying to a minimum, but you’re right, some things you just gotta read now.
I’m happy to hear that you are planning a move especially knowing how frustrating your work can be.
I’m trying to move soon but not finding much in the way of affordable housing.
107.
PurpleGirl
@Keith G: In my opinion, society needs to get used to the idea of a permanent group of people on a livable amount of a dole. There may be people, who though no fault of their own cannot find work and thus need economic support. And in order to keep the economy going, it will need to be sufficient for people to live on long term.
Also counter the Duggars and their comrades, we will need to restrict populations numbers. Society just won’t need as many people as it once did and could supply jobs to.
ETA: This applies whether or not there are robots. Just the automation we have in offices has changed the numbers of workrs needed.
108.
raven
I decided to try cornbread in a cast iron pan on the grill!
@different-church-lady: Yea, I had the bright idea to buy cornbread to go with all this stuff at our “country” grocery. The lady said, “honey, we done sold out’!
Beautiful photo. I can’t recall: did Ponce DeLeon’s scouting party wear their armor while they traipsed about? I know other Spanish exploring parties did elsewhere. The mention of gators and snakes that accompany the photo make me wonder if any studies have been made about their fate, in the face of global warning..
I’m actually not allowed to use those at my grocery store. I somehow always manage to do it wrong and lock the unit up so that a live employee has to put in a code to get it working again, so now they steer me towards the live cashiers. If I’m with my spouse, I am not even allowed to watch him scan the groceries for fear that my mere presence will cause the machine to lock up.
@feebog:
It’s something of a wonder that there are any courses here in SoCal. Not only do they use an obscene amount of water to keep all that grass nice, they also use a ton of space in an area that’s desperate for any developable space closer than the Inland Empire. If nothing else, those areas would be nice as parks available for the general public.
118.
Iowa Old Lady
@Betty Cracker: I’m horrified by Watchman, not so much because of the content (I haven’t read it) as because I don’t believe Lee is in any shape to have consented to its publication.
Here’s the Washington Post with a pretty well-documented article from February:
He describes the same trick that’s been played on me:
I’m standing on line and I’m waved over “Sir, there’s no line here!” Then I walk over, and the cashier walks away and leaves me with the robot.
120.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
You can release that bated breath. Carly Fiorina has condemned Donald Trump’s remarks about McCain, which I only mention because she says she’s “proud to call McCain a friend”. IIRC, Carly was one of the many wheels that fell off McCain’s campaign when, as an official surrogate, she said she wouldn’t hire McCain or Palin to work in a hypothetical private sector company she was running into the ground. But I’m sure an easy going fella like McCain doesn’t even remember that, much less harbor resentment.
2) Went to see Ant-Man. It was okay. Which is damning praise for a MCU installment. It could have been funnier in places, and it could have used a little more narrative – not exposition, but character development – as well. It’s not GotG-level of WOW THAT WAS UNEXPECTED but it was okay. One of its strengths was that it DID infuse itself well into the Avengers-verse in a way that didn’t feel shoe-horned.
I figured Ant-Man might be the MCU’s shark-jumping moment – it’s definitely the first movie in the MCU that I haven’t felt the urge to go and see. I figured I’d wait a little and see the reviews pour in before deciding for sure.
In my opinion, society needs to get used to the idea of a permanent group of people on a livable amount of a dole.
This.
122.
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Have you noticed — and I know I have — that we’ve now arrived a point of ill-cooperation between self-checkout machines and human customers such that it’s really no longer really self-checkout so much as one human checkout clerk managing and facilitating four “self” checkout procedures at the same time?
I only disagree because I’m one of those “inherent dignity of work” people who thinks people are better off emotionally and psychologically if they have a job. I would rather see a lot more job-sharing (fewer hours for more pay) than have an entire set of people cut off from the job market.
I think there could also be “alternative” jobs that aren’t necessarily utilitarian, like paying people to do research without requiring them to be full professors or working on a degree. There was a reason that they had positions in Europe that were either actual religious positions (ie monks and nuns) or academic positions that were pure research with no teaching component. I started thinking along those lines when I read a story about a guy who is the world’s leading amateur expert on ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics — he taught himself them in prison. He’s someone who finds it very difficult to function in “normal” society, but if you gave him room and board, a cubicle, access to a library, and a paycheck, he could happily spend the rest of his life doing his research.
124.
different-church-lady
@Germy Shoemangler: Nowadays my default response to anything and everything in life is, “Oh no, I’m not falling for that.”
125.
gelfling545
Once a robot can do everything an IQ 80 human can do
Once & everything are the key here. I’ve been hearing similar for many years. It’s like waiting for Godot or the second coming of Christ…always arriving but never arrives. Everything carries a lot of weight.
That seems to be the setup around here. Some stores have stopped having the self checkouts because it just meant they needed an extra clerk to supervise it and didn’t actually free anyone up.
Have you noticed — and I know I have — that we’ve now arrived a point of ill-cooperation between self-checkout machines and human customers such that it’s really no longer really self-checkout so much as one human checkout clerk managing and facilitating four “self” checkout procedures at the same time?
I’ve seen that. The clerk has to stand there and rescue people who have frozen the computer. Also, in the stupid supermarket in our town, anyone (no matter how elderly) buying beer will be proofed, so the clerk has to do that.
So maybe our robotic future will be like that. A robot for every job, and a human employed to stand next to the robot just to untangle things.
Some stores have stopped having the self checkouts because it just meant they needed an extra clerk to supervise it and didn’t actually free anyone up.
But, you know, self-driving cars are gonna go exactly as envisioned!
132.
Mike J
@Baud: Never self check with produce. The checkers know all the codes, I don’t and it takes forever to look them up.
133.
different-church-lady
@Mike J: A few years ago I remember reading that they were working on a way to get the fruit to grow the barcode right on itself somehow.
I was thinking, Fuck, this is not a thing we need, CURE CANCER INSTEAD.
134.
Yatsuno
@Mike J: And if they don’t know it off the top of their head they know exactly where it is in their little cheat book. That’s been my experience anyway.
Coming to Seattle at the end of the month for a wedding. Unfortunately still not driving yet so probably zero chance for a meet-up.
135.
Germy Shoemangler
I can’t wait to sit in a GM self-driving car!
I think I’m up to my fifth recall with my GM car. Ignition, steering, possibly the airbag (still trying to find out)… a few others I can’t recall.
@Mnemosyne (tablet): You can’t monetarize that guy’s output, though. So it doesn’t exist.
138.
gelfling545
I meant to mention this in the garden thread this am but time got away from me. My daughter’s garden was one of those in the town garden walk for the first ring suburb she lives in last Sat. Her garden is exquisite and she lives on a corner lot with more of the property in front of the house than behind it so it’s very noticeable. 100+(that’s where she stopped counting) people stopped to view the garden, said how lovely, asked plant names, etc. Odd thing is in this largely Republican town she got nearly as many questions about where to get a Bernie Sanders sign like the one she has on her lawn as she did about gardening. A very curious circumstance.
139.
Germy Shoemangler
@Baud: The codes are printed on this little rotating tube in six-point type, and I never bring my reading glasses with me.
If it doesn’t have a barcode, I wait in line for the human. Which also gives me the opportunity to exchange pleasantries: “How are you?” “Fine! And how are you?”
I talk to the grocery robot sometimes, but only to say “Scan! Scan, damn you!”
Those produce code charts might as well be written in hieroglyphics.
141.
different-church-lady
@Germy Shoemangler: The last time I tried to use
one it eventually stopped scolding me, sighed heavily a few times, and then finally muttered, “You really don’t know how to do this, do you?”
142.
Keith G
I love self checkout lines. All the fogies, the feeble, the check users, and the organizationally impaired dump their incompetence on the 17 yr old checker, and I sail through the self checkout station.
143.
Tree With Water
@Germy Shoemangler: I had the electrical system of a brand new GMC van quit on me as I crested the Altamont pass on my way to Livermore, Ca. That included the hydraulics, i.e., my ability to steer at 65 mph on a downward slope, and me in a far lane needing to get to the shoulder… which I did with traffic whizzing and angry drivers honking their horns. It ranks in the top three of my worst driving experiences, and it might have spelled disaster for a less experienced driver.
144.
Germy Shoemangler
@different-church-lady: My favorite thing is if I buy six or eight individual cans of cat food. I scan each one and I can feel the clerk watching me CLOSELY while I do it.
I suspect they’ve been burned by shoppers who scan one tiny can and drop two into their bag?
@Tree With Water: Shit! That’s much worse than when my power steering went while I was on a curving road. I could steer, but I had to force the wheel really hard. Turned out the power steering electronics were in recall. I hadn’t been notified.
I suspect I’m on the airbag list, because everything else has gone wrong with my car.
147.
different-church-lady
@Germy Shoemangler: What we really need is a robot that can watch the shoppers using the self-checkout robots.
As no one else has deigned to mention it, for future reference it is a jeweler’s loupe.
