We’ve made it to February, not just February, but the perfect February!
I blame AI LLMs.
This does not surprise me.
If you use Notepad++, I’d get a new version and make sure to check your hashes.
I think Tabasco has a solid case here.
Slate choosing the wrong side of history yet again.
Outside of midscale places doing options for margarita flavors/rims, I haven’t really seen this locally.
If you can’t take a joke…
“I’m disabled!” [Reference – Edited to add the link I forgot here]
If I lived in Denver, I’d be looking to go there.
For the cocktail of the week, let’s go with the French 75! What? I did that yesterday? Fine, let’s go with one that I recently learned of:
Beverly Hills Iced Tea
- 2 parts (1 oz) Vodka
- 2 parts (1 oz) Gin
- 2 parts (1 oz) Triple Sec
- 1 part (0.5 oz) lime juice
- 1 part (0.5 oz) simple syrup
- 4-6 parts (2-3 oz) champagne/sparkling wine
To the trained eye, you can see the base of this drink, the infamous Long Island Iced Tea (which, when made properly is a fine drink). To make this, add everything but the champagne to a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake until chilled and combined, and strain into a chilled wine/sling glass filled with ice. Top that with the champagne, give a gentle stir to combine, and garnish with a lime wedge.
With that, I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Hmm… I don’t know about perfect, but so far it has been a cold February in these parts. Afternoon, all.
Full moon on 2/1, which was a Sunday, meaning it’s a perfect four week month, both solar and lunar.
I suppose that’s one direction you could go for describing the month, sure.
I don’t blame the LLMs proper — I blame bubble chasing companies stockpiling parts they can’t even use yet in mass quantities (I think it was OpenAI, but I may be misremembering… maybe MS.. one of the big AI DC folks came out and admitted they have warehouses of parts but haven’t built the facilities for the racks, much less the servers… OpenAI pre-booking what 40 percent of global DRAM regardless of their real needs is in that same line… keep it out of the hands of the competition is more important than if they can really use it yet — sure sign of way too much money sloshing around inflating things….)
I am not getting why the laws of supply and demand are completely broken with this one product, unless someone somewhere is doing it on purpose.
I think it is because spinning up DRAM fabs takes a LOT of time and money, so a hungry competitor stepping in is hard. The existing companies like the higher prices and guaranteed contracts (and I think may suspect the bubble isn’t going to last) so don’t want to spin up more capacity when they’re making money hand over fist now and the capacity investment might not pay off in two to three years when it comes online.
But I’m a kernel engineer, not a HW guy… that’s just my impression.
Elon talked about it in his interview the other day. Apparently fabs are all booked up and it takes a good 5 years to bring a new one online. The fab manufacturers are booked up too.
He says everyone is currently going balls to the wall to grow capacity and there is no short term way to bring more online faster.
I also blame vibe coding.
I’m curious if that is going to be a mainstay or not. I’ve been studying programming hoping to get some combination of certificates and personal projects that might get me a job, but not sure if the industry is going to reduce the workforce rather than grow it.
It seems like (in my amateur opinion) that you still basically need people who can write and understand code, or else they’ll have no idea if the vibe coded projects are actually good. Kind of like how somebody who doesn’t speak English can’t write a novel just because they have ChatGPT.
I’ve heard some people say that manually coding things is permanently dead. But I’ve read other articles saying that AI-generated code is harder to debug and patch, and that people in the organization gradually lose the “big picture” understanding of what the codebase is doing since nobody is actually writing it. I’m not sure which to believe.
I have never heard that term, and now I wish I didn’t look it up.
Sooooo glad I am near the end of my career so I don’t have to deal with such stupidity for very long.
Kind of wish I would have become a data center builder kind of guy – like the people who physically install the racks and wire up the servers. Those people are probably making bank, and it doesn’t matter if most of AI usage turns out to be a bubble – their money is made. Like how the people who consistently made the most money during the Gold Rush were never the miners but rather the ones who sold picks, shovels, and other tools.
