Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tggzzz]

The Pseudo Politically Correct term that I would use to describe the mind set of postmodernism is "epistemologically challenged": a constitutional inability to adopt a reasonable way to tell the good stuff from the bad stuff.

Oh, indeed. But in trying to understand post-modernism one must keep a few things in mind;

• It is by and large a French invention
• France is a very centralistic country, governed from the centre
• The fact that France, at all, works in spite of that, is because the French largely ignore the governing from above.
• France also has produced a set of highly dogmatic and fragile structural schools of thought which can work if closely adhered to, but break when ignored; notable examples include Académie des Beaux-Arts and the Maginot Line
• The post-modern school is a reaction to this tendency, and must be understood as some petrified Sturm und Drang to be comprehensive.

I'm not much for it, but will give the post-modern philosophy a point in its nut-kicking of pompous institutions. Shame it had to become one, and take critical thinking with it in decay.

You piqued my interest sufficiently for me to verify what I remembered: it isn't a new essay. Here's a better link, since it is on the author's website: http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html

It gives the date as 1993, and wackypedia indicates it started in 1991. That ought to be sufficient time for its principal proponents to have retired. Hell's teeth: 2050 is closer in time!

[tggzzz]

Now I understand.

NSFW
https://youtu.be/eRIdtMlqwNA

Up to this point I had no idea who she was. Is she actually for real or is it just an act?

That is a surprisingly useful question.

My memory of her on the Apprentice is that during interviews she eventually admitted that she was doing it (and other things in her life) to "play the game" and see if she could win.

Wackypedia states "Hopkins rejected Sugar's offer of a place in the final episode of the programme, citing problems regarding childcare provision for her daughters, and withdrew from the competition at the end of the penultimate task". Yeah, right. If you say so, dear.

I don't know the outcome of her breeding program, other than "Katie Hopkins on her children: 'My son is good-looking, my daughters are not'".
https://closeronline.co.uk/real-life/news/katie-hopkins-children-son-good-looking-daughters/

[mnementh]

Its ok we Aussies reduced the average IQ of England today and sent Katie Hopkins back. How in the hell the muppet was even allowed into the country in the first place is farcical. Clearly prime material for a top posting 

F'ing Big Brother 

Dammit! There was a time where when someone was transported they stayed transported. I suppose we'll have to try Virginia next...

Lordy, lordy... I hope this doesn't become a trend.  One of the big selling points for the GWN was they had sense enough to get rid of Rafael "Ted the DoucheCanoe" Cruz. If Tejas sends him back, I might actually find myself within smelling distance of his ichor while out shoe-shopping for the kids at the maul... (true story)

mnem
Oh, who am I kidding... they love that sack of goblin shit down there...

[med6753]

Now I understand.

NSFW
https://youtu.be/eRIdtMlqwNA

Up to this point I had no idea who she was. Is she actually for real or is it just an act?

That is a surprisingly useful question.

My memory of her on the Apprentice is that during interviews she eventually admitted that she was doing it (and other things in her life) to "play the game" and see if she could win.

Wackypedia states "Hopkins rejected Sugar's offer of a place in the final episode of the programme, citing problems regarding childcare provision for her daughters, and withdrew from the competition at the end of the penultimate task". Yeah, right. If you say so, dear.

I don't know the outcome of her breeding program, other than "Katie Hopkins on her children: 'My son is good-looking, my daughters are not'".
https://closeronline.co.uk/real-life/news/katie-hopkins-children-son-good-looking-daughters/

Regardless if act or not, I'm not surprised she doesn't come here. We have guns. And lots of them. And we know how to use them. 

[mnementh]

Fun job of the week...
Still, it's good to know that the designer, who gets paid half again as much as we do, is safe, working from home. There's a fair possibility that I'll call him a useless cunt, the next time I see him.

LOL... I'd be surprised if you didn't roshambo the mutherfucker... 

mnem
 

You mean in the style of Ricky Stocks?

Urban Dictionary is your friend. 

BTW, Roshambo is the correct spelling for this version of the "game". 

mnem
Okay, more like your perverted friend who's right more often than you want to admit...

Nah, I was think more like this, it starts at around 5:20. I did however spell his name wrong it was Ricky Starks, not Ricky Stocks 

LOLOL....

Oh, no, that would never go over here. Not near enuf infantile chest-thumping, too much like actual wrasslin' goin' on there. Hell he actually bothered to pin the guy instead of smashing a chair across his teeth;  is up widdatt...?

