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MC Fresh Breath

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by MC Fresh Breath

  1. 1 hour ago, Rimbo said:

    Thing is, most gaming laptops don't have great-looking displays. They tend to be lower rez (1440p for something that size) and poorer color quality, but really fast refresh rates and updates. And it turns out, those are also the cheapest LCDs.

    You pay extra to get a high powered CPU, a discrete GPU, lots of storage space (games are space hungry), RAM. Everything else, you can cheap out on. So gaming stuff tends to be more expensive than budget, but still much cheaper than the high end good stuff.

    For lawyering, you don't need more than a budget computer. You aren't rendering 3D, you aren't doing digital creation, you aren't doing development.

    The only reason you pay more is to get that high end experience... the nice display, the quiet laptop, snappy UI response times, long battery life... only one of which you'd get from a ROG/Alienware etc.

    In short, the probability she's using that laptop for its intended purpose -- games -- is basically 1, minus maybe a few ten thousandths.

    Counter point:  Takes a lot of power to run a local AI lawyering bot.  CrapshootGPT requires some heavy processing power.

     

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  2. 1 hour ago, TheStoicPaisano said:

    Harsh, but fair.

     

    My Father is most likely going out the same way.  Luckily he only affects a small company in a small town, and I'm pretty sure he's been relegated to a busy work type position.  Edit:  come to think of it, I'm probably never retiring either.  But I'm aiming for friendly barista and/or liftie on the mountain.

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  3. Quote

     

    Donald J. Trump’s civil fraud trial over accusations that he inflated the value of his properties by billions of dollars could begin as soon as Monday after a New York appeals court rejected the former president’s attempt to delay it.

    The appeals court, in a terse two-page order Thursday, effectively turned aside for now a lawsuit Mr. Trump filed against the trial judge, Arthur F. Engoron. The lawsuit had sought to delay the trial, and ultimately throw out many of the accusations against the former president.

    Thursday’s ruling came two days after Justice Engoron issued an order that struck a major blow to Mr. Trump, finding him liable for having committed fraud by persistently overvaluing his assets and stripping him of control over his New York properties.

    Justice Engoron sided with the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who last year sued Mr. Trump, accusing him of inflating his net worth to obtain favorable loan terms from banks.

    Mr. Trump is not entirely out of options in blocking the trial from moving forward. He can still appeal Justice Engoron’s Tuesday order, but it is unclear whether the appeals court would consider that.

    A trial, the result of which would be decided by Justice Engoron, not a jury, would resolve other aspects of the case, most notably whether Mr. Trump and his company will face other punishments, including a financial penalty. Ms. James is seeking to recover $250 million in ill-gotten gains.

    In the lawsuit, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that Justice Engoron had ignored an earlier appeals court decision in June that raised the notion that some of the accusations against the former president might be too old to go to trial.

    But the appeals court on Thursday appeared unmoved by those arguments, and did not engage with them in its order other than to say they had been considered.

    A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Christopher M. Kise, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Tuesday, he called Justice Engoron’s ruling “outrageous” and “completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.” He said that the judge ignored “basic legal, accounting and business principles.”

    Mr. Trump has denied all wrongdoing. A Republican, the former president has accused the judge and the attorney general, both Democrats, of being politically motivated, and has called Justice Engoron “deranged” and Ms. James, who is Black, a racist.

    At the heart of Ms. James’s case is the accusation that Mr. Trump’s annual financial statements exaggerated his net worth by as much as $2.2 billion in some years. Mr. Trump, she said, submitted the statements to banks to obtain favorable loans.

    Mr. Kise, in turn, has argued that Mr. Trump could not have committed fraud because the banks made money off the loans and the former president never missed a payment.

    But lawyers from the attorney general’s office have countered that, under the powerful state law allowing them to bring the case, they did not need to show the fraud had resulted in any financial harm. Justice Engoron agreed in his Tuesday opinion, and sanctioned each of Mr. Trump’s lawyers $7,500 for continuing to advance arguments they had previously made.

    His order also left the future of Mr. Trump’s business in New York hanging in the balance.

     

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/nyregion/trump-fraud-judge-appeal.html

    Edit:  Also, in honor of this page number, a small break for a great tune:

     

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  4. Quote

    Sept 27 (Reuters) - Outgoing U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said on Wednesday he would take measures to protect his family after former President Donald Trump suggested he had colluded with China in an act he said would have once warranted death.