Sometimes “selling the way to make money” is the most reliable way to make money.
Whatever happens with programming – whether your job is done by a computer or some kid in Asia – if you don’t have actual skills in problem solving and dealing with customers and… shudder… “entrepreneurialship”, you’re not gonna last these days anyway.
I’m disabled!
If you don’t hear that in Chris O’Dowd’s voice, I’m not sure we can be friends.
I just fixed it to include the reference link that I forgot.
👍
I suspect a decent percentage of the commentators knew exactly what you were referring to, even without the link.
commentators
oi, I mean, what happened to Tottenham?!?
Can I still be your friend if I don’t actually know who Chris O’Dowd is?
Fine, fine.
But you are missing out
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiZCl6XIGf-jjW8ymrSDNT4PKkaSsDKpX
Me too.
Never seen it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I do wonder how they find singles to accommodate all the liars. The only people who got singles in my day were RA’s. I gue$$ they ju$t build more dorm$.
(You aren’t missing anything. Some people think it is the second coming of miss jesus, but, frankly, it falls short of general British comedies.
YMMV)
Yeah… I suspect Avowed and the pricing stuff had more than a little to do with it. I know I enjoyed the first one okay and had interest in the second one… but when it looked like more of the same at the root, the companions looked worse… the price was a lot worse and Avowed made me think all the good writers had left… I’ve just been thinking I’ll wait for a significant sale. And if there are a lot of original owners thinking like me — yeah, that would translate to poor sales up to this point.
Didn’t help that the DLCs for the first one are my least favorite part of the game, really… which again makes me question how they wanted to take the series forward and makes me care less about sequels.
Yeah. Avowed being $70 for what was generally reported as a short game has me waiting for a deep discount on it. I found the first Outer Worlds trite and fairly simplistic, nowhere near the FO:NV comparisons that were tossed around, so I’ll be waiting for it to hit a deep discount as well.
Damn, I read the title and was hoping for Amanda ranting that maraschino cherries are an oppressive tool of patriarchal fascist rape culture.
Only toxic masculinity wants to pop cherries into their drinks and eat cherry pie, Amanda will warrant.
And also something about racism and JD Vance’s wife.
Taps out before the end of the first sentence.
Well done, Slate.
That one was much less popular for Sheryl Crow….
I read that as “last” for a second. Where the hell did February go?
Although we’d be that much closer to spring… we have been having a pretty mild dry winter, and I expect it’s going to catch up with us in the not too distant future.
We’re finally supposed to be getting above freezing next week.
60 Americanheit in Santa Fe today.
Fixed.
If you’re specifically citing things that have no reporting or actual statistics, the problem can be whatever you describe it as. Perfect for pushing your agenda!
That’s where we got “5 out of 4 women have been raped.”
That particular tic only seems to cut one way
… you shouldn’t be reading Glibertarians? (More seriously, if I can believe the military SF I read — the punchline of that is usually “You shouldn’t have joined insert branch of service speaker belongs to)
I was expecting an ISS followup.
Congress sots and addicts? Not at all surprising.
Booze runs don’t even twitch the needle for Congressional staffers, I suspect.
… you’d know who can’t take a joke. (Not that you’d be surprised either…)
Yeah, it sounds like the place is likely to be refreshingly low on assholes.
I hope they make an AI John Rocker.
Tabasco maker McIlhenny Company is suing Stoli Vodka, claiming the alcohol company’s new spicy vodka uses packaging similar to that of the iconic hot sauce brand. The lawsuit comes as Tabasco rolls out a similar product in partnership with Absolut.
I’m not sure that McIlhenny would stand up to this stoically, but they could’ve been a bit more Stoli-d.
Here’s hoping that their counsel will pepper the vodka execs with questions during depositions, until one of them Popovs with a smart-alec remark that leads to their (grey) goose being cooked.
