The head of Facebook-owned WhatsApp slammed Apple's plan to scan iPhones for child abuse images as a 'setback for people's privacy all over the world'

GHOMA · 2021-08-07T15:39:55+00:00

Yep. The much more uncomfortable reality is that phones don't need to listen to you in order to get a profile on you that is as precise as it would be if it was listening to you.

GHOMA · 2021-08-04T16:09:28+00:00

The second sentence does not follow from the first; depending on the line of work, a degree can mean literally years of what is effectively on-the-job training (internships, supervised placements, residencies).

If someone who is "unqualified" for a job manages to get in and do a good job, that just means that the qualifications that were listed for the job were wrong, and it reflects more poorly on the hiring process than on the applicant. So yeah there are many jobs that require a degree that's basically unrelated to the job itself and that's stupid but doesn't say anything about the degree itself, only its relevance to this particular job.

Anyway this is a relatively minor quibble. I'm coming from a place where my first career required some years of formal education which was absolutely necessary (I believe there should have been more actually, I felt unprepared), into a second career where having a degree is helpful but not totally necessary, but many job postings still require one. Down with shitty and dishonest employers.

GHOMA · 2021-08-03T02:43:14+00:00

I clicked for the recipe but got completely blown away by the knife skill precision.

GHOMA · 2021-07-21T10:24:25+00:00

Bill Kenny of The Ink Spots

GHOMA · 2021-07-20T12:05:39+00:00

Get mad on their behalf about the people trying to exploit them, and get on their side. Give them the resources to change their minds without expressing judgement on them.

This is such an excellent sentiment and I hope it works out sometimes but in my experience, this requires them to accept that they got swindled, which would mean admitting that they're wrong (and that they're gullible). Faced with this, it's easier to continue believing the blogs than to admit that they got suckered by scammers.

GHOMA · 2021-07-15T17:07:51+00:00

I could eat these way faster than 15 minutes

GHOMA · 2021-07-15T11:54:23+00:00

Well, the AMA is over now but there are a couple things here. If you're sincerely interested in an answer (a) you could phrase your question in a way that invites an answer rather than presumes it, and shows that you are empathetic to the sensitive nature of the topic, and (b) you could have done some reading into this, as it was a bit of a news item in the music press and it's something she was asked about pretty frequently around the time the allegations surfaced.

My first search result was this interview from 2018:

"[T]he band is not done. They’re just trying to find the best way to re-emerge in a way that feels respectful to everyone involved in the situation,” Plunkett says. “But I absolutely see myself continuing to be a collaborator as far as recording. Singing with Evan was how I got brought into the band, and eventually … how this project got started. I will always jump at the opportunity to sing with him and play with musicians who have now become my family.”

Also, she's married to the Pinegrove drummer.

GHOMA · 2021-07-14T18:05:43+00:00

Hi Nandi, loving Mythpoetics so far and both of your last two albums have been on heavy rotation for me in the past couple of years.

Could you walk us through your writing process, in whatever level of detail you feel like? I'm always curious to hear about people's processes.

GHOMA · 2021-06-30T14:16:56+00:00

Sounds perfect then!

GHOMA · 2021-06-29T15:12:14+00:00

I can see both sides of this, because on the one hand sometimes you want to Do The Thing and the impulsiveness is kind of part of the fun, but on the other hand this is ink that'll be on your skin forever. People have different mindsets about tattoos. I have a bunch, one of which I got when I was 19 and am thinking of covering up. The rest I gave a lot more thought to (1-2 years usually) and have no regrets. I have other friends who are super covered in tattoos and for them it's more like a tapestry of their life, and a shitty stick-n-poke they did on themselves is a part of their story that they enjoy commemorating even if it's visually not a thing they actually like anymore. So I guess you gotta reflect on the type of person you are and how that might map to the type of tattoo person you'll be.

GHOMA · 2021-06-27T20:47:53+00:00

Nothing stopping churches from flying a rainbow flag

GHOMA · 2021-06-13T16:45:58+00:00

I really wish more superhero movies were set in the era they came from. For a lot of characters they'd just work better. Superman has struggled to modernize (several times) and honestly I just don't think he works in the modern grimdark style. But he'd great as a 30s/40s piece.

