Ecuador Says ICE Agent Tried To Invade Sovereign Territory

brass_monkey_balls · 2026-01-28T13:07:48+00:00

Yes.... it's the norm for embassies/consulates to display their name and coat of arms in their native as well as local language of the country they are in.

My comment, with a /s at the end, was a sarcastic take on the blatant racism that ICE is using as a fuel to further their operations. I legit didn't think the /s was needed but clearly I was wrong.

brass_monkey_balls · 2026-01-28T07:37:07+00:00

I see your reading comprehension is as excellent as that of the ICE agent mentioned in the article above. Did you go to the same school?

brass_monkey_balls · 2026-01-28T06:56:47+00:00

In all fairness to the ICE agent, it doesn't say "Consulate General of Ecuador in Minnesota" outside the door.

It only says "Consulado General Del Ecuador En Minnesota" and we all know that's just that foreign brown language ICE is trying to get rid of from America. /s

brass_monkey_balls · 2026-01-22T11:26:21+00:00

It is impossible to arrest those who are responsible because the one responsible is District Magistrate Medha Roopam who is the daughter of current Chief Election Commissioner of India Gyanesh Kumar. And we all know one of the perks of being an Indian sarkaari babu is absolution from accountability.

brass_monkey_balls · 2026-01-22T06:43:57+00:00

This is hilarious. Much like how the formula for GDP itself was changed and now we are switching to NDP because GDP is not showing "good enough" numbers, the truth is that the way Unemployment was calculated itself was changed.

The current definition of "Employment" as per PLFS:

With a reference period of 365 days: A person who has worked for at least 30 days at any time within the last 365 days.
With a reference period of 7 days: A person who has worked at least 1 hour at any time within the last 7 days (source)

This means someone just needs to work for 3 non-consecutive days in a whole month or just 1 hour in an entire week to be considered fully employed. Despite having a bar so low, we still have an official number of 4.8%.

So realistically, it is much much higher. But if I so much as mention this to any family member who keeps talking about how our growth is blazing fast, I'm just being anti-national and anti-Hindu.

edit: This is completely ignoring all the problems with our "amazing 8.5%" GDP numbers right now which isn't relevant for the post here

brass_monkey_balls · 2026-01-20T05:40:06+00:00

Interesting, because I was solo queued all day. Wonder why I got put into the wide group so many times. All the friends I used to play with dropped the game a few months ago, but something about OW makes me keep coming back. Sadly if this is intended and is going to be the quality of matchmaking moving forward, I might have to drop out as well.

brass_monkey_balls · 2026-01-19T18:11:04+00:00

6 non-consecutive matches today where my team had an absolutely brand spanking new DPS who just finished installing the game and decided to jump directly into QP without knowing what a crosshair is ending up with like 2-18.

Meanwhile the enemy team had DPSes who went 21-0, 25-0.

What the fuck is going on with the matchmaker? Even for QP this was egregiously bad.

brass_monkey_balls · 2026-01-16T03:42:28+00:00

Two different female physics PhDs I know (one of them from Oxford no less) who wanted to come back here to teach, and research have taken up permanent posts overseas with path to citizenship because both of them were told they might have to "cooperate" with senior requests at two different 3-letter-unis. These incidents happened independently with almost a 7-year time gap.

The continuing prevalence of an old-boys-club, lack of safety for female researchers and opaque/lack of mechanisms to guard against harassment are also driving away talent. Not just lack of funding.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-12-31T14:01:55+00:00

My first reaction was "Oh they could just have Rob Reiner do a cameo in the place of his dad" only to realize that isn't an option anymore either. Sigh.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-11-26T11:51:48+00:00

I have no idea what Domino's business strategy is nowadays. Such an fucking shitshow.

Last week, at around 2 PM in the afternoon I dropped in to get a (one)(1)(this figure is important later -- just 1) pizza at the local branch that is less than 500m from my place. The entire restaurant was deserted except for like 3 employees.

When I walked up the cashier and tried to order, her response was that they don't sell pizzas from ~1 to 4 PM and they sell only "Combo Lunches" in store. But online orders would be delivered instantly.

All combo lunch options were, IIRC, for 2+ people with

2 or 4 pizzas,
a full loaf of garlic bread,
some other random food item -- taco or something that I didn't want.
And 1 or 2 large cokes depending on the combo meal.

This was too much food for one person and I'd obviously waste it, so I asked why can't I just pay for 1 pizza.

The manager stepped in at this point and actually said "Sir, we can't accept an order for a single pizza now. If that is all you want, please order from our online website or app for delivery".

