Zoraptor
-
Posts
3523 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
20
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Everything posted by Zoraptor
-
-
Here they just cheat instead, and force the teachers to raise the pupils grades to increase their attractiveness. They likely do that here as well, it just hasn't been proven- they get money from the government depending on 'performance' so there's definite reason to massage stats. They do have external exams as metrics as well which are harder to fake, but charter schools at least theoretically have internal metrics which determine performance bonuses. They've been trying to bring in 'performance pay' and the like for ages in the public sector which is a terrible idea as it leads to rote metric learning designed only to get good marks on the metrics- either from bad teachers gaming the system or from schools doing the same as they're desperate for money- and fudging any internal metrics. And of course the good teachers either get poached by rich schools or are good for reasons that aren't necessarily tangible by the sort of metrics used. They've had the same thing with the police and all it has lead to is people being encouraged not to report crimes by police who don't want their stats ruined. At least I'm now reminded how much I liked The Wire S4, as (generally) depressing as it was.
-
I've never got a proper answer out of 'charter school' or private school or 'voucher' advocates of how they would break the cycle anyway. If the problem is gangs and crime then how does a privatised system stop that? If it's bad parents then how does a privatised system improve them? Are they still going to use the same educational framework? If they aren't who decides that whatever they do use is appropriate? Whole thing looks closest to the woeful kludge that is the US health system where competitive principles result in a great system if you're a millionaire (and healthy) as you can choose whatever you want, but an utter disaster if you're poor or ill. There's lots of handwaving and talk about competition improving everything- by the mythical magic of the invisible hand of the market- and no thought to how the practicalities work out. If it's anything like the (small scale, fortunately) mess charter schools are here then they cherry pick pupils to make themselves look good and actually cost the tax payer more than normal schools.
-
"I didn't like Clinton at all, but her position's are much better than Trump's on every issue I can think of." -Chomsky in an interview post election. Major election issues: TPP- Any genuine supporter of socialism (or even any non-corporatist shill) should be 100% opposed to TPP. Trump is far better than Hillary on this issue. Syria, Libya, Iraq, and neo-con warmongering- Trump was critical of Iraq, opposed intervention in Syria. On this front a genuine leftist should see Trump as better. At the very least Chomsky should considering his past rhetoric. These are NOT minor issues either. Either he's lying now, lied about his goals/ideology in the past for years, he's a partison hack, or he's just an idiot. At least theoretically Clinton was anti TPP as well. I wouldn't trust her over it either, personally, but to be fair her most quoted comment on it ("the gold standard of trade agreements") left out the rather important and conditional first part of her sentence: "it could become". I agree with the specific foreign policy examples given as being things he should be against, especially with Chomsky's strident opposition to military adventurism. However, Trump is not exactly bereft of FP negatives. I'd have to imagine that Chomsky supports things like the Iran deal and Cuba deals, which Trump opposes but Hillary supported; and Trump is considerably more likely to randomly insult random world leaders or alienate entire sections by 'banning muslims' or similar. Chomsky did describe Clinton as the lesser evil multiple times in that interview which is hardly an endorsement, if he's compartmentalising things into sections like 'economy', 'fp', 'supreme court' etc then he could very easily disagree less with Clinton than Trump on every issue but not agree with every subissue. (I presume someone has linked to the AJE interview that quote comes from above, but I have youtube blocked along with google so I'll do it again to be sure. As an aside, I rather like Mehdi Hasan, he had a fantastic interview with one of his indirect employers in the Qatari royal family that had no punches pulled)
-
Yep. Castro wasn't any saint, and it would be an absolute miracle if he were given his revolutionary origins- but the US had 62 years to give Cuba legitimate, democratic, free press, non corrupt, rule of law rule and instead gave it Batista who was illegitimate (some might say a right bastard), undemocratic, anti free press, corrupt as anyone and didn't give an asterisk about rule of law.
-
Wouldn't be too sure about that. Tito survived a huge number of assassination attempts (nationalists/ cetniks/ ustasi; SS/ Germans; KGB*; western intelligence all had a crack at various times), they just weren't as famously peculiar as the CIA attempts on Fidel. Well, some were quite peculiar like a bacteria laced jewelry box but they aren't as well known as exploding conch shells or botulin toxin A laced cigars. *So many from Stalin that some actually believe Tito assassinated him in retaliation.
-
The US hates being baulked, and Castro did it for 49 years, including through the 90s when he was supposed to go the way of Ceacescu etc. That a lot of people in the US take it personally is no real surprise. Would have said that Tito could, but you'd know more about that than I. And for most of his time Castro was nor genuinely politically independent as he was solidly USSR sphere, albeit more by necessity than outright desire- it was only the last 15 years of his rulership where he was independent.
