Just think, if the federal government put in the money they are just giving to these big corporations that are trying to set up data centers, you would have revitalized towns without the negatives of the data centers. Government can fix the infrastructure as well.

That would be both Trump, Musk, Netanyahu, Putin, and others. Altman isn't QUITE at their level, but is up there.

Those who don't know the history are not doing a fair analysis of the problems going on. The big problem is when there is an intentional distortion of events, and then you have the distortions being what gets put onto the news(traditional as well as online). You have certain groups that LIVE in a bubble where they know that most of the things they see are fake or misleading, and they LOVE the intentional distorting of reality. You see it all over, the "echo chamber" effect, and yes, that ends up being harmful when people embrace the distortions, because they don't like reality.

Then, you have the big social media companies that intentionally promote misleading content to try to manipulate people for various reasons. Social media by itself is not the problem, but the companies that are in control have set things up to encourage the distortion of these echo chambers and to then send it out, so you get distorted information that is now being amplified. That is where we have a problem. AI picks up on this as well to continue the cycle and makes it worse over time.

Now, when the GOVERNMENT(s) are pushing the distortions, that is when you get propaganda, and the companies that just do what government tells them to do. With freedom, it wouldn't be a problem, but we have a number of people who are being empowered to be dictators who get no push-back, and when the social media companies do what these dictators tell them to do(on threat of shutting down their business), again, propaganda is the result.

The harm to democracy is when people cave in to those who WANT to distort the message to favor what the dictators want, but again, it is because governments themselves are not pushing back against the trend of letting authoritarians gain greater levels of power. If you don't push back, the "never again" that was said so loudly after the end of World War II ends up being, "sure, we know what happened before, but we don't care that it is happening again". We MUST push back against the propaganda governments are pushing, and push back when they try to strong-arm the media into doing what government wants.

Some of that comes from the graphics capability as well, but even a quad-core CPU(e-cores don't count) isn't enough in the modern era, unless you are going for a special purpose Linux machine.

Many people buy CHEAP crap machines and then complain when they perform poorly. Before the Intel 12th generation, most of them went for dual-core i7 based laptops that they thought MUST be great at purchase because it was an i7. Then Intel released the 12th gen, and since then, you see many laptops with only two performance cores and 6+ efficiency cores, and then they still think the OS must be the problem and not the garbage CPU.

That's odd, my old Ryzen 5 4600H based laptop had no problem with 8GB of RAM and Windows 11. Your problem may have been the dual P-core Intel chip that you had as the CPU. Having only two performance cores makes many of these machines run like complete garbage when you do more than one thing at a time.

https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/...

I found this one for $700 on sale a few weeks ago. $10 for the WiFi 7 upgrade, $70 for the 512GB SSD upgrade. $500 for the CPU upgrade to 10 core Zen5 with 32GB RAM if you want to customize...factory order, so custom built.

Grindr crashes every time Republicans have a convention or gathering. Those who yell the loudest tend to be covering up for their own insecurities.

If someone is attracted to someone of the same sex or gender, but then are against LGBT+ because they don't want to admit who and/or what they are attracted to, then they don't deserve sympathy. Being against what you actually feel is a sign of someone who will cause problems in the long run.

The weekend of September 26th, not mid-July, so it is LATE in the year for this sort of thing to be happening. Sure, seeing sharks in July/August isn't unusual, but the end of September when the water temperatures are going down is a strange time for it, and seeing a storm bring them SWIMMING into flooded residential neighborhoods should be a wake-up call.

Sharks, fish, and dolphins move based on water temperatures and where prey is swimming. Unusually warm waters will bring in fish from further South. Air temperatures are also affecting the migration patterns of birds, which are not being talked about here(it's about hurricanes), but it's connected.

This is the end of September, not mid-summer, and when storms are able to allow ANY shark to swim into a residential neighborhood, that's not your typical thing. If this were July, sure, but the end of September, the waters SHOULD be cool enough this far north where sharks are nowhere to be seen. There have been more dolphin sightings in the summer months as well up off the coast of Long Island, NY than we have seen previously, again, it's due to the warmer water temperatures.

More fish that are more typically found off the coast of Southern states are being seen further North, and that's the thing, the water temperatures are higher, and if not for the things preventing tropical system formation, we would be seeing more storms that cause MASSIVE levels of damage.

Those who don't understand even the basics of a subject need to admit it and shut up until they learn something. The sand/dust off of Africa, combined with the shifting of the jet stream are the big reasons we have not seen organized tropical systems in the Atlantic this season, even while the ocean temperatures would normally cause whatever tropical systems to be more intense. The climate change deniers really should shut up at this point, because when even a small shark is seen in the floodwaters of a STREET in New Jersey after the nor'easter this past weekend, that should say that is strange enough stuff to make EVERYONE realize that things are changing, and not necessarily for the better.

These homeless shoppers are likely to get poached sooner rather than later. With the deep knowledge they build up of any given Walmart store's layout, they'd make good candidates to get hired into the store's online grocery pickup (OGP) department.

I don't know if HEB includes a tip, but I know that Walmart doesn't do tips. When I worked in the front end of a Walmart Supercenter six years ago, associates were trained to refuse tips, and if someone insists, to ring it up as a donation to whatever charity Walmart is collecting for at the time. Often that ends up being the nearest Children's Miracle Network hospital.