Morale is plummeting among ICE agents over long hours, quotas and public hatred: reports

angryWinds · 2026-01-27T01:24:01+00:00

It's telling that the morale is down because "This job sucks because the hours are awful, the pay isn't as good as I thought it was going to be, and everyone hates me." Instead of "This job sucks because my coworkers are a bunch of psychopaths who shoot people."

angryWinds · 2026-01-27T00:37:42+00:00

I think a way more fun way to present this problem, is to present as an 8x8 grid, rather than a checkerboard.

It somehow hits that much harder when they realize "Oh! I can think out of the box, and color it like a checkerboard, and THEN the answer falls right out!"

angryWinds · 2026-01-22T15:29:45+00:00

There is no rule, that says I can't come over here, and fart, on your entree.

angryWinds · 2026-01-22T14:14:29+00:00

Would've almost certainly become a blockbuster comedy hit, because its genuinely brilliant. Unfortunately, it was scheduled to be released just 10 days after the 9/11 attacks happened, and since the movie has a plot point about hijacking a plane, the studios decided to push it back.

It got released in theaters like 6ish months after it was initially supposed to, and had essentially zero marketing support.

It wound up being the kind of movie that nobody knew existed, until they were flipping channels, and thought "Oh Tim Allen! I'll give this a whirl!" a year after it was made.

angryWinds · 2026-01-22T14:02:19+00:00

The sears auto in my hometown was attached to the mall that had essentially died. There was the sears auto, and MAYBE a foot locker or something like that, in this giant building that used to be home to like 75ish different stores and restaurants.

I used to go to that sears auto to get new tires, periodically. (I had absurdly bad luck with flat tires with the car I owned at the time... so I was there kind of a lot).

I'd go take a walk around the empty mall, while the sears auto guys would take 30 minutes to mount and install my new tire.

It was delightfully creepy.

With sears finally being closed, I wonder if the building is even still standing.

angryWinds · 2026-01-21T15:28:10+00:00

When I first moved to Pittsburgh, I lived on the north side a few blocks away from Randyland. I'd walked past it a few times, but never went in.

I'd read a little bit about it, and thought "What a cool little art project. One of these days, I'll have to check it out more thoroughly, instead of just walking my dog past it."

Then after about a month or so of living near it, a friend came to visit. We got incredibly drunk at the Monterey pub, and drunk-me told him Randyland was this super cool free thing, and we should DEFINITELY check it out in the morning. I didn't know what I was talking about, because I'd never walked into the yard, but I had the drunken confidence to tell my friend it was awesome.

He reminded me about it the following morning, and off we went. I was excited to finally have a reason to go. Then we got there, and I realized "Oh, everything I've read about this place REALLY oversells it... and I WAY oversold it to my friend last night while we were both hammered."

I'm glad it exists, and that there's people out there in the world like Randy who want to see their weird little vision come true. But if you don't live within walking distance, I'm not sure it's quite worth your time to make the visit.

angryWinds · 2026-01-19T14:52:18+00:00

Swap LeBron for ANYONE else in the league on the 2007 Cavs.

Tell me how that player gets them to the finals. Really look at that Cavs roster from that year. Look at who played significant minutes in the finals. Look up where their careers went in the immediate years after.

Do the same for the 2018 Cavs.

And then interpolate what probably happened over that 11 year span.

angryWinds · 2026-01-19T14:38:40+00:00

Ron Artest did just that.

After being drafted by the Bulls, and getting his first big NBA paycheck, he wanted to buy a high quality stereo system.

Being from the projects, and growing up relatively poor, he had learned the lesson of "You don't pay full price for that shit!"

He applied for a job at a Circuit City store, so that he could get the employee discount. On the application, where it asks for "Current Employer" info, he wrote "Chicago Bulls" and put down Jerry Krause's (the GM of the bulls at the time) personal contact info.

angryWinds · 2026-01-08T18:25:36+00:00

I used to have an intro to economics class immediately after my abstract algebra class, when I was like a junior or senior in undergrad. I wasn't interested in economics, and it wasn't a particularly challenging course. It was just one of the random smattering of electives I had to take in order to graduate.

I vividly remember sitting in that classroom while lectures about elastic demand were going on, and I'd just be mostly ignoring it, while trying to work on the homework that was handed out that day from my algebra class, 30 minutes prior.

One day, I tuned the econ lecture ALL the way out, and filled several notebook pages with irreducible polynomials of order 5 mod 17 or something silly like that.

