• @Shelbyeileen
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    181 day ago

    We took a trip to Chicago and decided to go to Navy Pier. Traffic was basically gridlocked and the car behind us was not happy that my friend didn’t break the law and block an intersection. After the light turned green, the idiot took his massive, shiny, brand new, white pickup truck onto the SIDEWALK to cut in front of us.

    When we got to the parking garage, there was a HUGE sign saying the clearance was 6ft 3in and tall vehicles needed to go to a different garage. The idiot didn’t read it and, even with the windows shut, we heard the screeching and scraping of his roof on the top of the structure.

    The best part was watching him back out, hearing more scraping, seeing his surprised pikachu face, and the disappointment on the face of the woman in the passenger seat.

  • @[email protected]
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    542 days ago

    The Titan submersible incident comes to mind. ESPECIALLY after viewing the released coastguard hearings.

    • jgrim
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      82 days ago

      I missed the coast guard hearing details. What came out?

      • @[email protected]
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        Oh it was super interesting! Stories from experts strongly advising against design decisions but being ignored, colleagues and industry officials raising concerns, the utter failure of OSHA in protecting the wistleblowers, multiple red flags being ignored, the batshit insane list of failures during previous dives being ignored, the lack of safety culture, administrative office crew doubling as safety inspectors/dive operators/engineers while having no qualifications whatsoever for that job, the absolute lack of free speech to voice concerns/toxic positivity that was expected from everyone/repercussions against people that did try to speak up, the pressure put on potential mission specialists to continue their trip if they tried to back out, the extremely dubious “mission specialist” term used to describe passengers just to get out of insurance and liability, the long, long list of questionable design choices made by someone who had no proper experience, the cost cutting mentality, the “meh its good enough” mentality,…

        The list goes on and on and on. Those hearings are worth watching with popcorn. I was hooked and watched them all, but of you have to pick some, choose those from david lochridge, tony nissen, renata rojas, karl stanley, bart kemper and bonnie carl.

        The most entertaining part is the board asking seemingly ‘stupid’ or gullible questions and having the pro-oceangate witnesses digging their own grave trying to spin the answer in a positive light; while everybody already knows the real answer.

        https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgOje37c-b1NswzbM8kMEGRrdup_xwlW9

        • @[email protected]
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          31 day ago

          I mean, the CO scrubber was an Ikea plastic box with a CPU fan hooked to it. Literally.

          Just absolutely mindboggling.

        • @BambiDiego
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          132 days ago

          TL;DW it’s entitled rich a-hole who is used to money getting him what he wants, doesn’t understand money cannot buy intelligence, reason, and/or empathy. A critical lack of all 3 causes a severe case of “Human Paste-itis” on the ocean floor

  • @Kiwi_fella
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    232 days ago

    At a concert and saw the police approach and start questioning a young drunk guy (out doors, before show started). They basically said he had to leave on account of being too intoxicated and he started getting mouthy. I’ve never seen the police react so quickly the moment he finished saying, “My dad is a top class expensive lawyers and he’ll have your asrses for this” - he was in the ground and handcuffed within seconds. In the next few seconds he was back on his feet and being escorted to the paddy wagon.

    • @LifeInMultipleChoice
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      312 days ago

      Honestly I think it’s terrible that we think it’s perfectly normal and okay for cops to physically force someone to the ground with no mention of resistance.

      “Keep your hands where I can see them and I’m going to cuff you while I search your pockets.”

      “Please get in the back of the car” while lightly holding the inside of someone’s elbow should be all that is needed after checking their person for any weapons.

      • @Kiwi_fella
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        423 hours ago

        There was definitely resistance from the young guy. It just didn’t make my story. The police in the country where I’m from have a much higher standard of engagement with people. Their actions we well justified.