Have several dozen rolls of pennies which I put together back in the 50s and early 60s around here somewhere. Almost enough incentive to dig them out. Also in a drawer someplace are those folding blue booklets kids used to use for coin collecting.
So maybe our robotic future will be like that. A robot for every job, and a human employed to stand next to the robot just to untangle things.
Here’s an example of a customer/employee interaction at the (utterly non-automated) store I work at:
Customer [from other side of the store]: “Excuse me, how much are these?”
Me [walks over to the shelf she’s standing in front of; reading directly off the sign on the shelf]; “Two dollars and eighty three cents, ma’am.”
No matter how simple the operation, a sizable demographic of humans will always need another human to do it for them.
What we really need is a robot that can watch the shoppers using the self-checkout robots.
The self-checkout robot is paranoid enough to warn me if it suspects I placed something in the “out” bin that hasn’t been scanned. I’ve never tried to cheat it, but sometimes it talks like it suspects that I am.
Quite possibly. Once when I was buying cat food and beer, I joked to the human clerk that I know my cat loves her canned food, but I couldn’t understand why she asked for all this beer.
It got all the laugh it deserved.
153.
different-church-lady
@Chris: And that’s another thing: go back to making stores put prices ON the stuff, not merely in the general vicinity of the stuff.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a cloud standing on my lawn that needs my fist shaken at it.
154.
MattF
A propos automation, here’s an Ars Technica post on the Japanese ‘Robot Hotel’.
As no one else has deigned to mention it, for future reference it is a jeweler’s loupe.
thank you. I called it a “loop” and the robot spell checker said “fine, let it go.”
It’s a loupe my father had back in 1946, when he took a watch repair course after WWII. It’s feels and works better than anything I could possibly buy today.
156.
Keith G
@different-church-lady: And as often as not, they are in front of me trying to find their elusive ID. ;)
157.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I’d agree with you. There is dignity in work and people do need it. Maybe your alternative jobs could be a component of a permanent dole, or maybe the main component of it but with society still willing to pay some people who can’t work.
It still comes down to a change in attitude about how society supports people and makes it possible for people to not live in poverty.
It’s interesting how human-mediated services appear to become more and more of a selling point. I mean, personalization of service as a something to advertise was always a thing, but I think it’s becoming more salient in an era of increasing automation by information technologies.
Case in point: Apple Music differentiates itself from its competitors by, among other things, offering curated music playlists – they (supposedly) don’t create playlists based only on algorithms that draw their data from what you play or purchase, but human beings actually create the lists.
Apple Music differentiates itself from its competitors by, among other things, offering curated music playlists
I don’t think that’s Apple exclusive.
161.
catclub
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Yeah, this. Folding clothes was the task that has a team (at Berkeley?) stumped at the moment. I bet walking a dog – or multiple dogs, would be challenging.
It may not be, but it’s something they promote as part of their service.
163.
Baud
I need a robot that can answer captches, because they are becoming increasingly difficult for me.
164.
PurpleGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: I hear a bunch of advertisements on the TV for GMC cars and they talk about precision, excellence, and stuff like that. I wonder how the ad agency can possible write the text without breaking into laughter.
Have found the self-checkout stations efficient and easy to use at Home Depot, so long as one remembers to insert coins before bills when paying in cash.
Would never use one at the supermarket I occasionally shop at, as nearly each time I shop there I have to stop the cashier to point out that while an item scanned correctly as to what it is, the price rung up is incorrect (the error, of course, never being in my favor).
Almost always just one item among those I’m buying, but occurs quite frequently. It has gotten to the point where the assistant managers recognize me and instruct the cashier to change the ring-up without having to send a flunky to look at the shelves.
I chalk it up more to sloppiness than to venality, but who knows.
I suspect they’ve been burned by shoppers who scan one tiny can and drop two into their bag?
I am pretty sure there is scale, and a lookup table of item weights that need to match. Why else would it ask you to put things in the bag, or promise that you are not putting said item in the bag.
Apple Music differentiates itself from its competitors by, among other things, offering curated music playlists –
It is very under reported that Spotify has curated playlists and have had them for years. The first time I used Spotify was when a band that I follow mentioned that they had created a Spotify playlist of the songs that really influenced their early years. Since then, I have created playlists that attract followers. I guess when Apple does things that already had been done by others, they still get a bigger buzz.
Well, I know it’s a stretch to connect the big number preceded by a dollar sign with the price of the item stacked directly below it, but, hey… explaining that connection is one of the many things that justifies my job, so I’m not too eager for them to change it.
Oh, I knew about shared playlists on Spotify (I’ve made some myself), and yes, it’s a feature that is underreported.
But the point about service still stands. That is something you’ll probably see reported more and more.
170.
Tree With Water
@different-church-lady: Imagine DeNiro’s narrative during the opening scene in Casino, except with robots (pit boss watching dealer, floor guy watching pit bosses, DeNiro watching floor guy, and the cameras watching them all).
171.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I know there are a few WhatTheFuck-o-nauts here? This one could be a fucking hoot, I hope Sir Ian was in a good mood
marc maron @ marcmaron 22m22 minutes ago
Tomorrow is @ IanMcKellen day on @ WTFpod!
I saw on Chris Hayes’ feed he’s got one coming up, too.
I hear a bunch of advertisements on the TV for GMC cars and they talk about precision, excellence, and stuff like that. I wonder how the ad agency can possible write the text without breaking into laughter.
I’m sure they laugh and chuckle while creating the commercials and also laugh all the way to the bank.
I was shocked to see recently that GMC has had a big surge in sales. I thought they’d go under after the extremely tardy recall on faulty ignitions, which killed people.
When GM reorganized, I don’t know why it kept the GMC division – it seemed redundant, given that many of its products are twinned with Chevrolet. But they got rid of Pontiac, which was actually making some really interesting cars at the time of the bankruptcy.
175.
Keith G
@Linnaeus: I was noticing the pre rollout coverage of Applewhatever. Some press was ticking off “exclusive features” as if the little shed in Cupertino had invented oxygen.
I have noticed opinions are cooling down.
Speaking of which, Bernie Sanders is putting in an appearance just down the road from me in 3 hrs.
I’m trying Apple Music now, and I like much of it so far, but there are some kinks that need to be worked out. My trial Spotify Premium ends next month, and my trial Apple Music ends in October, and at that point, I’ll decide which one I really want to go with. The fact that I own an Apple computer will be a factor, but not necessarily the dispositive one.
178.
FlipYrWhig
@PurpleGirl: Their ad campaign is predicated on the idea that the C in GMC stands for “precision.” Nothing could testify to their high-end accuracy more.
Google bought out Songza and has started doing free internet radio. I really like it. I’m not a huge music aficionado so the difference between the services would probably be lost on me.
ETA: although I’ve tried Pandora, and I couldn’t get into it for some reason.
There are so many talented musicians, artists, actors, dancers, playwrights, composers, filmmakers, and other makers who would benefit from being paid to create.
At one time there used to be multiple weekly radio programs with live performances with full orchestras and great singers.
I wish we could have more live television broadcasts of performing arts to support our creative talent.
A real pipe dream of mine would be more public funding for lessons because the cost of studying performing and visual arts is too high for most people.
181.
Keith G
@Linnaeus: Though a PC guy, I bought my first iPod Classic in 2003 (another in 2005) and have been having a love/hate relationship with the iTunes brand ever since. Though I still use a few Shuffles when I need highly portable content (is there any device better for that), I have been a bit happier and less frustrated now that I seldom open iTunes.
My train conductor Frank who is the Treasurer of the union and has been on the same line for 27 years, keeps up constant banter and has a mantra he repeats every day to his captive audience – “self service is no service”. No robot is going to shame that one guy who’s always late like Frank can, and whose job it is to keep the schedule and to make sure everyone is paying their fare, and stays safe.
@MomSense: I’ve always always admired the public buildings in my neck of the woods that FDR saw built during the New Deal. The murals in some of the post office’s I’ve been in are works of art..
In reading this thread backwards, I just ran across this: “In my town, there are beautiful WPA murals in the post office that were painted in 1937”. Exactly!
191.
raven
@NotMax: It has actually been redone. I did a crummy job sharpening it, cupped the blade, and I found a guy who did a nice job putting it back together. I’ve had it and two other Sabatier carbon steel knives for 31 years. I also have a stainless one for onions and such.
Oh I agree that a WPA would be wonderful today. We can’t even get our Republican Congress to fund road and bridge repair.
193.
Gimlet
Transcript from Netroots yesterday. I think Sanders handled himself OK. The MSM could blow it out of proportion to make it a “Dean Scream” thing to sabotage Sanders chances. No idea how he or the others poll among Blacks.
After talking over one another, Sanders eventually ditched pre-planned remarks and tried to address questions from demonstrators.
“Black people are dying in this country because we have a criminal justice system which is out of control, a system in which over 50% of young African-American kids are unemployed,” Sanders said. “It is estimated that a black baby born today has a one in four chance of ending up in the criminal justice system.”
