merc

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NY Times’ David Brooks Said There’s Too Much Focus on Jeffrey Epstein. Here He Is Hanging With Epstein. in c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I imagine most of them didn't know that child sex abuse was going on. Even among the ultra rich, that's not seen as acceptable behaviour. Epstein was probably careful about who he let into the inner circle. They were probably fully vetted, and/or Epstein had compromat on them so they couldn't expose him without exposing themselves. The rest of them probably thought he liked women who were barely legal, but still legal.

NY Times’ David Brooks Said There’s Too Much Focus on Jeffrey Epstein. Here He Is Hanging With Epstein. in c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 day ago (5 children)

My guess is that many people who spent time around Epstein were probably not pedophiles. Maybe even the majority of them. His "day job" was a guy who knew all the powerful people and could introduce anybody to anybody else. If he had been a woman, we would have called him a socialite.

Some of the people were probably in his inner circle and participated in the child abuse. But, others were probably just using him as a way to meet royalty, or as a way to connect to VC money.

But, you know what? I'm ok if plutocrats who weren't actually pedophiles get caught up as collateral damage.

We pay microtransactions on life in c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago

That sounds like propaganda.

We pay microtransactions on life in c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

At some points in history, fire departments were privatized. It wasn't a great plan. Fire tends to spread.

Free software has some glib naming conventions in c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works -3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Well, I dont wanna start a debate, but the official website of GNU indicate that the "g" in GNU isn't silent.

Yeah, but that's wrong. It's named after the animal, and the animal is pronounced without a G sound. I'm not going to mangle the pronunciation because they screwed up.

Chatbot in c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago

And the subscribers are underpaying by such a huge amount that they're losing even more money from them than they are from the unpaid users.

Free software has some glib naming conventions in c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

Hierarchical Officious Oracle

Free software has some glib naming conventions in c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 17 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Yeah, they missed the best part.

GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix, which is a recursive acronym. And, when pronounced properly (like the animal) the G is silent. The entire Linux ecosystem has words that start with G based on an acronym where G essentially comes from nowhere, and isn't actually pronounced.

My culture also loves music, dancing and telling stories in c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

Just a little.

My culture also loves music, dancing and telling stories in c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

English has a rote greeting in "How are you doing?" But, you can respond with anything from "great!" to "oh, okay". It would be a big faux pas to take that as an opportunity to launch into all your medical issues. Maybe in Chinese it's ok to respond honestly, but just not to assume someone is actually asking you if you want to eat something.

For most of the world, the US is now a malign actor in c/world@lemmy.world
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 days ago

For those countries it's not soft power. Seriously man, if I have to point out the difference between soft power and hard power to you like this, this conversation isn't worth continuing.

How, exactly, does one make a living as a mathematician? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure your job title isn't "Mathematician" though. You're a "risk analyst" or "quantitative analyst" or something. You're also not doing pure math, you're using somewhat advanced applied mathematical processes to model financial information. Just like how a rocket engineer isn't a physicist but may have a background in physics.

237
XKCD Dependency (revised) (sh.itjust.works)
 

This time it wasn't the thing from Nebraska.

14
Air India plane crashes on take off from Ahmedabad en-route to London (www.bbc.com)
 
  • At least 200 people have died
  • The plane crashed into a doctor's hostel, injuring many people on the ground
  • One passenger survived, with injuries minor enough he was able to walk away
  • The plane was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner
141
Watch Pierre Poilievre lose his seat, live (globalnews.ca)
 

1:20 AM EST

210/266 polls reporting

| Name | Party | Votes | % | |

|

|

|

| | Bruce Fanjoy | Liberal | 27,220 | 50.4 | | Pierre Poilievre | Conservative | 24,927 | 46.1|

56
Trump tariffs: Stocks soar as US president announces tariff pause (www.bbc.com)
 

Stocks have almost returned to where they were 5 days ago after his latest change to the tariffs.

32
Best wireless earbuds when wearing gloves or mittens? (sh.itjust.works)
 

I need some new earbuds, and live in a place with severe winters. I want to be able to access the controls using gloves or mittens if possible.

The online reviews I've seen all assume that you can just touch the earbuds with bare hands, but when it's well below freezing, that sometimes isn't possible. If I have to take off a mitt to use my earbuds my hand might not warm up until I can get back indoors again. Earbuds that work with touchscreen-capable gloves aren't good enough either. I've never seen touchscreen-capable gloves that keep your hands warm at -40C.

Any suggestions?

180
PM Mark Carney Announces Elimination of GST on New Homes (www.cpac.ca)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by merc@sh.itjust.works to c/canada@lemmy.ca
61 comments fedilink
 

First time home buyers will not be charged GST (5%) when buying a home, as long as the place they're buying costs less than $1M. This means that people buying a home for the first time will save up to $50k on their purchase.

Edit: Note, GST is mostly only charged when buying newly built homes, so this won't have any effect for people buying used homes.

44
The PM isn't an MP, unusual, but it has happened before. (www.cbc.ca)
 

Currently the PM doesn't have a seat in the house. If he visited the house, he'd have to go to the visitor's gallery.

It's an interesting situation. The PM is the leader of the federal liberal party, but he's not a member of parliament. But, does he need to be? Is the PM sitting in the house of commons just a tradition that nobody has challenged yet? Could the PM delegate things inside the house of commons to their deputy-PM and then do things like give speeches, attend diplomatic functions, etc.?

The US has a very different system where the president isn't part of the legislative branch at all. But, typically presidents don't twiddle their thumbs waiting for something to do. Being the head of state keeps most presidents busy. It makes me wonder if technically Carney could choose not to run for office, and just spend his time doing head-of-state things rather than legislative things.

-1
TIL that in the 1860s one meaning of "Trump" was "A good fellow; an excellent person". (archive.org)
 

Maybe the "great" America that Donald wants to take us back to is the 1860s?

-1
(PDF) National Bank of Canada: Canada is caught in a population trap, something normally the preserve of emerging economies (www.nbc.ca)
 

Note: National Bank of Canada is a commercial bank, not the Bank of Canada which is Canada's national bank. Um. Which is Canada's central bank.

The graphs in the presentation are the key takeaway for me. But, some key words:

"Canada is caught in a population trap that has historically been the preserve of emerging economies. We currently lack the infrastructure and capital stock in this country to adequately absorb current population growth and improve our standard of living."

...

"To put things in perspective, Canada's population growth in 2023 was 3.2%, five times higher than the OECD average."

...

"But to meet current demand and reduce shelter cost inflation, Canada would need to double its housing construction capacity to approximately 700,000 starts per year, an unattainable goal."

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