  • @[email protected]
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    Some hospital royalty’s grandparent needed ECT for their treatment resistant depression. Said royalty fought tooth and nail to let gamgam get her very first set of induced controlled seizures under surgical level anaesthesia done outpatient. The ECT doc said fuck no (you can do them outpatient, but you always do the first set inpatient case shit goes pear shaped). They then tried to get gamgam to spend her time in the fancy hospital rooms (yes that’s a thing) instead of on the psych unit with us crazies. The ECT doc said no. This was also right after admin got mad at us for throwing out a piss soaked mattress. Don’t want granny sleeping on somebody else’s piss? Nobody should be sleeping on somebody else’s piss. DEAL WITH IT you bourgeoisie bastards.

    • @[email protected]
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      Gods, I remember interviewing to be a floor tech at Doctor’s Medical Center in Modesto when they first got their bourgeoise floor. It still upsets me to think about it 12 years later. Healthcare is healthcare, there shouldn’t be a damn luxury floor, and especially not while other people are getting bankrupted with bills where the numbers are basically snatched out of thin air anyway.

  • @[email protected]
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    983 days ago

    I have this pet theory about how people who learn that their privilege lets them bend or ignore human laws subconsciously believe that they can bend or ignore any law. So I always enjoy it when rich assholes buy super-cars and wrap them around trees, a surprisingly common occurrence, because the laws of physics aren’t impressed by your financial portfolio.

    • @AngryCommieKender
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      Elon did that with a McLaren, and Peter Thiel as a passenger.

      • TheRealKuni
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        51 day ago

        Good. That poor McLaren shouldn’t have to be driven by Elon Musk.

      • unknown1234_5
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        212 days ago

        hilariously the only things that made it fail were 1) the material they chose 2) producing that material the cheap way and 3) not testing if it was broken after test dives.

        • Zement
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          82 days ago

          It’s like they already rolled multiple 20s and just … overstressed their luck…

          badumtss… yep I find my way out…

        • Zement
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          02 days ago

          It’s like they already rolled multiple 20s and just … overstressed their luck…

          badumtss… yep I find my way out…

        • Zement
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          02 days ago

          It’s like they already rolled multiple 20s and just … overstressed their luck…

          badumtss… yep I find my way out…

    • @DrDickHandler
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      52 days ago

      Most rich do bend the laws in their favor all the time, very successfully in fact.

    • Log in | Sign up
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      22 days ago

      The learned experience that the cautionary advice other people gave them was inaccurate in their case is very real.

  • Subverb
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    1203 days ago

    About seven years ago when Trump was president the first time, my wife and I went to see Roger Waters in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

    We bought 7th row seats but had looked at 1st row and they were something like $800 each so we passed. Well, day of the show and you can only imagine the massive vitriol spewing from Waters and the huge screen behind him for Trump. He had an inflatable pig drone with TRUMP on it flying around the arena and all kinds of elaborate props.

    A group of four dressed in cowboy regalia, presumably MAGA, walked out from the front row, enthusiastically flipping Roger Waters off as they did it. The seats alone were $3200ish.

    Roger Waters and Pink Floyd. What the hell did they expect?

    Found this Australian video with clips from that tour. Being beneath the giant laser pyramid was awe inspiring. Waters says, “Haven’t you been listening all these years?”

    No, people don’t listen to the lyrics.

    • @Passerby6497
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      352 days ago

      No, people don’t listen to the lyrics.

      “Man, when did RATM become so political?”

    • @AngryCommieKender
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      Blues Traveler had a hit song that is a 3 minute essay about people not listening to the lyrics. It was called Hook.

      • @Snowclone
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        Hum… not really, it’s more about how a song works lyrically and a bit musically, it’s like a magician showing you how he does the trick, but you’re still amazed at the trick, as it somehow keeps working on you. It is fascinating that the lyrics also point to the fact that the listener brings most of the meaning and emotion to the song, not the song writers. Which is true, I had no idea Pearl Jam’s Red Mosquito was about sitting sick in a hotel room with a literal Mosquito. I thought it was a very complex song about the concepts of God and The Devil.

    • prole
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      That’s fucking funny…

      Roger Waters and Pink Floyd.