When Sanders cited the Affordable Care Act as a law he supported that helped people of color by making health insurance more accessible, one man shouted, “we can’t afford that!”
Before Sanders finished speaking, many of the protesters walked out on him toward exit doors in the back.
194.
Keith G
@Linnaeus: I think it is a plus if one is staying in an Apple ecosystem.
I have found so many updates (so many updates) to be glitchy and otherwise not well-focused on the user experience. It got to the point that I would not update until I was able to read reactions in user forums so I would know what issues to expect.
Edited
195.
wasabi gasp
Self-checkout is fantastic! Especially that hand scanner gizmo thing. Put bags in cart, scan and fill bags, go to checkout, scan card, scan coupons and pay. Out the door. Haven’t read the cover of People magazine in years.
Those will be toll roads when they finally get done, a privatized asset.
197.
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
I think I could come up with most of the Republican party’s objections: This is classic Democrat Big Government thinking. Government spending would skyrocket. Jobs should come from the private sector, the only real source of employment, or not at all. Etc, etc. The same arguments it advanced against Obama’s first-term stimulus package, which should have been twice its size.
198.
Josie
@MomSense: What you say makes so much sense. My son tells me that Canada has programs and money for artists to encourage them in their pursuits. I don’t understand why we can’t do the same. His dream is to move to L.A. to work in the industry, but we can’t afford it. He has to do everything long distance, on the computer. I don’t want to send him out there to live in his car.
There are a large number of obstacles in the path to do this — they are called Republicans and right now they control the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. And these are just the first set of obstacles.
201.
Gimlet
The administration sends up a balloon
Seeking tighter controls over firearm purchases, the Obama administration is pushing to ban Social Security beneficiaries from owning guns if they lack the mental capacity to manage their own affairs
@Keith G: I used to train cashiers way back when, so I can certainly manage the self checkout line, but I very seldom use them because I want to support the notion that stores need to hire people to perform customer service. I’m paying them money, I shouldn’t have to provide free labor to them as well.
I’m an old fogey that way.
204.
Tree With Water
@satby: Safeway forced a showdown with its union employees in Northern California about 20 years ago. When the picket lines went up, their stores stood deserted and their competitors cleaned up. I would have stayed away on principle, but like most people I had gabbed amiably with my local Safeway clerks for years. I was on a friendlier basis with them than I was with certain members of my own family. I would have been embarrassed to have been spotted crossing their line, and most everyone else thereabouts felt the same. The union won that fight.
One of the big parts of the WPA during the Depression was finding work that people already knew how to do rather than forcing people into ditch-digger jobs, so there are a ton of murals, plays, etc. from that time that people were paid to do by the government. Paying for the arts and arts training would definitely be part of my future utopia.
And though I know some people would see this as a downside, IIRC the band U2 was able to form because they were all on the dole in Ireland and had plenty of time to practice and find gigs. Bono says that being in U2 is the only job he’s ever had.
208.
Capt Seaweed
@Punchy:
I’ve heard the same stories about Tiger being a dick and Jack being not-a-dick. Seems that way to me too. Arnold Palmer is a great example of how far being a nice guy will take you. Still, I’d suggest that a great deal of the course design and building is going on in Asia (read CHINA) and whether Tiger is an ass or not is irrelevant. Get Tiger to build a course and put his name on it. Prestige! matters…
209.
Capt Seaweed
@Mack:
Yeah back when Tiger was kicking ass and breaking hearts he had more will and drive to win than just about anybody I can think of. Sundays belonged to Tiger, everybody knew it, and he used that fear to his advantage and helped become the best golfer in the game. Nobody could touch him. For years. And you bring up a good point: his swing changed. And he bulked up, noticeably. The two things might be related. He lost some of his suppleness as he got older. It happens. He broke his leg winning the US Open. He may never have recovered completely from that. Lots of small things changed for him (including the two years of non-stop scandal reporting) and in golf it’s all about the small things making a hash of the big things…
210.
mclaren
Looks like a swamp to me.
211.
Tree With Water
I just tuned into ESPN’s Sunday night baseball game, and it’s pouring rain in Anaheim.. in July, for crying out loud.
212.
Capt Seaweed
@gian: I’d heard that story/rumor before. I have no opinion as to whether it’s true or not. I just don’t know. However, Tiger did get really big awfully fast…
I used to train cashiers way back when, so I can certainly manage the self checkout line…
Not any of the goddamn self checkout lines I’ve tried.
Get this: I’ve been using computers since 1978. I can code in machine language. Not assembelr, motherfuck, machine language. Flat opcode. In hexadecimal.
And I cannot navigate one of the fucking self checkout machines I’ve been through. Not one.
Here’s the way it goes:
PLACE ITEM UNDER SCANNER.
No problem. Item scans.
ENTER NUMBER OF ITEMS.
Sure, do that.
SLIDE CARD.
So now I slide the card. And it gets hellish fast.
BAG FEE 25 CENTS.
No, no, no, no, no, no, I don’t want any goddamn bags. No fucking way to go back and eliminate the bag fee.
So I start over.
Now we get SLIDE CARD again.
And now it reads two items. What I originally scanned. And now what I just re-scanned.
So how do you change numbre of items?
You can’t.
At this point I start all over. And it traps me in the loop AGAIN.
Fuck it!
I’m outa there, back to the checkout line.
The shitty crappy rotten unconscionable pissant poor software design of these goddamn self-cehckout POS systems is so bad, that the goddamn 4 kilobyte paper-tape-booting computer I learned to program on, looks like User Interface Heaven by comparison.
Fuck self checkout.
Doesn’t work.
Piece of shit.
Suffer, scream, and die POS developers. Your shite hardware and garbage software is UN-FUCKING-USABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
214.
Capt Seaweed
@feebog: Golf course design and golf courses in general are struggling in the USA. But not in Asia. China especially. I was reading 140 new courses are under construction or planned in Japan. Thailand has new courses all over. Same same VietNam and S. Korea. The US may have reached peak duffer but it’s a different story elsewhere.
215.
different-church-lady
@Chris: When you say the item is “stacked directly below it”, you’re making an assumption that frequently does not mach reality.
Yatsuno
You didn’t see any fellow UF alumni? Are they like my school & flee the state upon graduation?
dmsilev
Operation Pack Everything is done. I’m not sure how many boxes it came to, but it was a lot. Movers come on Friday; I’m camped out in temp space for the next month until it’s time to move myself.
Not Fun.
Betty Cracker
@Yatsuno: Well, you got me there — I saw many fellow Gators. They tend to flee Gainesville, but many stick around in FL or leave and then eventually return.
RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)
Tiger Woods should just retire.
gogol's wife
@dmsilev:
Home or office? They’re moving my office this coming Wednesday. It’s not pretty.
Big ole hound
During the big freeway fire in CA private drones kept fire fighting out of the area for 20 minutes. I hope they find a way to drop water on them during any emergency or put an identifier in them during manufacturing so the owners can be prosecuted the same as an arsonist. Enough of this shit. That fire went on to burn 40 houses.
Ruckus
@gogol’s wife:
I’ve moved one of my own businesses and worked for a 90 person company that moved. Not one moment of that was fun. And in both cases the new digs were much nicer than the old.
Betty Cracker
@Big ole hound: Seems like there would be a way to jam their signal or something. I guess not.
raven
@Betty Cracker: Shoot em the fuck down.
raven
I mowed and weed ate in the brutal heat, did the grocery shopping and now I’m trying to get the old lady off the couch so I can take a nap!
dmsilev
@gogol’s wife: Home. The office moving is coming, and is an entirely different order of magnitude of Suck. The office (lab, actually) move is why I’m here for another month, to manage the process. Last estimate was ~50 crates plus miscellaneous, spanning three semi trailers.
Ruckus
@Big ole hound:
Same thought here. Have we gotten so, not sure of the word, but how about invasive, that we have to have pics of everything? And not just pics, but pics RIGHT NOW! Isn’t it enough that the news helicopters could/did show you everything while managing to stay out of the way of the firefighters? I could see feeds from several different news orgs on the internet.
Amir Khalid
@RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac):
He never really got his groove back after his big scandal. It’s sad how far he’s fallen, isn’t it? But he might not be confident that he knows how to do anything else.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
That sounds worse than the employer move even though I had to move several smallish trucks of my equipment. My business move on the other hand involved several truck loads of heavy machinery and wiring the new business. But your equipment sounds a lot more breakable.
Scout211
We visited Everglades National Park in February of 2014. We saw both snakes and gators, of all sizes. Plus, some amazing birds.
We loved that place.
Betty Cracker
@Ruckus: I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one or two of the drones belonged to a freelance photog.
Betty Cracker
@Scout211: They are definitely in evidence during the cooler months.
Josie
@dmsilev: I hate the part where you are all packed up and have to survive without stuff until the move actually takes place. Then, on the other end, you have to manage until everything is unpacked and in its place. I moved last fall 200 miles from my original home and still have not unpacked every single thing, mainly because I have no more space to put anything. I’m thinking EBay should be my next project. Good luck with the rest of your move.
