Pending Train is pretty darn close to what you’re describing. I only got through the first episode, it falls prey to a lot of annoying little tropes, but it’s a cool concept for sure.
Pending Train is pretty darn close to what you’re describing. I only got through the first episode, it falls prey to a lot of annoying little tropes, but it’s a cool concept for sure.
Ha! I never thought about the underground mansion hideaway. Good stuff. You’re right, they’d be pretty much unstoppable and unbeatable.
If I could bend, I think I’d choose the earth nation. Imagine how much cool shit you could build. Need an extension on your house? Here’s a brand new stone wall in 30 seconds.
I would take it upon myself to solve homelessness, if it existed. You need a house? Done. You need a house? How many rooms? Done.
I would build so. much. stuff. It would get weird.
Omg this happened to me last year in my old shitty apartment, but it was real. Somehow a massive roach ended up on top of my comforter. I had serious trouble sleeping for a while after that, and I was seeing tricky shadows for weeks…
The whole neighborhood had a roach problem, it wasn’t any particular grossness on my part. The general consensus amongst my neighbors at the time was that the nearby restaurants were to blame, but you can be sure I did a deep cleaning after that episode…so glad I don’t live there anymore.
My whole team and I work remotely, so it’s not the exact same situation as you, but I made a concerted effort from day one to set social boundaries with my colleagues. First week on the job my manager found out I’m single and offered to set me up with people. I acted very weird about it, purposefully exaggerating how uncomfortable the offer made me, and she got the hint. We have a very friendly and cordial working relationship, but she no longer pries into my personal life unless I volunteer information. Been happily working under her for four years now.
That work/life separation quickly filtered down to the rest of my colleagues, to the point where now they act a little weird when a company call starts to get personal. Mission accomplished.
I think the key thing is that you’ll never get through to people if they can’t read social cues. Sounds like your workplace cliques are filled with those types of oblivious folks, so you might just need to be completely explicit about keeping things fully professional. I’m lucky that my manager is emotionally intelligent, but that’s pretty rare these days.
Good luck!!
Edit: queues to cues
I know you said to avoid the “just don’t connect it” advice, but I frankly think that’s your best bet without shelling out absurd amounts of money. I hate the concept of smart TVs, so like you I tried to find a reasonably priced dumb TV. Had zero luck. Instead, I bought a 55” Hisense TV (U8K) about 6 months ago, and have never once connected it to the internet. I think it’s technically a Google TV, but I wouldn’t know, since I just connect my devices to it, no internet necessary. It’s a gorgeous display with amazing picture quality. All the features are enabled, nothing was stuck behind an internet-wall. I don’t regret it.
Yeah there are a ton of these on Craigs List lately too. It’ll be a whole listing that appears to be a standalone separate unit, but it turns out to be shared. Sometimes there will be hints like “private entrance” or something, but it’s still pretty deceptive.
Good question, I wish I knew. The closest I’ve found is sometimes Zillow, but it’s pretty different, not really comparable.
I’m not on Facebook, but from what I hear they’ve got the monopoly on this kind of thing now.
At least as far as apartment listings in California go, in my experience most of them are scams and phishing schemes. So yeah, 5-10 years ago most were legit postings, now it’s flipped.
I believe there are 3 kinds of musicians. Keep in mind I have no evidence for this, it’s just what I’ve experienced through a life of playing music and being around lots of musicians.
#1 is someone with natural ability, these are the people who seem to be able to pick up any instrument and intuitively understand how to make it sound like music. This is the rarest kind of musician.
#2 is someone with a little bit of #1’s natural ability, but like 70% of their skill comes from honing it through sustained, long-term practice. It’s hard, and can be incredibly frustrating, but also very rewarding. I’d say many if not most successful musicians fall into this category.
#3 is someone with none of #1’s natural ability, but a passionate desire to learn. With grueling long hours of practicing the basics, studying some theory, and intentional instruction, #3 is perfectly capable of playing an instrument beautifully, but it will be a lot more work for them than it would be for #’s 1 and 2.
It’s probably pretty similar to sports. Some people are naturals, but almost anyone can learn to be really good at them, it just takes a shitload of work.
No he has had a secret service detail ever since he was elected, he didn’t refuse their protection after losing the election and leaving office.
Current presidents are required by law to have secret service protection, former presidents are entitled to lifetime protection, but can choose to refuse it. He hasn’t refused it.
This is the only answer I’m okay with. Keeping government away from it would be a challenge, but an easier challenge to handle than our current cesspool of for-profit media companies.
Same with elections, they should be fully funded by taxpayers, and not a single cent of private money should enter the equation. Depending on the office and the size of its constituency, every candidate gets the exact same amount. You accept a dollar from a corp? You’re automatically disqualified. Imagine how much harder candidates would have to work for their votes.
Couldn’t agree more. I was having this conversation with friends back in 08/09. No one took me seriously, but the red flags were all there for everyone to see. Facebook was caught using their platform to run sociological experiments on their users without consent, for example. That alone would get an academic or real researcher in serious trouble. But for an evil-corp like Facebook? Nothing but skepticism or disbelief from most people. It happened, people were harmed. Oh, and remember Myanmar?
The general publics’ overall sense of helplessness, apathy, and/or disbelief that the tech industry is doing anything untoward is their biggest victory. People are happily falling for it all over again with LLMs.
The best evidence for their common ancestry is from 2008, but it doesn’t look like there have been any new developments since then.
Molecular analysis of a shred of 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex protein — along with that of 21 modern species — confirms that dinosaurs share common ancestry with chickens, ostriches, and to a lesser extent, alligators.
Source Harvard Gazette
It’s takes real skill to take a concept that has been developed over years of highly technical debate and scholarship and make it understandable with normal language, even if the underlying concepts are actually super simple.
I think a reason for this is that in highly technical or complex fields, it’s counterintuitively easier to speak in full jargon, since that’s how ideas are developed and how people in the field are convinced of their validity. Using language for the “public” can often mean you lose some of the more subtle meanings, though you’re right that at the end of the day the explanations that we end up with are usually easy for most people to understand.
So I think it’s actually pretty natural to start with jargon and then refine the ideas by translating them into normal speak.
I want to know who goes around giving a single downvote to entirely personal and uncontroversial comments. Happens to almost every single one of my comments. I’d rather have five or ten downvotes than just one. I dunno, I know I shouldn’t let it bother me, but it does.
You win the internet today.
Blow some cannabis smoke in my face and point me in the direction of a comfortable chair. Now it’s a chill hangout session, not a boss fight. But you still win.
Completion reward: let’s share some pretzels
When I was growing up, we called these “sweatshirt jackets.” So, yes.
I think of government as a relatively recent adaptation for our some of our species’ less socially-harmonious impulses. Government makes formal our ability to gather in groups and come to a shared understanding, across diverse and often contradictory belief systems. Humans have always been really good at this, but modern governments and their accompanying bureaucracies take it to the next level. Sure we lose some efficiency, but that’s what happens when you’ve got massive populations.
I believe government is meant to take the place of the caretakers of old who would have been responsible for the well-being of the group. If you think of government as an extension of ourselves, the part that cares for the collective for the benefit of the individual, and vice versa, then it’s one of the most critical components of our survival as a species.
Ideally, government should provide everything that an individual cannot provide for themselves. If a person isn’t a builder, then government should provide a place to live. If a person isn’t a farmer, then government should provide enough food to survive on. If a person isn’t a doctor, then the government should provide medical care. And so on. All the essentials we need to live should be provided by the government, because the government is us.