      Not even… It was him alone, which is always far more political and vitriolic. Everybody knows this. These were likely boomers who liked Dark Side of the Moon when they were kids, and 50+ years later decided to waste a shit ton of money on tickets, knowing nothing about the man.

    • @RememberTheApollo_
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      43 days ago

      Must’ve had a bad day. I saw him not too long ago and he did some minor commentary on political issues, but there was no ranting. Waters is all over the place politically sometimes. Great show though.

  • Parade du Grotesque
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    2283 days ago

    That submarine imploding near the Titanic will never be not funny. Especially since the guy who designed it believed in the “move fast and break things” nonsense.

    Every person on board paid a pretty penny to be on that sub, so no pity from me either (except perhaps for the teenager who was reportedly terrified to go on, but did it to please his rich prick father).

          • @[email protected]
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            -493 days ago

            Well for me humans need to have morality, compassion, they need to care for others, the bourgeoisie don’t do that, so they aren’t humans for me

            • @[email protected]
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              533 days ago

              So you are failing your own morality test, and handwaving it away.

              How convenient.

              I thought history was quite clear, time and time again, it has been shown that once you declare a group of persons as “subhuman” bad shit start happening.

              • @[email protected]
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                -303 days ago

                How can you opress and exploit BILLIONS of workers and not want bad shit to happen to you?

                • @Feathercrown
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                  193 days ago

                  So target your vitriol at the people exploiting. A teenager has not even had the opportunity to do that yet if they wanted to.

                • @Lumisal
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                  263 days ago

                  The biggest failure in stopping evil is realizing it’s plain old humans that create evil.

    • @[email protected]
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      303 days ago

      Moving fast and breaking things can be a great R&D philosophy…when health and safety aren’t a concern or have been addressed.

      • @[email protected]
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        142 days ago

        And to add on that R&D thing. It’s supposed to be move fast and break things to learn what things are not working good enought so you can deliver a finished not-breaking-stuff-thing.

    • @[email protected]
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      653 days ago

      I’ve seen some interesting YT videos about the engineering behind the sub. Turns out, that sub was a ticking time bomb, and many people had warned about it. The controller thing was perfectly fine, but the walls were not.

      • @[email protected]
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        453 days ago

        Their crack detector thing actually detected a problem on the previous trip… Just nobody checked it…

        • @khannie
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          253 days ago

          What the fuck? That’s mental. I’d never heard that little nugget before.

          • @[email protected]
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            Pretty sure it’s this one: https://youtu.be/FAAQVntpk00

            Goes through the photos to get an idea where it failed (towards one end). Then looks at manufacturing photos (milling down carbon fiber in a pressure vessel is crazy!) then looks at strain guage graphs.

            • @khannie
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              213 days ago

              Yeah that’s the one I just watched it through. Thanks for the link. Absolutely reckless behaviour from the owner after the previous crack event on dive 80 to go down again. Just so many bad choices.

              Fascinating that they had the data to tell them it wasn’t safe and just ploughed ahead without examining it.

      • Diplomjodler
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        -253 days ago

        Using off the shelf consumer electronics in safety critical applications is never OK.

        • @[email protected]
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          563 days ago

          I would argue that the consumer electronics had more testing and engineering experience behind them than the structural parts of the sub…

          • @[email protected]
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            The funny thing is, the news articles got stuck on the least significant (but funny) detail. The main emphasis should have been on the fact that lots of people had noticed serious problems with the design, but one stubborn guy decided to roll the dice anyway. Well, you reap what you sow.

        • unknown1234_5
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          62 days ago

          it’s the same functionality but cheaper and easier to use, it’s such a good idea the navy has been trying to switch everything they can to off the shelf stuff.

        • @[email protected]
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          373 days ago

          Of course it is. The US Navy uses Xbox controllers for their photonic masts, which we can all agree is pretty safety critical.

          • @froh42
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            173 days ago

            Thanks. I did remember that US subs used a off the shelf controller but couldn’t think of the specific example.

