USCE 2023: Please let them shove a camera up your butt

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USCE 2023: Please let them shove a camera up your butt

trevorreznik: Apr 22, 2023

Manager Hoyden posted:

I dunno, even with zero fees the tip plus the premium in-app pricing makes it a lot more expensive anyway.

The ones that support group payment are a godsend though. Now hosting duty is just texting the group link.

Uber Eats shoves a bunch of 40% off (up to $15, min order $25) promotions at people on the app. So if you order food for 3 people, or get a large pizza for leftovers the next day, it works out to under $30 including all taxes, fees and tip.

I've even compared prices to the website of the locations and they're usually the same. You may miss out on a lunchtime special here or there but otherwise it's 3-4 meals for under 30 bucks. Which, 5 years ago wow that sucks. Now? Not bad

trevorreznik fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Jun 23, 2023

# ¿ Jun 23, 2023 01:32

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 18:22

trevorreznik: Apr 22, 2023

Gatts posted:

I have joined a new social media app, Threads by Instagram that seems like a twitter replacement

In 100% seriousness, I cannot find the website for this Twitter competitor. Threads.com is some slack clone instead.

I just want to view posts anonymously without an app and without an account, and hopefully embed them into forums. is this too much to ask

Edit found it: https://www.threads.net/ but doesn't seem to do anything

With respect to the economy, I know several people who have been laid off from cushy non tech jobs and for the first time in ages are completely unable to find similar employment. There's a lot of worrying about what if that happened to me?? Going on. These are GenXers.

trevorreznik fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Jul 6, 2023

# ¿ Jul 6, 2023 01:32

trevorreznik: Apr 22, 2023

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Threads is the Facebook competitor to Twitter that just launched today. I believe it is currently only available as a standalone app on your phone or through Instagram right now.

Weird, someone should set them straight on the point of the internet being ad free.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2023 01:38

trevorreznik: Apr 22, 2023

Four Dollars posted:

"Government censorship is good actually" is certainly a precedent that will never come back to bite us. Worry not, friends.

I think most of the posts seem to be using definitions that censorship is bad by definition, but doing good things (combatting anti vaccine statements) with coercion cannot be censorship because it is good. It seems more like a definitional argument than anything else.

That includes whether the definition of censorship includes coercion, asking in public, or anything else. Surely the definition is more expansive than someone working with the government redacting letters home from the front lines in world war 2, but I think it's clear the modern definition is unclear.

Ergo, is censorship only done by the actual party controlling the statement itself? So possessing the letter, or storing the post on the server? But asking/demanding/threatening to have the statement removed isn't censorship because it isn't directly in the government's control/possession? I have no idea.

trevorreznik fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Jul 6, 2023

# ¿ Jul 6, 2023 14:15

trevorreznik: Apr 22, 2023

Main Painframe, can you link to the pre-1935 crime statistics you have?!I've never seen those and that's really.interesting.

Also, what's the theory for why the 2000s/10s were more like the 1940s-60s for violent crime?

# ¿ Jul 7, 2023 13:43

trevorreznik: Apr 22, 2023

Main Paineframe posted:

I've seen this chart floating around a fair bit, and while I'm unable to find who originally put it together (I didn't save where I found it last night, and when I search for it now I see that it's mostly being reshared by people with terrible opinions), the sourcing details seem solid enough.

Note that research on pre-WWII crime rates is a bit shaky due to a lack of good data; other sources I've found say that the homicide rate fell through the 1800s to a historic low in around 1900, and then rose again to peak in the early 1930s.

The best piece of research I've found for about 20th-century crime rate trends is a 1975 paper titled Homicide Trends in the United States, 1900-74. Yeah, it's old, but that's apparently a recurring trend in this field. It also contains a homicide rates chart to illustrate the pattern well:

The difference in how these two charts treat the first couple decades of the century, by the way, is because Homicide Trends in the United States relies directly on the reported data, but Estimates of Early Twentieth-Century Homicide Rates believes that official numbers were widely underreported until the 1930s for various reasons (most of which come down to careless and sloppy handling and reporting of death data in that era). As a result, it discards the official numbers and attempts to instead calculate the true homicide rate using statistical analysis. In that author's view, the rising homicide rate in the early 20th century was the result of improvements in reporting practices and record-keeping, rather than an actual increase in crime.

Regardless, both approaches agree on a key point: crime peaked in the early 1930s before sharply dropping, then staying at that new level until the mid-60s (aside from a brief spike when the troops were brought home in the late 40s), and then rapidly rising back to 1930s levels.

As for why crime rates are so much lower in the 21st century, there's plenty of theories, but a lot of them are very obviously ideologically-motivated, and it's hard to tell with any certainty which one is correct. Even when it comes to the crime dynamics of the first half of the century, there's still plenty of competing theories. Just click the "terrible opinions" links back at the start of my post to see some absolutely loving racist criminal justice theorists claiming with a straight face that the drop in the 1930s had nothing to do with the New Deal and was entirely due to falling immigration rates reducing the number of people from crime cultures.

