Screwball

5 hours ago, romad1 said:

Nerf in a professional office initializes the workforce.   

You're fired.

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

I have a second thought take on this as well.

I had to sit through a sales training course once with my fortune 100 (pretty close to living purgatory for an engineer!). So our sales system consultant trainer is trying to set us up for a role play exercise and he starts hammering on the idea that you always have to get one more thing on the deal - so he tells us an anecdote about going out to buy a car for his daughter and from his description he's got a great deal on the table and he decides now he wants a set of floor mats thrown in. The car guy finally balks at that and our guy walks out on the deal. That's supposed to be our model - walk out on a great deal because they have to give you more no matter what.

So we get to the role play and the topic in the groups was 100% "this guy is an idiot!" but that's the way people the sales world often think (think "Glengary Glenross"!). That's the world Trump comes from. Shoot yourself in the foot for your ego.

Large corporate entity doing stupid things - no - never.

We got a new director of our division of a fortune 100. One of his things was to bring Nerf balls to staff meetings. If someone said something stupid or wrong, we were suppose to throw the Nerf balls at them. I wanted to bring a ball made out of something hard, real hard. Most needed a ball banged up side their head, especially the idiot who thought up this stupid idea.

1 hour ago, Deleterious said:

I 100% forgot that was on and missed it.  Great finish.  

It is nothing like it used to be when a hundred cars were trying to get in. 33 most years now. I don't know half the drivers or where they came from. But the race was great, and the finish was spectacular. Talk about some nads...

There is a race the night before at Anderson Speedway in Indiana. The Little 500 it's called. 33 sprint cars on a 1/4 mile track for 500 laps. Wild race. Normally I can watch it be couldn't this year unless you paid. A guy named Cody Swanson won. This guy flat out dominates sprint car asphalt. Never been in the Indy - that is a travesty.

I think it was Johnny Rutherford who said something like: there are more car salesman at Indy than there are race car drivers.  He might be right, and that's why the field is the way it is - minus guys like Swanson.

Somehow, given the weather we have had in the Midwest, they got the Indy completed. Little rain delay, but what a race. Was a great show all day. Great finish too. Neat video below;

I'm old, and I don't understand how this **** still goes on. WTF are we doing?

We know of the Epstein class, and that's only part of the grand perversion that's been going on for how long? We can name names. Nothing - ever - happens. Other than a sacrificial sucker every once in a while. 

How can Maxwell be convicted and sitting in jail for trafficking humans and the perps walk the street????? Come on! Then there is this news from Ohio. On a much smaller scale with who knows how many more victims. Who knows how widespread this is. 

It should be easier on the smaller level to rat these people out. They are not rich celebrities with power and influence. I really don't get it. This one hits close to home. I know a guy on that list. He was a classmate of one of my sons. We were shocked to hear it. Came from a good family. Something went wrong somewhere.

I honestly don't know what to think of the world we live in today. We have lost our way.

No! Tell us this isn't so. With markets at all time highs no less.

Nation’s largest public pension fund plagued by secrecy and underperformance, probe finds - Bubblevision

Quote

 

• The fund’s returns placed it in the bottom 15% of all 230 U.S. public pension funds for five- and 10-year periods.

• Some 9% of the pension’s assets are in aging private equity partnerships, known as zombie funds, that are having difficulty selling the companies they have invested in. These funds are “consuming management fees but producing little or no return for investors.”

• The fund’s staffers receive “excessive compensation” despite its dismal performance. Four executives make more than $1 million a year, another four more than $900,000 and 26 earn between $500,000 and $900,000.

 

There is never only one cockroach. This fund has been a swindle for years.

Quote

 

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.

Warren Buffett

 

And we are at high tide. 

24 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

yup - if a guy comes in with the objective of carrying an agenda for the guy that sent him and the other 11 don't agree with him, it's going to make policy formulation even more a mess than usual. If he acts as a team player with the rest of the them he risks ending up under indictment like his predecessor.

Nobody's going in there expecting to carry out an agenda for some dip**** president, Trump, or any other before him. That's not how it works. Don't be silly.

I just picked this as a random article. Doesn't matter who you get it from the story is pretty much the same. What a sick ****ing world we live in, and these people are pikers compared to the Epstein class who runs the world.

122 people arrested in Ohio human trafficking crackdown: "Operation Spring Cleaning"

Don't know why this doesn't get more national news. But I guess the perverts all know the other perverts.

As a parent...

Warsh is one vote. The FOMC has 12 people so it ain't up to him.