            Additionally with an off the shelf controller it’s really easy to pack a replacement one. (And building a controller yourself - that one will always be worse and heavier than an off the shelf one plus replacement)

            The crazy thing really is how they ignored everyone on warnings how not to construct a hull.

          • Diplomjodler
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            33 days ago

            World you get into a plane that was controlled with one of those?

            • @[email protected]
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              223 days ago

              The army uses Xbox controllers because the recruits are already familiar with them and don’t need training on a new and expensive custom controller. It’s more user friendly and reduces input errors.

            • @[email protected]
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              173 days ago

              No, but not due to reliability.

              Rather because an Xbox controller is not designed to fly a real aircraft.

              I would however go on a boat that was controlled with an Xbox controller, less speed and one less direction to worry about.

        • @ilinamorato
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          123 days ago

          Off the shelf consumer electronics were not the problem.

        • @[email protected]
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          293 days ago

          Using off the shelf consumer electronics for safety critical applications is fine.

          In this case the controller is engineered to work well for a resonable time.

          Ok, the controller is not waterproof, but if you get water inside a sub, you have larger problems than moving it, and you have other ways of triggering an emergency blow.

          • @[email protected]
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            honestly I would prefer to drive a DIY custom built machine using a popular off the shelf gamepad, that way I could buy a handful of controllers and keep them in the cockpit as backups.

            • @[email protected]
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              21 day ago

              Given the option between making my own controller vs buying a dozen Xbox controllers, yeah gonna go with Xbox. Nothing I make will get anywhere near as good.

    • prole
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      253 days ago

      The photo of the shitty Logitech controller will never not make me laugh… Anyone who has ever handled a controller before knows those things are absolute garbage lol

        • @Sterile_Technique
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          22 days ago

          Probably? Someone posted it shortly after the actual oceangate situation happened, and it went straight to my downloads folder, lol. No idea what the original source was.

    • Chainweasel
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      -173 days ago

      He was 19, he was an adult and able to refuse if he wanted.

      • @I_Has_A_Hat
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        When you were 19, did you have much of a say if your parents wanted to take you on a trip? Legally, sure. But in reality?

        • @FarmTaco
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          -63 days ago

          Bro you could say that about any age at that point.

          • @[email protected]
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            142 days ago

            This is a ridiculous statement. If a 40 year old can’t tell their parents no to a trip, that’s a problem with the 40 year old. At 19, even though you’re legally an adult, you’re probably still very reliant on your parents, don’t have a very high paying job, and likely don’t have your own place.

            • @FarmTaco
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              So what age are you officially an adult? when do you come off the apron strings? when is it OK to finally treat someone like an adult?

              If a 19 year old cant tell their parents no, TO A TRIP, that is a problem with them.

              e: and I forgot where I was, i like that you are trying to say this 19 year old millionaire spawn has a low paying job, with no place.

              • @[email protected]
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                18 hours ago

                “officially” is an ambigious term here. Legally, 18 years old in the US. “completely” an adult? depends on a variety of factors. Most people under 25 aren’t allowed to rent a car by themselves in the US, so that brings up the age in regards to that. Regardless, I think this is a tangential question.

                I think what you mean to ask, is at what age does a person make decisions for themselves completely, as we’re talking about this 19 year old being pressured into going into the sub. Well that depends on the situation of the person in question which is basically what I said in my previous post. Does this person live on their own? Provide income for themselves? How is their relationship with their parents? How confident is the person in themselves?

                At 19 years old, many people are still reliant on their parents for many things, and also living with them. Arguments are way more impactful in this situation because you can’t just go home and leave, or you can’t ignore certain things because they may be ongoing or consistent problems. There’s probably already arguments happening in this relationship about how each person wants to handle different things. This may be a situation where the 19 year old thought, “I don’t want to cause a big argument over this” so they give in.

                e: and I forgot where I was, i like that you are trying to say this 19 year old millionaire spawn has a low paying job, with no place.

