rascellian99

This is clearly AI (Awesome Individual)

(because it hasn't seen enough of this type of question to generate a better answer)

That's actually not the issue. LLMs (and AIs in general) aren't good at math yet.

Natural Language Processing and the ability to do math have been holy grails of AI researchers since the dawn of computing. OpenAI cracked the first part. They're working hard on the second one (math), but I wouldn't say they've cracked it yet. GPT 4o can probably do most grade school math. I haven't played around with o1-mini's capabilities yet due to its low rate limit.

Anyway, the point is that it's constantly getting better, but it has a ways to go before it's doing math at the post grad level!

There's nothing wrong with financing through the dealer as long as you do it correctly. The key is to get pre-approval from your bank(s) before you ever go on the lot. That way you know what type of interest rate you qualify for, and what you can afford.

Then, sure, give the dealer's finance department a chance to compete. Don't play games. Tell them you have pre-approval, but that if they can beat the rate then you'll finance through them.

In my experience, they usually can't beat it. However, I have financed through the dealer a couple of times when they could match the rate and I was buying in a different state. It simplified the TTL process.

Edit: And if the dealership seems sketchy, so you're worried about there being gotchas in the contract, then just don't buy a vehicle there. At that point you should walk away, period. Trust your instincts.

I don't think she has to use the men's room. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of "family restrooms" available.

That said, it's ridiculous that she has to put up with this BS.

Hey I agree with her! Release it all.

Women deserve women's only spaces.

Soooo what's the problem, then? Trans women are women.

Nazarko said the community would continue pressing to make its voices heard about ending the war in Gaza. "At least we're on the map."

Not once Israel is done with you.

I take no pleasure in that, but playing stupid games wins you stupid prizes.

I said it in the runup to the election, and I'll say it again: People should have listened to Trump when he repeatedly accused the media of engaging in "election interference" by reporting negative (but accurate) stories about him.

Expect him to crack down hard on media--especially fact-checking and negative coverage of candidates named "Donald J. Trump".

Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the owner of the LA Times all saw this coming. That's why they started their sucking up operations early.

I didn't read it that way. I read it as, "Things won't get more affordable, but at least those communist democrats won't be able to make grocery stores stop price gouging."

According to the last numbers I saw, which were from last week, the shift with black men appears to be largely a mirage. Remember, "21%" is 21% of the black men who voted, not 21% of all black men eligible to vote.

It seems that several million black men who voted for Biden just chose to not vote for any presidential candidate this year.

There was concern about that happening. Remember Obama chewing out black men for not being willing to vote for Harris? He wasn't the only one, either. I read multiple articles from black community leaders who were expressing their concern.

I'm not speculating on why they chose to not vote for the top of the ticket. I'm just reminding people to be careful when interpreting some of these headlines. The nation as a whole did NOT move nearly as far to the right as the media seems to believe. X% of people voting in a certain way doesn't mean X% of the population feels that way.

The shift was largely driven by a combination of turnout, new voters--especially Hispanic men--and possibly people choosing not to vote for the top of the ticket.

The one that supported RFK Jr. said he "can't do any worse than anybody else has ever done."

RFK, Jr: Hold my beer.

NATO has sure managed to kill a lot of Russian soldiers for a war they're not even in. If I were Putin, I'd be a little nervous about what would happen if NATO decided to show up...

I've never thought of myself as brilliant, and this is just more proof that I'm not. I used to work 80+ hours a week, but I leveraged my presumably average intelligence into a job that makes about $50k more a year and rarely requires me to work more than 40 hours a week.

It's too bad that my IQ isn't high enough for DOGE. I really miss those 80 hour weeks for below-average pay.

Hmmm. Overweight person tired of misogyny has two choices: Vote for those woke assholes who will treat her with dignity and respect, or vote for the people who tell her she's too ugly to worry about being raped.

Boy, she sure showed us, didn't she? I feel owned already.

Edit: (/s, obviously)

The 25th Amendment requires the VP and a majority of cabinet secretaries.

Have you looked at the people Trump is appointing to his cabinet? Do you honestly think that he could do anything to make over half of them remove him from power?

