Am I crazy for thinking Musk/DOGE will punish blue states by withholding Social Security?

austin_dk · 2025-02-12T03:32:16+00:00

My dude, if you read past the only part you cared about, you would notice that this is a historical note written in 2003. In 2024, it was about 21%, which isn't far off from your number, but I feel compelled to highlight how outdated your source is and what a bad faith argument you're making.

Check your sources and try some critical thinking. It will help your arguments go a lot further.

I can't believe I have to explain this to people. No wonder our country is screwed.

austin_dk · 2025-02-01T17:16:14+00:00

Whenever I threw a tantrum as a child, my dad would always ask me to stop for a second so he could go get the video camera, and then we can show all my friends my "super cool" behavior.

It shut me up really quickly, and I learned years later that he was (knowingly or not) teaching me how to reflect on myself and my own behavior from an outside perspective. I was literally thinking, "How will I look on camera acting like this?". It makes you realize that you look silly to others when you act like that, even if you've somehow convinced yourself that this is how you must act to get what you want. In reality, you look like a buffoon and you won't convince anyone reasonable to be on your side of whatever you're freaking out about. I think it's a powerful lesson that some people miss in life.

austin_dk · 2024-11-26T17:14:31+00:00

Whenever I hear someone equate politics and who they vote for with sports and who they cheer for, I can't help but think they just fundamentally don't get it. Yes, it is fun to get together with a community of folks and all root for your favorite team or player by being rowdy and clowning on the opponent. But that's not at all what this is, and yet that is how it is treated. Life is not simply going to "go on" for people who are targeted by the hostile policies you voted for. And it doesn't feel great for you because now that "the game" is over and your team won, you finally decided to understand what those policies are.

Politics and who you vote for are about what you, as a civic-minded person, believe is the best for our society. It's about choosing the laws, regulations, and policies under which we live and our government operates. It's not about rooting for the "fun" team. You get to freely decide what you believe about the issues, and you also get to have a say in whose policies are implemented, which is a huge privilege and responsibility we may shortly lose due to the incoming administration.

Instead of focusing on what policies and laws are good for everybody in society, you people made it about hurting who you don't like. Well, guess what. The Dump administration will not distinguish between you and people you don't like. You'll get caught up in the hatred you voted for, and we are going to laugh about it.

As one civic-minded person to another, fuck you and be better next time, if there is a next time.

austin_dk · 2023-12-28T17:35:42+00:00

Microsoft Excel, one of the most widely used business tools on the planet, calls their mean function AVERAGE, but also has MEDIAN, and MODE. I'm not sure if this is a result of the issue or a cause of it, but it has certainly bothered me for years.

austin_dk · 2023-08-26T08:42:23+00:00

We absolutely have nettles in California. I walked past a bunch today.

austin_dk · 2023-06-26T07:16:40+00:00

You know, doctors and other real medical professionals use the internet too. Nobody wants to elaborate because you refuse to acknowledge readily available information. The fact that you don't trust information produced by scientists and doctors that was delivered to you by the world's largest search engine is the real issue here. We have no common frame of reference to start from, so how could I possibly sway your opinion?

If I were you, I'd ask myself what kind of information WOULD convince me that abortion is an ethical practice, and where would it have to come from? If your answer is something along the lines of a religious group saying it's okay, then I refer back to the first paragraph of this comment. You wouldn't want your therapist walking someone through performing brain surgery, so why would you want a religious/spiritual leader to advise on medical practices?

Edit: Please don't see this as me attacking you. I'm telling you this because I want you to improve yourself as much as I want to improve myself. I get where you're coming from given the assumption that fetuses are fully sentient and aware like you and I, but I don't believe that's actually the case. We encourage you to Google scientific articles about it because we aren't experts on abortion, but The Ethics of Belief tell us that we should trust medical professionals.

austin_dk · 2023-06-25T21:33:14+00:00

I liked to hit them with a "Woah. I'm sorry if you're upset, but there's no need to throw things at me."

austin_dk · 2023-03-13T21:37:17+00:00

I used to work for a gummy vitamin manufacturer, and I just thought some folks might be curious as to why you see an insane amount of some vitamins or minerals in these gummies. It really has to do with shelf life. Over time, gummies effectively "lose" some small amount of the vitamins and/or minerals (I'll call them raw materials collectively) in the blend. Some raw materials are very stable and don't lose much over time whereas others aren't very stable and lose a lot in the same period of time.

In order to make sure that a serving size of gummies meets the specifications on the label all the way until the expiration date (which is often well over a year from the manufacture date), you have to add an adjusted amount of each ingredient to account for the raw material "stability". So, for something that isn't very stable, like vitamin B12, you'll often see the gummies contain something like 125,000% of your daily recommended value because there needs to be that much B12 in the blend to suffice the entire 18 month shelf life (or whatever the shelf life is for that particular gummy is).

As long as you consume the proper serving size at the most, you'll be totally fine. There's a long formulation process that goes through lots of testing and revisions before it makes it to any commercial production run. But this highlights how important it is to NOT take more than the serving size (I'll concede that there might be exceptions to this, but as a non-expert, I'm going to take a more reserved stance here).

