That first $1,200 check was obviously based on gross income from US federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr, for 40 hours a week, for a month: $1,160

What is this $600 amount based on?

Vormithrax is basically the Lobos of Cataclysm. He plays the game with challenges that'd make it impossible for other people to survive even for a few minutes.

While his challenge runs are stunning, it is annoying that there *is* a meta.

In each, "normally I'd ___ but I can't do it so easily now, so ___"

What usually happens is someone watches a Cataclysm video, gets it, and then dies.

Then dies and dies and dies, having tons of fun in the process.

And then they learn the meta.

Grind slings to level crafting, search bushes to level survival. Make a knife spear. Stop making a knife spear, they nerfed it.

And before you know it, every game starts the same way. Like a video game, not an apocalypse simulator, or a story generator.

An interesting take on zombies would be a virally mediated analgesia.

This kind of zombie plague has already happened before. Leprosy-induced neuropathy has been a thing for all of human history.

You'd just need to improve upon it.

Imagine getting a terrible flu, and after a high fever, discovering you can no longer perceive pain.

Imagine 30% of a population acquiring analgesia.

There's a reason people born with congenital analgesia don't often survive childhood, and why leprosy is so lethal.

Such an analgesia plague would hit poor people the hardest.

Restaurant workers scalding their forearms down to the muscle, warehouse workers not noticing they've crushed toes, etc

Hospitals would fill with people who'd suffered minor injuries of all kinds that'd gotten infected.

Or people who'd let illnesses go ignored until far too late.

Here's an interesting ncbi article on rage:

One of the claims argued, is that frustration triggers rage.

Either frustration from behaviour not producing expected outcomes, or frustration from someone not doing what one asks.

And, you can experimentally trigger rage by frustrating people sufficiently.

Get someone to do something in order to get a reward. Suddenly stop rewarding them for that. Bam, frustration and then rage.

Alternatively, pair your test subjects, ask them to cooperate to accomplish a task, and have your inside guy not listen.

Bam, frustration and then rage.

The thwarting of expectations is the common theme. Thwart someone's expectations, violate their model of how things work, and you frustrate them.

Keep at it, and you enrage them.

It's odd that 2020 is almost over and I've not seen one person the whole year go viral for using astrology to predict how shit a year it would be this time last year.

Not one post from november or december last year going "the stars say pandemic, lockdown, unemployment, your parents will die." Etc

It's been a whole year. One person would have gone viral for having a post this time last december saying their astrologer predicted basically *any* part of this year

At the same time: remember the sheer joy of thinking he was dying? Billions of people eagerly urging that to materialize? Wishing all the negative energy you could possibly want on one man?

Kinda disproves that whole thing, huh.

2020: the year woo failed, entirely.

Not even preppers got out of it. They were the first people to start proudly coughing in each other's mouths to own the libs upon their fantasized biological disaster finally occurring.

I'm watching the City of Austin press conference:

Judge Andy Brown says today's ice storm made roads incredibly dangerous, so please stay home if possible.

.@austinenergy : we are starting to get more power and are prioritizing turning on the power for people who have been without power the longest. if we can sustain this level, we can do true rotating blackouts

.@austinenergy : we have crews out in the community trying to fix things, but they are having people screaming at them and throwing things at them. Jacquie Sargent asks that people let them do their jobs and not harass them.

.@AustinWater : we ask that you DO NOT drip your faucets, stop using laundry machines, dishwashers, and if you know how to take care of a burst pipe please do.

City Manager Spencer Cronk: We know this is frustrating and I'm sorry this is happening. We have shelters open.

(Here is a list of the various shelters, some are for warming, some are for staying the

1. SolarWinds - an IT monitoring company with the NSA, all five military branches of the Pentagon, and several major civilian agencies, had their software hacked by the Russian hacker group Cozy Bear yesterday, the same group responsible for the 2016 DNC hack.

2. SolarWinds uses a protocol called Orion Improvement Protocol (I believe this is a wrapper for RMON and SNMP calls), and this protocol was hacked at Treasury and NTIA, the National Telecommunication advisor agency.

3. As a veteran of hacking forensics, I always look at modus operandi by malicious groups and at human factor compromises as the first investigative avenues to pursue. My research partner Jen Moore discovered Pavel Yershov lead the 2016 attack for GRU also worked for Microsoft.

4. Interesting that Warren Flood also works for Microsoft Pro Services, and he was intimately involved in the 2016 DNC Microsoft GRU "Hack". Flood and his wife were instrumental in the Dominion Voting Machine purchases in Wayne County, Michigan and the State of Georgia,

5. Even more interesting that Warren Flood has worked for a long time for Joe Biden as has his wife.

Riley J. Williams is charged in the Capitol riot.
She allegedly stole a computer from @SpeakerPelosi’s office, & now @FBI is investigating a tip that she intended to send the computer to a friend in Russia who’d sell it to Russian intelligence.
Williams appears to have “fled”.

From the affidavit against her: Riley Williams’ former romantic partner called the FBI several times in the days following the riots to report that they had seen her in videos inside the Capitol, but friends of Williams had shown the tipster a video of Williams taking a laptop...

... computer or hard drive from Speaker Pelosi’s office. The witness told the FBI that “WILLIAMS intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service...”

“... but that the transfer of the computer device to Russia fell through for unknown reasons and Williams still has the computer device or destroyed it. “This matter remains under investigation.”

Williams has appeared to have fled, she packed a bag & did not tell her mother where she was going but said she would be gone for a couple of weeks. She has changed her telephone number & deleted what are believed to have been her social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram...

Last week, @CleCityCouncil started reviewing Mayor Frank Jackson’s proposed city budget for 2021. There was robust discussion, and Documenters were there to cover it. Here’s a thread of what we learned last week about the #CLEBudget

First, it helps to know where we are in the budget process. From today through Feb. 24, the council will meet about the General Fund budget. The council will then agree on a budget with their changes (if any); 15 days after doing so, they can vote to make the budget official.

In other words, there’s still time to use your voice! The #refundcleveland tool can help. Create the #CLEBudget you want and send it to your council member. Click “Change the Budget” on the homepage and follow the on-screen instructions from there.

Want to know the budget basics? Our #CLEBudget primer details the timeline, different types of budgets and the funds involved, and defines budget-related terms. It can be a helpful guide during City Council’s discussions.

And don’t forget: all these meetings are livestreamed on City Council’s YouTube channel. They’re slated to start at 9 a.m. every business day from today through the 24th. You can also follow along with #CLEDocumenters live-tweet threads and

A thread on... where we are as Americans.

Since I was a kid, I've been a 'news junkie'. Read both local newspapers every day, all the newsmagazines, and watched every local & national newscast. I even wrote & voiced a national financial news broadcast for several years.

1/

Even after I left broadcasting, I continued to consume all the news within reach. Religiously watching all the Sunday shows, writing letters to the editor, and plowing into Social Media- when it first started! I even watched all the late-nite comics for their witty snark.

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Now, for the first time in my life, I don't. I keep up with events, and still read voraciously, but I just can't watch or read the majority of the corporate news. Because most of it ISN'T news anymore, but a sad self-parody akin to the 1976 Movie 'Network'.

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Paddy Chayefsky wrote a scathing satire of a news network so consumed with ratings that it eschewed journalistic ethics in favor of sensationalism and pushing narrow corporate and political interests. That sadly, is no longer parody.

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The line between 'hard news' and opinion was erased at most outlets long ago. We no longer talk of 'objectivity' or hearing both sides'. People refer to most (formerly) 'hard news' outlets by their ideological slant, and the agenda they push.

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