I remember an old reddit post about what it’s like to not like football by replacing it with archeology. I felt that in my soul.

Personally, I enjoy the drinks I’m drinking. And no, I’m not saying where it tastes like candy but I drink in the manner of responding “I don’t understand the question.” when I’m asked “What would you like with your gin?”

Part of what I drink helps because slamming it hurts, but I like that slight burn when sipping (Why yes I like spicy food too but I digress), that burn is a nice speed limiter so it takes a while to even get a buzz. There at the slight the term “social lubricant” shines. I’m not deep in my head, all the worries, anxieties, etc I can actually set aside and enjoy my time rather than going through the list of shit I need to get done a thirtieth time.

If you don’t like it, it’s perfectly fine, getting drunk is not something necessary to live life.

Your unplayed games will remain unplayed forever.

My dad is in his 70s. When a suspicious message comes through, he asks a question that only the family would know, or sometimes asks questions that has no relation to the family to see if I answer normally.

It doesn’t fix anything globally, all I can say is I appreciate being raised by a paranoid nerd who expected this sort of thing in his lifetime.

IMO the “getting scarier” is the swinging back part. Grew up in the same time, my parents were big on “No identifying information to anyone on the internet!” I joke with them now that their generation, the ones that told us to stay off post all their business on facebook and the like.

But that’s the thing, you have a small segment of society that was the internet nerds that didn’t trust anything on the internet, hid themselves and the like, but now like you say it’s the corporate walled garden that’s sanitized and happy, which makes that veneer of trust. And boy do people trust it, posting anything and everything.

Odds are lower in percentages of being genuinely victimized as a child, but the lack of paying attention what’s posted has lead to a lot of effects, so people are getting worried again.

That would change overnight if we had personel getting pasted by IDF while dropping off supplies.

We had citizens in the war zone for a month until Egypt made a corridor. NPR was talking directly to them as they begged the US government to help them get out.

The US isn’t going to stare down the IDF at all

Look, last two elections I looked at the third parties, the most prominent was when it was Trump v Hillary. Green party couldn’t get a candidate that felt coherent enough to put up a fight against any of the other parties. Libertarian party has consistentently been Republicans who don’t want to call themselves Republican.

Those were the best two options. So yea… while both options suck, one is a moldering garbage fire and the other is running over to the garbage fire with gasoline, I’m going to do what I can to stop the gasoline. So yes, I can vote 3rd party, just as well as I can piss in the wind and hope it gets in one of the leaders eye.

You want 3rd party? Do the same thing the Republicans have been doing for the past 30 years and stop doing what the Democrats have considered the best plan. Don’t focus on the Presidency as the pure win/lose. Focus on it on the locals. Mayors, state legislators, governors. When the locals start following then start chipping to get into the senate and legislative branches. That’s when the chance will be had. But until a 3rd party is willing to play the same game as Republicans did where there will be no uncontested election no matter how small, no one is going to care because it’s quite telling how involved they are when all the local ballots are only filled with (D) and ®

I use the shockz (another open ear headset) daily with my job. Work on equipment, a lot of tedious opening up a machine and fixing it. I don’t have a singular place but move around a lot. Going from earbuds that I have to take out just to have a conversation if someone comes up and asks questions vs the open ear allows me to be able to know what’s happening around me, keeps from annoying those around me with whatever I’m listening to, and I’ve chewed through so many audiobooks which has kept me from losing my mind.

That’s a major part, but the key problem IMO is that the USA has shown multiple times that a change in president leadership can be enough to shatter existing promises and expectations.

FTFY

The US is fighting to even pay it’s own debts because of the political grabass going on in the Legislative branch and who knows now what the Judicial branch is going to throw up to change. The President is just the most visible change.

Same here!

Lets be honest, my retirement plan is my corpse getting tossed in a dumpster.

Well sure. Only an optimist goes “Wow, this is as bad as it can get.”

The pessimistic crowd is of the opinion it can ALWAYS get worse. We may not know how, but it can get worse.

I think it is obvious where I am on the spectrum when I say I don’t think we’ve begun to see how bad it can get.

While… I agree with you on companies like Intuit pulling this is bullshit, depending on the region you’re in the trash example used is… not great.

Speaking in the Kansas City region where City of Kansas City trash pickup is literally two bags allowed, no cans used, often late, the bags tear easily, and with this whole freeze thing they’re still behind two weeks out. I live outside in one of those 5 (I’m not kidding, one literally started up last year) overlapping truck routes and it is insanely better. That said, previous town I lived in the town did the trash pickup and they did a good job, got the cans that could be auto lifted and even regularly had large item pickup days for free so even better than where I’m at now.

Turbotax, H&R Block, and the other tax companies are massively wealthy companies that actively lobby to push laws to keep them from being simple. There are states that they have managed to bar the same thing from happening in.

There was a lot of build up before, depression got bad. Honestly can’t go through absolutely everything that was going on. The final straw was locking myself out of my house and car in a town where everyone I knew was about 100 miles away, and I had a box cutter on me. I had the medical knowledge of how to cut to make sure it’d work. However I knew my dad, a paramedic who would walk away from horrible fatalities without a reaction was deeply bothered when a kid committed suicide, and I am an only child. Called the police on myself, took me to the hospital where the stress literally made it where any light whatsoever was a painful headache. Still comes back on high stress times.

Dad made me promise I wouldn’t take my life. The depression hasn’t left, it’s not as desperately bad as it was then but it’s still there. But been alive for about 15 years since.

Green River… unless it’s the Sprecher Red Apple but that’s seasonal which makes me angry lol

Kansas city… what I’d kill for a fast track to Chicago, St Louis, Denver and the like…

I mean fuck, at least we have Amtrak to Chicago and one to St Louis… however only runs once a day, takes as long as driving as long as the priority that goes to freight trains doesn’t delay too much.

US here… it has less to do with the 1% being fucking morons and more to do with the only infrastructure we actually pay any attention to is cars. Sure we’re having a bit of a bicycle revolution but at least in my area the bikes aren’t being used for transport but for fun, but then that’s with a metro that’s sprawling with a city that’s only 100 sq miles smaller than NYC, with 8,000,000 less people in it. Add that the auto companies were allowed to buy out things like the streetcar that was local and able to tear up the tracks to get rid of competition, it really isn’t a shocker.

But we’re now stuck in a cyclical spiral, of no investment for things like this are happening because it’s not seen as profitable enough. Which means a constant problem of using something like a bike for commuting is “But then I have nowhere I can put my bike where it won’t get fucked with.” so people don’t commute with it, which leads to no investment to the infrastructure.

Dunno how to fix it. It just sucks.

Here’s something tangentially related that makes it difficult to find older options, the support. In the US a piece of medical device has to be supported for 7 years. My hospital has these bladder scanners that are in quite a few departments, regular fixture in hospitals (ultrasounds). Jan 1 2024 was when our came up on the 7 year mark. To do preventative maintenance calibration required logging on their server, guess what’s no longer accessible? So to stay in compliance all of us in the biomed department has to figure out how to get new ones to replace the 10 $11k each paperweights we have now.

Kidney stones, gallstones, whatever the fuck the body does of “Lets build a rock inside the body that can fuck us up” needs to stop.