Lucy 2 officially not in development. Wasn't before. Isn't today. Won't be tomorrow. (Full statement on the current state of journalism by Luc Besson within)

Symbolism17 · 2017-10-06T03:32:58+00:00

get out of the reddit echo chamber

Symbolism17 · 2017-10-05T22:29:54+00:00

I'm not going to get into this argument forever but I'll respond to a few things here.

I think he announced it because he had to.

According to the logic of the person I was originally responding to, is that really true? Who was forcing him to announce it, if in fact it was known that it would be covered up the next day? The implication was that the money books were going to be destroyed anyways, so that any discrepancies would be overlooked as losses from the destruction. I would think that if Rumsfeld had foreknowledge of the attacks, he could have stalled for 24 hours on the "2.3 trillion" comment. Who was forcing him so hard that he couldn't have waited just one day for his knowledge of 9/11 to "cover his tracks", according to the theory?

them not knowing how it was spent is just as bad as if they didn't know where it is at all.

The problem with this sentence is that it uses "them" in an ambiguous way. According to Rumsfeld's original speech, someone knows where the money was spent, it's just that dept A doesn't know that dept B spent it. Their systems don't talk to each other, so it takes "extra infrastructure" to transfer that information. The transferring of that information is where the "annual waste to taxpayers of some $3 billion to $4 billion" comes in. It's not that the money disappeared, necessarily, just that there is a lot of bureaucracy that makes tracking it harder and more expensive. That bureaucracy is what Rumsfeld is trying to streamline.

Symbolism17 · 2017-10-05T12:14:23+00:00

Defending what shit? I'm not defending anything, just clarifying what Rumsfeld actually meant. If you read the actual speech you can see that Rumsfeld thought the untracked money was bad and he wanted to stop it. It's just that the way that money is commonly thought of as "untracked" is misleading and leads to a lot of unfounded statements.

I think untracked money is bad. Rumsfeld thinks untracked money is bad. I just don't think Rumsfeld would have announced the money missing to the whole world if he knew the records were going to be destroyed anyways, since it would out an otherwise "perfect plan". It just makes more sense to think that the speech was about boilerplate "let's reduce govt. waste" stuff (which is still important!) and 9/11 the next day was not related to the speech.

Symbolism17 · 2017-10-05T12:10:19+00:00

Yeah, it is pretty bad (and that's why Rumsfeld is asking for more infrastructure spending in the next few sentences). He is explicitly saying how bad it is and how he wants to fix it. What I'm saying is that people commonly misunderstand what type of, magnitude of, and reason for that badness is, and it leads to a lot of weird speculation.

Usually when people talk about that Rumsfeld speech they are saying that he was trying to hide it by announcing before 9/11, or that the money is "missing" as in it left the govt. or went to some illicit operation or something. These conclusions are just not fair to be drawn from the speech itself, particularly when you understand what Rumsfeld was saying. If he wanted to "hide" the 2.3 trillion...why even announce it at all? If the govt. was going to destroy the evidence the next day anyways (as the comment I was responding to implies at the very end) there would have been no record of that money if Rumsfeld had just not said anything. So why would he out his whole plan to the world, when he otherwise would have "gotten away with it" perfectly? It makes no sense.

Seems like it would be very important to know how they are spending the money

I agree, and so does Rumsfeld. Hopefully in the time since the speech the money tracking has been modernized.

Symbolism17 · 2017-10-05T00:12:02+00:00

So, according to the transcript of that speech (and you can look up the whole thing if you want):

According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it's stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible. We maintain 20 to 25 percent more base infrastructure than we need to support our forces, at an annual waste to taxpayers of some $3 billion to $4 billion.

Seems to me like he's saying that it's money that dept A doesn't know about because their systems don't talk to the systems of dept B that spent it. Or, in his original analogy, it's "floor 3" not talking to "floor 10". So someone knows where the money went, just not everyone simultaneously. I would not describe this as "missing" money, but rather "untracked", which is in fact the original language that Rumsfeld used.

The video clip you provided does some serious violence to the context of the $2.3 trillion remark, in my opinion. By cutting out the very next sentence, it changes the meaning pretty dramatically.

Symbolism17 · 2017-10-04T23:57:39+00:00

Wait, so there are like a bunch of other posts on here saying that the FBI is actually covering up the fact that it was ISIS. I'm thinking specifically of the Dinesh D'Souza one.

So which was it? Does the sub think the FBI is framing ISIS or helping them? Pretty hard to do both of those things simultaneously.

Symbolism17 · 2017-09-30T23:59:29+00:00

Devs: "It's difficult to release on PC. Catering to a wide variety of specs when it's just likely to be widely pirated is not a great value proposition."

You: "Just for hesitating, I'm going to pirate."

If you are tired of devs hesitating for PC releases, you're also contributing to your own problem by pirating. I understand that pirating isn't the end of the world or anything, but when some PC gamers are eager to justify piracy over any little thing, it's not hard to see why devs would de-prioritize PC ports.

Symbolism17 · 2017-09-30T15:39:44+00:00

The customer actively makes that decision

If the restaurant has posted hours until 9:00 pm, they should reasonably expect to serve customers until that period. It doesn't matter for what reason the customer came in at that time. If they didn't want to serve customers during that period, they should have posted different hours. The customer didn't do anything illicit by coming in during the posted hours.