Germy Shoemangler
Mrs. Shoemangler was reading something about rare old wheat pennies being worth money.
I’ve been collecting them all my life, so I took out the old 1940s jeweler’s loop and looked them over. One from 1919. A bunch from the 1940s and 1950s. Nothing from 1943 (which apparently is the most valuable).
I think the loop actually might be worth more than the pennies.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m in Boston, all dressed and ready for my friend’s surprise 70th birthday party (not a surprise that he’s having a 70th birthday, of course, and he knows something is in the works, he just doesn’t know any of the wonderfulness).
It is hot and muggy here. Thought I might have left that behind, but, sadly, no.
Tomorrow or Tuesday, before I head back home, I think I’ll visit the Science Museum of Boston. They have a very cool-sounding exhibit called “Micro or Macro?” which looks like fun: http://www.mos.org/exhibits/macro-or-micro. Have any of the Bostonian Juicers seen it?
dmsilev
@Ruckus: Yeah, a lot of our equipment is small and fragile. Then there’s the big and not so fragile stuff. And of course the special-case headaches, like the two (weak) radioactive sources that have to be shipped separately with reams of paperwork documenting their nature and movements and so forth. Not to mention the renovations at the receiving end to make sure that the space is what we need it to be. For instance, I think I counted seven different types of power that we need to have run (single vs. 3 phase, various voltages, various levels of isolation and filtering).
shell
Betty, not even any weird insects…
dmsilev
@Josie: I’m doing the ‘furnished temporary space’ thing for a few months (one month at this end, probably three months at the other end), so at least I don’t have to worry about moving furniture etc. more than once. Does mean that all my books will be in storage until I’m in quasi-permanent housing, but I can live with that (three cheers for eBooks…).
Mnemosyne (tablet)
We drove out into the Everglades a couple of times when we were in Naples (both accidentally and on purpose). We saw a gator when we stopped at a park for that purpose and a big ol’ one strolled across the parking lot and slid into the pond to pose for us tourists.
Capt Seaweed
@Amir Khalid:
No offense, fellas, but I find it hard to feel sorry for a billionaire who has reached the inevitable end of a brilliant career, then gets on his $40million jet and flies home. He may not win any more golf tourns but he’ll make hundreds of millions more designing courses all around the world and still gets to bed supermodels any time he wants. Is he washed up? Sure looks like it. He’ll create a different kind of Tiger Inc. and carry on all the way to the bank.
TaMara (BHF)
@Betty Cracker: From what I read, the drones were operating in an area that is an open space for recreational drone use. The fact they were over the fire seemed coincidental. Police went to the area and all the operators brought their drones in, no charges filed. Although, they shouldn’t they have known better and brought them in when the fire started?
Joel
The problem for golf is that Tiger was their last, best, hope for broad appeal. Now they got nothing.
JPL
@raven: what happened to the Princess?
Amir Khalid
@Capt Seaweed:
Ah. He designs golf courses too? And he’s still screwing around? Then I don’t feel sorry for him either.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Me neither. Still, those news helicopters have to stay out of the way and are controlled by the FAA. Who as I understand it can set emergency air directives, setting minimum ceilings, closed areas, etc. Some have called for the drones to be shot down, but we are talking a very small moving target, in a situation where there usually isn’t room to maneuver well in a populated area (this one isn’t all that populated but those people in cars and on foot fleeing the fire….) Things falling out of the sky, like lead, drone parts, doesn’t sound like the way to go. I’m thinking if you get caught, jail time for interfering with a state of emergency, although I can see that the police would probably end up abusing this, and possibly partial responsibility for the losses, after all the firefighting had to cease for some time because of the drone owner’s actions.
TaMara (BHF)
Some Bixby pics and his diary (including pool shots). I know I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s still growing, but yes, when I had to loosen his halter I was.
TaMara (BHF)
Driven through the glades only, but kayaked through the Cypress preserve in Ft. Myers and that was great. Manatees, birds galore, snakes. Not too many bugs (must have been a lull).
Germy Shoemangler
@Joel: Young Asian ladies are playing golf.
Maybe they can go with that.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
It’s not just “after his big scandal”. If you remember, his big scandal happened while he was rehabbing from knee surgery. My suspicion is that his knees just aren’t the same, and that has more to do with his extreme falloff than the scandal itself.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
on my to-be-read pile is “The Swamp”, by Michael Greenwald, who also wrote a book on the Stimulus that should have gotten a lot more attention from what actual liberal media there is. I think when it came out, he got about three minutes on the Ed Schultz show.
As I’ve said before, you make Florida look good. I want to tour the Everglades in one of them goofy boats, and spend a week or so on the Keys. In the off season
CaseyL
Bite of Seattle is this weekend: food and music everywhere! I went yesterday with a friend to see Ochkam’s Razor (celtic hard rock) and go to the Alley (12 restaurants put together a platter of tasty bits, for charity).
Today I’m going there to see another friend play (blues), and probably stuff myself silly again. Great way to spend a weekend!
Tenar Darell
@SiubhanDuinne: Happy 70th to your friend. Haven’t seen the science museum exhibit. Favor: Let me know if it’s really good, and I’ll add it to my list. Thanks!
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
Sounds like the major difference in my business move is the breakability of some of the items. Lots of precision stuff in my move but the big trucks and a forklift that takes up half the load capacity of a semi were the harry part. But that’s what experienced movers were very good at. Bastards made it look easy. Maybe it was. For them.
Capt Seaweed
@Amir Khalid:
His career is most likely over, but he is still Tiger Woods. There is no limit to what he can accomplish off the course. I read somewhere that Nicklaus made way more money in the course design biz than he ever made playing. Jack had like 5 or 6 projects going at once and the money just tsunamied in. Tiger, I can see same same. I will say his game disappeared after getting clobbered with a 9-iron on the noggin by his wife, so he may not be the same Tiger mentally.
dmsilev
@Ruckus: We had the good sense (and budget) to hire some pretty good professional movers and riggers. Would really really really not want to do something like this without that sort of support.
shortstop
I know the ‘Glades aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m crazy about that place. The bird life, the open vistas, the quietness, the stars at night…love it all.
Shakezula
Just got back from kayaking. It was OK at 7 am. By 10 I felt like I was sitting in a pan of hot water. Mr. S fished while I found bits of shade to lurk in.
I saw 4 green herons, 2 blues, an osprey, a kingfisher and a hummingbird. Also eleventy billion turtles – snapping and cooter. Yes there is a turtle called a cooter.
Also a big ol’ catfish, that Mr. S. caught. Yuck.
@Germy Shoemangler: It really depends on the year and the condition and the mint and oh, are you asleep? A coin shop might give you 2-5 cents for each one.
raven
@JPL: She moved, I got my 20 minute nap. I invited her back. She gave me the face.
MattF
It’s often noted that there are words in German that signify things you can’t say in any other language. Apparently, judging from the headline on this article, there are English words that have the same status in German.
Punchy
@Capt Seaweed: I think much of Jack’s success was that he was a genuinely nice, well-liked guy. I’ve heard for many years lots of Tiger anecdotes thats he’s completely the opposite. Asshole to the core. Not sure how much business he could drum up as an asshole.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: I have not seen that exhibit, but the MOS is a great place any time. Used to have a family membership back when the kids were still living at home.
Mack
@Capt Seaweed: I don’t at all disagree with you that Tiger will continue to have, as the kids say, mad bank. But in many cases, money is a secondary concern. Tiger was a FIERCE and dominant competitor, and he will just never be that again. He tried to bulk up too quickly, and ruined his swing.
ThresherK
@Germy Shoemangler: Weren’t the 1943 pennies made out of (a lot of) zinc, making them not penny-colored?
I don’t know if that’s in addition to a few 1943s that are standard copper. If that is the case I’m sure there would be very few, and their value would be correspondingly higher.
Call me unpatriotic, but instead of Presidents and such, my taste in American coins runs to depictions of Liberty, like the Walking Liberty Half, Mercury (sic) Head Dime, and the Morgan Silver Dollar.
MattF
@ThresherK: Zinc-coated steel, it says here.
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
Apparently, Shitstorm is a more respectable word in German than in English. Respectable enough, in fact, for a serious, conservative-leaning newspaper like die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. I’m curious as to why Germans would prefer the loan word Shitstorm to the native Scheißsturm, though.
Mack
Oh, and one reason I think Tiger won’t do well on the course design circuit is that so few are being built these days. It really is a dying sport. I play disc golf professionally, and the opposite is true. The sport isn’t quite mainstream, but the growth is unbelievable for a variety of reasons.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: Possibly, being a loan word makes it more acceptable. Similar to schmuck, which is a fairly specific anatomical obscenity in Yiddish.
FlipYrWhig
@Mack: Building something madly water-expensive like a golf course seems like an inherently losing proposition, even regardless of whether anyone wants to play the sport.
gian
@Capt Seaweed:
There is some whispering that tiger’s decline and the rise of PED testing are more than simply coincidental.
