patrick.net

He's transphobic because he doesn't believe a man can get pregnant. Marxism reeducation 101. It's UC Berkeley so what else do you expect. That's where Angela Davis held court for decades.

Hawley disrupted the slip stream of her rat-a-tat KommieKunt rhetoric. It's kind of tough to conduct a one sided one freakazoid feminist-ethnic, woke struggle session on a member of Congress.

It must have been easier on the diploma printing presses to do it that way to distinguish between the real and the imaginary diplomas.

Instead of cum laude they have a stamp for 'Sacred Cow Exception'.

Patrick says

We're back to the 1950's, maybe even worse than that.

Whose going to hire a black man from Berkeley when there's favoritism there?

Now I have to make certain any doctor I go to is white or asian, everybody else gets artificial support.

Your life is literally at increased risk from "Affirmative" Action when the standards are dramatically lower for black and Hispanic doctors.

Patrick says

Your life is literally at increased risk from "Affirmative" Action when the standards are dramatically lower for black and Hispanic doctors.

Yeah, people are going to avoid them, because they cannot be trusted.

This is a calamity for black and Hispanic doctors.

Thomas Sowell showed that when standards are lowered for black students in college, they did worse in college as a result and did worse in life as a result. He argued they should go to colleges that better accommodated their intelligence and education. He's right.

Don't you miss the meritocracy? We HAD ONE in the 1990's, at least in Silicon Valley.

Patrick says

Your life is literally at increased risk from "Affirmative" Action when the standards are dramatically lower for black and Hispanic doctors.

I have a couple of real life stories that I can't really promulgate on a blog that are just that. The pressures on the pretend doctors are so great, they wind up being shifted about from institution to institution until they manage to land some kind of no harm government grift job. I have also known exceptions that are fine, but the wheat from chaff problem is real and results in disasters.

richwicks says

Don't you miss the meritocracy? We HAD ONE in the 1990's, at least in Silicon Valley.

True for programmers up until the woke disease infected everything.

In job interviews, you would be tested on raw competence and nothing else. It was purely a business decision. They didn't even care about your personality, much less your race or sex. It was only "Can you solve this programming problem in a reasonable amount of time? OK, how about this one?" etc.

Oh no, he was called a bad word. Time to cower in fear of being labelled by people that don't even respect you!!!

Patrick says

In job interviews, you would be tested on raw competence and nothing else. It was purely a business decision. They didn't even care about your personality, much less your race or sex. It was only "Can you solve this programming problem in a reasonable amount of time? OK, how about this one?" etc.

Plus:
Virgin - check
Now shotgun this liter of Mountain Dew
And the tie braker - "Explain the benefits of natural fabrics" (The correct answer is none).

And Patrick, RichWicks, do you guys still have your company issued pocket protector and multi-color pen?

Ceffer says

they manage to land some kind of no harm government grift job.

Sadly locally it was usually the VA. There was an old man in our church who practiced there, when I said something to my parents about it they said it was the only place that would take him.

HeadSet says

And Patrick, RichWicks, do you guys still have your company issued pocket protector and multi-color pen?

Why do programmers need pens?

HeadSet says

And Patrick, RichWicks, do you guys still have your company issued pocket protector and multi-color pen?

Never got one, but I have plenty of old badges.

In silly con valley, it's pretty casual, as long as you do work. On the East Coast, pants, pressed shirt, at least somewhat work attire. When I worked for a subcontractor, when I showed up at the customer, suit, tie, shoes, jacket. I pretty much left the East Coast because of that. Just seemed ludicrous to me to be dressed in semi-formal attire to sit on a desk, and type.

PeopleUnited says

Why do programmers need pens?

We don't. I can't even write legible cursive anymore, other than to me. I can't write anywhere near as fast as I can type.

Typing was the only real class in high school that turned out to be truly useful. I had to unlearn all of my "history", English was a complete waste of time, I had to start reading Anthony Burgess books to fix my retarded vocabulary, math was taught stupidly, maybe I got some things out of science classes, but that's just personal interest.

Even college was a waste of time, did I really need to learn how a hyperbolic tangential function modeled a transistor? I spent 1/2 a semester learning an amplifier circuit that had infinite output impedance (basically, it couldn't drive anything), that was used exclusively in scan lines in television sets. College is mostly a test of "how much shit will you put up with before you quit?"