    Correct me if I'm wrong military folks, but isn't he technically the highest ranking Military officer?  Someone that high up in the military wants to protect himself from the minions of an ex-President.   And is probably correct in feeling that way.  Astounding.

     

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  5. glad the bump wasn't what I feared, yet.  Read this one the other day.

    Quote

     

    Jimmy Carter’s Final Chapter: Peanut Butter Ice Cream and His 99th Birthday
    Mr. Carter was already the longest-living president in American history, but his staying power even in hospice has captured the imagination of admirers around the world.

    By Peter Baker
    Peter Baker has covered the past five presidents and interviewed Jimmy Carter during his post-presidency.

    Sept. 21, 2023

    Maybe it’s the peanut butter ice cream he still enjoys. Or the fact that his first-place Atlanta Braves are cruising toward the playoffs and he wants to see another World Series. Or as many of his loved ones and former advisers suggest, maybe he is just too stubborn to follow anyone else’s timetable.

    Whatever the reason, seven months after entering hospice care, Jimmy Carter is still hanging on, thank you very much, and is in fact heading toward his 99th birthday in just over a week. While nearly everyone, including his family, assumed that the end was imminent when he gave up full-scale medical care last winter, the farmer-turned-president has once again defied expectations.

    “We thought at the beginning of this process that it was going to be in five or so days,” Jason Carter, his grandson, said in an interview, recalling the former president’s decision to check out of the hospital and go into hospice care at his home in Plains, Ga., last February. “I was down there with him in the hospital and then said goodbye. And then we thought it was going to be in that week that it was coming to the end. And it’s just now been seven months.”

    Mr. Carter was already the longest-living president in American history, but his staying power even in hospice has captured the imagination of many admirers around the world. It has generated an extended farewell, one that was unplanned yet remarkably affectionate for a president who was turned out of power by voters after a single term yet transformed his legacy with decades of service that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

    In the months since he returned to his small-town home to meet his final fate, the outpouring of remembrances has been heartening to his family and friends. Instead of a memorial service he could not attend, Mr. Carter has experienced a living eulogy, soaking up tributes from around the globe. Relatives and advisers say he is aware of what has been written and said, and is deeply grateful.

    “He’s got so much joy in seeing his presidency and post-presidency revisited,” said Paige Alexander, the chief executive of the Carter Center, the nonprofit institution that served as the base for his philanthropic work over the last four decades. “In many ways, that keeps him going — along with peanut butter ice cream.”

    Mr. Carter has withdrawn from the active life he led until not that long ago. The regular calls with Ms. Alexander are no longer so regular. What animated him for so long were not the ins and outs of the daily news but the projects he devoted his life to, like eradicating certain diseases from developing countries.

    “He wasn’t asking about politics or the economy,” Ms. Alexander recalled. “He just wanted to know what the Guinea worm count was.”

    While Mr. Carter has good days and bad days, he has not lost his perspicacity or his sometimes curmudgeonly sense of humor. Ms. Alexander recalled a telephone conversation over the summer when she mentioned his upcoming big day.

    “If I don’t talk to you before your birthday, happy birthday,” she recalled telling him.

    “I’m going to be 99,” he replied. “I’m not sure what’s so happy about that.”

    Nonetheless, the Carter family, both those who are blood relations and those who are part of his longtime circle, are planning various celebrations to mark his century-minus-one milestone on Oct. 1.

    The Carter Center is asking supporters to send pictures or videos that will be arranged in a digital mosaic. It collected 6,000 in the first three days, from celebrities like Martin Sheen and Jeff Daniels as well as everyday people from Africa and around the world. Peter Gabriel led an audience in a round of “Happy Birthday, Jimmy” at Madison Square Garden on Monday night.

    The next night, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation presented its lifetime achievement award to Mr. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, with Ms. Alexander collecting on their behalf. The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum will hold a naturalization swearing-in ceremony for new American citizens on his birthday. David Osborne, known as the “pianist to the presidents,” will perform at Mr. Carter’s Maranatha Baptist Church.

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    Mr. Carter was not suffering any particular ailment that prompted him to enter hospice care last February, according to people close to him, but was tired of being in and out of the hospital and wanted to spend his final days at home with Mrs. Carter. Hospice is defined as care for terminally ill patients when the priority is not to provide further treatment but to reduce pain and discomfort toward the end of life. It is meant for patients not expected to live more than six months.