                You should at least reread things before commenting to not waste your time my previous post with added bold, and brackets:

                At 19, even though you’re legally an adult, you’re probably still very reliant on your parents, [implied you] don’t have a very high paying job, and likely don’t have your own place.

                We don’t know if this 19 year old has a high paying job. I doubt it since many people don’t have a degree at this age.

      • @[email protected]
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        313 days ago

        Having the legal right and feeling in any way empowered to exercise that right are wildly different things.

        • @FarmTaco
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          -73 days ago

          so what age does he become an adult like the rest of us? 25? or when he is empowered enough?

      • @ilinamorato
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        113 days ago

        “Ugh, it’ll probably be fine, and it’ll get my dad off my back.”

  • @JollyG
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    2473 days ago

    This is not that funny but I was amused watching it happen. One time I was at the DMV in a college town and a kid was at the counter trying to get his license renewed. From what I could gather he had it revoked because he was underage and had a DUI. Lady at the counter bounced the kid and a few minutes later, the kid came back in with his father and they were apparently from a rich family. Or at least rich by Ohio standards. When the lady at the counter explained that he could not have his license renewed because he had a court order against him, the father started in on the “Do you know who I am? I will buy this whole town!” routine, but the DMV lady was not having any of it. Both the kid and the father insisted that the judge did not have any right to take his license away from him and that it would be over turned on appeal so the DMV lady had to give him his license, because dad would make sure she got fired if he didn’t. But the DMV lady would not relent and issue a license. The father and kid were getting pretty animated, so finally the lady picked up the phone and said something to the effect of “Your kid lied on this form and is probably violating his probation, we can call the court right now and see what your judge thinks about that.” Which at that point caused them to sheepishly leave. When I got to the counter she told me that was not the first time in her career someone tried to do that to her.

      • @[email protected]
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        82 days ago

        One time, I had to get my ambulance license renewed (it’s a thing in CA). The lady asked for my state EMT license and I handed her my paramedic license (it says “paramedic” on instead of EMT-P. Paramedic is a level of EMT in the US). She looks at the card, looks at her computer, and hands my license back, saying “no, I need your EMT card. This says paramedic on it.”

        Not going to lie, I was pretty stunned that she split that hair. I asked her to please confirm with her supervisor, which she did, and we all went on our merry way.

      • @satans_methpipe
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        83 days ago

        I don’t totally understand why I feel cheered up by your comment.

    • @[email protected]
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      923 days ago

      She’s weaponizing the soulcrushing banality of the DMV for good! Her deadpan face and stolid “I’m here all day anyway” refusal to give an inch, and then the little chink of sunshine through her castle wall as she helped you, a normal person who treated her with respect.

      • prole
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        Honestly, as someone who has held similar customer-facing positions when he was younger: it’s interactions like these that keep you going. It’s even better when it’s a government agency, because they’re not trying to turn a profit so they’re not going to bend over backwards to make a rich person happy.

        The best is when people like this demand to speak to a superior, and then the superior comes over and says the exact same shit the employee just did.

        • @[email protected]
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          122 days ago

          It’s also pretty great to be the superior and just stand there telling them No and not elaborating any more because it has already been explained to them.

    • bean
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      243 days ago

      DMV isn’t a judge and has no power over a court order lol. It’s also ridiculous that employees have to deal with this kind of abuse in the first place. It sounds like she was bad ass though.

    • prole
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      273 days ago

      Imagine thinking someone who works at the DMV gives a single shit who you are lol

    • @CheeseNoodle
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      152 days ago

      But the rich won that one and then enforced regulations to ensure that it couldn’t happen again?

      • Battle Masker
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        82 days ago

        Perhaps, but it exposed some companies, namely Robinhood, as chumps for doing just that. And those that won big by sitting on Gamestop so the other chump couldn’t buy it out chose philanthropy, which is a minor victory in the long run

  • @ChonkyOwlbear
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    1923 days ago

    I worked security for a pro baseball stadium. Some guy and his teenage sons had front row season tickets behind home base. The boys were underage and openly drinking alcohol. We went to tell them the kids had to cut it out.