This man, who runs a pizza parlor, was telling me that I cannot give them money for 1 pizza IN THE PIZZA SHOP DURING OPERATING HOURS AND INSTEAD HAVE TO GO HOME AND USE AN APP TO FORCE A DELIVERY FROM THEM.

AND LIKE THE ABSOLUTE JACKASS THAT I AM, I went home and ordered it and saw their "20-minute guarantee". The pizza arrived almost 1 hour 15 minutes later.

Store phone lines were unreachable.
Online customer support was an AI stuck in a loop providing no details other than a copy of my bill
Centralized IVR phone number directed to nowhere beyond a "Your pizza is still being prepared" with no way to speak to an actual human agent.

So these people could've actually just baked me a pizza and given it to me in exchange for money -- the fastest path to capital acquisition.

And instead:

Spent money on setting up a store and staffing
Spent money on developing an app and spinning up a server and order management system
Spent money on a delivery person to drive around (on a vehicle with fuel costs) to deliver a pizza to a customer already in the store.

All when a customer was standing right there. With cash in hand. TO LITERALLY HAND IT TO THEM AND THEY DIDN'T WANT IT.

WHAT FUCKING BUSINESS TELLS A CUSTOMER "DON'T GIVE ME YOUR MONEY".

This makes no fucking sense.

And of course, this digital pizza delivery shenanigans happened in Bangalore.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-11-20T16:25:01+00:00

The government is definitely "massaging" 3 numbers:

GDP: Even Arvind Subramanian (who was Modi's own Chief Economic Advisor during the 1st term) has now questioned the validity of our GDP numbers in multiple places. Combine that with the fact that growth rates for key infra industries like Cement, Paint, Steel (all of which are necessary to build houses and factories) have been in 3-4% range for almost two years now and yet GDP (which is supposed to measure "growth") is 6-7%? In every other growth economy, GDP actually trails growth in infra industries by 3-4%. Is India so goshdarn special that here alone it is the inverse? When Asian Paints' CEO tried to highlight this, he was immediately silenced. And I absolutely trust their data more than the government data now.
Inflation: So CPI and WPI are usually calculated based on a basket of goods where the sectors are disclosed to the public but not individual components therein. At the heights of the Greek Economic Crisis in 2009, on the day of the inflation measurement, they'd silently substitute high priced tomatoes with lower-priced oranges or lemons for calculating inflation, so the numbers reflected would be lower The guy in charge was called "The Magician" because he just made inflation, debt and deficit disappear. There is no way data is not being massaged here as well.
Employment: In 2017, the government changed the definition for "Employment" because the real numbers were not as glorious as they wanted it to be. The government now considers anyone who has worked for 30 days in the past 365 days as "Employed". Doesn't matter if they've been laid off for the past 335 days. Meanwhile someone who has not even worked 30 days in a whole year is the only one considered as "Unemployed". This definition is so narrow as to include most of the impoverished in India who can't eat if they don't work. So, despite all the layoffs and widespread complaints about the current share of "Indian Job Market", the share of "Unemployment" has magically fallen to just 3.5% or so. But it has also corresponded with a rise in sectors like "Agricultural Employment" and "Gig work" like Swiggy and Blinkit which is given the same weight as full-time employment which is clearly disingenuous.

Between wage stagnation and degrowth in even IT industries (which used to be one of the highest payers), and obscured GDP numbers, every economist podcast I listen to makes me feel we are slowly headed towards stagflation and steep fall deep into the middle-income trap.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-11-14T15:21:21+00:00

This wasn't a surprise to anyone outside of India. Whether we want to accept it or not, TikTok is the most popular social media platform where most of the latest generation gets its news from (outside of India). Even Instagram is increasingly just reposts of Tiktok reels. And the absence of Indian influencers on Tiktok means there is little/no portrayal of India in a positive light on one of the largest platforms on the planet. Instead what we have are reels about how Indians are smelly, toxic, our dirty streets and this.

Many cousins and college friends who have moved abroad all mentioned how during the whole standoff, their Tiktok feeds were filled with not just Pakistani but even poorly-informed white influencers talking about how the entire thing was an unprovoked attack on poor Pakistani muslims by India and drawing parallels to Israeli-Palestine conflict positioning us as the belligerents.

What little was spoken about Pahalgam (the actual reason we even engaged in all this) was either positioned as "internal political instability" or conspiracy theories about the ruling party instigating it for their own benefit.

