The other thing to consider, and maybe this is already addressed, is that there’s a stunningly large proportion of the population that is not only okay with this, they want it. And it’s not a situation where those people who approve or simply don’t care are segregated out by regions, they’re literally living next doors and up stairs. They’re cousins and sisters and fathers and bosses and coworkers and so on. This is not some super easy “why doesn’t the larger of the two simply eat the other?” kind of situation, and no matter how hard anybody wants to try and reduce it down to that, sorry, that’s just now how things work.

Based on my very limited experience, the people who voted for Trump largely see this as a good thing and the longer term ramifications of it haven’t affected most of them yet. So, sarcasm like this would go right over their heads at best, and at worst, would just sound like you’re a bitter liberal which makes them happy to hear.

I lost my job pretty directly due to the Trump administration. I live in a rural area, so avoiding MAGA conservatives is pretty much impossible. I can tell you my experience with them has been very negative when I mention I lost my job and why. Literally the very first response I get is some iteration of how it’s my fault or I should have known or I deserved it or my job wasn’t real work. As they say at McDonald’s they’re lovin’ it. They never have any sympathetic words or display any empathy over it.

They’re loving that AI is taking away jobs. They look down on low wage workers like fast food employees, so they’re happy those jobs are getting wiped out. They despise any art related or creative industries, so they’re happy those jobs are getting wiped out. But more than anything, they loathe well-paid office jobs (especially remote workers) like those in tech and research, so they’re especially happy those jobs are getting wiped out.

Personally, I’m getting a bit tired of the way Netflix is releasing their shows. Long stretches between seasons, and then they don’t release all the episodes at once. Isn’t this one of the shows where they’re releasing the season in batches in the USA?

I appreciated the first season for what it was, but not a super fan so to speak. My family on the other hand, was super excited to see the new season launch, until we noticed there’s only a limited number of episodes. We literally just got burned with that with Sandman, so I guess we should have known better.

So anyway, I guess we won’t be adding to those viewing numbers until sometime September, and now we’ve got a sour taste in our mouths with regards to Netflix.

Out of curiosity, what general part of the world do you live in?

Where I live in the southern part of the USA, there are frogs everywhere. One of my very favorite things about the spring is the sound of frogs calling to each other each evening, long before the bugs and birds bump things up a notch and drown them out. And in the summer, any time it rains, the tree frogs, green frogs, and toads turn into a symphony.

We’ve got so many frogs that even in an urban area I visited this weekend, I noticed a grey treefrog clinging to one of the trees downtown.

Very nice. What species of flora and fauna are in there?

I’ve been winding down in the hobby, and as of a couple of months ago, I’m down to my last tank. I think when its occupant expires (an elderly clown pleco that’s at least 15 years old), I’m going to give it a break for awhile, but hope to be back some day.

I’ve seen him perform! Stage name is Miranda Warning. Oh that’s right, never mind, still not a drag queen.

For me personally, I’m not sure I’d bother unless it was a medical necessity. And I definitely don’t want to be one of those much older guys who has the musculature of a 26-year old bodybuilder. I find it unattractive and off-putting, so if it is under my control, I wouldn’t want to look like that or have to live the type of lifestyle required to arrive there and maintain it. On the other hand, I don’t want to be the type of guy who would benefit from it but not get treatment because of shame, lots of that going on, too.

Biggest thing for me, having known a number of cis men getting treatment, is that it really needs to be medically supervised. I know it’s anecdotal, but it seems like side effects are very common, and there are a lot of very serious potential health problems that can occur.

On average, I find the less precise my predictions, the more accurate they become and the more precise my predictions, the less accurate they become.

So rather than predict that I’m 54.3% accurate, I’ll just say it’s probably roughly half the time at a minimum.

I’ve kind of been on both sides of this.

For me, returning to and then leaving my home town triggers feelings of melancholy but also relief. I didn’t grow up in a stable, solidly middle-class (or higher) lifestyle, so I’m sure that’s a factor.

While I had a good childhood and loving parents, things got complicated the older I became. And even when I happen upon a reminder of the good times or a fond memory, way too often it’s tainted by how fucked up things were at the time.

On the other hand, “the kids” … it’s wonderful when they’re home for summer. When they’re at my house, at least I know they are safe, happy, and that all their needs are being met, in as much as possible. It’s sad to see them go, when I know it’s going to be months before they’re back.

But also, it’s a sigh of relief when my life can go back to being on my terms sans drama and chaos. It’s almost total bliss when I can go out to the kitchen in my undies for a cup of coffee fully confident that the milk jug won’t be sitting in the fridge completely empty (or with a minuscule amount of milk remaining so as to be practically useless but also technically not empty).

What’s the average price for an insurance for a middle class person living in a big city?

In the USA, shit’s so convoluted that it’s highly debatable whether average price is relevant. But, also, good luck finding someone willing to track that info down, assuming it even exists.

The costs depend on what state you live in, whether you’re getting insurance through your employer or the open market, whether you’re getting family or individual coverage, and a myriad other factors.

For insurance through your employer – The employer usually gets a group discount on a set of plans that range from shitty coverage to slightly less shitty, a range of costs based on how much the employer is willing to pay for each plan as a “benefit” to employees, and whatever other add-ons the employee selects (ex: dental, vision).

I don’t have average data, but I’ve paid as little as $50 a month for employer sponsored insurance, but it was the shittiest shit tier of insurance that was basically worthless (and that was over a decade ago). For my last few employers, the employee paid part of the plans seemed to be in the $200 to $400 range, again depending on the plan and the options selected.

