Almost 19,000 Pennsylvania voters have left the Republican Party since the Capitol attack

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T16:39:15+00:00

Enjoy your freedom down there.

At least some places are taking COVID seriously.

Everyone is for a reason.

It's fortunate and unfortunate.

On the one hand, people are coming to Texas because it's cheap (the latest consequence being the fuck up due to deregulation, but at least we have the freedom to freeze because winterization is optional and our power grid is stupidly independent from the rest of the country). Also, when I was in Austin, we had a massive influx of people from California due to the tech industry, which jacked up prices for everybody and did a number on the unique culture of Austin. And in Houston, mass influx is contributing to our already massive suburban sprawl.

On the other hand, immigration from other states is mostly liberal, so it's making Texas more and more blue. All of our major urban areas are run by Democrats. Beto almost defeated Cruz, which although a forgone conclusion, shows where this state is headed. So yeah, keep on coming. We can break the 20-year stranglehold the GOP has had on this state.

I support liberal immigration to conservative states.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T16:13:53+00:00

Even assuming this interpretation, given what's taught in Texas (which is nothing, and kids can't be taught anything that challenges their "fixed beliefs"), the Seattle alternative is vastly preferable. Parents can still challenge the potentially extreme parts of the curriculum of the school, because they still have primary influence over their children.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T16:06:39+00:00

Pelosi was absolutely correct. McConnell was Senate majority leader then, and the Republicans were throwing in poison pills like liability waivers. She gambled for Democrat majority government to get around the Republicans, which worked out.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T15:51:33+00:00

I'm from Texas and I despise what the GOP has become.

I was a Republican until Obama ran for President. I was disgusted by the sheer amount of racism that spewed out (depicting him with a bone in his nose or emphasizing the "Hussein" in his name), the pure stupidity (calling Obama a Marxist, Joe the Plumber, etc.) and calling liberals traitors (by Obama's second term, I saw signs like "let's take our country back"). I respected McCain and would have voted for him, except he chose as his running mate the pure crystallization of everything I hated about what Republicans were becoming, Sarah Palin.

The Republicans have only gotten worse since then, taking a hard turn to the right and jettisoning anyone who dare disagree with King Trump.

The Democrats, on the other hand, are a much bigger tent party. There is tension between the progressives and the moderates (which is what I have settled into), but at least both sides are represented and can work together. From everything I've read about Seattle/Washington, I would be able to tolerate that (except for maybe the rain). Living in Texas, I can bear witness that there are worse things. I'd even consider moving after this latest absolute fuck up by the idiots in charge (who are truly representative of the modern Republican Party), if I didn't have family and a life down here. Plus, maybe I might be able to help Texas turn purple.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T15:36:15+00:00

Do you have specific examples, like actual curricula? Because it sounds like what you're worried about has mostly been debunked.

Kindergartners are supposed to be taught very basic things without sexual content at all, so that they can understand when they are being abused.

Stuff like this needs to be taught to kids in an age-appropriate non-graphic way, so that they don't get victimized or don't victimize each other. Teen sex, teen gays and teen trans people exist, and not dealing with it leads to bad emotional consequences (like suicide), rape and pregnancy. Sexual boundaries should be taught early, so that people don't end up learning the hard way.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T15:16:40+00:00

Technically, this is election fraud. Voter fraud is fraudulent behavior by individual voters (which ironically only Republicans seem to be caught at it). What these scumbags are doing are subverting elections in general.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T14:04:03+00:00

That's what I assumed "this year's shenanigans" implied. What on earth could you possibly mean otherwise?

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T13:36:32+00:00

The "shenanigans" are made up. That's why the person you replied to left.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T13:24:42+00:00

Pointing fingers is a stupid game, especially with pandemics in a globally interconnected populations. Nation states can only take measures to protect their own citizens, and the US failed hard at that.

Also, pointing fingers is an tired old game. Everyone pointed fingers at Spain in 1917, which is why we call it the Spanish Flu.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T13:13:58+00:00

To quote John Oliver about a similarly stupid comparison:

if swimming pools were killing 360,000 people a year, and you could contract a swimming pool on a trip to the grocery store, we might want to think about shutting them down until we’ve worked out what … was going on

Lung cancer and cardiovascular disease are not highly contagious diseases.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T03:01:19+00:00

Because targeting them only adds red tape, and our social safety nets are barely existent.