Here was one of the first Google hits
http://starlightreflex.hubpages.com/hub/Photos-of-PGA-Golf-Superstars-Before-and-After-Probable-PED-and-Steroid-Use
dr. bloor
@Mack:
The golf industry is going through a big contraction, largely due to rapid over expansion, but the game isn’t going anywhere. Get back to us when they replace the holes at St. Andrew’s with hoops, or baskets, or whatever you throw it to.
Mack
@dr. bloor: LOL. Dying, I think, is an accurate enough description, but it is indeed a slow death. To your point, there is already quite a trend of ball golf courses being converted to disc golf (as well as other types of venues)
Linnaeus
@ThresherK:
Steel, actually, with a coating of zinc. There were some 1943 copper pennies, but since they were minting errors, they’re very rare. If you find a 1943 copper penny in circulation, you should get it appraised, because it’s a coin that is often faked.
Mack
There was quite an interesting piece done on “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” on how the golf industry in scrambling (no pun intended) to figure out ways to make the sport more appealing to younger people. One thing they are trying out is to increase the diameter of the hole by something like 600%.
Disc golf of course has no big money behind it at the moment, but that will change as the numbers continue to grow. It’s largely free to play, and the initial equipment investment is minimal.
The biggest growth over the past five years has been in youth and women’s divisions.
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
Schmuck is German for jewellery or decoration. I remember reading in a collection of Lenny Bruce comedy routines where Bruce (himself Jewish, and so presumably familiar with Yiddish) defined the Yiddish word as also meaning a fool, but nothing more indecent than that.
ETA: Google Translate also tells me that “schmuck” is Yiddish for fool.
opiejeanne
@Big ole hound: drones also interrupted firefighting at the Lake fire, over by the Jenks Lake cutoff. Forced the planes dumping water to land.
Litlebritdifrnt
I have spent most of the weekend looking at houses and flats for sale in Lancaster just for fun. It looks like we should be able to find something nice in the downtown area for about 100,000 pounds which would be well within our budget. I am struck by how tiny they all are of course, but at this point in my life the smaller they are the easier they are to clean. I am all for that. I found one place that I wish I could buy today, a three bedroom Victorian terrace with stunning views across the River Lune within walking distance of down town. It will be so much fun being able to live our lives without the need to grab the car keys every time we leave the house. Of course three years is a long lead time but I am still having fun daydreaming about everything.
raven
@Punchy: Bullshit. Tiger was focused and relentless and that’s what made him great. The old honky golf world didn’t like it but he made millions for everyone.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: Wikipedia has an article on this.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Amir Khalid:
In Yiddish, “schmuck” is a term for the family jewels, ifyouknowwhatImean (FYWP puts those who use the anatomical term into moderation). Bruce cleaned it up for the goyim, but he knew he was sneaking it past the censors.
ETA: In English, the word “dick” has both an anatomical and a metaphorical meaning. Same with “schmuck” in Yiddish.
PurpleGirl
On my third trip to Boca Raton, my friends took me to the Everglades and we took a tour from one of the private tour operators. The Everglades are so beautiful — the tour guide reminded us several times not to put our hads in the water, the the saw grass may look nice but it is dagerous and you can get your hand cut badly.
I once watched a show on TV about the Everglades being a slow moving shallow river. On the tour I could see that.
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
I stand corrected. Serves me right for taking Lenny Bruce seriously.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Amir Khalid:
The fact that Yiddish and German share some words probably misled you as well. The Yiddish meanings of German words are often different and sometimes mock or are a play on the German word and its meaning.
(I don’t know German, but I’m familiar with a fair amount of Yiddish since I’m a goy who grew up around people who knew it.)
germy shoemangler
Tiger Woods on TV at the age of two with Mike Douglas and Bob Hope.
feebog
@dr. bloor:
I guess it most likely differs from one part of the country to another, but there are definitely some struggling courses here in SoCal. The 2008 recession had a lot to do with it. If you lose your job, you are not going to spend any bucks on golf, and if you finally got a new job it was quite possibly substantially lower paying than the previous one. I would guess play on a lot of courses around here has dropped by 30 to 40 percent.
Joel Hanes
Those of you who have seen the Everglades or have pictures should treasure them —
sea level rise plus the continued development in Florida pretty much dooms that biome in the relatively near future.
fuckwit
Dropping this turd in the punchbowl without comment:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
James E Powell
@MattF:
And I find the politics of other nations so much more interesting than my own because I don’t understand them.
germy shoemangler
@fuckwit: Is that why half the population dreams of a career in show business and the other half dreams of a career in sports?
germy shoemangler
i’m in moderation after saying something not so nice about trump, but i didn’t use any curse words.
Did he buy WP?
Baud
@fuckwit:
Are there no robots in socialism?
John Revolta
I used to watch a show on my steam-powered television about the Everglades where they rode around in those airboats with the big fan on back. I kinda thought,as a kid, that they were something somebody made up. Do they still use those?
germy shoemangler
There’s a robot hitchhiking across America:
http://www.popsci.com/theres-robot-hitchhiking-across-united-states
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy shoemangler: any words involving the activities that go on in his hotel/s (?) in a town on the Jersey shore?
PaulW
three things:
1) Bought both Go Set a Watchman and Between the World and Me today, even though as a librarian I am or was on hold for both titles to check out from my library system. I simply couldn’t wait any longer.
I felt it necessary and appropriate to buy both, and shall review both. I think there may be some interesting parallels.
2) Went to see Ant-Man. It was okay. Which is damning praise for a MCU installment. It could have been funnier in places, and it could have used a little more narrative – not exposition, but character development – as well. It’s not GotG-level of WOW THAT WAS UNEXPECTED but it was okay. One of its strengths was that it DID infuse itself well into the Avengers-verse in a way that didn’t feel shoe-horned.
3) I *really* gotta get this short story “Body Armor Blues” done today. I swear…
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@fuckwit:
Get back to me when a robot can bag groceries as well as an 80 IQ human can. It’s a much harder task to program a robot to do fine movements while making decisions on the fly (do the eggs go on top of or under the gallon of milk?) than that article seems to realize.
tybee
@raven:
PULL!
Iowa Old Lady
@fuckwit: So even now we could do without Congress?
John Revolta
@Baud: Sure. Didn’t you ever hear, “From each according to its mobility; to each according to its speed”?
raven
@tybee: Goddamn right, how hard can it be??
I just peeled and chopped the maters, sliced the okra and kerneled the fresh corn! Won’t be long now!!
Germy Shoemangler
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, I used the word for the activity. That’s what probably got me thrown into moderation, where I will die in the poisoned air outside this dome of life.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@fuckwit:
Also, too, I’ve seen various dirty hippie economists suggest that the response to increasing automation should be to reduce the average workweek, increase pay, and give people additional vacation time so people can still have jobs. Ain’t gonna happen with our current MoTUs in charge, but there actually is a way to solve the problem of humans being replaced by robots without forcing all the workers into abject poverty.
Germy Shoemangler
@Iowa Old Lady: A robot congress would have more compassion that the current GOP gang
Germy Shoemangler
@John Revolta: yes!
http://www.captainjacksairboattours.com
You can sign up for a tour!
Hearing protection provided!
Baud
@John Revolta:
Yes, I think it’s from the Communist Manifest 2.0.
Germy Shoemangler
Let me try again without the offending word:
@FlipYrWhig:
@Mack: Building something madly water-expensive like a golf course seems like an inherently losing proposition, even regardless of whether anyone wants to play the sport.
Isn’t Trump currently embroiled in an attempt to create a golf course in Scotland? Against the wishes of local residents?
A guy who creates gold-plated casinos, beauty pageants, and golf courses. I think he’s a worthless human being, no matter how much wealth he accumulates.
PurpleGirl
@John Revolta: I went to the Everglades in or around 1995, and they were still using the airboats then. I think they are still using them because they are the best craft to get around in. The Everglades is shallow, so a boat needing a deep draft won’t work. Will someone let me know if my impression about the river depth is wrong.
BBA
@Iowa Old Lady: Robots can handle most of it but still can’t froth at the mouth and fall over backwards.
Iowa Old Lady
@Germy Shoemangler: And take reality into better account.
shell
Indeed. The first law of robotics is : A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Mandalay
@Amir Khalid:
Someone else also asked that question, and I think they also answered it….
That seems a persuasive argument to me, and is not confined to scatology.
Apparently it was voted the ‘Anglicism of the year’ in 2012.
Baud
@shell:
But can robots, like conservatives, redefine who qualifies as a human being?
Jeff
Been to the Everglades many times. An amazing place. We’d see alligators very often lounging around the waterways that run under the road. Several times saw enormous ones, in some cases lounging in the sun on top of each other. Check out a place called Shark Valley (no sharks, no valley) state park. So many ‘gators it was ridiculous. You can rent bikes and it’s like a 3 mile blacktop loop in the middle of nowhere. Several overlook towers you can climb. HIGHLY recommended.
Ruckus
@PurpleGirl:
Well as I’m understanding it at some point in the reasonably near future the water level will rise, joining the Everglades and the Atlantic.