I mean, yeah; you can actually see the guy jump up onto his shoulders for that body slam, it's not like it was choreographed at all...  but entirely too little manure-spreading for the Simps family TV market that is the bulk of the WWF viewership. 

mnem

[mnementh]

That’s pretty funny 

Roughly the title is “client apologist” wrapped in some HR speak. Ultimately this new profession will lead to an “association of apologists” and eventually government department called “ministry of strategic apologetics” and degree courses being spun up suddenly with various skol swilling bearded tramps on Brighton seafront shouting out “I’ve got a BA in apologetics don’t ya know”

Thats almost as good as the government hiring someone to look for Brexit positives, the salary was pretty good though IIRC, but seriously who in their right mind would take that job 

LOL...

That's almost as good as The Bureau for the Dissemination of Plausible Lies, another pseudo-Orwellian term which for the life of me I cannot recall where I first read it forever ago; so lost in the mists of time that experience was. Maybe it was something Orwell himself wrote; wouldn't that be like the ultimate recursion irony...

Of course, if I Google it now, all I get are page after page of hits for dissection/analysis of the Chump Administration. 

mnem
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ” ~George Orwell

[mnementh]

The Pseudo Politically Correct term that I would use to describe the mind set of postmodernism is "epistemologically challenged": a constitutional inability to adopt a reasonable way to tell the good stuff from the bad stuff.

Oh, indeed. But in trying to understand post-modernism one must keep a few things in mind;

• It is by and large a French invention
• France is a very centralistic country, governed from the centre
• The fact that France, at all, works in spite of that, is because the French largely ignore the governing from above.
• France also has produced a set of highly dogmatic and fragile structural schools of thought which can work if closely adhered to, but break when ignored; notable examples include Académie des Beaux-Arts and the Maginot Line
• The post-modern school is a reaction to this tendency, and must be understood as some petrified Sturm und Drang to be comprehensive.

I'm not much for it, but will give the post-modern philosophy a point in its nut-kicking of pompous institutions. Shame it had to become one, and take critical thinking with it in decay.

You piqued my interest sufficiently for me to verify what I remembered: it isn't a new essay. Here's a better link, since it is on the author's website: http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html

It gives the date as 1993, and wackypedia indicates it started in 1991. That ought to be sufficient time for its principal proponents to have retired. Hell's teeth: 2050 is closer in time!

Wow... I remember that from my first go-round in the halls of academia...

Thanks for the reminder! 

mnem
*sigh* I suddenly feel so very old...

[tggzzz]

Now I understand.

NSFW
https://youtu.be/eRIdtMlqwNA

Up to this point I had no idea who she was. Is she actually for real or is it just an act?

That is a surprisingly useful question.

My memory of her on the Apprentice is that during interviews she eventually admitted that she was doing it (and other things in her life) to "play the game" and see if she could win.

Wackypedia states "Hopkins rejected Sugar's offer of a place in the final episode of the programme, citing problems regarding childcare provision for her daughters, and withdrew from the competition at the end of the penultimate task". Yeah, right. If you say so, dear.

I don't know the outcome of her breeding program, other than "Katie Hopkins on her children: 'My son is good-looking, my daughters are not'".
https://closeronline.co.uk/real-life/news/katie-hopkins-children-son-good-looking-daughters/

Regardless if act or not, I'm not surprised she doesn't come here. We have guns. And lots of them. And we know how to use them. 

Somewhat regrettably you lot have repeatedly missed your chance to improve the species, possibly because some of you want her bile.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/katie-hopkins-going-america-outspoken-4785956
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/04/katie-hopkins-warns-america-dont-become-uk-frontpagemagcom/
https://warroom.org/2021/05/15/the-most-banned-woman-on-the-planet-katie-hopkins-tells-america-how-to-save-its-freedom/
N.B. don't read the last two unless you are pinching your nose; NSFM(ind)

[dl6lr]

To our German friends. Are any of you affected by that flooding? I saw some of the videos and holy shit what a mess. 

Not me, thank you. In fact parts of northern germany is currently starving of drought, no rain for weeks. Thanks to global warming. Just being back from holiday with zero km driven by car, only bike. SWMBO is currently on her way to visit her mother (by bike, too). Expected back on Sunday, so party time with scopes and meters!

Cheers, Bernd

[cyclin_al]

To our German friends. Are any of you affected by that flooding? I saw some of the videos and holy shit what a mess. 

Not so far, fortunately. But I am watching the weather maps closely.

Let me ask you a question, but it is still really related to the topic. Do you have any organization whose job it is to maintain the rivers and streams over there? I ask because years ago we used to have a national network of county river authorities whose sole job was to keep rivers and ditches dredged, free from weed build up, and they used the dredged silt to build up the river banks. This served two purposes ensured the rivers were kept fast flowing, and higher banks meant they also had a greater flood capacity. Sometime around the late 1960's or 1970's these were disbanded and since then we have many bad floods which also means that now many people living in these areas are now, in many cases, trapped as they are both unable to sell their homes and cannot get any insurance cover.

