April Fools America! Yes this is real life. LC - I suck at puns - thread - Page 3 - Politics and Economics

I started to, and he tried to work out a way to get me to stay. I'm very close though. I've been there for an extremely long time and I like the job a lot. I just don't like him or a few of my co-workers.

04-03-2017 , 02:26 AM

#52

5ive

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04-03-2017 , 02:28 AM

#53

5ive

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You're saying I'm a nazi just because I have different political views and have this big-ass swastika tattoo on my chest.

04-03-2017 , 02:42 AM

#54

HastenDan

banned

Join Date: Sep 2016 Posts: 1,711

Plucked from latent space. Wowza

04-03-2017 , 03:28 AM

#55

simplicitus

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Quote:

Originally Posted by HastenDan

Plucked from latent space. Wowza

Couldn't really understand your post. May want to mention that it's partly interpolated images using neural networks. Figure is from page 6 of this paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.10717.pdf

Boundary Equilibrium Generative Adversarial Networks
David Berthelot, Tom Schumm, Luke Metz
Google, Inc.

Abstract
We propose a new equilibrium enforcing method paired with a loss derived from
the Wasserstein distance for training auto-encoder based Generative Adversarial
Networks. This method balances the generator and discriminator during training.
Additionally, it provides a new approximate convergence measure, fast and stable
training and high visual quality. We also derive a way of controlling the trade-off
between image diversity and visual quality. We focus on the image generation
task, setting a new milestone in visual quality, even at higher resolutions. This is
achieved while using a relatively simple model architecture and a standard training
procedure.

Last edited by simplicitus; 04-03-2017 at 03:32 AM. Reason: "Enhance"

04-03-2017 , 05:11 AM

#56

O.A.F.K.1.1

Ted Patrick

Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 27,952

So apparently the authorities in Chechnya have been using social media to bait and then arrest gay men and in the process two gay men have been reported killed.

The official response:

Quote:

“You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic,” he told news agency Interfax.

“If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...paper-chechnya

04-03-2017 , 06:20 AM

#57

mosdef

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Sholar

Setting aside whether this is true (and, of course, at the extreme it's not: selective universities are just that), it doesn't have to be a great proxy, it just has to be enough of a signal that it's usable.

When there are plenty of young, unemployed college graduates, what's the incentive to look for young, unemployed people without that credential? If you are on the side of the argument that "college degrees are worthless" then it's not like you have to pay more for the credentialed applicants...

It just has to be effective enough that it saves some work for whoever in HR is sorting resumes at your comapny for that "dead end" job.

No disagreement with any of these points, and I didn't mean to suggest university is "worthless". That's certainty not that case. I just think that a more interesting story than "why are university degrees required for even the most basic job" (which is simply due to the abundance of people with degrees relative to jobs) would be a story that asks "why haven't companies found a better way to evaluate candidates than sorting by degree + an interview". There's a lot more substance there, and there's probably lots of interesting material on how some companies have tried to be innovative in this area.

04-03-2017 , 06:21 AM

#58

mosdef

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Quote:

Originally Posted by suzzer99

It's a good thing that they placed the "artificial flavors" warning on this, otherwise people might thing they were getting locally sourced organic handpicked oreo-whites.

04-03-2017 , 07:33 AM

#59

Money2Burn

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Scaphism tarantula.

04-03-2017 , 08:21 AM

#60

daca

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terror in russia

https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/848870030242705408

04-03-2017 , 09:23 AM

#61

Max Cut

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Posts: n/a

Sun Son

04-03-2017 , 09:33 AM

#62

Sholar

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Quote:

Originally Posted by mosdef

I just think that a more interesting story than "why are university degrees required for even the most basic job" (which is simply due to the abundance of people with degrees relative to jobs)...

Right.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mosdef

...would be a story that asks "why haven't companies found a better way to evaluate candidates than sorting by degree + an interview". There's a lot more substance there, and there's probably lots of interesting material on how some companies have tried to be innovative in this area.

One better way (which is well-used) is referrals: hire people who have worked with and are endorsed by someone currently succeeding at the company. But yeah, I don't see a lot of variation even among companies with supposedly innovative HR.

04-03-2017 , 09:57 AM

#63

Max Cut

Guest

Posts: n/a

Zombie Zombie

04-03-2017 , 10:08 AM

#64

longmissedblind

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 3,735

Mudslides in Columbia killed over 250 so far, but it just doesn't have that bomby terroristy feel to the story

04-03-2017 , 10:12 AM

#65

Our House

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Quote:

Originally Posted by longmissedblind

Mudslides in Columbia killed over 250 so far, but it just doesn't have that bomby terroristy feel to the story

...therefore Fox hasn't picked it up, and Trump hasn't promoted it.