-
Fermentation will happen naturally to all fruits, there are plenty of stories of pigs getting drunk eating windfall apples and the like and if you leave fruit juices in a warm room after opening you'll often get spontaneous fermentation. Brewing is the controlled method of the natural process, by and large you can just stick juice and yeast into a container and get a drinkable result so long as you're reasonably careful about hygiene and don't mind the drink being far (far) less sweet than juice- you can also add stevia or similar to sweeten it- as yeast eats all the normal sugars out of it to make the alcohol. The more advanced people control other factors as well, it's much the same general process as beer coming from different combos of malt, hops and having different alcohol contents etc. Some fruit make better wine than 'cider'- feijoa cider is doable but a lot more difficult than making wine, for example.
-
According to the group that cracked it it's not constant encrypt/ decrypt, just one time encrypt based on hardware keys and then (constant) decrypt which is why hardware changes will lock you out until you reverify. Of course, that it can lock you out until you reverify definitively makes it DRM rather than 'anti tamper' since that behaviour is the same as any other activation based system.
-
I said a few months ago that I'd try making cider and I have. So far I've learnt that you don't get much apple juice out a kilo of apples and it's an obnoxious process to get the juice out as well. Next time I'll just bulk it out with (quality) commercial apple juice, much as that offends my food snob side. It's nearly finished fermenting though so I'll probably be bottling tomorrow or saturday morning, then try it maybe around Christmas if I can be that patient. I'd already done one batch of beer as well, will probably go for feijoa wine after the cider is done. I don't actually like feijoas to eat, but they do make a nice wine so long as you don't try drinking it for 3 months (really, I was impatient, tried one early and it tasted like acetone)- plus they're easy to juice since you can freeze them, stick them in a bucket and use a standard potato masher. You can also blend feijoa wine and cider, which is extremely pleasant.
-
I don't really understand why it would be a big deal, forums are not a truly public space and you don't 'own' your account. In any case, Chris can't really both drop passive aggressive hints and complain that he's been unfairly locked out; there would be a non negligible chance of something like the character blog being replaced by dongmonster gifs if he weren't. (IIRC Matt Rorie used his old account a fair while after leaving, but I'm not certain and can't be bothered checking) I don't think his 'tone' is at all... constructive, either for him or for Obsidian. For all his positive comments about Bethesda in those interviews he isn't doing himself any favours if he ever does want full time employment again. Companies hate disruptive influences. Trouble is, his style of complaint is something I find symptomatic of the sort of pointless grudge holding that went on at high school. It's entirely possible that things weren't trivial, but if he was doing the passive aggressive hint dropping stuff at Obsidian it would certainly explain why nearly everyone ended up either ignoring or disliking him/ he felt that he was ignored and disliked* as that sort of approach is obnoxious to people just trying to do their job, and it tends towards being a vicious circle where the passive aggressiveness ends up as a persecution complex because people won't support you. And at the moment most of his objectively checkable complaints have not, er, checked out. *he has said he only had one friend at Obsidian, which is both a bit sad but definitely indicates his problems were not just with senior management. I was the 'one friend' to someone in a similar situation and most of the time they were their own worst enemy whatever the justifications were in their dislike as they made themselves painful to work with.
-
Proportional states' votes in the EC would be more likely, but still not that likely. You'd have to have some sort of simultaneous adoption else you'd have, say, California going proportional while Texas keeps giving its votes to the R candidate wholesale which gives the R candidate a big advantage. I know a couple of states do it anyway, but they're small states. Complaining about the EC is a bit like complaining that someone with more wins finishes behind someone else in a football league or the Golden State Warriors not being NBA champions despite having the most wins. It is what it is, everyone knows the rules beforehand and while it may not be a perfectly fair system, it is balanced.
-
We've got 4 more years (four more years!) of posterial discomfit to come, I'm very much afraid. They've only just got started on how Hillary won the popular vote* and it isn't even decided by how much she won yet. *so she was the right choice and should have won, nothing needs to change just wait for Trump to self destruct and it'll be Kaine/ Brazile all the way in 2020!
-
And another sale, this time for Black Friday and barely a week after the last one ended. Limbo for free if you have Connect. (Probable Bioshock(s) incoming as well, judging by the sale's leader style, colour and font; though they aren't there at this point) Cossacks 3 released as well, which is a recent release. Oddly enough it has a minimum spec requiring 6GB of RAM and a recommended requiring, uh, 4GB at the moment.
-
I didn't think you thought it was a verbatim quote, but I thought I'd better be safe due to the 'actual tweet saying that' line. I probably should have linked the tweet in the first place anyway.
