I was making a (dark) humor joke about the state of everything else going on - really not trying to dig on small joys or your excitement about MicroCenter in any way.
I enjoy MicroCenter and have benefitted from being a few hours from several.
Not sure where you feel like this timeline could be a dream because you’re getting a micro center with everything else that’s happening.
Good for you.
Claude and all the other ones are garbage for the task today, it’s like employing a garbage coder with stack overflow search abilities.
You have to know what it’s producing to be able to proofread its mistakes and then be able to test the code before moving into production.
It’s marketing bull dook.
Facts:
You need to understand what it’s doing to keep it on track or a lot of time to head down all of its dead ends.
You need to understand your intent and project in order to recognize that it’s hallucinating.
When it magically decides variables or other factors need new unused names while mid way through any project, you have to watch out for that- you have to be able to audit everything it does and constantly restate the whole project in chunks.
We saw the one off example of a coder beating an LLM at code production recently.
I don’t expect LLM coding or reasoning to be good for a while.
Calling the comprehensive evidence of human rights abuses against Uighurs ‘CIA propaganda’ dismisses the work of:
These are not government intelligence agencies. Their findings are based on a volume and consistency of evidence that stands up to scrutiny, regardless of how inconvenient it may be to label it as such. The narrative of ‘economic development’ doesn’t negate systematic human rights abuses.
So you’re acknowledging that the actions in China against Uighurs also amount to genocidal?
I also mentioned multiple times the genocide in the comment you’re quoting, and you’re choosing to overfocus on the single time I didn’t.
I’m glad we’re in agreement. It seemed you were trying to make a different point.
Given the sheer volume and consistency of evidence from multiple independent sources, it is difficult to dispute the compelling case of widespread human rights violations.
You’re correct, that is what the meme is referencing.
However, I responded to your statement attempting to deny photographic evidence of violence.
14 independent sources; yet you still are denying the evidence and moving goalposts.
This is what you wrote as of this comment:
Yet, in 2025, somehow, in the smartphone era, when almost literally every Chinese adult citizen carries a camera in their pocket with internet access (and widespread non-prosecuted access of VPNs in China to bypass the great firewall), there isn’t a shred of photographic evidence of violence against the Uyghur people.
It seems like some evidence of violence against them exists, and has been corroborated by multiple sources.
This was the point where you moved the goalposts and revealed you’re not willing to discuss in good faith.
I googled it and found a literal trove of evidence.
Here’s a starting point since it’s eluded you for so long.
I can understand that. There are several expression ‘rules’ that don’t feel right to me.
As a wonder, what’s your ‘first’ language? Did you like it?
I’d guess that might influence your preferences.
I started with (iirc, in order) batch, bash, python, powershell, go, typescript, rust.
I’m not putting all the ‘markup’ languages in there.
It sounds like the main point of confusion for you with semicolons, especially in bash and its if/then statements, isn’t about their general readability but more about their role in defining what counts as a complete statement or command, and when they are required versus optional.
You’re right that bash requires a semicolon (or a newline) after the if condition before the then keyword if they are on the same line. This is because then is considered a separate ‘command’ or keyword that follows the if condition and its associated [ ] or (( )) test.
A newline serves the same purpose as a semicolon.
In contrast, languages like Lua, Python, or PowerShell often have syntax where then (or its equivalent) is intrinsically linked to the if and doesn’t require a separator between the condition and the block opening keyword, even on the same line. They typically use newlines or specific block delimiters (like end in Lua, indentation in Python, or curly braces {} in PowerShell) to define the scope of the if statement.
While the semicolon’s general use is to put multiple commands on one line, its mandatory placement after the if condition before then in bash when on the same line is a specific syntactic requirement of bash to separate those two distinct logical parts of the if construct. Many other languages simply define if condition then block as a single syntactic unit, hence no semicolon is needed there.
It is unnecessary. It’s only needed when you keep them on the same line. E.g.:
if [ "$variable" == "value" ]
then
echo "Condition is true"
fi
That ; can be used anywhere in bash or powershell for the same effect
That semicolon is the same use in both languages, why the hangup? It’s a way to put separate commands on the same line.
PowerShell tried to build everything around the verb-noun command naming structure, which improves readability.
What’d the semicolon ever do to you?
Open support of dictatorships, for starters.
They’re not honest about their political policies in the slightest.
Lying about everything and censorship of dissent. This really is the icing.
If their ideologies are pure and right, why do they need to silence conversation with imaginary pretenses?
You’re misrepresenting the actuality of the environment you’re promoting…
Few may be decent, though the experience of most non trolling has been, the instance is overrun and managed by a lot of narcissistic, hypercritical, and toxic individuals.
If you find their behavior cool… Cool is defined by society, usually.
Most do not find their behavior remotely cool. They’re absolute hypocritical dissent censoring liars, as a majority.
What is cool to you?
A second department, no less, to improve efficiency in the government.
The GAO exists.
Are two efficiency offices more efficient than one?
The DNC and RNC are 527 non profit companies.
In a country where money == speech and corporations are allowed to use their freedom to speak freely.
They’re actively supporting the largest voices in the room, corporations.
The primaries that the winning candidate refused to participate in? Check your fairness a little closer.
The turd has been given special treatment at every turn.
Calling for a cease fire is definitely the same as what you wrote. /s
Rewriting history isn’t supposed to be on the schedule for freedom loving folks.
Someone else assembled this reference for those ignorant of the news.
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