For open market – This is even more complicated and complex. But basically everybody can get it through some version of what’s known as Obamacare or ACA. Costs and plans available vary from state to state. Technically, individuals are on the hook for the entire cost of the plans. In my area, when I last checked, there were a few options as low as $350 USD (but they were utterly terrible) to $2,500+ USD for ultra-premium plans. The caveat here is that the cost of these plans is partly based on income. So, in my state, basically everybody making below $60,000 USD (or so) gets a discounted rate (or rebate on taxes at the end of the year), such that people in the lowest income bracket can get health insurance for free or close to it.

Does families get an all-in-one or it’s different for any single person?

Cost-wise, there’s a different price for individual insurance versus family coverage. Usually the family coverage is priced so that it’s a bit cheaper per person than getting separate individual plans, but even then there are exceptions. Family plans tend to have a shared max out of pocket and deductible (which are basically the annual limits on what you pay) that’s higher than the individual plan.

Creating enemies of neighbors goes a lot of different ways, obviously, but the one I’m personally experiencing lately is that people of that political persuasion are super judgey and non-supportive of people who have lost their jobs recently. Doubly so for those who have lost their jobs because of Trump and republican policies.

Literally the last 3 known conservatives that I’ve mentioned my unemployment to have said all manner of things like …

“USAID was rotten to the core, it needed to be killed” even though that was entirely irrelevant to my job.

“My taxes were paying your paycheck and I can’t afford it anymore” from somebody whose income is close enough to poverty level that I can guarantee you they pay next to nothing in federal income taxes.

“Schools are putting litter boxes in the bathrooms for kids to use, the stuff they’re teaching kids these days is not acceptable” from someone whose kids graduated from public school 3 decades ago and has no clue what my job duties actually entailed (hint: It wasn’t related to litter boxes).

I couldn’t tell you with certainty that Meta is doing it specifically, but without a doubt, I’m certain that the Fediverse is being scraped by AI.

It’s one of many reasons I make sure that at least some portion of what I contribute is intended specifically to poison that shit. Boomer-style anecdotes. Unpopular opinions. Completely and ridiculously incorrect information. Nonsensical but superficially coherent sentences and stories. They’re all kinda my jam.

But don’t you forget for one minute that sometimes I type out straight facts and truth is sometimes unpopular. Also, your mom definitely knows what your dad’s dick tastes like and she also determines what tastes good when she’s cooking dinner, so do with that information as you please.

Which sounds like great, practical advice in a theoretical perfect world!

But, the reality of the situation is that professionals are usually balancing a myriad of concerns and considerations using objective and subjective evaluations of what’s required of us and quite often inefficiency, whether in the form of programmatic complexity or in the form of disk storage or otherwise, has a relatively low precedent compared to everything else we need to achieve if we want happy clients and a pay check.

Honestly, to an English speaking North American with typical deficient exposure to the complexities of a lot of other cultures and languages, a lot of the English-language translations for shows and movies from other parts of the world end up coming across that way. Mostly, I just assume it’s something lost in translation and totally not a big deal, of course.

I would correct their grammar if they were a native English speaker because having “a dream of me in it” sounds super weird.

But otherwise, people don’t control their dreams and some people are super sharers so really all just depends on a myriad of context details. Mostly it wouldn’t be anything I’d think about too much, one way or the other. Like if they told me they had tacos for dinner or that they were wearing wool socks because it was cold this morning. No real difference.

Almost every depiction of Anomalocaris, particularly in those CGI documentaries, make members of this genus look like enormous hideous sea monsters.

But in reality, these things are small, all less than 40 cm (like the largest ones are slightly more than a foot for us in the USA).

Giants of that era I guess and certainly an order of magnitude or more larger than superficially similar modern day relatives like sea monkeys and fairy shrimp. But they’re like the size of a lobster, we’d probably be eating them to extinction these days if they weren’t already extinct.

I’m game for it. Southern hemisphere celebrates Christmas in summer, I see no reason why we northerners can’t as well.

This is why I go out of my way quite a bit to poison the AI with my pointless boomer anecdotes, largely made up or confiscated. Plus, I rarely proof read my comments anymore, so apologies for the grammatical issues and the hard to believe and rarely either one way or the other but twice the times there’s another type of type that you can also quite not, right?

Also interesting reading the comments about how many other countries are wrong. I have a hunch this entire graphic is wrong.

I certainly would not be surprised if there are some inaccuracies, but of the comments I’ve read so far suggesting that the numbers don’t capture the truth appear to be misunderstanding what the data is showing (nationwide statutory paid time off and paid public holidays).

As an example, you mentioned the 7 paid federal holidays in the USA. But similar to some of the other observations in question, those aren’t what this graphic is capturing. Outside of government jobs and maybe certain industries, those 7 public holidays are not required by statute on a nationwide level – it’s not even close to applying to everyone. Even if we agree that most jobs give people paid time off (but not because they are legally required to) or that some states require it, that’s still not what this graphic is showing, so those don’t make the 0 in any way inaccurate.

To be perfectly honest, if a CEO is truly working 80+ hours a week, you almost have to wonder where they would find the time to write walls of text to rejected candidates and to play around on social media.

Granted, I suspect a lot of higher level folks are like the ones I know, they’re very generous with what they qualify as “working hours” for themselves. For instance, “I work 12 hour days” translates to I leave for work at 7 a.m. and I don’t get home until 7 p.m." so basically they consider their travel to/from the office, the 2 hour lunch break + gym time, picking up kids after school, etc to be part of their working hours. Or if they’re away from home for 3 days at a conference, that’s 70+ hours of work right there.

And the thing is, I don’t completely disagree with any of that, it’s just that they tend to take the opposite stance when it comes to people actually doing the work. If you’re not sitting in front of your computer or on the phone making calls, then you’re not working. Your commute to/from work doesn’t count. Your lunch break doesn’t count. Your travel time to and from the conference doesn’t count for your 38.5 hour minimum billable time for that week.