ETA Joining them into one rather large pond, not surrounded by land.
Mustang Bobby
What I like about the Everglades is that there are microecosystems; a six-inch change in elevation means a totally different type of flora. I am glad to be able to drive fifteen minutes and be in the midst of them… of course with industrial strength Off! all over me.
John Revolta
@Germy Shoemangler: @PurpleGirl: Trey cool. I’m going to FL this winter to see family- may have to try that!
Keith G
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
This is arguably the first or second most important social issue facing this society.
It disappoints me when I hear politicians who I like speaking as if they have a plan to create enough “new” jobs to solve this issue. They don’t because they can’t. When an economic system needs X fewer hours of labor to produce increasingly more economic output than the year before, there is a crises brewing unless the displaced labor has a place to fit in.
OzarkHillbilly
Heh. I just walked out my front door and almost stepped on a 4′ black snake. No gator but I have seen 3 fence post lizards and a couple of skinks. Does that count?
different-church-lady
@fuckwit: OK, let’s think this through…
Eventually there are no human workers.
That means most people have no income.
Who do the 1% sell anything to?
Betty Cracker
@PaulW: I read Watchman. It was dreadful, IMO. Looking forward to hearing your opinion.
Phylllis
@PaulW: Just started Go Set a Watchman. Coates’ book is in the ‘next payday’ queue. Try to keep the book buying to a minimum, but you’re right, some things you just gotta read now.
MomSense
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I’m happy to hear that you are planning a move especially knowing how frustrating your work can be.
I’m trying to move soon but not finding much in the way of affordable housing.
PurpleGirl
@Keith G: In my opinion, society needs to get used to the idea of a permanent group of people on a livable amount of a dole. There may be people, who though no fault of their own cannot find work and thus need economic support. And in order to keep the economy going, it will need to be sufficient for people to live on long term.
Also counter the Duggars and their comrades, we will need to restrict populations numbers. Society just won’t need as many people as it once did and could supply jobs to.
ETA: This applies whether or not there are robots. Just the automation we have in offices has changed the numbers of workrs needed.
raven
I decided to try cornbread in a cast iron pan on the grill!
srv
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Robots don’t need groceries.
different-church-lady
@raven: Let’s see a robot do that!
raven
@different-church-lady: Yea, I had the bright idea to buy cornbread to go with all this stuff at our “country” grocery. The lady said, “honey, we done sold out’!
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@srv:
That’s not what “Futurama” told me.
http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Bender
Tree With Water
Beautiful photo. I can’t recall: did Ponce DeLeon’s scouting party wear their armor while they traipsed about? I know other Spanish exploring parties did elsewhere. The mention of gators and snakes that accompany the photo make me wonder if any studies have been made about their fate, in the face of global warning..
srv
@Mnemosyne (tablet): You already are a grocery robot
Works for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izLgJWmlr4A
Baud
@PurpleGirl:
Every team needs a bench.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@srv:
I’m actually not allowed to use those at my grocery store. I somehow always manage to do it wrong and lock the unit up so that a live employee has to put in a code to get it working again, so now they steer me towards the live cashiers. If I’m with my spouse, I am not even allowed to watch him scan the groceries for fear that my mere presence will cause the machine to lock up.
Roger Moore
@feebog:
It’s something of a wonder that there are any courses here in SoCal. Not only do they use an obscene amount of water to keep all that grass nice, they also use a ton of space in an area that’s desperate for any developable space closer than the Inland Empire. If nothing else, those areas would be nice as parks available for the general public.
Iowa Old Lady
@Betty Cracker: I’m horrified by Watchman, not so much because of the content (I haven’t read it) as because I don’t believe Lee is in any shape to have consented to its publication.
Here’s the Washington Post with a pretty well-documented article from February:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/to-shill-a-mockingbird-how-the-discovery-of-a-manuscript-became-harper-lees-new-novel/2015/02/16/48656f76-b3b9-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html
Germy Shoemangler
Rod Man on grocery robots:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Tn-a-TT6r4
He describes the same trick that’s been played on me:
I’m standing on line and I’m waved over “Sir, there’s no line here!” Then I walk over, and the cashier walks away and leaves me with the robot.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
You can release that bated breath. Carly Fiorina has condemned Donald Trump’s remarks about McCain, which I only mention because she says she’s “proud to call McCain a friend”. IIRC, Carly was one of the many wheels that fell off McCain’s campaign when, as an official surrogate, she said she wouldn’t hire McCain or Palin to work in a hypothetical private sector company she was running into the ground. But I’m sure an easy going fella like McCain doesn’t even remember that, much less harbor resentment.
(Yup. September ’08 was cruelest month…)
Chris
@PaulW:
I figured Ant-Man might be the MCU’s shark-jumping moment – it’s definitely the first movie in the MCU that I haven’t felt the urge to go and see. I figured I’d wait a little and see the reviews pour in before deciding for sure.
@Baud:
This topic seems ripe for a sci-fi parody/dark social commentary.
@PurpleGirl:
This.
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Have you noticed — and I know I have — that we’ve now arrived a point of ill-cooperation between self-checkout machines and human customers such that it’s really no longer really self-checkout so much as one human checkout clerk managing and facilitating four “self” checkout procedures at the same time?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@PurpleGirl:
I only disagree because I’m one of those “inherent dignity of work” people who thinks people are better off emotionally and psychologically if they have a job. I would rather see a lot more job-sharing (fewer hours for more pay) than have an entire set of people cut off from the job market.
I think there could also be “alternative” jobs that aren’t necessarily utilitarian, like paying people to do research without requiring them to be full professors or working on a degree. There was a reason that they had positions in Europe that were either actual religious positions (ie monks and nuns) or academic positions that were pure research with no teaching component. I started thinking along those lines when I read a story about a guy who is the world’s leading amateur expert on ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics — he taught himself them in prison. He’s someone who finds it very difficult to function in “normal” society, but if you gave him room and board, a cubicle, access to a library, and a paycheck, he could happily spend the rest of his life doing his research.
different-church-lady
@Germy Shoemangler: Nowadays my default response to anything and everything in life is, “Oh no, I’m not falling for that.”
gelfling545
Once & everything are the key here. I’ve been hearing similar for many years. It’s like waiting for Godot or the second coming of Christ…always arriving but never arrives. Everything carries a lot of weight.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@different-church-lady:
That seems to be the setup around here. Some stores have stopped having the self checkouts because it just meant they needed an extra clerk to supervise it and didn’t actually free anyone up.
Germy Shoemangler
@different-church-lady:
I’ve seen that. The clerk has to stand there and rescue people who have frozen the computer. Also, in the stupid supermarket in our town, anyone (no matter how elderly) buying beer will be proofed, so the clerk has to do that.
So maybe our robotic future will be like that. A robot for every job, and a human employed to stand next to the robot just to untangle things.
Linnaeus
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Seems like that old German guy was right about a thing or two.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Yep. I prefer the regular line unless I have only a couple of items with clear bar codes.
Roger Moore
@Tree With Water:
Except for the white balance, which needs some work.
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
But, you know, self-driving cars are gonna go exactly as envisioned!
Mike J
@Baud: Never self check with produce. The checkers know all the codes, I don’t and it takes forever to look them up.
different-church-lady
@Mike J: A few years ago I remember reading that they were working on a way to get the fruit to grow the barcode right on itself somehow.
I was thinking, Fuck, this is not a thing we need, CURE CANCER INSTEAD.
Yatsuno
@Mike J: And if they don’t know it off the top of their head they know exactly where it is in their little cheat book. That’s been my experience anyway.
Coming to Seattle at the end of the month for a wedding. Unfortunately still not driving yet so probably zero chance for a meet-up.
Germy Shoemangler
I can’t wait to sit in a GM self-driving car!
I think I’m up to my fifth recall with my GM car. Ignition, steering, possibly the airbag (still trying to find out)… a few others I can’t recall.
Baud
@Mike J:
Never ever.
Davis X. Machina
@Mnemosyne (tablet): You can’t monetarize that guy’s output, though. So it doesn’t exist.
gelfling545
I meant to mention this in the garden thread this am but time got away from me. My daughter’s garden was one of those in the town garden walk for the first ring suburb she lives in last Sat. Her garden is exquisite and she lives on a corner lot with more of the property in front of the house than behind it so it’s very noticeable. 100+(that’s where she stopped counting) people stopped to view the garden, said how lovely, asked plant names, etc. Odd thing is in this largely Republican town she got nearly as many questions about where to get a Bernie Sanders sign like the one she has on her lawn as she did about gardening. A very curious circumstance.
Germy Shoemangler
@Baud: The codes are printed on this little rotating tube in six-point type, and I never bring my reading glasses with me.
If it doesn’t have a barcode, I wait in line for the human. Which also gives me the opportunity to exchange pleasantries: “How are you?” “Fine! And how are you?”
I talk to the grocery robot sometimes, but only to say “Scan! Scan, damn you!”