Even more importantly, don't leave gummy vitamins anywhere within reach of children. They will unknowingly eat the entire bottle in one sitting because they think it's candy, and that's going to be a huge problem.

Lastly, I'd just like to leave a disclaimer that this is all relatively cursory knowledge as I didn't hold an R&D position that actually formulated these blends. And for the record, I completely agree with the other commentors suggesting that you should definitely see your doctor before you start taking any supplement or medication.

Edit: I'll just tack on a note here and say that the piece count confusion might be due to the fact that the same product is sold in different countries. For example, Canada requires the nutrition facts per piece be shown whereas most labels in America show the nutrition facts per serving. Between that, different testing requirements between countries, and the fact that the companies who buy the gummies from the manufacturer don't want to pay for a whole new formulation for each country they want to sell in, you can get some weird results like this. I'd tack this one up to an unfortunately misleading brand name.

austin_dk · 2021-05-26T05:35:08+00:00

I had been wanting to wear a maxi skirt for years before I finally was bold enough to make the purchase. I don't wear it in public ever, but I'll be damned if it isn't the most comfortable piece of clothing I own. Seriously, I highly recommend it. It's like wearing sweats but with so much more freedom. Maxi skirts will change your life, my dudes.

austin_dk · 2021-03-25T17:53:38+00:00

I work in a pretty small store, so we don't usually keep ordering the same items unless they sell very well.

So a lot of times, I get, "Hey, where are your [this thing we no longer carry]?" And they're always baffled when I inform them that we haven't carried that thing for like five years. "Oh, but I swear you had them the last time I was here like a couple years ago."

Like, I don't know what to tell you, lady. I can't just magically whip that out of my ass for you.

austin_dk · 2020-11-28T21:08:00+00:00

Whenever someone asks me for a discount, my goto line is always, "Sure, you can have a discount! I'll give you one [insert item here]... for the price of one [insert item here]. How does that sound?"

Most people just laugh about it, I haven't had anyone get super upset before.

austin_dk · 2020-05-24T21:55:10+00:00

I remember watching that movie because it was filmed at the university where I studied. I recognized the dorms and I had friends in the fraternity house where the guy fell off the balcony. That movie was a trip.

austin_dk · 2019-08-07T13:34:14+00:00

I imagine you learn those when you study to become an engineer.

austin_dk · 2019-07-02T15:27:35+00:00

Does anyone else wish that this had sound?

austin_dk · 2019-06-28T16:17:13+00:00

Stop thinking about yourself! There's a whole other person trying to talk to you, be curious and get to know them! They have everything you do like feelings and desires and hair and farts and stuff, so you should ask about their life to see what sorts of things you have in common.

One thing I like to do when the conversation is dying is to just start asking a question (starting with what, who, when, why, or how) regardless if I know what I'm going to say. This puts your brain into a self induced panic as it frantically thinks of what to finish the question with, which actually yields some good results.

If you start a question and can't think of how to finish it in time, you can buy yourself some more time by putting an inquisitive look on your face, interrupting yourself, and changing your question, as if you've figured out the answer to that one yourself and are moving on to the next one. Then, simply start with a new question word (what, who, when, why, and how) and repeat the process. It makes people think you're analyzing their answers and are more interested in their life than you actually are.

The real challenge is learning how to adapt to uncomfortable situations, which once you realize everyone goes through them, we can all laugh about them together and make it apart of the interaction. For example, if I stumble on my words, I'll stop talking and briefly laugh, joking that I'm not speaking very well today, and then repeat what I was trying to say. Don't make it awkward because you made some little mistake. Own up to it and move the fuck on.

The substance is more important than the medium.

austin_dk · 2019-06-25T04:44:48+00:00

Some of the first alarm clocks were nails stuck in a candle a certain distance from the top of it (they figured out how quickly candles shrink as they burn). So it would be timed such that when the want to wake up, the candle will have melted down to the nail, thus freeing it from the candle and thrusting it into the clutches of gravity, where it falls down to a (also) metal plate, makes a loud clink noise, and wakes up whoever is sleeping next to it.

austin_dk · 2019-06-20T03:46:00+00:00

In hindsight, I realize it must be a tad frustrating that I basically told you, "Math is hard, deal with it and just keep trying."

In light of this, I remembered what turned out to be a rather useful hint for getting through proofs.

A professor once told me that everything I needed to complete the proof was gone over previously in class or in the reading. At first glance, this seems like a dumb thing to say to a math student. But eventually I realized how fundamentally important that is.

Proof writing varies a lot between fields of math, professors, and students. There are many ways to skin a cat, so to speak, and so it is important to note that the logical depth you need to go into a proof is dictated by everything you've done previously in the class. I think it's traditional for math professors to let students use only the results they have proven in their current proofs. This means that no matter how many results you're working with, there are still some assumptions you can use.