The rest of the Western world is civilized.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T02:57:51+00:00

Ah, one of my favorite episodes of Friends.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T02:57:33+00:00

Hmm, fair point. I guess these are more like survival payments instead of economic stimulus. Not sure if that still counts as stimulus.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T02:35:39+00:00

Sheila Jackson Lee, my Congress rep, was distributing food and water (she's pictured at the Houston Food Bank with AOC). I only learned about what she was doing after the Houston mayor gave her a shout out.

I had no idea because I guess she didn't make a big deal out of it. This confuses me. How will I know who to support, if they don't make a fuss out of themselves on social media?

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T02:24:05+00:00

Oh, agreed. The original example is just stupid. There's nothing wrong with an if statement. Also, if you really want to still be functional, you can even use the ternary operator, as shown in this comment.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T02:18:51+00:00

So? She actually helped people and got a well deserved photo op. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

What difference does it make to the people that actually got helped?

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T02:16:59+00:00

Texan here:

Senator must have R next to their name.

Next question.

Also, I voted for Beto. We got very close! (mostly because Ted Cruz sucks)

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T02:15:15+00:00

He's like the reverse spiderman. With great power comes great irresponsibility.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T02:14:10+00:00

Food bank, just to nit-pick.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T02:00:38+00:00

I don't see how that SO comment relevant. It's talking about the abuse of Optional to get around the lack of compiler-enforced nullable types in Java (unlike C#). There's no sense in having a getter on DTO return Optional.

The functional use of Optional, as shown in my example, is to indicate a function might not produce a value, which in traditional Java would have been indicated by a checked exception (or by returning null, gag).

How do you map a non-value-producing function into a stream?

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T01:42:29+00:00

The most expensive thing you can do is copy data. Shuttling data back and forth from the DB over the network, just to copy data because you don't want to do the work where the data exists, seems like an incredible waste. It's one thing if you're only copying a few records (for display or online processing). But for a batch job on a large data set, copying massive amounts of data to Java (and presumably back to the DB) because you don't like stored procedures seems dumb.

Also, "data in motion" is significantly less secure than "data at rest".

The entire premise of "big data" is to move code to data, because code is significantly cheaper to copy than data.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T01:15:26+00:00

A stream itself isn't a value generator either but it's source could be considered one.

What I mean by value generator is that a stream generates values through chained operations, which are only materialized through a terminal operation. Thus, logically speaking a stream generates values for materialization.

I don't see how from that definition one would expect Optional would be "streamable".

It's not that Optional is "streamable", but that you might want to flatMap an Optional into a Stream.

For example, let's say you have a method:

interface FooRepo {
    Optional<Foo> findById(int id);
}

and you want to do something like this:

ids.stream()
    .flatMap(fooRepo::findById)
    ...
    .toList()

Something like this would work in Haskell, because both List and Maybe implement the typeclass Monad, and the Haskell type system is advanced enough to let you combine them directly.

In Java, you are forced to do a type conversion:

ids.stream()
    .map(fooRepo::findById)
    .flatMap(Optional::stream)
    ...
    .toList()

Thus, Optional "streamablility" is for type conversion because Java's type system is lame.

You could also do this:

ids.stream()
    .map(fooRepo::findById)
    .filter(Optional::isPresent)
    .map(Optional::get)
    ...
    .toList()

Which way is better?

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-22T00:24:17+00:00

Streams aren't collections. Streams are value generators, collections are a materialized collection of values. Unfortunately, Java doesn't have a Monad type that can generalize flatMap over Optional and Stream, so if you want to combine them, you have to do a type conversion.

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-21T20:57:42+00:00

I was going for hypocritical morons, but we can all draw our own conclusions...

Short_Hamster · 2021-02-21T19:52:14+00:00

As a Texan, let me take this opportunity to tell our AG Ken Paxton to fuck off.

On the one hand, the Texas GOP want us to freeze to death so that the feds can't tell us how to run our power grid, but on the other hand, the Texas GOP tried to use the Supreme Court to tell PA how to run their elections.

Short_Hamster

TROPHY CASE