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Bunsbert Montcroff

Favorite team:Arizona 
Location:Phoenix AZ / Boise ID
Biography:
Interests:
Occupation:It's All Academic
Number of Posts:5667
Registered on:1/15/2008
Online Status:Not Online

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quote:

Post how many fishing shirts you count in church today. This is the day baws only go to church once a year and pull out the nice Columbia or Huk shirt.

short sleeve Columbia shirt = 1 pt
Long sleeve Columbia shirt = 3 pt
Huk dri fit long sleeve = 5 pt

BONUS Columbia under a sports coat = 10 pts

I wore an Orvis shirt just to flex on the spin fisherman in Columbia and Huk gear to remind them that fly fishermen are superior
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This is probably the most concerning aspect of the whole thing to me. Americans who don’t understand their own Constitution.

It applies evenly to anyone in the U.S., whether you are a citizen or not.

look up the practice of expedited removal, which allows for people who entered our country illegally to be deported without a hearing before even an immigration judge. there are limits/exceptions to this policy, but as a few other posters have pointed out, when it comes to aliens who have entered our country illegally, the extent of the due process they are afforded is not the same as a legal citizen.
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Kilmar Garcia is an Illegal Immigrant who has had a deportation order since 2019. He’s already had due process.

amazing that this salient point gets lost in the fray.

and the lawyers can correct me if i'm wrong, but deportation is not a criminal punishment.

now, i know that due process applies to both criminal and civil cases...but i guess i'm wondering what additional process is due when the united states has idenified that a citizen of a foreign country has entered our country illegally, and we seek to repatriate that foreign ctizen to their home country after the illegal alien appears before an immigration court? it doesn't seem like deportation is inherently a process that threatens the life, liberty, or property of the illegal alien.
quote:

This is interesting you bring this up. I've been a ChatGPT Plus subscriber for some time now, but recently it's been telling me a bunch of wrong shite. I'll get it to summarize things for me occasionally and normally, everything is fine. But not long ago, I read something that it had recently summarized and it was clearly wrong. When I confronted it about this, it said it was sorry but it actually used reviews and other pre-released info to generate the summary.

Then I found a few other instances where it did the same thing. Then it told me something else incorrect and I think I'm out on it.

Been messing with Grok and it seems to be on the right track. Today I actually killed my sub to ChatGPT and signed up for Gemini Advanced to see what it can do and so far so good.

you can try chain-of-thought prompting to get the model to "explain" its reasoning, but if some of the training data or the tokens the model is relying on are bad (like fake news or misinformation) the output will be bad too...

re: 2024-2025 Ski Thread

Posted by Bunsbert Montcroff on 4/11/25 at 3:26 pm
quote:

mashed potatoes

just bought some rub-on yellow wax for slushy, warm days that has been a game changer for spring skiing.

quote:

Adam Smith emphasized in book IV of The Wealth of Nations, trade sometimes needs to be limited, not least because ‘defence is of much more importance than opulence’. It is not much use being prosperous if one is not free, and therefore security threats are good reasons to forego economic opportunities.

I don't see how this applies to the administration's tariffs, which the White House itself has said were "to balance bilateral trade deficits" not for national defense.
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According to Smith, it was perfectly justified to burden foreign traders for the encouragement of domestic industry when this was needed.

Again, I don't see how this applies to some of the countries on the administration's tariff list, which a "reciprocal tariff" isn't going to have any effect on domestic industry.

Now, who knows if the administration is just posturing to get leverage against our trading partners for more favorable agreements of if the President is a true believer in mercantilism? I hope it's the former rather than the latter.
quote:

Wrong, the discussion is about whether or not a trade deficit is inherently bad. A lot of you seem to think it is.

it's like adam smith has become anathema...

interesting times we live in, i guess
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Reciprocal tariffs are calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the U.S. and each of our trading partners. This calculation assumes that persistent trade deficits are due to a combination of tariff and non-tariff factors that prevent trade from balancing. Tariffs work through direct reductions of imports.

so we're going back to mercantilism, yay

re: 2024-2025 Ski Thread

Posted by Bunsbert Montcroff on 4/2/25 at 9:21 am
quote:

I saw where the Wasatch got a decent system last week. Exciting. Need that tax day pow system now.

Glad to also see that Mineral is back open again after a few weeks being shut down for maintenance?

got 9 inches yesterday at bogus basin, took a day off and went up with my wife (no pics) and enjoyed deep powder and no lift lines. stuff started to get super choppy and tracked out around 3pm. nice to get an april pow day that wasn't the heavy, wet snow. our closing weekend is april 19-20, will have to go to mammoth if I want to ski through late may.
friedman said as far back as 1962 that you could have capitalism without freedom, but not freedom without capitalism. seems like clinton, bush, et al. missed that point...
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Look, classified info or not, sharing that over that platform was a retarded thing to do. Why? Because exactly what happened could happen.

Dumb decisions don’t know party lines.

you're not wrong. i just get the impression that these senators are posturing
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And I see you are part time in Boise. How is Bogus Basin and is it worth making the drive from Twin Falls?