    This guy (who was drunk too) throws a fit that we dared tell him what he could do. He starts shouting “do you know how much I pay for these tickets!? My sons can do whatever they want” blah blah blah.

    I wave down the security head and he radios for the police to come deal with it. The man and his sons were marched out to boos from the crowd. They were ejected from the game and fined. They potentially lost their season ticket rights too, but I don’t know for sure. I never saw them again though.

    • @WoodScientist
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      72 days ago

      Most states allow minors to consume alcohol in some manner if parents are consenting and present. I mostly hearing about that applying at home or in bars and restaurants, but I’m not sure how it works for baseball stadiums.

      • @ChonkyOwlbear
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        21 day ago

        The stadium required anyone drinking to show valid ID and get a wristband. The city keeps a very tight watch on the stadium following the laws under threat of getting their liquor licence pulled. In this state a liquor licence can be pulled if the facility knowingly allows minors to drink alcohol, even if the guardian of the minor permits it.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 day ago

          oh yeah no shot the stadium would risk losing that. the dude is kind of an idiot for thinking the money he spent on seats would compare to what the stadium earns in beer money as a whole. must be new money. old money knows how to exploit people and stay in power; new money just exploits and throws it away

      • @[email protected]
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        12 days ago

        Texas allows underage people to drink if they are with their parent, guardian or spouse (if the spouse is 21). However, the establishment can still refuse to serve them. And in fact most places will refuse because the risks are just too high.

    • prole
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      263 days ago

      Nice…

      However, poor parents would have likely gone to prison and had their children taken away from them.

      • @ChonkyOwlbear
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        222 days ago

        But poor parents wouldn’t have been in those seats and a large reason we cared so much was the people in those seats were shown on TV each time a player was up to bat.

  • @Sequentialsilence
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    1183 days ago

    I do events, one of the events was a medical conference. We had an exec for a pharmaceutical company presenting and he wanted the entire stage layout changed 45 minutes before the presentation. Like completely different projectors, screens, mics, that sort of thing. Not a quick fix by any means. We told him it wasn’t possible, his response,

    “Anything is possible if money and physics allow it, and I have money.”

    Their pharmaceutical company wasn’t invited back to the next years event. We were.

    • @[email protected]
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      He forgot the most important variable in that equation, and it’s time. I continually have to remind clients of that. You can throw more people and money at a problem but you can’t get 9 people with uteruses to give birth to a baby in 1 month.

      • @suodrazah
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        He included time by saying physics. However he said money and physics, not or physics. He has money, sure, but time, under the banner of physics, makes the task impossible.

    • @ilinamorato
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      143 days ago

      “So make it rain and then we’ll talk about physics.”

    • @NeoNachtwaechter
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      173 days ago

      “Biology doesn’t allow it.”

      • “…what biology???”

      “I am biology.”

      • @Sequentialsilence
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        132 days ago

        It was not, the event organizers were not happy with that statement as we try to accommodate and had made all of the presentations up till that point go off without a hitch.

    • @RevolverSly
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      63 days ago

      So, how much you guys charged him for the layout change?

      • @Sequentialsilence
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        192 days ago

        We looked at our client, the event organizer, who was the one paying us, not the presenter. They were not happy with that statement.

        “They get what they get, don’t even bother moving the furniture.”

        Yes ma’am.

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    I’m a union organizer, so I got to see some truly golden moments. My favorite was during a campaign, we took over a Q&A session with a member of the C-suite present. In a previous meeting he tried to convince me of some bs, so I asked him directly “why did you lie to me?” during this take over. The look on his face was priceless, and it took him over a minute to respond pathetically with “I don’t appreciate being called a liar”

    • @insaneinthemembrane
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      433 days ago

      Can you tell us any more about the lie and the rest of the response? Sounds juicy

      • @rockSlayer
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        623 days ago

        Yea for sure! We were organizing around performance metrics, quotas, discipline, etc for quite a while. My work is in QA, where quotas are actually really bad for software development. We had been trying to get management to research and implement modern QA practices that would reduce/eliminate quotas, without much success. We also wanted progressive discipline with real guidance, because if you don’t meet metrics then the performance improvement plan (pip) was really just a do-or-die meet the metrics for 10 days or get fired.