What he said or how he voted in the past doesn't mean ****. They are all a bunch of puppets for the pigmen banks who run the world - same bunch underwriting the Space X IPO. Neel Kashkari - of all ****ing people - is a voting member of the FOMC. Might has well have Jim Cramer or Paul Krugman.

As much as these highly educated financial wizards think they can control their mandates - which has already been proven an utter failure - the "market" does what it does. The "market" is "we the people." You can only fudge numbers and bull**** for so long - then reality sets in.

These people are not going to fix ****, shouldn't be trusted, or listened to. 

And wait until we get to bail out the banks again.

4 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

The US AI industry is racing to build a StutzBearcat, the Chinese are trying to build a Model T. Which do you think will still be standing when the market shakes out.

That's because we are so ****ed up we couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the directions were on the bottom.

2 hours ago, Deleterious said:

It gets worse.

The article says some of this is probably not legal and will certainly be challenged in court. Three pension funds have already sent letters to SpaceX protesting some of these rules.  Probably an attempt to fix things without expensive litigation.  

SpaceX IPO: Musk Controls 85.1% Voting Power, Shareholders Waive Jury Trials and Class Actions

 

I hope it pukes on IPO day, but it won't. What a ****ed up mess. The pigmen will make money so it's all good. We are playing in the secondary market anyway.

In other news, this pertains to NVDA. Stock isn't doing much today after the earnings report last night. This may be part of the reason why.

Nvidia says it has ‘largely conceded’ China’s AI chip market to Huawei

Also, market related. The bellwether WMT reported this morning. Not so good. Stock down around %8.

51 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Some rules were changed/tweaked.

SpaceX to IPO on Nasdaq after index rules adjusted - reports

 

Oh my! I'm sorry I asked. The pigmen are happy once again. This is nuts. 

From my Debbie downer side, these IPO's are chasing the bubble before it blows the **** up.

For those who don't follow, from Investopedia a primer on stock float;

Understanding a Company's Float: Key Facts for Investors

Float's only a part of this but helps understand. There is all kind of stuff going on here. Once again, proud of the pigmen; the swine crook swindlers and criminals they are. But hey, they run the world. It's good to be the king.

Then I had to look. The question - who is the bank behind this?

Quote

 

The full roster of banks managing the public offering includes:

• Lead-left underwriter: Goldman Sachs
• Lead underwriters / Syndicate: Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase [1, 2, 3, 4]

 

4 hours ago, Deleterious said:

 

After hours chart porn is pretty uneventful. I don't know what that means.

In related market news, and I'm not following like I used to, but the Space X stuff - from NBC;

SpaceX confirms plans for an IPO that could make Elon Musk a trillionaire

FTA:

Quote

SpaceX’s IPO is expected to draw wide investor interest because of the company’s success in rockets and satellite-based internet — two areas where SpaceX has a wide lead over potential competitors. The IPO is expected to take place next month after a marketing period in which Musk can try to drum up further interest in the company’s stock.

Next month? Doesn't an IPO of this size take longer than that? Who's the bank? Like I said, I don't follow the casino much other than to look at the chart porn. Has this been going on for a while?

Related; NVDA reports earnings tomorrow after the bell.

13 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

This one makes me wonder:  AI can find and generate attacks on an IT system faster that a hacker can - so inevitably our IT security systems are going to be turned over AI defense bots. So that sounds like Even Steven right. But then some malicious young mind that happens to be *creative* finds a hack that no-one ever thought of before, and exactly as you note, since no-one ever thought of it before AI cannot think of it at all, so in effect, these system will be exactly vulnerable to *human* attack. Thus the current big push for Agentic AI, where at least one of the idea/hope/aspirations is actually to reach credible synthetic 'thinking' ability. It would be a hoot if they achieve without ever even understanding what it is a human brain.

The best way to secure your network is to hire a security expert that was a hacker.

***

I can't think of too many good things about the AI revolution. It's not good for schools (I was a professor), it's not good for the manufacturing / design world (I was an engineer), and it's not good for our energy grid and the resources needed to cool it.

For society as a whole to grow and flourish, you need energy. Building huge data centers that consume massive amounts of energy, along with massive amounts of water is a disservice and huge misallocation of investment capital to the public at large. Once built, they don't employ enough people to make much difference, but they still eat the energy and water. We the people don't benefit.

Already stories out there about data centers making people lives miserable who live close by. Higher bills, water problems, noise, etc. I talked to a guy who works for a concrete company working on a data center in mid-Ohio that need 8 trucks with generator's running 24/7 to power the damn thing. They would also need to be re-fueled on a regular basis. Probably has online power to and electric company that can't supply enough. What exactly, is so good about this? Who does it benefit? And for what?