I got a degree in EE, where I was technically qualified to be a computer chip designer. thank god I didn't go into that. You have to work for a billion dollar company, you do design verification (essentially a janitor to clean up mistakes and test the design), and hardly anybody needs it, other than huge corporations. You can't do anything on your own.

P.S. - here's something that every person taking physics should know. Learn what all the units are. Learn that acceleration is meters divided by seconds squared. M/s^2. Learn liters is 1 decimeter cubed of water. Learn that 1 liter of water is 1 kg. Learn all that shit, and when you get to calculus, you know how to derive EVERYTHING from other units. For some FUCKING reason they never bothered to mention that the units IS the equation. So pissed off when I realized that was the case, after 2nd year calculus.

richwicks says

Learn that 1 liter of water is 1 kg.

And interestingly, one pint of water weighs one pound.

Sadly, in the fullness of time, my pocket protector has been lost. This, along with my prized TI 1250 Pocket Calculator, Rapidograph Pens for drafting, Green and White plaid bellbottoms, Side Zipping boots, TRACTICS rules for miniature Tank Gaming with several boxes of 1:144 scale tanks, Chemistry sets, BB guns, BB revolvers, Cap guns, Pump guns, 10-speed road bikes, Estes Rockets, Revell (and a bit later much better Japanese Hasegawa) scale airplane models, Ping pong paddles with cushions for extra spin for the Senior lounge!

Surely signs of a misspent youth, but damn I had a ton of fun.

How about your Q-Bert watch?

HeadSet says

richwicks says

Learn that 1 liter of water is 1 kg.

And interestingly, one pint of water weighs one pound.

No it doesn't. There's 8 pints in a gallon and a gallon of water weighs 8.33 pounds. It's close but I think coincidental.

The SI system was really revolutionary, it eliminated a ton of constants, VASTLY simplified equations.

There's some thinking (which will never actually come to pass) to put everything in Planck units.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units

The number is so small though, they'd have to do some multiplier to make it usable, and it would fuck everything up as well.

The Plank Constant is the shortest possible distance. How do they determine this is true?

Well the answer is ???????? No fucking idea. I think something to do with the shortest wavelength possible but how do they know that's REALLY the shortest possible wavelength? Maybe it's determined, but if it's not, it's just another arbitrary measurement, no better than SI which is based on meters, which was supposed to be based on the circumference of Earth, and that measurement was way off.

richwicks says

SI which is based on meters, which was supposed to be based on the circumference of Earth, and that measurement was way off.

The meter was originally based on one millionth of the distance from Paris to the North Pole. They should have used a Nautical Mile as the base, which is equal to one minute of latitude. That is, 1,000 meters equal a nautical mile. But the French Revolutionaries did not want to use anything that was used by the old regime.

richwicks says

The Plank Constant is the shortest possible distance. How do they determine this is true?

Well the answer is ???????? No fucking idea. I think something to do with the shortest wavelength possible but how do they know that's REALLY the shortest possible wavelength? Maybe it's determined, but if it's not, it's just another arbitrary measurement,

No, not arbitrary. You may find this video interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPnmssrwGcg

HeadSet says

And Patrick, RichWicks, do you guys still have your company issued pocket protector and multi-color pen?

Pocket protectors went out with slide rules.

Back in the 70s my high school girlfriend asked me what she could make for me in leather working class. I asked for a pocket protector. She said, "No".

Onvacation says

Back in the 70s my high school girlfriend asked me what she could make for me in leather working class. I asked for a pocket protector. She said, "No".

Did she say 'yes' to the cat 'o nine tails and the bustier, though?

Ceffer says

Did she say 'yes' to the cat 'o nine tails and the bustier, though?

What do you think she was wearing and holding when she was asked?

Ceffer says

Did she say 'yes' to the cat 'o nine tails and the bustier, though?

She was pretty kinky... and a nut case drama queen.

She ended up making me a purple suede pillow in the shape of a heart. I earned that purple heart.

Onvacation says

She ended up making me a purple suede pillow in the shape of a heart. I earned that purple heart.

At least it wasn't a locking leather cock cage with a leash attached. That would have been a purple hard.