        In the previous meeting, it wasn’t a take over but coworkers and I relentlessly asked about pips, metrics, etc. We were very clearly getting under their skin, to the point where he asked me how I felt pips should work. He was probably thinking I never planned that far ahead and would discredit myself, but I had done significant research on modern QA management techniques and gave an overview of my minimum for a 3 step pip. Right before he ended the meeting, he essentially “confirmed” that we do it exactly like that, no sword of Damocles or anything.

        Of course having done the legwork to actually talk to employees that had gone through the process, we knew that it was total horseshit. Just to be sure, we talked to a few more people to confirm that pips were still being used to cut people for cause instead of improving their metrics before planning the takeover. To open the meeting, I asked this to the COO:

        I’d like to preface my question by saying thank you for hosting these sessions again, and preemptively note that a lot of us are here to discuss PIPs. In the last Q&A session I attended, I was told by you that PIPs follow a progressive discipline model. However, we’re aware that most if not all employees that fail a PIP are terminated immediately, and multiple employees have been fired shortly after passing a PIP for failing to meet productivity expectations. Why did you lie to me?

        His face went beet red and you could see the anger build in his eyes. After about a minute, he responds with “I don’t appreciate being called a liar. You’re hostility isn’t welcome and I reject the question”. After that, you could cut the tension with a knife. I reiterated my question that pips don’t work the way he said they do, but he continued to refuse it until I moved on to the many other “hostile” questions I had.

        For the aftermath, he lied to us again in that meeting when someone uninvolved with the take over asked about remote work, and said there’s no plans to change anything for the foreseeable future, before RTO was announced a week later. There was another meeting about RTO with him that I attended, and he made a vague threat about “respectability” and ending the meeting if he felt disrespected after looking at the attendees. I wanted to ask a legit question over mic, and he ignored me until it was becoming obvious to others in the meeting. He stopped doing all q&a stuff after this for some reason.

        • @insaneinthemembrane
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          192 days ago

          Nice! Well done, very brave. Good on you for doing the research too, you couldn’t be easily slammed down.

        • @[email protected]
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          1 day ago

          I hear these isolated stories of bravery and no-BS defiance of corporate overlords, and for the longest time I’ve been thinking:

          How do we start an organization that could train people to handle these jerks like you did, and plant these newly educated, hardened, prepared badasses-like-you in every organization in the country? These C-suite pricks need to be made famous, treated to detailed records and long memories of their every lie and falsehood toward their workers.

          I’ve learned professional union agitators are called “salts” which sounds awesome, but their impact isn’t very well understood or recognized, I think.

    • Cyrus Draegur
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      162 days ago

      Well, I’m sure YOU didn’t appreciate him being a fucking liar either so i guess it’s even XD

  • @ultranaut
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    1203 days ago

    Super rich guy tried to pick up my then girlfriend at an industry event after party kind of thing. She was not impressed by any of his shit. The look of disappointment on his face after showing off his $250k watch still makes me smile all these years later.

    • LucasWaffyWaf
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      823 days ago

      I’m not even gonna lie, chief, if somebody shows me any kind of luxury fashion like that and boasts that it costs more money than I’ll ever see in my lifetime, I’m just gonna ask if it was worth the human suffering incurred in the making of these luxury goods.

      • partial_accumen
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        943 days ago

        There are apparently a surprisingly different levels of strata of “rich people”. The groups in the middle range are apparently the most desperate to appear to be in the higher ranges of rich people.