-
It's there. I paraphrased- actual quote is "No, I worked on it but may not be in the credits (they tried to delete me from the credits at least once since my departure)"- but that should have been pretty obvious from the string of exclamation marks. (To be fair to Infinitron, the first reply to the tweet makes it irrelevant except as evidence of potential butthurt so it's pointless except in that context. And while I might make no twitter integration into a point of pride if we've got youtube integration twitter integration would probably be a good idea so we can keep up on the goss' ourselves)
-
It's still there. At least I presume that's the one. I'm surprised Infintron managed to resist adding Chris's "I worked on Tyranny but I bet they've not credited me!!!1!!!" tweet (he's credited on narrative design, first name even), guess it's because we don't have an easy tweet poster unlike the 'codex which would fall apart without the ability to gossip over 147 character messages about trivialities from trivialities. We only discuss the big and important issues, here, and if you want to talk about tweets you jolly well have to click a link to see them like a proper researcher! At this point I'm willing to chip in a few bucks to buy Chris some Preparation H brand botty ointment to treat the obvious butthurt. Then again, perhaps he's researching that High School game he was talking about and wants to get a good idea of what the 'gossip' mechanics need to be.
-
I am not sure that is true. Lets take for example Finland's diplomatic envoy, every time we sent one to negotiate with new US president. [..] Totalling to somewhere from 350k to 3 million dollars (three million is more typical than 350k for such trip) for Finnish tax payers. Which is of course usually justifiable because they usually make several billions worth of deals during such trip. In order to get to $25 million you'd have to be having those negotiations on that (top end) scale every year for a double term Trump presidency, it seems unlikely that you'd even have the 3 you'd need to get close to $10 million over 8 years unless you're doing something wrong. It's not really a fair comparison anyway, since; A hotel room is a proper service where the hotel has fixed costs, major staffing, etc and those Finns staying at 'Trump DC' take up bed/ room space that is fundamentally limited. None of those apply to the CF- well, the 'costs' one does obviously, but a single donation by itself has negligible cost associated with it, there's no/ very limited added cost with scale and there is no physical limit to how many donations can be accepted. Critically, in that scenario Trump also only gets extra money from people staying in rooms that would otherwise be empty*, else it's just getting money from a different source and might be counter productive to his business long term if private clients cannot stay and become loyal to alternatives instead; and if Finns are staying there for 2 weeks and taking up half the rooms or whatever then the delegation from Sweden might be able to be there as well, but nobody else can. It's not a good look, potentially, but it is also an inevitable consequence of him running a huge business with the best hotels, let me tell you I know hotels and Trump hotels are just the best, just the best. Tremendous. No wonder diplomats want to stay at them when they're that good. It's certainly not equivalent to the Crooked Foundation and its illegal money laundering, such comparisons are just sad! As previous, I'd be far more concerned with concessions and the like being granted to the Trump businesses as favour currying, as those are where there's a lot of quick money to be made with little scrutiny. *yeah, he could jack up prices for diplomats as well
-
By its nature that's far more difficult to prove as an accusation than diplomats staying at a Trump hotel though, especially since she lost. If Saudi donated $25 million in the hope of arms deals they got said arms deals- but you can't prove that the donation influenced that and both parties want and benefit from the deal anyway- and if they donated in the hope of preference when she became President you also can't prove that, since she lost. If that money got diverted in part to her campaign that too is hard to prove. On the other hand, a diplomat saying they'll stay at Trump Washingon (or whatever) to curry favour is both volunteered information and easy to check. Having gulf states are various other kleptocracies like a near bankrupt Ukraine donate in the order of $10 million or more a piece is inherently far more suspicious than Bill and Melinda Gates donating similar amounts because unlike Bill&Mel they are not big on altruistic donations- they're big on corruption, influence peddling and spreading their ideology via 'charity' mosque building that just happen to all be wahhabi/ salafi. Plus you'd have to have a lot of diplomatic missions to get to $10 million worth of accommodation. I'd be more worried about sudden concessions and agreements for hotels, golf courses and the like being granted rather than accommodation as that's pretty small fry. None of that proves anything corruption wise, of course. But at best I'd have to say that the CF almost certainly dangled the thought of potential influence in the faces of those corrupt enough to try and buy it. (Should be noted that GWB's charity almost certainly- no disclosure so can't be sure- accepted Gulf money as well, though the circumstances there are somewhat different since Laura was not even entertaining the idea of going for President, albeit Jeb! was)
-
3 years in the 50s. Learn something new every day. In any case while it may not have been clear my view is that having a non ideologue in the post is more important than any other factor. I don't think we've had an ex armed forces Minister of Defence as long as I can remember, albeit our military is way smaller even on a per capita basis. Then again, we also had a just retired when appointed general as theoretically the most important man in the country until recently. Two new things. [am I going to have to edit every post due to dropped keystrkes? Sure looks like it]
-
Trump would still be the military's leader, and he is a civilian. In theory the idea of having a civilian as Minister of Defence/ Secretary of Defense is great, in practice though it's more questionable. Depends on the people involved of course, but I'd find it difficult to believe that if, for example, Rumsfeld and Powell's cabinet positions were reversed there would have been half as much trouble in Iraq post invasion. I couldn't see Powell disbanding the Iraqi military and putting 100,000s of resentful, unemployed, unpaid but trained fighters on the streets or most of the other Rumsfeld/ Brenner stuff ups. Same with Brenner as well, his predecessor Garner was military and made practical rather than doctrinaire decisions during his brief time in charge, Brenner otoh was pure Rummy stooge doctrine and was a disaster. The danger is of course that a military secdef is biased either towards the military as a whole or towards their specific branch. But that's also a danger for a civilian secdef as well- in either case it's about picking the right guy/ gal whatever their background.