Baud
@Germy Shoemangler:
Those produce code charts might as well be written in hieroglyphics.
different-church-lady
@Germy Shoemangler: The last time I tried to use
one it eventually stopped scolding me, sighed heavily a few times, and then finally muttered, “You really don’t know how to do this, do you?”
Keith G
I love self checkout lines. All the fogies, the feeble, the check users, and the organizationally impaired dump their incompetence on the 17 yr old checker, and I sail through the self checkout station.
Tree With Water
@Germy Shoemangler: I had the electrical system of a brand new GMC van quit on me as I crested the Altamont pass on my way to Livermore, Ca. That included the hydraulics, i.e., my ability to steer at 65 mph on a downward slope, and me in a far lane needing to get to the shoulder… which I did with traffic whizzing and angry drivers honking their horns. It ranks in the top three of my worst driving experiences, and it might have spelled disaster for a less experienced driver.
Germy Shoemangler
@different-church-lady: My favorite thing is if I buy six or eight individual cans of cat food. I scan each one and I can feel the clerk watching me CLOSELY while I do it.
I suspect they’ve been burned by shoppers who scan one tiny can and drop two into their bag?
different-church-lady
@Keith G: There’s one in every crowd…
Germy Shoemangler
@Tree With Water: Shit! That’s much worse than when my power steering went while I was on a curving road. I could steer, but I had to force the wheel really hard. Turned out the power steering electronics were in recall. I hadn’t been notified.
I suspect I’m on the airbag list, because everything else has gone wrong with my car.
different-church-lady
@Germy Shoemangler: What we really need is a robot that can watch the shoppers using the self-checkout robots.
NotMax
@Germy Shoemangler
As no one else has deigned to mention it, for future reference it is a jeweler’s loupe.
Have several dozen rolls of pennies which I put together back in the 50s and early 60s around here somewhere. Almost enough incentive to dig them out. Also in a drawer someplace are those folding blue booklets kids used to use for coin collecting.
Chris
@Germy Shoemangler:
Here’s an example of a customer/employee interaction at the (utterly non-automated) store I work at:
Customer [from other side of the store]: “Excuse me, how much are these?”
Me [walks over to the shelf she’s standing in front of; reading directly off the sign on the shelf]; “Two dollars and eighty three cents, ma’am.”
No matter how simple the operation, a sizable demographic of humans will always need another human to do it for them.
Baud
@Germy Shoemangler: Maybe the clerk thinks of you as crazy cat guy.
Germy Shoemangler
@different-church-lady:
The self-checkout robot is paranoid enough to warn me if it suspects I placed something in the “out” bin that hasn’t been scanned. I’ve never tried to cheat it, but sometimes it talks like it suspects that I am.
Germy Shoemangler
@Baud:
Quite possibly. Once when I was buying cat food and beer, I joked to the human clerk that I know my cat loves her canned food, but I couldn’t understand why she asked for all this beer.
It got all the laugh it deserved.
different-church-lady
@Chris: And that’s another thing: go back to making stores put prices ON the stuff, not merely in the general vicinity of the stuff.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a cloud standing on my lawn that needs my fist shaken at it.
MattF
A propos automation, here’s an Ars Technica post on the Japanese ‘Robot Hotel’.
Germy Shoemangler
@NotMax:
thank you. I called it a “loop” and the robot spell checker said “fine, let it go.”
It’s a loupe my father had back in 1946, when he took a watch repair course after WWII. It’s feels and works better than anything I could possibly buy today.
Keith G
@different-church-lady: And as often as not, they are in front of me trying to find their elusive ID. ;)
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I’d agree with you. There is dignity in work and people do need it. Maybe your alternative jobs could be a component of a permanent dole, or maybe the main component of it but with society still willing to pay some people who can’t work.
It still comes down to a change in attitude about how society supports people and makes it possible for people to not live in poverty.
Linnaeus
@Chris:
It’s interesting how human-mediated services appear to become more and more of a selling point. I mean, personalization of service as a something to advertise was always a thing, but I think it’s becoming more salient in an era of increasing automation by information technologies.
Case in point: Apple Music differentiates itself from its competitors by, among other things, offering curated music playlists – they (supposedly) don’t create playlists based only on algorithms that draw their data from what you play or purchase, but human beings actually create the lists.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
Two.
Baud
@Linnaeus:
I don’t think that’s Apple exclusive.
catclub
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Yeah, this. Folding clothes was the task that has a team (at Berkeley?) stumped at the moment. I bet walking a dog – or multiple dogs, would be challenging.
Linnaeus
@Baud:
It may not be, but it’s something they promote as part of their service.
Baud
I need a robot that can answer captches, because they are becoming increasingly difficult for me.
PurpleGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: I hear a bunch of advertisements on the TV for GMC cars and they talk about precision, excellence, and stuff like that. I wonder how the ad agency can possible write the text without breaking into laughter.
NotMax
@different-church-lady
Have found the self-checkout stations efficient and easy to use at Home Depot, so long as one remembers to insert coins before bills when paying in cash.
Would never use one at the supermarket I occasionally shop at, as nearly each time I shop there I have to stop the cashier to point out that while an item scanned correctly as to what it is, the price rung up is incorrect (the error, of course, never being in my favor).
Almost always just one item among those I’m buying, but occurs quite frequently. It has gotten to the point where the assistant managers recognize me and instruct the cashier to change the ring-up without having to send a flunky to look at the shelves.
I chalk it up more to sloppiness than to venality, but who knows.
catclub
@Germy Shoemangler:
I am pretty sure there is scale, and a lookup table of item weights that need to match. Why else would it ask you to put things in the bag, or promise that you are not putting said item in the bag.
Keith G
@Linnaeus:
It is very under reported that Spotify has curated playlists and have had them for years. The first time I used Spotify was when a band that I follow mentioned that they had created a Spotify playlist of the songs that really influenced their early years. Since then, I have created playlists that attract followers. I guess when Apple does things that already had been done by others, they still get a bigger buzz.
Chris
@different-church-lady:
Well, I know it’s a stretch to connect the big number preceded by a dollar sign with the price of the item stacked directly below it, but, hey… explaining that connection is one of the many things that justifies my job, so I’m not too eager for them to change it.
Linnaeus
@Keith G:
Oh, I knew about shared playlists on Spotify (I’ve made some myself), and yes, it’s a feature that is underreported.
But the point about service still stands. That is something you’ll probably see reported more and more.
Tree With Water
@different-church-lady: Imagine DeNiro’s narrative during the opening scene in Casino, except with robots (pit boss watching dealer, floor guy watching pit bosses, DeNiro watching floor guy, and the cameras watching them all).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I know there are a few WhatTheFuck-o-nauts here? This one could be a fucking hoot, I hope Sir Ian was in a good mood
I saw on Chris Hayes’ feed he’s got one coming up, too.
Germy Shoemangler
@PurpleGirl:
I’m sure they laugh and chuckle while creating the commercials and also laugh all the way to the bank.
I was shocked to see recently that GMC has had a big surge in sales. I thought they’d go under after the extremely tardy recall on faulty ignitions, which killed people.
satby
@Litlebritdifrnt: that sounds so lovely! Happy anticipation planning, that’s usually the most enjoyable part of a move!
Linnaeus
@Germy Shoemangler:
When GM reorganized, I don’t know why it kept the GMC division – it seemed redundant, given that many of its products are twinned with Chevrolet. But they got rid of Pontiac, which was actually making some really interesting cars at the time of the bankruptcy.
Keith G
@Linnaeus: I was noticing the pre rollout coverage of Applewhatever. Some press was ticking off “exclusive features” as if the little shed in Cupertino had invented oxygen.
I have noticed opinions are cooling down.
Speaking of which, Bernie Sanders is putting in an appearance just down the road from me in 3 hrs.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I’ll be happy to loan you my walker.
Linnaeus
@Keith G:
I’m trying Apple Music now, and I like much of it so far, but there are some kinks that need to be worked out. My trial Spotify Premium ends next month, and my trial Apple Music ends in October, and at that point, I’ll decide which one I really want to go with. The fact that I own an Apple computer will be a factor, but not necessarily the dispositive one.
FlipYrWhig
@PurpleGirl: Their ad campaign is predicated on the idea that the C in GMC stands for “precision.” Nothing could testify to their high-end accuracy more.
Baud
@Linnaeus:
Google bought out Songza and has started doing free internet radio. I really like it. I’m not a huge music aficionado so the difference between the services would probably be lost on me.
ETA: although I’ve tried Pandora, and I couldn’t get into it for some reason.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
There are so many talented musicians, artists, actors, dancers, playwrights, composers, filmmakers, and other makers who would benefit from being paid to create.
At one time there used to be multiple weekly radio programs with live performances with full orchestras and great singers.
I wish we could have more live television broadcasts of performing arts to support our creative talent.
A real pipe dream of mine would be more public funding for lessons because the cost of studying performing and visual arts is too high for most people.