        So if someone comes up to you and brags about their $250k watch, you already know that they’re not in the “rich rich” group, and they desperately want you to think they are. So hit them where it hurts with a reply like: “Ahh, I understand now. You’re not really rich. People that actually are rich don’t tell others how much they paid for a watch. Maybe someday you’ll get to that level like really rich people. Until then, could you please leave me alone?”

        • @ChickenLadyLovesLife
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          183 days ago

          I had a boss years ago and I knew everything about his financial situation because he had hired me to trade S&P500 futures with/for him. He had about $20 million in stock, a beach house in South Carolina worth a couple million, and he owned a temp agency that paid him about $40,000 a month, so he was certainly rich by any normal human standards. But he had moved from San Francisco and was friends with a bunch of venture capital types who were all worth more than a couple of hundred million dollars, and it was obvious that his (relative) poverty absolutely burned him to his core. This was why he imagined that day-trading futures was going to be his key to the really big time - he could never see that the brokerages we dealt with were just scamming him.

        • Justin
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          363 days ago

          $10 millionaires don’t brag

          $100 millionaires brag about their “wealth”

          $1 billionaires brag about their “intelligence”

          • @[email protected]
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            22 days ago

            $1 billionaires brag about their “intelligence”

            They say “intelligence” to make you think “smarts” when it’s really “membership to a market manipulation and insider trading club.”

    • @[email protected]
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      3 days ago

      Is anyone into watches at the age when rich men try to pick them up? I could be easily impressed by a watch now (a personalised G-Shock $50-300, any diapason $500-2k, an enthusiastic watch geek explaining their Jaeger-Lecoultre…), but not part of the target demographic.

      • Noxy
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        122 days ago

        I have some lower-four-figure watches and am always way more impressed by someone with a Casio or non-grand Seiko, they clearly have more sense than me, and excellent taste on top

      • Zagorath
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        62 days ago

        Personally I’m more impressed by a $1k Garmin than a $250k Rolex or whatever.

        • @kalpol
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          52 days ago

          Ive been pretty impressed by this 20 year old knockoff Victorinox I have that cost like nineteen dollars originally and yet somehow keeps perfect time.

            • @[email protected]
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              Got excited enthusing about watches I thought are cool. Very long and deraily for the original topic. But in summary I think there’s a factor to the dance of advanced mechanics, so to say, and the deliberate absence of contemporary smart functions. A “soul”, if you will. Someone showing you their watch can be like them telling you their favourite Linux distro, it says a lot about a person, and just having one suggests they may be “my people”. 😅

              Though Rolexes are imho fugly often gaudy pieces that do have in-house movements but it clearly isn’t their main selling point. Please don’t use them as an example. I don’t know what the Linux equivalent would be, ChromeOS?

              • Zagorath
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                17 hours ago

                Oh damn, that’s a great comment! I’m glad you put it up, if only in summary form.

                Someone showing you their watch can be like them telling you their favourite Linux distro, it says a lot about a person

                Hahaha. Yeah absolutely. And indeed, that’s sort of what I was getting at with my earlier comment. I’m a runner and triathlete. I can geek out about someone’s Garmin and relate to that in a way I just don’t care about any other timepiece. That’s what my watch says about me, and I’m very conscious of it. It doesn’t feel like being a “watch person” so much as being an amateur athlete.

                I don’t know what the Linux equivalent would be

                Ubuntu. It’s 100% Ubuntu. Which, fwiw, is my Linux distro of choice. I like Linux, but I don’t care about it in a meaningful way. I can count on one hand the number of hours I’ve spent using a non-Debian based Linux distro (Android excluded, of course). Ubuntu, or some closely-related Debian-based distro, gets the job done. It lets me have the low level easy terminal access I don’t get on Windows and only kinda-sorta get on Mac, and any problem I have is exceptionally easy to Google because it’s what all the tutorials and questions are geared towards.

                As for not using Rolex, unfortunately for better or worse, they are the by-word for “fancy watch”. It’s the one brand everyone will have heard of and understand basically what it means.