So we can ask it how to fix our car, or write some code? And hope it's right? Plenty of stories about that too, and not all have happy endings. 

I remember when renewable energy was the thing. First thing that was said is we need to improve our infrastructure. Without a doubt. Our power grid needs a massive upgrade for EV's, charging stations, wind farms, solar farms, hydro or nuclear. Massive upgrades. Add in cryto mining that uses the power of small countries/cities...Now the AI craze... Good ****ing luck with all that.

There is a local company here who runs electric lines all over the state. Huge money. It's all for data centers according to the warehouse manager I talk to at the local **** hole bar. They are working for the electric companies like AEP. This might be the only good thing about this - new and improved transmission and distribution lines that may eventually do some good other than feed the AI data center hunger when they turn into the failure they are destined to be. We'll see I guess.

Of note; I have tracked my electric bill for about 5 years. AEP Ohio is the supplier, but I shop for my electric rates. AEP has 3 charges; transmission, distribution, and customer charge. The customer charge has been $10.00 a month as long as I remember. Last month, it went to $13.50. I wonder why?

6 hours ago, oblong said:

There's going to be a backlash I think against AI.  We cannot predict the future.  Regarding the doom and gloom... if everybody's replaced by AI then who will the customers be?

We were all given AI objectives this year and we laugh at it.  Maybe off the cliff but we see the holes already in trying to implement it in our work.    Then it becomes "Well, just call this AI to check the box".

Using in place of something like google has been fantastic.  It absolutely helps me do my job faster but it does not replace what I do.  I'm not special. Just a hack grinding away.

7 years ago I spent 3 months on something because autonomous vehicles was the way forward.

 

I'm in total agreement, but let's take it a step further.

I think many who pay enough attention know the downside to this AI craze, including the massive market bubble, but many many others don't. They think it is the next best thing, the latest and greatest, and it will make our lives better. Look what we can do now, think what we will be able to as time goes on. They have a point. But...

Where the computer world really changed things was time. They took math, therefore physics, and turned them into zero's and ones. IPS they call it - instructions per seconds. The rest is history. A football size room full of drafting boards using pencil, paper, a mechanical arm, and a slide rule used to design our cars, homes, bridges, airplanes, and the NASA crafts.

The binary number system was the Oscar winner when it came to computers. But this AI stuff isn't the same thing. The internet has been a huge step forward for everyone, without a doubt, but it comes with a price. Usually jobs, because that's how things work. Zero's and ones gave us computers, CAD systems, CNC machines, and robots - the physical AI that can do manual labor (and a whole bunch of other things - like being armed). It always starts with the blue collar workers, then the white collar. Physical jobs, then mental jobs. Indirect labor they call us.

This will be no different, except if this isn't all it's cracked up to be, and I don't think it is; the damages might be very bad. Company commits to AI, fires people because AI will do their job. Doesn't work, can't hire anyone back. Then what? And everything is all ****ed up because of bad decisions like this. In the quadrant lesson on efficient production from an Edward Deming class they are in the state of chaos. Don't know how to get out.

And AI won't work, because it can't.

We are teaching it, not the other way around. It can't know what I know because it didn't do what I did for 40 plus years. Doesn't matter the job. There are things we know because we know. I can't explain that, but it's true. We have a hard enough time teaching humans how to do their job FFS.

We are training these bots, their fine print tells us that. It's the only way it can work. This is all fool's gold.

Still reminds me of crazy Teddie the Uni*omber. He was a Luddite. For those who like to read, long article from April 2000 by a guy named Bill Joy, chief scientist of Sun Microsystems and Java language expert.

Why the future doesn't need us - Wired magazine

30 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

My niece graduated from law school this past weekend.  The commencement speaker mentioned AI a few times and was booed loudly each time.

Good.

Here in the hated land of Ohio, they have put together a commission to study this. Might be the second group. I don't know where that will go. There is also a movement to stop them if too big. 

Ohio lawmakers create bipartisan committee to get 'accurate, relevant' info on data centers - statehouse news bureau

FTA;

Quote

An effort to put a constitutional amendment to ban data centers that use more than 25 megawatts monthly before Ohio voters in November continues. The deadline for the volunteer groups working on that petition drive is July 1, and they need 413,487 valid signatures from half of Ohio's 88 counties.

We'll see where that goes.