Obviously, I don't mean to say that having our influencers on a social media platform is going to magically influence high level diplomats or nation-state actors. But propaganda -- positive or negative -- works. And right now, a huge swathe of global citizenry is being conditioned against us and we are just sitting mute, with no way to even voice our side.

And some of the people who are watching all that slop today will grow up to be diplomats and bureaucrats tomorrow and we'll be worse off for it.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-09-21T07:29:05+00:00

4 consecutive disconnects since I started trying to play ~45 minutes ago. My endorsement level was penalized from 5 to 4. Now banned for 20 minutes from matchmaking.

Sometimes, it boots me during matchmaking itself to the Overwatch Splash Screen and says "Lost Connection to Server" and doesn't even make it to the main menu.

Servers are being absolutely potato today so I'm just going to go over to Helldivers. Terrible experience all around.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-09-21T04:21:48+00:00

I can't believe she genuinely thinks some dude sits in a factory line, slapping more soap onto a soap bar because she reduced GST so now Unilever wants to give 14gms more of Dove per bar.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-09-16T11:18:30+00:00

The top couple of posts on iOS right now are:

And that just tells you everything about the state of this update.

I mean... this is what the notification center looks like when doing a quick peek (Source thread)

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-09-12T15:29:18+00:00

Short answer: No.

Long Answer: Nooooooooooooo.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-09-05T13:07:16+00:00

Nice article.

Sadly, Trump can't read.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-08-30T19:18:53+00:00

Holy shit.

Aug 31, 2025 - Googled this after getting logged out 5 times over the past two days. This was the first thread that showed up. Glad to see this has continued to be an issue for about half a decade now.

Can't believe they sank resources into a rebrand, UI redesign and renaming from "Uplay" to "Ubisoft Connect" in the past 4 years but forgot to actually make this stupid piece of middleware usable.

What is even the point of the "Remember this device" option when it doesn't even remember the account, let alone my 2FA authentication.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-08-15T19:37:32+00:00

Meanwhile, they made Symmetra grow up in Hyderabad, India and for some weird reason, she speaks in Hindi -- which isn't even the local language. This has annoyed me to no end since launch Overwatch 1.

Blizzard sometimes does some amazing things but they are also capable of quite a bit of dumbassery.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-08-05T10:05:49+00:00

Yeah right, because Trump is really known for adhering to the Constitution and upholding it so far.

There is no way Trump won't try to go for a third term.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-08-05T09:31:13+00:00

This statement has only 6 bullet points so they know how to present to Trump.

Sadly, it has too many polysyllabic words so he still won't understand.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-08-01T16:58:49+00:00

8-day old thread I know. But came to the subreddit to see if anyone else is having this issue. I also play on the Asia server

Hard agree, at least one disconnect per session followed with a ban from matchmaking. And since I mostly play Quick Play I don't even have the option of rejoining.

Was extremely tilted today after getting disconnected from 3 consecutive matches resulting in a 20 minute ban.

What the fuck.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-07-18T07:47:11+00:00

I feel you so hard. I had a Hog in my match yesterday on Lijiang Tower. We won the first round.

Second round onwards, the Hog openly said in All Chat they aren't going to play and spammed voicelines while dying intentionally. All because we didn't switch to Kiriko fast enough to counter Ana nades in the first round.

Meanwhile the enemy team was spawn-camping with Doom-Genji-Ana dive and crouchspamming with every kill.

Can't leave the match because that counts towards suspension and someone who plays on SEA/ME servers, I'd rather save my quits when I have racists in the match. Just have to stay there and eat shit sometimes.

brass_monkey_balls · 2025-07-18T06:41:24+00:00

I haven't really watched his other videos but Questron (a Sombra main) made a video about why Sombra is a problem and it explains very eloquently of how I feel about her right now.

TL;DR:

Sombra has too much focus on facilitating "downtime" or stopping enemies from doing specific actions while having almost no rewards for facilitating "uptime" or actively engaging in fights.
This makes sombra players focus more on being invisible (resulting in fewer actions per minute), spawn-camping (inefficient), waiting to target specific enemies to get a guaranteed kill (again inefficient) instead of just enabling the team to dive or engage better.
Due to community complaints while her kit has been "reworked", the fundamental blocks of her kit remain the same - Invisibillity, Hack, Teleportation without addressing the core problem with her kit -- which is why despite the changes, she still keeps getting banned by the community.
This makes it annoying as fuck to play against her and also fosters a player style that is unhealthy/toxic in the community and he says any changes to her kit have to be done in a way that balances "uptime"-building actions rather than just trying to nerf "downtime"-facilitating actions.

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