-
Most of those quotes seem reasonable, in a military context. I don't really expect a deeply introspective examination of man's inhumanity to man and exhortations to take up mung bean farming in an anarchist commune from the military; I expect gung-ho bombast and self embiggening mixed with some trash talking. I'm completely unfamiliar with Mattis otherwise though, and with most of Trump's appointments. Doesn't seem to be much point finding anything out about potential appointments since the 'likely' picks of the media don't seem to have been very accurate so far. Individual pagination of the quotes on the other hand, I'd like to unleash the "world's most respected and feared fighting force" on that click harvesting technique. Metaphorically of course, no need to bloody your kukris lads.
-
I haven't heard about this before. Is this just part of the updated FB "algorithm" or has it been reported anywhere? It was reported all over the place a couple of days ago. TL; DR: A bunch of 'fake' news sites were/ are going to be removed from FB and Google's affiliate advertising programs; what 'fake news' actually means is to be decided by FB/ Google. And there are currently a plethora of articles about how 'fake' news performed better than 'real' news on FB too. Not like fake news isn't a problem, but there's not a little irony in targeting it immediately after an election where the traditional media failed spectacularly and where we can be fairly certain the management at FB/ Google disagreed with the result.
-
Heh, if there's one thing that illustrates how fundamentally borked the system is it's the double and again inconsistent whammy of 'free' trade deals and agricultural subsidies. Because, of course, agriculture is excluded from just about every 'F'TA to protect farmers whether they be 19th century style german or french farmers sucking on the CAP or US corps frolicking in the pork barrel. Meanwhile, IMF demands poor African farmers open their markets to those subsidised goods and grow coffee or bananas instead of proper food so they can buy those subsidised staples. Then the banks decide to do some speculation on the futures market and drive staple prices through the roof. It's a perfect vicious- or virtuous if you're a soulless economic drone- circle where you pump money out of the poor and into your own pockets, plus you get cheap coffee and bananas and a perpetually beholden country out of the deal. Banks do the exact same thing within their own countries. The whole point of 'sub prime' loans was to give people loans they could never pay back to get a few years interest out of them before bankrupting or mortgagee selling the property. Works beaut, until the housing market tanks and the bank can't cover legal costs and the mortgage primary out of the bloated house price increase any more- but at least you're too big to fail so the little guy ends up paying anyway in the bail out. Banks do do essential stuff as well, but the bad stuff is outright parasitical and done solely to benefit themselves to the absolute detriment of those getting their services. And it still goes on. Most reputable companies understand that signing their customers up to bogus services without their knowledge is the preserve of scam artists, but that's what Wells Fargo was doing for over four years.
-
And that is only going to get worse so long as current policies continue. There are two mutually incompatible forces at work. Most western countries aren't having enough children for a population where the old are expected to live into their late 70s or 80s. But, ironically, there also aren't enough jobs for those children anyway; and the people who pay for those jobs don't want to pay what a closed market would demand, they want someone used to an Indian/ Indonesian/ Mexican/ African or wherever else wage to be in them. So you have the peculiar circumstance of simultaneously having too many and too few jobs for too many and too few people. You also have the competing desires of the older part of the populace- who want the superannuation, healthcare etc that they paid for over 40 years- versus the younger population who have to pay for it all once the older people retire, because governments accumulated debt rather than prepared for all those old people, shifting the burden onto the current generation. Since old people vote they tend to get what they want, which leaves much of the younger set and anyone who expected to have a manufacturing job for life deeply disillusioned and looking for someone to blame. When political and economic orthodoxy is failing people go for the unorthodox, and that means either left or right. The most ironic thing is probably old people blaming millenials for everything having voted themselves low taxes, debt spending, easy credit and everything else that benefits them and their position. Having their cake, eating their cake then complaining that their children need to harden up because they're taking the children's cake and eating that too. (as always with generalisations, it's deeply unfair to certain individuals within the generalised group. otoh, if you keep voting from pure self interest don't complain when others do the same)