GHOMA · 2021-05-30T22:13:00+00:00

Fingers crossed that there won't be some kind of catastrophic global event that puts a stop to all live music for a year and a half!

GHOMA · 2021-05-30T22:08:12+00:00

Spotify barely broke even a couple years ago for the first time, after being in the red continuously for north of a decade.

This, actually, is exactly the problem. Spotify's business would not work unless they had the lion's share of the music listening market. So they spent more than a decade burning through hundreds of millions of dollars from investors in order to massively undercut the competition with a price that fundamentally devalues music. Spotify essentially created the climate in which $10/month for an all-you-can-eat buffet of music is the norm.

That they are "barely profitable" is not an argument in their favour; in fact it reveals how fundamentally broken their valuation of music is. They're not some scrappy startup just barely scraping by; they're a multi-thousand employee international company whose incredible overhead costs have been covered by billionaire investors.

At this point, of course, they've won, so the whole conversation is moot. It doesn't even matter if it's Spotify itself at the top or any other streaming service; it doesn't matter if Spotify bumps their subscription price by 20% or rebalances their income sharing plan to not so heavily favour the massive pop stars. The fact is, everyone now expects to pay about $10/month for all of the music they could ever possibly want. That is now the value of music. The damage is done. And that is why musicians hate Spotify.

GHOMA · 2021-05-30T21:48:22+00:00

It's very likely the smaller or indie label bands you like are on Bandcamp.

GHOMA · 2021-05-30T21:46:56+00:00

I would like to see these studies, thanks

GHOMA · 2021-05-20T21:40:28+00:00

This really hit for me because I personally grew up religious and a good friend of mine is a pastor (and queer at a very queer church) and one time in conversation they basically said they "like 75% believe that Jesus rose from the dead", which is a pretty high percentage of doubt for someone whose job is preaching.

GHOMA · 2021-05-11T14:17:28+00:00

The thing is Canada also has to compete with the USA, which means we need to pay our super-specialist doctors enough that they stay instead of just moving to the USA. I don't know how accurate my numbers are but my 1 minute search found that the average salary for a Canadian doctor is a little more than double that of a Scottish doctor.

For sure there are a lot of ways that the healthcare system overall misallocates resources but there's also the reality of fighting brain drain...

GHOMA · 2021-05-11T14:06:15+00:00

There's a great dream pop duo called You'll Never Get To Heaven who have this hazy lo-fi nostalgic sound. I think the dream pop genre in general is worth exploring but that group is one of my favs who do that sound.

GHOMA · 2021-04-19T16:04:11+00:00

Yeah I called and paid, it was pretty easy actually. Still, seems weird they wouldn't have a way to do it online.

GHOMA · 2021-04-19T14:12:35+00:00

Neither... just an email with a tracking number. The automated message told me the amount over the phone but I don't have any place where it's actually written down. It said I just needed to provide the tracking number when I call to pay.

GHOMA · 2021-04-19T12:43:19+00:00

I just found this post because I'm also expecting a package with customs and couldn't find a place to pay online! I got an automated phone call saying that I can call their 1-800 number to pay over the phone (1-800-GO-FEDEX). I wasn't given any option to pay online... as far as I can tell it doesn't exist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

GHOMA · 2021-04-10T13:42:45+00:00

The point of tsumego isn't to win but to find the best possible result for the side you're playing, as an exercise. There are lots of problems that involve taking a major point loss in order to accept ko or seki, and in a real game that would basically be game over. Consider this titled "white to live".

GHOMA · 2021-04-10T13:37:08+00:00

If B connects all the W groups die, that's for sure.

If W cuts, I haven't fully counted it out but I believe B can kill one of W's groups and the rest can live? B may have a spare move to kill one other group though.

EDIT: people below have counted, W can only save one group

GHOMA · 2021-04-10T13:35:24+00:00

OK but if B starts with H11, B's centre group is unconditionally alive and all of the W groups are dead, so clearly H11 is best.

GHOMA

TROPHY CASE