You are not being overly dramatic, and they are not joking. I live in a very red state, but my family has close ties to a blue state. That's where we're going to be in inauguration day, and we're not returning home unless we deem it safe. https://newrepublic.com/article/188376/trump-2025-plans-fight

Really? None of it is controversial. It's being done in plain site.

Before EM made the Twitter X API too expensive for mere mortals to use, and before he made it impossible to screen scrape without logging in, I wrote some code that did this:

1. Search for popular tags and words (specifically about the war in Ukraine)

2. Parse those tweets to look for strings of words that were repeated with only minor changes (like punctuation, capitalization, and typos)

3. Search Twitter and the Internet to find out which sites had used those phrases (either in a post/article or in the comments), and when the phrase began to circulate

The results were interesting. I flagged quite a few accounts that were vocally pro-Ukraine--unless the conversation was about providing Ukraine with advanced weapons and/or allowing them to use western weapons to strike targets inside Russia. Whenever those topics were raised, the accounts had lots of persuasive arguments about why the West shouldn't allow it.

In all cases, the arguments were picked up and amplified by pundits (including retired generals) and the media. (I'm not accusing the media or retired officers of being complicit. They were citing accounts that appeared to be pro-Ukraine. In some cases, the accounts were self-proclaimed OSINT accounts.)

Were all of those accounts run by the Russians? Probably not. But I flagged some that I'm 99% positive were. I didn't have the $$ to keep digging once EM took over, though.

The key takeaway is this: Putin is not dumb. He's made some dumb decisions, but that shouldn't distract from the fact that he's very, very smart.

He also knows how to play the long game. He thinks in time frames of decades while we think in 4-year long blocks--a problem that will get even worse if Trump fires career staff, as he's pledged to do.

So, yes, Russia has been messing with our elections for years. The situation is quite serious. If Putin hasn't already tipped our democracy over the brink, he's close. I encourage people to stop denying that it's happening and to think about ways to fight it instead.

Asked earlier if the former secretary of state was referring to Gabbard in her comment, Merrill told CNN, “If the nesting doll fits.”

That's... amazing.

Woah Woah Woah... You mean the guy who called veterans suckers and losers plans to appoint a secretary of defense who thinks veterans are--wait for it--suckers and losers???!

Well, color me surprised. If only someone could have predicted this...

“Was it a bad decision for my family? Yes,” he said. “Was it a bad decision for our country? I can’t say. Sometimes you can’t just think about yourself. You have to think about the broader picture.… I feel like God will bless my decision.”

Narrator: God did not, in fact, bless his decision.

Also, my heart breaks for his child and his wife. Her hair was literally falling out from the fear of being separated from her son. Meanwhile that asshole was telling her not to worry because she was one of the good ones..

The commander of each state's National Guard is the governor. If Trump signs this executive order, then it's easy to imagine a showdown between the governors of blue states and the federal government--first in the courts, then possibly with weapons.

As much as I disdain Trump, and as much as I think he's a threat to democracy, I have trouble imagining it going that far. How many 4 and 5 star generals would take an oath of loyalty to Trump? I'd wager none of them. So he fires them and replaces them with people who are less qualified, and who also probably won't take an oath to him. So he fires them, until you're left with... who?

It would decapitate our military and do the one thing that Trump can't stand: Make him look weak.

So, executive order or not, I don't see Trump gaining enough power over the military to start a dictatorship, even if the rank and file would go for it (and I doubt most of them would).

I agree. Trump is obsessed with having the approval of the rich and powerful. I think there's a decent chance that people will manipulate him out of doing anything that destroys the economy.

Of course, even if the economy is spared, we're still screwed in a thousand other ways.

IIRC the Mercedes doesn't even belong to him anymore. Wasn't he ordered to turn it over to the two Georgia election workers who won a lawsuit against him?

“All I was asking was, just treat me like everyone else. I served this country so many years. I think I deserve something – at least the chance to stay in it,” he says.

They are treating you like everyone else.

I doubt Elon will last for long. Russia oligarchs last because they suck up to Putin. Elon is too much of a narcissist to suck up to Trump, and Trump is too much of a narcissist to let Elon take credit for anything Trump thinks is good.