One of the problems, as usual, so many don't understand what the ramifications are. A local guys who covers news ran an article on FB a few weeks ago about the data centers. He is all for them and thinks they are the future. Someone chimed in about the "bad" parts of this and some went ape-****.

How dare someone talk about not wanting this. One guy was told; you just posted on FB. How do you think you could do that without this stuff? Look at all the pictures on FB - we wouldn't have that without this. What the hell is wrong with you?

OK. Dude, this stuff was here long before these data centers and AI, just so you know.

I have no doubt if there is a way to **** this all up they will find a way to do it. 

Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI - Fortune

What could possibly go wrong?

29 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I never heard that expression until I just saw it over and over again in a book recently: "The River" by Peter Heller.  Excellent book by the way. 

I thought it might just be a made up expression for the book, but now I know it's for real!

From the movie Office Space - so fitting.

37 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Not much funny anywhere. Did Cooper have any OEM business? Selling tires in the after market only has to be tough business. 

To answer this question - no. Just replacement. Kind of...

When we started shipping stuff to China, we had to build the tires there or we couldn't sell them. So we sent them the tire molds and they would make the tires. You never knew how that was going to work. Some shop would run your tires for a while - then get a better deal from one of the other tire companies - and your molds end up out in the back lot. Sorry...

But it got better - someone would steal the molds and go make tires and sell them as ours, in China and here.

You can't make this **** up.

My last job before I told them to stuff it, was 120 tire molds to the China tiremaker because they lost the molds we sent them about a year before. We're talking about 3 million dollars worth of tooling.

Lost...

14 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Not much funny anywhere. Did Cooper have any OEM business? Selling tires in the after market only has to be tough business. 

There is a tale of a once great company who ****ed it all up. I worked there.

A guy who became CEO started out in the factory and worked his way to the top when I started. They were a replacement tire company and built a great supply chain all over the states. Made a bunch of people in Findlay and NW Ohio a great living, and was a great company to work for.

Things changed. This guy retired as CEO. They were going strong at the time. The new CEO - ironically - came from a company that I worked for prior to that part of my life. Didn't know him, couldn't find out anything from my contacts at the old company (Dana Corp).

He was a disaster in so many ways. Embarrassing enough he got caught banging the head of HR in his office, among other cluster ****s he did. Example above - he cheated our books with the profitable BG plant when we didn't make the numbers. Finally the board **** canned him. Cost us a 5 million dollar buyout. He went to a cosmetics company as CEO.

****in' A!

The prior CEO had a great advantage. He did every job on the shop floor over the years. Nobody could bull**** him. Today, I got a piece of paper that says I know Jack ****.

No you don't. Or most don't.

Not funny this; Cooper Standard in Bowling Green to close facility, nearly 200 jobs affected

I think Cooper tire division was bought out by Goodyear a few years ago. They have a plant and mold shop (on the other side of town) in Findlay. So apparently Goodyear didn't buy that plant. Another NW Ohio company shuttering the doors. We have two other plants (not related) closing here in Cornhole. Not good.

Related; If you look at the WHR stock price in the last 3 months - not pretty. They even suspended their dividend. Forward guidance not good. Many of these small places supply the appliance and auto companies. **** runs down hill. We have 3 large WHR plants within a few hours.

The real barometer; the **** hole bar hasn't been near as busy. I see the after work crowd at 3:30. They live paycheck to paycheck. Their getting pinched. Gas around $4.65 here. Then there is food...

I wouldn't give two ****s on what some Fed ****wad has to say. They have been an abysmal failure since the creature of Jekyll Island. Their not going to fix ****.

Markets are at almost all time highs. Saw a headline today somebody says S&P to 8000. Giddy up!

It's really this simple; all we have to watch for is when demand destruction takes over. As most of us believe the numbers are bull****, they also tell a tale when you look at them rationally. They are not good. Many indicator's show this. Not difficult.

The global supply chain has been broken - bad. Not only energy related. As they say about oil prices, and it holds true for all prices - the solution to high prices is high prices.

We haven't felt the pain - yet - ****'s about to get real.

There's your Debbie Downer for the day.

4 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

A reporter asked Trump if he's concerned about the Hantavirus. Really? Why don't they ask him if he learned anything from Covid? Between Trump and that wacko RFK, if there was another covid, we're all doomed.

Maybe he could do another Operation Warp Speed? Ironic, that was launched on May 15, 2020. Ain't that wild?

4 hours ago, Tenacious D said:

Anyone know where Alex Cobb is?

The way this season is going, we might need Ty Cobb. Did he pitch?