04-03-2017 , 10:30 AM

#66

HastenDan

banned

Join Date: Sep 2016 Posts: 1,711

Quote:

Originally Posted by simplicitus

Couldn't really understand your post. May want to mention that it's partly interpolated images using neural networks.

Those are straight samples, not interpolation. (prompting the wowza)

04-03-2017 , 11:00 AM

#67

bobman0330

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Interesting editorial in the NYT questioning why anti-Semitic threats get more press than actual violence against Muslims and other brown people:

Quote:

For example, while synagogues have been threatened, at least four mosques have been burned. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, there have been 35 attacks on mosques — including vandalism, break-ins and death threats — in the first three months of this year, compared with 19 over the same period in 2016. In the last week, a family of Pakistani origin in Virginia and an Iranian refugee in Oregon reported their homes broken into and defaced with anti-Muslim obscenities.

The Iranian was not even Muslim, and others who are not Muslim but may be suspected of being such have been targeted in hate crime incidents. In February, a white man demanded to know if two Indian patrons at a bar in Kansas were in the country illegally, and shot them, killing one. In March, a masked assailant shot a Sikh man in Washington State, reportedly telling him to go back to his country.

...

To be an American Muslim or a brown-skinned immigrant and know that people like this are in power must be terrifying. Mr. Trump and his appointees have consistently denigrated and dehumanized these minorities in ways we’d never tolerate if they were talking about Jews.

The president and his cronies talk a lot about representing “the people,” but they don’t mean all Americans. “The only important thing is the unification of the people,” Mr. Trump said at Eugene, Ore., campaign rally last year, “because the other people don’t mean anything.”

Naturally, a government that decides certain groups of people “don’t mean anything” shakes many Jews to the core. But the horror of the president’s vision isn’t that “the other people” might include Jews. It includes people. Even in this brutally tribal moment, that should be enough.

04-03-2017 , 11:12 AM

#68

einbert

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Awwww snap

http://deadline.com/2017/04/the-pres...mp-1202058966/

04-03-2017 , 12:14 PM

#69

bobman0330

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Matt Yglesias on immigration is a can't-miss:

Quote:

[Washington] embraced a vision for an open America that could almost be read today as a form of deep idealism or altruism. “America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions,” he told newly arrived Irishmen in 1783. He assured them they’d be “welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.”

But Washington’s vision wasn’t primarily about charity or helping others. It was about building the kind of country that he wanted the United States to become. Greatness would require great people. America would need more than it had.

The contemporary debate around immigration is often framed around an axis of selfishness versus generosity, with Donald Trump talking about the need to put “America first” while opponents tell heartbreaking stories of deportations and communities torn apart. A debate about how to enforce the existing law tends to supersede discussion of what the law ought to say.

All of this misses the core point. Immigration to the United States has not, historically, been an act of kindness toward strangers. It’s been a strategy for national growth and national greatness.

...

These enormous benefits [of increased wages to immigrants] matter in part because foreigners are still human beings whose lives and interests ought to count for something in our calculus.

In other words, to the extent that there is reason to believe restricting the ability of some class of immigrants to enter the United States will have some benefits to some set of native-born workers, it’s worth considering that keeping a potential worker out of the United States is an extraordinarily costly measure to take.

04-03-2017 , 01:49 PM

#70

suzzer99

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 99,984

Quote:

Originally Posted by HastenDan

Why not quit if the company is so dumb as to have an open neo-nazi employee for so long and a boss who is clearly a moron?

JFC - why do I ever click to view one of your posts?

04-03-2017 , 01:51 PM

#71

suzzer99

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 99,984

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmakin

As always, the real crime is pointing out racism. Glad you laid it on the line for your boss.

04-03-2017 , 01:57 PM

#72

HastenDan

banned

Join Date: Sep 2016 Posts: 1,711

Quote:

Originally Posted by suzzer99

JFC - why do I ever click to view one of your posts?

What? I asked a pretty simple and legitimate question, and jmakin even replied that he had considered it and tried at one point!

04-03-2017 , 02:24 PM

#73

suzzer99

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 99,984

Proxies to get around stuff are probably also forbidden - so either way you're risking trouble.

04-03-2017 , 02:42 PM

#74

MrWookie

Don't Call Me Meredith

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 94,159

Quote:

Originally Posted by HastenDan

What? I asked a pretty simple and legitimate question, and jmakin even replied that he had considered it and tried at one point!

Oh right, the true liberal solution is to take on a massive risk of financial hardship rather than call a Nazi a Nazi.

04-03-2017 , 02:49 PM

#75

suzzer99

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 99,984

I work with a Nazi and my boss is an idiot - time to quit and start over. 'Murica.

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