So I was just wondering if that could be a contributory factor in the severity of the floods we have seen on the news?

Here in Germany we call this water protection conversation (Gewässerschutz). This is a task of the municipality, at least here in Baden-Württemberg. The municipality is responsible for keeping brooks and river courses free and not overgrown, for example. It is also responsible for flood protection control (Hochwasserschutz), which is subsidised by state and federal funds. Unfortunately, it is also the case that such issues as flood protection do not usually win any laurels in politics, which is why often enough something is only done when a disaster has occurred. There are also regulations here about where you can build your house, for example, which is then called a development plan. But this development plan is also the result of a political decision in the local council and often enough not the result of a rational decision. Such wrong decisions or misjudgements usually do not take revenge immediately, but only after years.
In my opinion, the floods in the Eifel are also the result of a chain of such decisions. The extreme weather then showed what can happen. And it is not only limited to the Eifel. In the southeast of Bavaria (Berchtesgardener Land) there were also drastic floods with several deaths and injuries.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

That sounds about as much of a mess as it is over here.
We have "watershed supervisory boards" meant to address those issues.
However, in the end, each board member is free to control their infrastructure however they see fit, and do not have to follow the recommendation of the board.
Not only that, but the board membership has devolved over time.  The boards used to have representation from the political jurisdictions of towns, provinces, etc.  The infrastructure got privatised over time.  Along with that, the board membership became the owners of the power generating stations and such.
Now we have board members that are not accountable and who have the single goal of making money in a position of looking out for Joe public.
How is that working out?  We have major floods on the Ottawa river in 2017 and 2019.  The only reason there have not been floods since 2019 is that we have drought conditions and less winter snow pack; it has nothing to do with lessons learned from those floods.

That being said, I have seen what flooding does and the impact on people.  Take care of one another, and keep safe.  It will take a couple of years for those areas to get back to some semblance of normal.

[med6753]

Did some initial checking and not finding anything obvious. So it looks like I'm forced to verify each and every connection with this pictorial of the completed instrument. I'll check off each connection as completed (and continuity check too). This is gonna be a long haul. 

[Cerebus]

That's almost as good as The Bureau for the Dissemination of Plausible Lies, another pseudo-Orwellian term which for the life of me I cannot recall where I first read it forever ago; so lost in the mists of time that experience was. Maybe it was something Orwell himself wrote; wouldn't that be like the ultimate recursion irony...

Sounds more Robert Anton Wilson fnord, PKD or Harry Harrison.

[Specmaster]

To our German friends. Are any of you affected by that flooding? I saw some of the videos and holy shit what a mess. 

Not so far, fortunately. But I am watching the weather maps closely.

Let me ask you a question, but it is still really related to the topic. Do you have any organization whose job it is to maintain the rivers and streams over there? I ask because years ago we used to have a national network of county river authorities whose sole job was to keep rivers and ditches dredged, free from weed build up, and they used the dredged silt to build up the river banks. This served two purposes ensured the rivers were kept fast flowing, and higher banks meant they also had a greater flood capacity. Sometime around the late 1960's or 1970's these were disbanded and since then we have many bad floods which also means that now many people living in these areas are now, in many cases, trapped as they are both unable to sell their homes and cannot get any insurance cover.

So I was just wondering if that could be a contributory factor in the severity of the floods we have seen on the news?

Here in Germany we call this water protection conversation (Gewässerschutz). This is a task of the municipality, at least here in Baden-Württemberg. The municipality is responsible for keeping brooks and river courses free and not overgrown, for example. It is also responsible for flood protection control (Hochwasserschutz), which is subsidised by state and federal funds. Unfortunately, it is also the case that such issues as flood protection do not usually win any laurels in politics, which is why often enough something is only done when a disaster has occurred. There are also regulations here about where you can build your house, for example, which is then called a development plan. But this development plan is also the result of a political decision in the local council and often enough not the result of a rational decision. Such wrong decisions or misjudgements usually do not take revenge immediately, but only after years.
In my opinion, the floods in the Eifel are also the result of a chain of such decisions. The extreme weather then showed what can happen. And it is not only limited to the Eifel. In the southeast of Bavaria (Berchtesgardener Land) there were also drastic floods with several deaths and injuries.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

That sounds about as much of a mess as it is over here.
We have "watershed supervisory boards" meant to address those issues.
However, in the end, each board member is free to control their infrastructure however they see fit, and do not have to follow the recommendation of the board.
Not only that, but the board membership has devolved over time.  The boards used to have representation from the political jurisdictions of towns, provinces, etc.  The infrastructure got privatised over time.  Along with that, the board membership became the owners of the power generating stations and such.
Now we have board members that are not accountable and who have the single goal of making money in a position of looking out for Joe public.
How is that working out?  We have major floods on the Ottawa river in 2017 and 2019.  The only reason there have not been floods since 2019 is that we have drought conditions and less winter snow pack; it has nothing to do with lessons learned from those floods.