Quite the hot take there, Shpip… I expect the vodka folks may end up trying to find a friendly jurisdiction that doesn’t extradite… maybe Chile.
1) Wasn’t there some story about a glass or a ring or something women could use to test for themselves surreptitiously a couple of years back?
2) I’d rather they just explicitly decriminalize the male relatives and/or friends of such a victim beating the living shit out of an asshole who did this (yeah, to be safe you’d probably have to have some morning after reliable verification or something… since women are humans and some are lying assholes too, just like men can be scum). Seems like that was the working preventative measure for the last couple of thousand years.
Except in the third world shitholes where the male relatives murder the victim.
They do that here too.
My favorite case was in the 90s in ATL. They were talking about a 15 year old girl who was raped on AM 750 when they broke in with news that they had caught the guy after a 3 week manhunt.
Police said he was found in the middle of College Avenue in college park, naked, beaten to hell, with a pair of vice grips attached to his junk that were used to drag hi. To that location.
A lieutenant gave a live interview and could barely hide the giggle as he reported that “nobody saw anything”….. at noon…. on the main road in the area….
I think everyone agreed that this crime was jist unsolveable.
And rape their sister.
The ring or straw or whatever it was didn’t detect alcohol, which is the only date-rape drug in common use in the US.
Thank you for demonstrating that on any given subject, Slate will always select the most retarded take on it. We should call it Neph’s Law.
The Beverly Hills Iced Tea looks good, and I have leftover champagne! (No vodka though, I’ll have to go grab a bottle of Chambray.) I think that a few of those would get one white girl wasted in no time at all.
I honestly was expecting it to be trash talking Creme de Violette, which would at least have some history behind it. When I learned how to make an Aviation, it was during the period when it wasn’t available.
My friend refers to it as “home-drunk”.
I do live in Denver, and I’ll try to stop by that brewery. The statement they released is spot-on.
I accidentally contacted Westminster Brewing thanking them for the statement, so some commie brewer is probably gloating about how stupid maga-ites are. I did correct it and email Wonderland. Unfortunately, I suspect as a small local, they don’t distribute widely (looking at the scale of their operation, don’t distribute at all) and they don’t have a web store, so I can’t support them financially. If I ever pass through, I’ll make it a point to stop. Assuming they aren’t burned down.
I guess I’m just going to have to toss one back on behalf of each and every Glib.
I’m in favor of restaurants providing test kits for date rape drugs. I need to know if I’m getting the dosage right.
Going for the dark humor of the week award there… well played.
Cisco has a security product called Identity Services Engine, which generally gets abbreviated as ISE and pronounced as ‘ice’. We’re in the process of rolling this out for one of our customers. The customer has requested that we stop saying ISE because it’s freaking out some of the employees at their branch offices, so now we have to call it NAC (network access control) or port security. eyeroll dot gif.
That seems like a really good way to weed out stupid or overly political (and hence unlikely to be focusing on their actual work) employees to me.
Tell me you’re employing a bunch of illegals without telling me you’re employing a bunch of illegals.
Or a bunch of idiot leftists.
I suspect that someone only vaguely aware of the project became worried that someone somewhere might overhear us somehow and become confused and upset about the terminology.
Gay.
It’s only gay if you open up ports on the backend Sean.
And so you told them to tell their employees to grow the fuck up?
It’s a customer so the likely response is “we’ll call it whatever you like as long as you keep shoveling us money”
That may be part of the problem.
Yeah, they give us money and we like money, so whatever.
Price just went up 20% for unforeseen circumstances.
On the break room fridge, is the “ICE” label crossed out and Sharpie’d over with “FROZEN WATER”?
Start calling the people who work with it NACcers.
“I have a lifelong condition called hemochromatosis, a genetic disease where my body absorbs too much iron. I can only get rid of iron by bleeding it out. So I have a lot of phlebotomies. Any and all alcohol makes it worse,” Mace wrote on X Tuesday.
More than I ever needed to know.
So her body fixes itself once a month in two ways?
