The Marine Corps credited Mawhinney with 103 kills as well as 216 ‘probable’ kills that could not be confirmed because of the dangerous conditions in which the shootings happened…. The Oregon native recorded all of the kills before he turned 20….. Serving as a sniper “was the ultimate hunting trip: a man hunting another man who was hunting me,” Mawhinney told the Los Angeles Times in 2000. “Don’t talk to me about hunting lions or elephants; they don’t fight back with rifles and scopes. I just loved it.”
Today’s memes: This is love
Facebook just sent me notices that it removed two of my posts for violating its rules. It won’t show me what those posts are so I don’t know how I violated the rules, therefore I can’t modify my behavior to be more in line with Facebook terms of service.
If you’ve been laid off – and especially if you’ve been laid off for the first time – you will blame yourself for being laid off. This post is just for you, and it can be summed up as this: you’re probably facing the consequences of someone else’s mistakes.
Upper management makes bad decisions, and employees face the consequences:
The decision-makers at companies making these layoffs sound like Lord Farquaad from Shrek: “Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr: How America’s oligarchs lull us with the be-your-own-boss fairy tale. The gig economy, DEI and ESG are the latest iterations of a 70-year-old PR campaign to convince Americans that Big Business is their friend.
Bose introduced pricy open-air earbuds that sit on your ears, rather than in them. Bose is touting the devices as being comfortable enough to wear all day.
I already find my AirPods to be comfortable enough to wear all day. But I don’t because it would be weird, battery life isn’t up to all-day use and I can’t think of a reason why I would want to do that.
After much practice, I am now expert at photographing my own left ear. I do not expect this skill to be useful.
Antisemitic callers overwhelmed a La Mesa City Council meeting with hate speech. timesofsandiego.com. I am a Jewish person who has lived more than 25 years in La Mesa, a suburb of San Diego, California. This is terrorism.
UPDATE: I edited this post to remove criticism of the City Council. I have no reason to believe they behaved inappropriately.
‘A Black Thing.’ Fani Willis’s father explains why his daughter keeps cash: John Clifford Floyd III, attorney and former Black Panther, says that when he was younger, Black Americans couldn’t count on white-owned businesses accepting credit cards from them. And so he taught his daughter to always keep six months' cash on hand. crooksandliars.com
"Stinge-watching" vs. binge-watching
I went out to walk the dog the other day and discovered I’d forgotten to charge my AirPods. I found wired earbuds in a box near my desk, where they’d been unused and unopened for five years since I got them as a free giveaway. They worked fine. This is why nothing ever gets thrown out in our house.
I’ve been hearing about the Perplexity search engine, a competitor to Google. www.perplexity.ai I tried it yesterday and it’s really quite good. It’s like ChatGPT with links to sources. Those links are important because the inaccuracy problem with Perplexity is bad, like any other generative AI.
When I’m using Wikipedia for serious research, I fact-check by looking for the blue footnote links and following those to the source articles. Perplexity seems to work the same way, although Perplexity—like all conversational AI—is significantly less accurate than Wikipedia.
Play this video when you want to pretend to be busy so people will leave you alone. Say “yeah” at the three-minute mark.
Enterprise leaders swing between confidence and sleepless terror over AI.
Fear of missing out (FOMO) vies with fear of messing up (FOMU).
Enterprise leaders say they’re well along in their AI implementations and ready for more, but they’re also afraid of falling behind competitors, according to a study by Juniper Networks and Wakefield Research. These leaders are also concerned that employees within their organizations are out of control in their AI use.
My latest on Silverlinings.
“The Hucksters:” A sitthroughable 1947 romcom and satire starring Clark Gable
Clark Gable is a veteran returning home from World War II eager to resume his pre-war lifestyle as a playboy ad-man, but ultimately finding the life empty and unsatisfying. He takes a high-paying job at an ad agency, in the course of which he meets beautiful war widow Deborah Kerr, which causes him to change his values.
Are there not-too-expensive alternatives to Grammarly? I’m starting to get fed up with it.
I began using Grammarly a year ago and loved it for most of that time, but it generates so many false positives that grinding through them can be a chore. I accept only about 30% of the suggestions it makes.
Also, the little helper chiclet that it puts on-screen gets in the way far too often. It is a horrible, horrible user interface and it drives me crazy.
I saw this extremely handsome pig in the front yard of a house in the neighborhood.
Young people may find this hard to believe, but I remember back in the old days we spent hardly any time making sure our devices were charged.