    Perhaps it should have been no surprise that Mr. Carter would ignore that time frame. He has been defying death longer than anyone who ever served in the Oval Office. In 2015, he beat cancer that had spread to his brain. In 2019, he bounced back from several falls, including one that broke a hip. “He’s been faced with what he thought was the end multiple times,” Jason Carter said.

    He spends his days now in the house where he and Mrs. Carter have lived since 1961, a two-bedroom, one-story rambler so plain that The Washington Post once calculated that it was worth less than the Secret Service vehicles parked out front. His children and grandchildren take turns visiting with them, and he has a crew of caregivers but has not seen a doctor in more than six months. President Biden calls from time to time to check in.

    “It’s a day-to-day thing,” said Kim Fuller, his niece. The children sometimes read him news articles, and he catches Braves games on television. “They holler at the TV and do everything you do normally when you’re watching baseball,” Ms. Fuller said.

    Mr. Carter can no longer teach Sunday school at Maranatha as he did for so many years — the church’s website says almost optimistically that he will not be teaching “until further notice” — so Ms. Fuller has taken over.

    Her uncle watches her every Sunday on a live Facebook feed. At first, he would offer critiques. “He would let me know if I had said something that wasn’t quite the way it should be,” she said. “He doesn’t anymore. I kind of miss that. I would like for him to.”

     

    Mrs. Carter, the genteel former first lady who made promoting mental health a cause while in the White House, announced in May that she had dementia, and the two of them spend days together quietly, recently celebrating their 77th anniversary. “She’s very happy,” Jason Carter said. “She’s reminiscing and remembering some of the great times she’s had.” As Ms. Alexander put it, “They continue to offer us lessons in dignity and grace.”

    For Mrs. Carter’s 96th birthday last month, Ms. Fuller said she organized a butterfly release at the house. Ms. Fuller said her uncle was aware of his own upcoming birthday.

    “He wants to reach 99, I know that,” she said. “The last month has been different for him,” she added, but “I am just praying every day that he makes it to 99.”

    “It’s a bittersweet one,” she added. “We’ve all been on pins and needles since February. Every day’s a celebration.” But as her uncle has demonstrated time and again for nearly a century, no one will dictate to him. “He’s going to do exactly what he wants to do when he wants to do it.”

    For Mr. Carter, any birthday celebration will be marked at home, surrounded by family.

    “He’s really significantly limited physically and he is coming to the end, there’s no doubt about that,” Jason Carter said. “He is, I think, frustrated by that. But he is at home. He’s together with his wife. They’re in love. They’re at peace and you don’t get more from that. You certainly don’t get more than they got from this life. And the end is exactly how you would hope for it to be.”

     

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/21/us/politics/jimmy-carter-hospice.html?searchResultPosition=1

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  6. a bit more fun from NYT:

     

    Quote

     

    Justice Engoron’s decision narrows the issues that will be heard at trial, deciding that the core of Ms. James’s case was valid. It represents a major blow to Mr. Trump, whose lawyers had sought to persuade the judge to throw out many claims against the former president.

    In his order, Justice Engoron wrote scathingly about Mr. Trump’s defenses, saying that the former president and the other defendants, including his two adult sons and his company, ignored reality when it suited their business needs. “In defendants’ world,” he wrote, “rent-regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air.”

    “That is a fantasy world, not the real world,” he added.

    The judge also levied sanctions on Mr. Trump’s lawyers for making arguments that he previously rejected. He ordered each to pay $7,500, noting that he had previously warned them that the arguments in question bordered on being frivolous.

    Repeating them was “indefensible,” Justice Engoron wrote.

     

    Quote

     

    But Justice Engoron, with whom Mr. Trump’s lawyers have tangled at every turn, mocked those arguments.

    “The documents do not say what they say; that there is no such thing as ‘objective’ value,” the judge wrote, summarizing his take on their arguments, and adding, “Essentially, the court should not believe its own eyes.”

    In a footnote, he added a quote from the movie “Duck Soup” uttered by Chico Marx: “Well, who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

     

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/26/nyregion/trump-james-fraud-trial.html

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  7. 17 hours ago, Js1 said:

    It’s going to happen and they will, as usual, take the blame 

    Yeah, but they're trying already to cast it in a different light of course.