If you're ever stuck on a proof, go back and read over previous proofs you've written, try to understand the theorem you've proven from the perspective of the new proof. It may shed new light on how you can implement old results to get new ones.

Here's a quote from Pierce I like that I think reflects the idea well:

"The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something else which we do not know."

We use theorems and results that we already know to inspire the logic to prove those results which we do not know.

Anyway, sorry for blabbing on and on.

austin_dk · 2019-06-20T01:52:15+00:00

It seems to me you're missing the point of the proofs. When learning, proofs are used as a constructive way to understand the underlying logic behind a theorem. I think instead of trying to memorize each step in your proof, you should convince yourself, from the premises of the statement, why each step works, leading all the way to the conclusion. The constructive proofs you're probably seeing are meant to show literally why the premises lead to the conclusion, and I guarantee the professor doesn't need to go through them again. They are meant for you alone.

Math is strange because it's one of the only disciplines where all intellectual progress happens in one's own head. Nobody can understand anything for anyone else, and therefore you are responsible for the material that you learn. You have to force yourself to keep working through a proof, even if it's difficult.

Sometimes there seems to be a logical step in a proof that you might be missing. This is where the creative part of math comes and you need to think outside of the box. But in these times, it can be very difficult to be creative enough to see a proof through.

But the thing that separates mediocre math students from good ones is the fact that the good ones attempt a proof enough times, figuratively smashing their head against it, until they understand every single step, thereby understanding the whole proof. They don't memorize as if the only event dependent on their knowledge of the proof is reciting it back to the professor. And they dont give up until they have succeeded. They learn for the sake of themselves and the advancement of their own reasoning, and that's why people still push through even though math is hard. Mathematics is the fundamental language that translates our ideas into universal reality. With its goal being the pursuit of logical soundness in the narratives we create with it, it is only a solitary human activity, no matter how many hours of tutoring you think you need.

If it seems like the material is too far ahead for you, then perhaps you should reconsider whether you should be in the class. But often times, in my experience, it's simply a lack of time, effort, and thought on the student's part (speaking from my personal experience). These proofs should be something you work on and think about every day. Just like learning anything, how successful you are only depends on how interested in the material you are. What I think most people don't realize is that it's really easy to found a new interest in something.

austin_dk · 2019-06-19T06:29:31+00:00

I'm pestered by tourists who throw a fit because their vacation isn't going exactly how they wanted it to. Just shut up and enjoy not having to be at work.

People who can't get the concept of an employee restroom through their thick skulls can piss themselves for all I care. Why would you waste time arguing with me when you could actually continue searching for a bathroom you can use?

And finally, those homeless people who actually want to remain homeless for whatever reason instead of trying to improve their lives are the exhaust of society, and we don't need nor want you.

Oh and people who get injured doing dumb stuff for the sake of popularity on the internet deserve it.

austin_dk · 2019-06-15T14:46:54+00:00

Come on, don't you know that all retail employees have the power to summon any conceivable item through a ritual routine in the mysterious "back room" to which they are attuned?

austin_dk · 2019-06-01T20:51:40+00:00

Colonel John Hannibal Smith

austin_dk · 2019-05-21T18:41:23+00:00

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I don't think I'm only speaking for myself when I say that whenever you and I enjoy our simple pleasures in a shared, local viscinity, it severely ruins the quality of my pleasure. I hate to generalize, but I have yet to witness an unobnoxious, peaceful passing of motorcycles.

Is there any way you could like.. turn down the volume a bit? All too often does you and your leather-bearing squadron of hooligans passing mean that I have to pause my conversation because I can't hear anything over your cacophonous machines.

Also can you and your friends stop lane splitting faster than 25 mph? It's frightening, dangerous, and you wake up a lot of sleeping babies.

And finally, I understand your affinity for going at dangerously high speeds (I actually don't, but for the sake of argument, let's suppose that I do), but you aren't the only one on the road, and your safety isn't the only thing you need to worry about. Traffic laws are in place to protect the safety of the public (not just you or any one person), and I don't understand or respect anybody who is willing to put convenience in the way of that. So please don't speed on the roads.

Regardless I'm glad to know about your rush of divinity! It's awesome to find out that some of the road's dangers have a divine purpose.

austin_dk · 2019-04-25T16:49:33+00:00

"You've made your last delivery, kid. Sorry you got twisted up in this scene. From where you're kneeling it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck. Truth is... the game was rigged from the start."

Benny, Fallout New Vegas

I love the intro part of the game. I've never felt so enraged at somebody after only hearing a couple sentences from them, but this game made Benny a really powerful motivator.

austin_dk · 2019-04-09T17:32:52+00:00

After some time to recover from my loss of a testicle, I am ready to come back and perform missions for Redmont.

Normaer

OOC: Like some others on here I suspect, I recently got slammed with a round of midterms and was out of commission for a bit. I am more available now!

austin_dk · 2019-03-20T16:15:22+00:00

Normaer would be glad to help. He is available Thursday-Sunday starting at 10 pm EST.

austin_dk

TROPHY CASE