That being said, I have seen what flooding does and the impact on people.  Take care of one another, and keep safe.  It will take a couple of years for those areas to get back to some semblance of normal.

The way I see it is, as we grow, we use more land, and thus we cover more land with buildings, concrete, tarmac etc, land would in the natural state absorb water. Add into this mix, as towns and cities grow, the existing sewers, many of which are years old, and onto these we keep adding new ones as the places develop, but do we upgrade the old original ones? I suspect the answer is no because that would cost money and the developers don't want to pay for it, the authorities don't either. So every time it rains in a built-up area, that rain water is directed into old worn out and under capacity sewers, not a good idea. I'm sure we have all seen photos and videos of floods where there is water spout coming up from manholes etc of upto 1 or 2 metres high, which is a clear sign that either the infrastructure is unable to cope with the amount, or that it is in need of attention to clear blockages, however they are caused. Do these ever get sorted once the floods have cleared? Now add in the excess of water from flooded rivers that are slitted up and clogged with weeds, shopping trolleys etc and we have an added problem.

Now are we sure that is all caused through global warming or is another cover for years and years of neglect? 

[Cerebus]

Now are we sure that is all caused through global warming or is another cover for years and years of neglect?

It doesn't have to be an either/or proposition, it could be - most likely is - both.

[mnementh]

That's almost as good as The Bureau for the Dissemination of Plausible Lies, another pseudo-Orwellian term which for the life of me I cannot recall where I first read it forever ago; so lost in the mists of time that experience was. Maybe it was something Orwell himself wrote; wouldn't that be like the ultimate recursion irony...

Sounds more Robert Anton Wilson fnord, PKD or Harry Harrison.

Robert Anton Wilson quite possibly... hmmm... WhaWeTalkinAboot...?

mnem
The Stainless Steel Rat for President! Oh, wait... we tried that one, and it didn't work out as planned...

[Specmaster]

Now are we sure that is all caused through global warming or is another cover for years and years of neglect?

It doesn't have to be an either/or proposition, it could be - most likely is - both.

True, but I can recall 1955 when I was a child that most of the rivers around here all dried up and we had a really boiling hot summer. The rivers dried to such an extend the river bed was dry and recall that loads of people were walking along them discovering all kinds of things, loads and loads of clay pipes  (the smoking variety) among many other things could be found. Therefore we have had these exceptional weather patterns before.

This in living memory and perhaps if we could look back even further we might these patterns repeating, all I'm saying is that it does make you wonder.

[mnementh]

yeah, but the polar ice caps melting to this degree is not among those phenomena...

mnem
*toddles off to COSTCO*

[med6753]

Now are we sure that is all caused through global warming or is another cover for years and years of neglect?

It doesn't have to be an either/or proposition, it could be - most likely is - both.

True, but I can recall 1955 when I was a child that most of the rivers around here all dried up and we had a really boiling hot summer. The rivers dried to such an extend the river bed was dry and recall that loads of people were walking along them discovering all kinds of things, loads and loads of clay pipes  (the smoking variety) among many other things could be found. Therefore we have had these exceptional weather patterns before.

In 1965 we had a drought here and I recall the local lakes being reduced to a small channel that you could almost walk across. 

[Specmaster]

yeah, but the polar ice caps melting to this degree is not among those phenomena...

mnem
*toddles off to COSTCO*

They might have been, how long has mankind been able to reach the polar ice caps and back again in order record events?

[bd139]

Hmm just got a low offer on a 34401A. Have asked for picture of it powered up... 

[Specmaster]

Meanwhile in other news, this is still up for sale on eBay but at a much reduced price, there is just no fixing stupid is there.   https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/393441046651

[bd139]

Offering £1 is a good way to fix stupid 

[Specmaster]

Offering £1 is a good way to fix stupid 

Nope, scared it might be accepted 

[tggzzz]

Hmm just got a low offer on a 34401A. Have asked for picture of it powered up... 

The other ones he's sold don't say "some settings may not register on higher power rating"

[bd139]

He also says it works so it’s a zero risk from my point of view and eBay returns