Your closest resorts are probably Magic Mountain, Pommerelle, and Solider? Not counting Sun Valley just because it's so darn expensive, and you probably know about it.

Bogus will be bigger with more vertical than the modest resorts close to Twin Falls. It has some beginner terrain, a ton of intermediate terrain, and some advanced/expert terrain. It will probably be busier than places like Magic Mountain and Pommerelle, but not Utah or Colorado busy. We went up last weekend on bottomless powder days and there were no crowds or lines (except to get on the lifts first thing in the morning). I think most folks in Boise have transitioned to golf, bikes, fishing, the Greenbelt, etc. Could still find lots of untracked powder even after lunch.

My wife (no pics) will ski groomers while I'll ski the trees and bumps in between and on the sides of the trails. When I'm solo I try to ski off trail as much as possible, and I still discover new side hits, fun lines, etc. after being season pass holders for several years. Lots of groomers but good off-trail skiing too. We have planned out and almost taken winter trips to Brundage or Sun Valley but Bogus is so close and easy that we haven't yet. The drive up 55 with the Payette and certain death if you go off the side with no guardrails freaks me out even in the summer. And 95 (the long way to McCall from Boise) just closed for a landslide...so Bogus it is for us! The vibe is totally chill, the people are super friendly (it is Idaho, after all), not too expensive, and as of today the base is still about 100 inches deep. Worth a trip in my book :cheers:
quote:

Do I need a new pair of skis?

Yes.

The correct number of skis to own is n+1. While the minimum number of skis one should own is three, the correct number is n+1, where n is the number of skis currently owned.

This equation may also be re-written as s-1, where s is the number of skis owned that would result in separation from your partner.


You'll need an early-season, narrow rock ski for hardpack, a daily driver all-mountain ski, powder skis, park skis with twin tips for skiing switch and doing tricks, and a touring setup. This doesn't count two pairs of XC skis, one classic and one skate ski.

re: Car Buying Experts Only.

Posted by Bunsbert Montcroff on 3/17/25 at 9:31 am
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Don’t discuss financing or not when negotiating price. Trade in either for that matter.

after you get the price in writing, if you then reveal you have a trade in, won't they just low ball you on the trade in?
quote:

Grand Tetons. Not much else to see in southern Wyoming until the Teton range.

Wind River Range

re: Moving to Prescott Az

Posted by Bunsbert Montcroff on 3/4/25 at 9:45 pm
quote:

Prescott seems to be a bit remote...

The northern-most Phoenix exits (like Anthem and New River) are only 30 minutes from the turn off for 69, which takes you to Prescott.

The drive along 69 from 17 to Prescott is an additional hour. That's what makes it feel a bit more remote.

The drive itself isn't bad from Phoenix to Prescott - gradual uphill which can be pretty trafficy on weekends. I believe ADOT is trying to expand 17 between Phoenix and Prescott. And you don't often have to deal with snow and ice like you would if you were going all the way up 17 to Flag, so that isn't a concern.

re: Moving to Prescott Az

Posted by Bunsbert Montcroff on 3/4/25 at 9:32 pm
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Mostly that it's a rough place now. Just not what it was 20+ years ago when they were growing up. One of them owns a condo in Sedona we have been to before, so of course they love Sedona. Additionally they like Flagstaff over Prescott.

Prescott is gentrifying like nobody's business but it's rough? The new Trader Joe's, In N Out Burgers and Sprouts must have added to the grittiness.

I have family who have owned property in Prescott for the last 50 years and have been visiting for the last 20 years myself. If there is anything to complain about, it's the development, traffic, and the fact that so many people (especially retirees from So Cal - including my own family members) are moving there.

It's still a delightful little place with lots of year-round outdoor activities (think: combination of high desert sagebrush but also pine forests) with access to Phoenix and FLG. But it has developed a lot - the traffic when you hit Prescott Valley into town is always bad now. People are spreading out as far as Mayer, Chino Valley, and further afield. My wife's family has properties high in the Bradshaws in Walker. Nothing is a secret anymore, people are moving everywhere.

Honestly my only complaint would be how big it's grown and developed. It isn't the sleepy little town - "everybody's hometown" - that it used to be. And I-17 is a parking lot not only in summers now but year round. Other concerns are going to be fires and fire insurance. Sedona will be more expensive and have worse traffic (there are people who say they're from Sedona but actually live in Cornville or Camp Verde). As I mention it, present-day Cottonwood feels like what Prescott was like 20 years ago. Flagstaff is also crazy expensive and full of traffic, especially during the school year. And suffers from forest fires that shut the town and forests down every summer...some of the primary reasons we left Arizona for Idaho.
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I’m not. I’m not catholic and I still participate in lent. Sacrifice and being intentional on creating better habits is a great practice, tied to religion or not. I’m attacking retards who eat like shite all week and then go get their favorite meal on a day that’s about abstinence

may I humbly suggest you abstain from tigerdroppings for lent? please and thank you, mango.
quote:

I cant tell if hes counter trolling or if he really thinks Trump is trying to annex Canada.

Was thinking the same thing.

I suppose there are enough idiot Canadians who think Trump is seriously trying to annex Canada, and Gov. Trudeau is trying to earn their support?