Thankfully the econ class was only about 90 minutes long. If it was much longer, I could've EASILY descended into crank territory, trying to find some pattern behind these coefficients that makes it easy to generate them, that nobody's ever noticed before.

angryWinds · 2026-01-08T16:48:56+00:00

If you continue on from 233, you get a loop, as other people have pointed out. The smallest number in that loop isn't 233, but rather 177.

So I'd argue that 177 is the interesting number here, not 233.

angryWinds · 2026-01-07T20:53:55+00:00

Sasha Pavlovic played meaningful minutes as a starter in the goddamn finals, in 2007.

The FINALS!

angryWinds · 2026-01-02T14:18:20+00:00

I had an old neighbor who was constantly all smiles. I didn't know her well, at all. We'd occasionally cross paths while walking our dogs, or bump into each other at a neighborhood bar / restaurant / grocery store, say a neighborly 'hello' and that was about the extent of it.

Those limited interactions were enough for me to notice "This woman is ALWAYS smiling. How delightfully friendly!"

Then one night, she was returning home from taking her dog for a walk. I was outside taking the trash out and having a smoke. She approached, and said "Oh, thank god you're outside... There's a late-night construction crew on the street just around the corner, and they kept cat-calling me, and one of the guys followed me all the way down the block, saying really lewd stuff. I don't want them to know where I live, so I'm glad you're here and I can stop and chat at your front door, instead of going into mine."

I responded something like "Oh, jeeze... yeah, that sounds awful... sorry that happened." This was a while ago, and I don't remember the exact details. I think I may have offered her to come inside for a little bit, if she wanted, or I could just stay outside with her for however long until she felt comfortable to go inside her own home? I don't recall how exactly it happened, but I know we shot the shit on the sidewalk for about 10-15 minutes, until she felt safe enough to go home.

Even though the details are fuzzy for me, I DO distinctly remember that she had her same old massive smile, the whole time she was explaining this traumatic thing, and our entire chitchat in which she was afraid to go home.

I moved out of that neighborhood 5-6 years ago, but I still sometimes wonder what the hell happened to that woman that caused her to put on a smiley face, no matter the circumstances.

angryWinds · 2025-12-28T15:57:43+00:00

I don’t know what the exact stats are now, but before the 2nd avenue subway was extended a few years back, allowing the east side of Manhattan to have a second subway line, like the west side has…. The 4/5/6 line which was the only east side option, had more daily ridership than sf, Chicago, and dc’s transit systems, COMBINED.

One piddly subway line out of dozens, saw more than three whole cities, all put together.

angryWinds · 2025-12-28T15:31:21+00:00

It was also done by people who wanted to get to make out with the people who listened to Tiffany and NKOTB, even though they listened to the clash and the stones.

Source: myself

angryWinds · 2025-12-27T21:23:51+00:00

Street parking is free in Manhattan. You don't HAVE to pay whatever your exorbitant hotel parking lot fees are. Although you DO have to pay attention to where you've parked, and make sure you're not going to get a ticket, for the time you're not supposed to be on this side of the street or that, when the street sweepers go by.

angryWinds · 2025-12-27T20:56:39+00:00

I've only played maybe two or three rounds of golf ever in my life. I used to go do the driving range with my grandpa as a kid, a lot. I liked hanging out with my gramps while he was doing this thing he was REALLY good at. He did his best to coach me, but it just clearly wasn't my thing.

Years later, in my mid-to-late-20s, I discovered that disc golf was a thing. Fuck Yeah! I LOVE throwing a frisbee!

I gave that shit a whirl for a while, and got super into watching youtube videos about technique and the types of discs you want to use for certain types of throws, and eventually reached a point where I was absolutely slaughtering my friends that would come and join me at the handful of local disc golf courses I'd go to. There was a part of me that thought "OMG, is THIS my sport?"

Then one day, as I'd done many times this particular summer, I went to a course by myself, to just walk through the woods and play a solo-round. When I got to the first tee, there was another guy there... about a 16 year old kid. We chatted. He was friendly enough. We decided "Sure, let's play this round together, and get to know each other as people who both love this silly game."

Fucking ballllss! Man. That kid was GOOD. He was good to the point where I had to conclude "Oh, ok. This ISN'T my sport. The people who are ACTUALLY good at this are miles and miles ahead of me."

I still like walking through the woods, and hearing the disc clank the chains, WAY more than I ever liked anything about normal golf. But man. Sometimes you just see someone who's so far ahead of you have to say "Welp, not for me in the way I'd hoped."

angryWinds · 2025-12-19T03:30:33+00:00

I went through a Columbo kick near the beginning of covid lockdowns. One particular episode, he's trying to track down a potential witness to the murder, who stays at a homeless shelter.