Given that there's no big obvious event impacting the nation to the degree that the New Deal or WWII did, it's going to be a lot harder to settle on any one theory. The lead hypothesis (that the crime wave was caused by leaded gasoline) and the abortion hypothesis (that the decriminalization of abortion led to more potential criminals being aborted) both seem fairly popular in pop-discussion circles like this, but I personally don't find either one to be a satisfying theory. Personally, my view is that the high perception of high crime rates led to a relatively high level of political focus on reducing crime rates, leading authorities all over the country to put substantial resources into all sorts of efforts and initiatives and experiments to try to bring down the crime rate. That led first to a wave of ineffective policy directions like "Tough on Crime" and "War on Drugs", but after those failed to reduce crime rates, that opened the door to new directions and experimentation, some of it ineffective (like broken windows policing) and some of it more effective (like community policing). On top of that, some of the social factors that heavily destabilized cities during the 1960s, like white flight and urban decay, had slowed or even begun to reverse by the 1990s.

That's really interesting, thanks.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2023 16:20

trevorreznik: Apr 22, 2023

haveblue posted:

I'm curious how much of a change this actually is, exactly how much quantity sold separates the #1 beer from the #2 beer from the #14 beer?

While I don't have a direct answer, the sales slump seems major, not just a few percent. A quick google found this in an article: "Bud Light sales are reportedly down almost 30% from last June and the brand "is showing no signs of rebounding from its slump," according to a MoneyWatch report. " I can't find the actual report though.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2023 15:43

trevorreznik: Apr 22, 2023

DynamicSloth posted:

Bullshit propaganda, it took them 8 years to go from having 0 appointments under FDR to a majority under Ike, the Democrats had a 5-4 majority during the New Frontier, since 1973 and the subsequent 50 years have all been a Republican majority court.

When were these 50 years the Republicans were in the wilderness.

Souter is a load bearing justice in a lot of these examples. Replace him with say, Bork (I jest, but surely there was a comparable comparison to Kennedy/O'Connor that Souter was picked over ), and it's a much, much different court.

Although I suppose in this what-if world, you also have Supreme Court Justice Harriet Miers instead of Alito.

Edit: To be more clear, while O'Connor/Souter/Kennedy were picked by Republican presidents, I don't think of them being Republican judges in the way that someone like Alito is. Souter clearly wasn't.

trevorreznik fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Jul 13, 2023

# ¿ Jul 13, 2023 19:29

trevorreznik: Apr 22, 2023

yronic heroism posted:

Or they could just give Bruen protections to �low level� domestic abusers but not to drug users. How many principles do we think Thomas and Alito will really hold sacred in the war on drugs?

You should read Thomas' opinion in Gonzales v Raich, he lays out his principles pretty well there and I think he would be the most likely justice to side with Hunter Biden if this issue gets to that level.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2023 22:02

trevorreznik: Apr 22, 2023

FlamingLiberal posted:

It's a complete fantasy that you could have 'negotiated' a way out of Civil War. Civil War was baked into the Constitution from day one, and even back then the Founders knew it. Prior to the Civil War, there were decades of violence due to various failed political attempts to preserve a country that had both slave and free states. It was absolutely never going to work. The South was also never going to agree to free the slaves, even if they were compensated, because the entire Southern economy was based on involuntary labor.

I recently had a discussion with my dad about his belief Lincoln is one of the few great men of history, because of the theory that only Lincoln (due to his frontier upbringing) was willing to spill the blood off hundreds of thousands to preserve the union instead of working out some sort of EU style multinational compromise with the South once they actually seceded .I don't think he's right but it's an interesting counter factual to think about

# ¿ Jan 9, 2024 05:47

trevorreznik: Apr 22, 2023

When yiz are discussing culture or the lack thereof, what are you specifically referencing? I assume it isn't the resident companies in the major performing arts: symphony, ballet, opera, and theatre (which Houston has, for example) nor the major museums in places like Chicago?

I see it brought up a lot and never quite know what exactly people mean besides their general understanding of a city's vibe, which can often just mean that that person doesn't know that specific city very well, or doesn't enjoy the offerings said city does have.

If I had to guess I'd say the definition is a variety of bars and restaurants that often a lot of different cuisines, but most college towns have those (as well as bands that come through on tour).

trevorreznik fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Jan 30, 2024

# ¿ Jan 30, 2024 20:52

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 18:22

trevorreznik: Apr 22, 2023

BougieBitch posted:

I can't speak for the neighborhood in Pittsburgh, but I can tell you right now that the Industry neighborhood of Muncie, IN has access to none of that. Muncie is a college town, and on the side of town north of the river we got Indian and sushi finally in the 2010s, none of that poo poo is in the least bit accessible to residents living across the river and across the tracks. You could buy a house where the previous owner OD'd on meth for low 5 digits if you want, but your car is going to get broken into every other week. There's not a grocery store or restaurant near you either, because the zoning is prohibitive and even the corner stores regularly went out of business because they got robbed so often in my neighborhood (which shares a border in the railroad track)

Similarly, there are cool outdoor areas and local museums dedicated to the Ball family (you may know them for the glass jars), but all of those are in and around the university campus, on the far side of town from Industry.

Basically, if you want to have "local color"-level amenities available at "making a trip to the city" distances you can, but you have to go home some time and the view from your window is going to be BLEAK.

I'm surprised to hear Muncie is that bleak.

But your response does kind of go to my question - are people defining culture by food variety? It can't be that simple, because plenty of inner ring suburbs have phenomenal food variety yet are disdained.

The point I think I'm slowly working towards is that culture isn't a thing people are interested in - they just want to be by lots of other people for both jobs and socialization. The quality of museums, fine arts, etc doesn't matter too much, they'll find something they enjoy doing whether it's backpacking, fishing, nightclubs, comedy shows, etc.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2024 06:31

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