The sales manager I used to work with had hemochromatosis. Good guy, excellent salesman, but hot-tempered. When his iron levels got too high he got REALLY explosive, to the point of making everyone one to leave. Fortunately he found out what was wrong and got his iron levels under control.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/let-the-easter-fun-begin-peeps-unveils-its-2026-lineup-302658869.html
I await Mojeaux’s take on the new flavors.
nobody eats peeps.
Maybe Bernie has a point, nobody needs 43 flavors of peeps.
This is an outrage and I’m offended. Oh, hell, I was offended by blue Peeps, so…
There is only true flavor and that is sugar flavor. There’s only one true way to eat sugar Peeps:
Open the package.
Leave it out in the open for a couple of days.
May not be eaten before they are adequately stale and crusty.
I am allowed to install it at work & it does one thing I haven’t figured out how to get VSCode to do but otherwise it feels like stepping back in time about 30 years and not in a good way.
We just had a fire-drill over that one. ChiComs look to have been responsible and used it on targeted users.
Our next security shit-show:
https://x.com/DanielLockyer/status/2019422410018267328
We were just discussing how many of our 12k employees would be reckless enough to install OpenClaw on their work machines.
The method of attack is the interesting bit, moreso than the application. It was a redirect on the updates at the host level. That is pretty hard-core and means all sorts of things are equally vulnerable.
As a state actor and likely with chip-level exploits built in to networking equipment…. I dont know how you would even defend against that if it was targeted to a limited number of users.
Heh… I suspect you wouldn’t care for my current coding environment of WSL windows to use cscope + gvim.
I have it on my personal machine… rarely run it.. don’t remember if it did updates. Sigh… I suppose I should check things over the weekend to be safe.
I used to use WSL on Windows until my desktop bricked and I went to my backup Mac.
I like vi(m). At least it’s not emacs. 🔥
The Dow hit 50k.
Since almost all the US economy growth has been under the AI crap that I feel is a bubble… pardon me for not being terribly impressed or buoyed up by that news. (Obligatory I don’t speak for my employer which does profess to believe in AI, yadda yadda yadda).
Idea: Maraschino cherries that detect the presence of rape drugs.
What now, Slate?
Elite
I watched The Wrecking Crew last night. If you like rote predictable violent comic book hero tales, it’s not bad. I even laughed out loud a few times.
It wasn’t a documentary on studio musicians?
Tommy Tedesco and Carol Kaye
in case you thought the Beachboys played on their own albums
Yeah… a movie that is exactly what it claims to be and nothing more. And nothing less.
Rare for a good 5-6 years at least… just plain entertainment may be making a comeback
Very much a brainless “thin plot exists only to string together a series of action scenes” movie. Fine for what it is.
Also features a still-looking-real-good Morena Baccarin. Rawr.
Speaking of The Ambassador, while I was sick like dog last weekend, I caught a really really bad film called Sands of Oblivion, with Baccarin as the lead and Adam Baldwin supporting as her brilliant but weasely ex-husband. It was a mini Firefly reunion.
Not the Dean Martin one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrecking_Crew_(1968_film)
Idea: Maraschino cherries that detect the presence of rape drugs.
What now, Slate?
Billy Blaze is writing for Slate?
On the maraschino front…. I can report that maraschino cherries and juice does a fantastic job of rescuing Mountain Lightning Zero Sugar, which has an OK but vaguely anti-freeze flavor. But a couple of cherries and a splash of the juice in a large drink with nugget ice? Pretty good.
No idea about maraschino liqueur in cocktails though.
I have successfully made sure that no more bright red, artificially flavored, artificially colored, cheap maraschino cherries are in the house. The syrup from the good ones on the other hand…
Maraschino liqueur is usually used in small measure (0.25 – 0.50 oz) as an accent liqueur for cocktails.
I see it in tiki cocktails. I like it. And real Maraschino(tm) cherries are just awesome.
I assume you mean the Luxardo?