    Quote

    “I’m probably going to do a press release and name every one of them and say these five members voted with the Democrats to not fund our military, defense, and not give a pay raise to our military personnel,” said Representative Mike Simpson, Republican of Idaho and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/us/politics/pentagon-gop-bill.html

  8. In fairness to Skipper, he was answering me and I was derailing.   That broad swaths of this country have been persuaded that such things that he listed are 'extreme' is truly one of the major issues facing this country.  Not saying Skipper is the issue.  There are unfortunately tons who feel the same way.  Unlimited Pentagon budgets aren't extreme.  Proliferation of billionaires while the income gaps increase broadly not extreme.  Climate change not extreme. Crap, I'm derailing again, sorry.

    To get back to Biden--I do think his age is a concern.  Not a 'oh my, I don't want to vote for him' because the alternative is flat out nazism.  But as McConnell has shown, you can be fine one day (totally evil but obviously quite cogent) and then drop off the next.  To me, that's concerning.  Not concerning enough to give the Executive Branch over to the loony bin, but still troubling to me. 

    Barring an Eagleton moment VP choices don't matter in elections.  Well, maybe Palin damaged McCain but Obama was going to win that one either way imo.

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  9. On 9/15/2023 at 3:43 PM, Skipper said:

    Yeah, I forget what forum I type on sometimes then I read the responses.  AOC isn't progressive, the economy isn't a concern and Kamala is a high profile VP.  Sure Jan.  

     

    No reason to be a dick.  I took issue with your characterization of 'extreme.'   I would again ask which of her ideas are extreme, but it should be another thread really.

    Quote


    As a non "liberal" but democrat voter



    Ah, well there you have it.  Perhaps you do view anything remotely progressive as 'extreme.' Has Biden enacted 'extreme' policies in your view? 

  10. 1 hour ago, G650 said:

    Hey, all good man. Free country and whatnot. Personally, I rarely go to dinner without a sports jacket because I'm not a 14 year old, but that is just my perspective.

    I have a construction company myself, so my daily is pants and a shirt to my chagrin.

     

    53 and between Austin and now Bend I can't remember the last time I needed a sport jacket.  Yay, I"M STILL YOUNG THEN!  WOOOO

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  11. 1 hour ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

    Texas is a lost cause.  Those that can should get the fuck out.

    I always have very mixed feelings reading the threads on Texas politics (and the blast furnace thread).  Surly is one of the main ways I 'keep in touch' with it all.  On the one hand there is the relief and the reinforcement of 'man did we do the right thing getting out,' even if my primary reason was beautiful nature and a better climate for me, not necessarily politics at the time.   On the other hand I still have so many friends and family back in Texas.  Some of whom really and truly want to get out but can't find a way to afford that move either finanically or emotionally.  Others who want to fight the good fight, damn the odds.  And while I don't know most Surly folks in person, I have been entertained and educated by so many that I root for them to continue to have the best they can in life.  So that other side of the relief for me getting out is just pure sadness for those who are left.   Sadness and anger that this system and the assholes who wield it are beating those folks down.  

     

     

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  12. 1 hour ago, Skipper said:

    They may just throw their hands up and not vote all together with the thought of a extreme progressive like AOC becoming president if Biden dies or becomes incapacitated. 

    lulz at 'extreme progressive.'  like really.  just goes to show what i've said in another thread.  i don't want to really get into it and derail here, but maybe it's worth doing some self-refelction and historical study on why you think that's the case.

    but yeah, changing up the ticket would be seen as a sign of weakness and indeciveness, sure.

  13. 7 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Pol Pot's agrarian collectivist dream would like a word with you.

    Authoritarianism isn't just a right wing affliction.  Granted, the versions popping up in OUR orbit these days all are, but some of us are old enough to remember "the dictatorship of the proletariat" bullshit.

    Yeah, I was conflating some things there, but admittedly badly made point is that there is no real threat anywhere of some kind of leftist dictatorship in this country.   Not only that, but we've so skewed the ideas of left and right over these past 20 years that even things that seem relatively common sense are only opposed due to the corporate brainwashing from our real overlords.  Anything deemed remotely progressive has to be 'kept in check' and it seems we're pretty good at doing that.

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  14. It would really suck to be under a leftist cult of universal health care, women's rights, proper taxation on billionaires, and moves to reduce man's impact on climate change.  Then again, free college is also probably a looney left idea.   I keep waiting for one of those 'crazy leftist' ideas that actually makes me say 'nope, sounds bad.'  

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