Keith G
@Linnaeus: Though a PC guy, I bought my first iPod Classic in 2003 (another in 2005) and have been having a love/hate relationship with the iTunes brand ever since. Though I still use a few Shuffles when I need highly portable content (is there any device better for that), I have been a bit happier and less frustrated now that I seldom open iTunes.
raven
Dinner fixins!
raven
@PurpleGirl: They are a lot better than they used to be.
Germy Shoemangler
@MomSense: Woody Guthrie got paid to write songs for a dam:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Coulee_Dam_(song)
In my town, there are beautiful WPA murals in the post office that were painted in 1937.
Why not a WPA today?
Linnaeus
@Baud:
Yeah, I’ll have to check that one out, too. I’ve backed off on a lot of Google things in recent years.
Linnaeus
@Keith G:
I use iTunes pretty much daily. It works well enough for me. YMMV, of course.
the Conster
@different-church-lady:
My train conductor Frank who is the Treasurer of the union and has been on the same line for 27 years, keeps up constant banter and has a mantra he repeats every day to his captive audience – “self service is no service”. No robot is going to shame that one guy who’s always late like Frank can, and whose job it is to keep the schedule and to make sure everyone is paying their fare, and stays safe.
raven
And this was dinner!
NotMax
@raven
The stories that sturdy chef’s knife could tell….
Tree With Water
@MomSense: I’ve always always admired the public buildings in my neck of the woods that FDR saw built during the New Deal. The murals in some of the post office’s I’ve been in are works of art..
In reading this thread backwards, I just ran across this: “In my town, there are beautiful WPA murals in the post office that were painted in 1937”. Exactly!
raven
@NotMax: It has actually been redone. I did a crummy job sharpening it, cupped the blade, and I found a guy who did a nice job putting it back together. I’ve had it and two other Sabatier carbon steel knives for 31 years. I also have a stainless one for onions and such.
MomSense
@Germy Shoemangler:
Oh I agree that a WPA would be wonderful today. We can’t even get our Republican Congress to fund road and bridge repair.
Gimlet
Transcript from Netroots yesterday. I think Sanders handled himself OK. The MSM could blow it out of proportion to make it a “Dean Scream” thing to sabotage Sanders chances. No idea how he or the others poll among Blacks.
After talking over one another, Sanders eventually ditched pre-planned remarks and tried to address questions from demonstrators.
“Black people are dying in this country because we have a criminal justice system which is out of control, a system in which over 50% of young African-American kids are unemployed,” Sanders said. “It is estimated that a black baby born today has a one in four chance of ending up in the criminal justice system.”
When Sanders cited the Affordable Care Act as a law he supported that helped people of color by making health insurance more accessible, one man shouted, “we can’t afford that!”
Before Sanders finished speaking, many of the protesters walked out on him toward exit doors in the back.
Keith G
@Linnaeus: I think it is a plus if one is staying in an Apple ecosystem.
I have found so many updates (so many updates) to be glitchy and otherwise not well-focused on the user experience. It got to the point that I would not update until I was able to read reactions in user forums so I would know what issues to expect.
Edited
wasabi gasp
Self-checkout is fantastic! Especially that hand scanner gizmo thing. Put bags in cart, scan and fill bags, go to checkout, scan card, scan coupons and pay. Out the door. Haven’t read the cover of People magazine in years.
Gimlet
@MomSense:
Those will be toll roads when they finally get done, a privatized asset.
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
I think I could come up with most of the Republican party’s objections: This is classic Democrat Big Government thinking. Government spending would skyrocket. Jobs should come from the private sector, the only real source of employment, or not at all. Etc, etc. The same arguments it advanced against Obama’s first-term stimulus package, which should have been twice its size.
Josie
@MomSense: What you say makes so much sense. My son tells me that Canada has programs and money for artists to encourage them in their pursuits. I don’t understand why we can’t do the same. His dream is to move to L.A. to work in the industry, but we can’t afford it. He has to do everything long distance, on the computer. I don’t want to send him out there to live in his car.
Linnaeus
@Amir Khalid:
Hell, that pretty much sums up the GOP’s objections at the time. They haven’t changed.
Felonius Monk
@Germy Shoemangler:
There are a large number of obstacles in the path to do this — they are called Republicans and right now they control the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. And these are just the first set of obstacles.
Gimlet
The administration sends up a balloon
Seeking tighter controls over firearm purchases, the Obama administration is pushing to ban Social Security beneficiaries from owning guns if they lack the mental capacity to manage their own affairs
MomSense
@Gimlet:
Yup.
@Josie:
It’s such a shame because the arts make life so much more interesting and beautiful.
satby
@Keith G: I used to train cashiers way back when, so I can certainly manage the self checkout line, but I very seldom use them because I want to support the notion that stores need to hire people to perform customer service. I’m paying them money, I shouldn’t have to provide free labor to them as well.
I’m an old fogey that way.
Tree With Water
@satby: Safeway forced a showdown with its union employees in Northern California about 20 years ago. When the picket lines went up, their stores stood deserted and their competitors cleaned up. I would have stayed away on principle, but like most people I had gabbed amiably with my local Safeway clerks for years. I was on a friendlier basis with them than I was with certain members of my own family. I would have been embarrassed to have been spotted crossing their line, and most everyone else thereabouts felt the same. The union won that fight.
the Conster
@Gimlet:
Troll Obama is trolling.
Jay C
@Germy Shoemangler:
Think of the upside: when those cars get recalled, they can drive themselves to the shop, and save you the time!
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@MomSense:
One of the big parts of the WPA during the Depression was finding work that people already knew how to do rather than forcing people into ditch-digger jobs, so there are a ton of murals, plays, etc. from that time that people were paid to do by the government. Paying for the arts and arts training would definitely be part of my future utopia.
And though I know some people would see this as a downside, IIRC the band U2 was able to form because they were all on the dole in Ireland and had plenty of time to practice and find gigs. Bono says that being in U2 is the only job he’s ever had.
Capt Seaweed
@Punchy:
I’ve heard the same stories about Tiger being a dick and Jack being not-a-dick. Seems that way to me too. Arnold Palmer is a great example of how far being a nice guy will take you. Still, I’d suggest that a great deal of the course design and building is going on in Asia (read CHINA) and whether Tiger is an ass or not is irrelevant. Get Tiger to build a course and put his name on it. Prestige! matters…
Capt Seaweed
@Mack:
Yeah back when Tiger was kicking ass and breaking hearts he had more will and drive to win than just about anybody I can think of. Sundays belonged to Tiger, everybody knew it, and he used that fear to his advantage and helped become the best golfer in the game. Nobody could touch him. For years. And you bring up a good point: his swing changed. And he bulked up, noticeably. The two things might be related. He lost some of his suppleness as he got older. It happens. He broke his leg winning the US Open. He may never have recovered completely from that. Lots of small things changed for him (including the two years of non-stop scandal reporting) and in golf it’s all about the small things making a hash of the big things…
mclaren
Looks like a swamp to me.
Tree With Water
I just tuned into ESPN’s Sunday night baseball game, and it’s pouring rain in Anaheim.. in July, for crying out loud.
Capt Seaweed
@gian: I’d heard that story/rumor before. I have no opinion as to whether it’s true or not. I just don’t know. However, Tiger did get really big awfully fast…
mclaren
@satby:
Not any of the goddamn self checkout lines I’ve tried.
Get this: I’ve been using computers since 1978. I can code in machine language. Not assembelr, motherfuck, machine language. Flat opcode. In hexadecimal.
And I cannot navigate one of the fucking self checkout machines I’ve been through. Not one.
Here’s the way it goes:
PLACE ITEM UNDER SCANNER.
No problem. Item scans.
ENTER NUMBER OF ITEMS.
Sure, do that.
SLIDE CARD.
So now I slide the card. And it gets hellish fast.
BAG FEE 25 CENTS.
No, no, no, no, no, no, I don’t want any goddamn bags. No fucking way to go back and eliminate the bag fee.
So I start over.
Now we get SLIDE CARD again.
And now it reads two items. What I originally scanned. And now what I just re-scanned.
So how do you change numbre of items?
You can’t.
At this point I start all over. And it traps me in the loop AGAIN.
Fuck it!
I’m outa there, back to the checkout line.
The shitty crappy rotten unconscionable pissant poor software design of these goddamn self-cehckout POS systems is so bad, that the goddamn 4 kilobyte paper-tape-booting computer I learned to program on, looks like User Interface Heaven by comparison.
Fuck self checkout.
Doesn’t work.
Piece of shit.
Suffer, scream, and die POS developers. Your shite hardware and garbage software is UN-FUCKING-USABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Capt Seaweed
@feebog: Golf course design and golf courses in general are struggling in the USA. But not in Asia. China especially. I was reading 140 new courses are under construction or planned in Japan. Thailand has new courses all over. Same same VietNam and S. Korea. The US may have reached peak duffer but it’s a different story elsewhere.
different-church-lady
@Chris: When you say the item is “stacked directly below it”, you’re making an assumption that frequently does not mach reality.
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s dumb with a capital M.