Cherries are also in my “bullshit fruit” list. What flavor is there isn’t at all worth the dining awkwardness. And these fancy cherries kinda prove the point. ‘Normally these things kinda suck, but we’re gonna drench them in this shit to make them ‘happier.”
And Cyto, just get reg sugar Mtn Lighting so ya get the *full* anti-freeze flavor. *Chugs Coke Zero.* Now THAT’s brisk!
I love maraschino cherries. Especially in coke and ginger ale. There will be no bad mouthing those orbs of joy.
How long before we are watching AI players playing the games?
‘Watching’ an old Law & Order from ’91, and a witness said he saw a guy walking in the alley. Looked very professional. “Ya know? Like Donald Trump.”
Trump’s whereabouts at the time have not yet been confirmed, but he was likely in the area. This timeline is so amusing.
So the guy was described as “disheveled, with a tie hanging below his crotch?”
“If I lived in Denver, I’d be looking to go there.”
That’s all well and good, until an army of Karens stops by on the way home from yoga class.
I use EditPlus. I can’t remember why I hated Notepad++, but I did.
Maraschino cherries are lovely.
In a Manhattan?
Nope. Straight out of the jar.
Or in a Shirley Temple poke cake.
My husband is bringing me lobster bisque. He truly loves me.
I’m sure he went to the best bisque place around too…
Yada yada yada. Mention the lobster bisque.
That was the best part!
That is where my head went too lol
Just ran to the store.
I need beer. And maybe a loaf of bread. And some bananas. And… 70 bucks later, I’m back.
It’s such a nice day the Harley-tards are out.
I can’t believe it’s snowing again. And another bombcyclonestormhorror is on its way.
‘Tardley Davidson
FAGS
A maraschino cherry or two and a drizzle of juice on vanilla ice cream was quite the childhood treat.
Chocolate in our house.
What’s ice cream?
I had a banana split at DQ a couple weeks ago. It’s probably been 40-50 years since I have been in a DQ. Next trip will be a sundae.
Life in the fast lane for Ol’ Fourscore.
fast lane
do midwesterners think it’s funny that Texans think they invented DQ?
it is something to sit in the DQ in Graham, say, and watch the locals come and go
Did someone say First?
A question for Mr R C Dean as the three different stories I’ve read refuse to address the elephant in the room.
Renowned Houston surgeon allegedly faked records to block patients’ liver transplants
Why? To keep the cash flowing in some way that’s better than actually completing the transplant? To keep the success rates up with cases that had a high probability of complications or death that would lower ratings and access to organs? To game the system in some way to keep the organs coming to the hospital.
Naturally, our MSM just paints the doc as an asshole.
my ex is a giant at getting next of kin to donate before the corpse spoils
guy doesn’t have papers; family is a wreck; she walks in: I know this is tough, but can we make some good happen today?
I don’t know how she does it
I don’t miss her or want her, but I completely respect all the things down at the hospital she does
My wife who worked IC has told me some stories as well.
yup: TICU
FirstWife was a mousy little thing in high school, in college
and I thought it was stupid for her to go back for a BS in nursing
but she just blossomed, which is great,
but I never really knew her after that and so it goes
PS: but come over for NewWife’s shrimp and grits @@@!!! some time
Without knowing what he falsified, it’s impossible to say. All the organs get implanted anyway, so it’s not like he was going to get paid for more surgeries.
My guess: he disagreed with the allocation algorithm, and was gaming it toward patients he preferred.
The thing is, he wasn’t trying to get the patients at his hospital qualified. He was disqualifying them. Which could mean fewer transplants by him/his hospital. I’m just not seeing an obvious financial/institutional motive.
Thanks!
That’s what’s knocking me for the same loop.
He’s the Liver Nazi.
No liver for you!
R C would know lots better than I, but I would lean towards the cash flow hypothesis. I believe some of the drugs involved in keeping patients alive with liver dysfunction are very very expensive.