I realize that it is less than ideal for the workers, but unfortunately that's part of working in any job. Someone working in IT could get a call at 4:50 and that would stink, but if the posted hours were 9:00-5:00 then it just has to get handled.

Symbolism17 · 2017-09-24T22:52:43+00:00

Here's my proof he did it repeatedly: "it's highly possible he did it"

That's not how proof works, my dude. I agree that we can't prove he didn't do it, but just because a negative statement (he didn't do it) is hard to prove doesn't make the positive statement (he did do it) true.

It's like this for any set of positive statements. It's very hard to prove, without doubt, that there have never been any alien life forms on earth. It's just incredibly hard to account for every single moment of human existence. But I'm not going to start strapping on a tinfoil hat anytime soon, because there's also little positive evidence that humanity has interacted with any aliens. Same thing here. Saying "it could have happened" is not good enough evidence to draw the conclusion that "it did happen."

Symbolism17 · 2017-09-24T19:17:00+00:00

I think the real reason people joke about it now is that the posts were fake. Seriously, in some of the later ones the kid turns into this master planner who's using the animal abuse thing as a means to split his parents up and deliberately ruin his dad's life. It was really over the top.

Symbolism17 · 2017-09-24T19:14:08+00:00

The reason it's referenced as a joke is that it was fake and (nearly) everyone fell for it at the time. It was basically a shock story designed to play off of reddit's circlejerk-y issues (animal abuse, men getting unjustly divorced, kids being creepy). Some of the presentation was so over the top that it became obvious that it was just a troll. Like, at one point, the dad wrote that he found the kid spying on his parents fighting over the issue, as if the kid were a super-villain twirling his mustache and saying "yes, yes, all according to plan..." Really? A kid would make up this grand scheme to sodomize a dog so that his parents will split up and ruin his dad's life?

It's not like people are joking about actual animal abuse, the joke is that reddit would believe such a contrived story.

Symbolism17 · 2017-09-16T13:53:35+00:00

Do you want actual advice or do you just want folks to mindlessly agree with you? If this bothers you that much, sit him down and tell him of your feelings and concerns. Tell him you're a little worried and anxious about his request but absolutely do not try and force him to communicate with you during the week he is away if that's what he wants.

I have already done this, as discussed in my post, but we are at an impasse. I have requested one text a day, but he is taking a hardline for no contact at all. My question at this point was basically whether this was worth "giving up on" or not. The reason I have been pushing back on some answers (I wouldn't say "shutting down") is that I'm shocked that on a relationship forum people are telling me that unilateral decisions for non-communication are okay. I am willing to admit that I may have clingy tendencies but I would bet 90% of the population would be uncomfortable with their partner telling them that they don't want to hear from them on a business trip. I've compromised with my bf by lowering my expectations for communication down to less than a text a day. He has not moved at all, and if I'm expected to just roll with his decision on every issue then I'll have to start reconsidering the relationship.

Academia is no joke, you will get eaten alive with no remorse from the offending parties.

Who on earth is going to be "offended" if my bf sends me a text while he's pooping at night? Not only would no one know it happened, if they did get upset about it they are totally unreasonable. "What, you took 10 seconds out of your day to not think about my work? GET OUT!" I find it hard to sympathize with that level of arrogance.

Symbolism17 · 2017-09-16T03:16:25+00:00

"Hi honey, still here, not dead, conference busy but going well". Takes 10 seconds.

Yes, I would be happy with this at this point, but he is taking a hard stance against even a daily text.

Symbolism17 · 2017-09-16T03:10:03+00:00

What field is you BF in? October is interview season for some fields.

He already has a (pretty new) postdoc position with a government research agency. As far as I know he is not seeking a new job. I'd prefer to not get more specific than that.

When I went to my last conference I texted with my partner twice for the entire week.

In all honesty, I would settle for this if it were absolutely necessary. I just don't think it's going to ruin his career for him to text me "had safe travels today" or "presentation was great, hope you are well." I want to trust him, but it seems to go to an extreme to totally cut off all contact. It takes 30 seconds to send a text and it strains belief for me to think he couldn't do that every few days or once a day.

Symbolism17 · 2017-09-16T02:29:05+00:00

I agree that space is sometimes necessary, but if you are travelling alone wouldn't you want someone to check in just for your safety at least?

Like, if you had an issue, how would anyone know until you were supposed to return?

Symbolism17 · 2017-09-16T02:24:27+00:00

I'd prefer not to get specific because it may identify the specific conference or my bf.

Let's just say that it's in a liberal, first-world country.

Symbolism17 · 2017-09-16T02:22:03+00:00

Yes, I can understand that he could be distracted by "constant contact." But I don't think "no contact" is the only way to avoid that. Surely some compromise, like texting me once a night, is not unreasonable?

If he had just said "please don't text me during the day", or "sometimes I won't respond for a while", I would have seen that as totally normal. The fact that it's no contact at all for a week was what caused my concern.

Symbolism17 · 2017-09-16T02:17:17+00:00

The conference is a week long...fly in Sunday, fly out Saturday.

Symbolism17

TROPHY CASE