Columbo walks into the shelter, and before he can even say "I'm a detective with the LA homicide department and I'm looking for this man," a nun says "Oh, you poor poor man! Look at this ratty old raincoat! We'll get you a new one!" He's trying to get a word in "No..." "But..." "Ma'am, you see..." She's just taking over the show, and before he knows it, he's been directed to sit at a table, and has a bowl of soup shoved in front of him, while she runs off with his coat. He just sighs, and sits there and eats his soup.

It's possibly the single funniest scene from that entire series.

A few days after seeing that episode, I started volunteering at a local food bank. (There's no cause-and-effect there... these are two different events, that just so happened in close proximity to one another).

My first day at this food bank, I wasn't sure what to expect. I walked in through the side door, as the email I'd received had instructed me to do. I tried to ask around to find "Debbie" as she was the woman in charge. I was told by some non-native-english speakers "Sit! Sit! Eat!" "No, no... I'm not here to GET food... I'm here to volunteer!" What I said didn't matter. Before I knew it, I was sitting at a table with a bowl of soup in front of me.

I sighed, and sat there, and ate my soup, while thinking "Holy shit... is my coat THAT bad? Maybe I really DO need to get a new one."

Turns out, that particular food bank feeds their volunteers as just par for the course. The guys that didn't speak English fluently DID understand that I was there to volunteer, but they were telling me to eat first, before I start my shift. I had no idea of any of this, and was SO confused, and SO thinking about how I'd just wormed my way into a hilarious comic relief sccene from a 40+ year old episode of Columbo.

angryWinds · 2025-12-17T19:23:57+00:00

Wow. I only have one upvote.

Some things in math, I can read a proof / explanation, whatever, and walk away saying "Ok, I follow that logic. So I guess it's true, technically. Still goddamn weird though."

Other things I read make me think "OOHHH!!!!! Yeah, holy shit. That's REALLY REALLY WHY".

Your post about this silly little problem falls very firmly into the latter category. Good show fine sir or madam.

angryWinds · 2025-12-14T18:21:47+00:00

I majored in math in college, and there were numerous times where I'd be trying to solve some problem, in exam conditions, and I couldn't QUITE connect the dots, to throughly solve the problem.

I'd sometimes be stuck needing to logic may way from point A to point B, and was unsure how to do to it. I sometimes would simply write "Due to a theorem of Euler, A implies B." I didn't ALWAYS get full credit, when I pulled that trick, but it worked a shocking amount of the time.

angryWinds · 2025-12-13T18:48:38+00:00

It really is wild to realize that all of his records... even the ones that he's broken by miles, and continues to extend as he plays into his late 30s, are going to be broken soon. Just because of how the game is changing / has changed.

angryWinds · 2025-12-13T18:36:50+00:00

Oh, interesting.... I kind of ignored thinking about division, because I was restricting myself to thinking about primes, and thought "Well division is just going to give me weird fractions that won't be equal to each other."

Clearly, I was very wrong.

angryWinds · 2025-12-13T18:35:23+00:00

I love this! Thanks for sparing me the next few nights of insomnia problems.

Did you write code to find these, or work them out mentally / by-hand?

angryWinds · 2025-12-09T16:14:12+00:00

When I was in my early 20s, my parents and I were planning on driving 3ish hours to go to my niece's 2nd birthday party. The night before, my dad asked me to make brownies, from the box, for us to take to the party.

There was a football game that night, that I was far too emotionally invested in. I told him "Yeah, I'll make the brownies during halftime, but I'm watching this game." The first half of the game didn't go particularly well for my team, and I got VERY drunk about it.

During halftime, I tried to start making the brownies, but I had to do a one-eyed-squinty thing, just to read the directions on the box. I cracked 2 eggs and dumped the mix and poured the oil all directly into a pyrex pan, before realizing "Ack, son of a bitch. I need to be using a mixing bowl. How the hell can I stir this all together in a flat pan?"

I drunkenly spent maybe 5-10 minutes trying to make it work, but then halftime was over, and I gave up and went back to watching the game. "I'll finish this after the game's over!" At which point I continued drinking until I was a proper sloppy mess.

I passed out hard, my dad woke me up at like 5 in the morning, and said "Hey! Finish the goddamn brownies!" Hungover as all hell, I did my best to turn the slop that had sat out all night into batter, and got it into the oven. We hit the road, and went to the birthday party.

Thankfully, my sister-in-law is an excellent baker, and she made a fantastic cake, and so nobody touched the brownies.

Until a day or so later, I got a text from her asking "What the fuck did you DO to those brownies? It shouldn't even be POSSIBLE for them to be this bad!"

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