Eric Clapton is wildly overrated

There are enough vegans who absolutely discuss their diet immediately to keep the joke alive. Given how difficult and isolating it can be in many places, I get how it can become really core to one’s identity.

China does have a lot of agricultural and manufacturing workers who aren’t on computers all day. And they have some pretty poor rural areas. But I’m calling bullshit on Japan’s numbers. Tokyo looks like Blade Runner at night but and the office culture is famous for long hours but no one is looking at screens? Get the fuck outta here.

I used to stick to that rule and get a sensible mid sized Toyota Corolla or Honda Accord that’s a few years old as needed. But in 2013 (the last time I needed to get a new car) the cost savings were really low compared to new. I think the used market was particularly hot so you’d save less that 10% of the cost, so I ended up getting my 1st and only (so far) brand new car ever.

Most people don’t want this. Most people are one paycheck or emergency away from financial ruin. There is no social safety net and most workers have long hours, long commutes and not enough days off. No one can get off of the treadmill because they’ll end up homeless, starving or unable to get needed medical care.

Sewing, learning to draw, knitting, reading, macrame, playing with my dog, video games, pottery. Maybe go to thrift shops and look for hidden gems that you can fix up?

Sounds like you’re doing everything you can. It sucks that you’re going through this; I hope the situation improves and you don’t get furloughed.

I’m guessing that if you could get to all your jobs without the car, you would have already done so? Saving on gas and insurance can help, but depending on where you live that might not be realistic.

You could try contacting local food banks and see if they ever make accommodations for people who are working during operating hours. They might not but there’s no harm in asking.

Right now you’re in a serious hole from missing work for a family emergency. I don’t have much advice for getting back onto steady ground aside from being super crazy frugal and working extra hours in the short term (which is fucking exhausting mentally and emotionally and physically). Do you have any long term plans for having more breathing room years from now? If your steady state is “one car repair or illness away from defaulting on payments” then that’s a hard path. Do you or your wife have prospects for better paying jobs in the future? Are there training or educational opportunities that could help? Are there cheaper places you could live (smaller, worse neighborhood?) to save money while working towards better job prospects? Living on not enough money in crappy circumstances sucks but it is definitely more bearable if you know it’s temporary and you’re making progress towards something better.

Good luck.

Anyone who says their smart overestimates themselves. Anyone who says their dumb underestimates themselves. How does anyone even answer this question?

I think it’s possible for someone to know that they are generally pretty smart or not very smart without over or under estimating. A lot of people will over or under estimate but if you’re just looking for a rough placement in a third of the bell curve, there’s a lot of feedback in everyday life to help.

Pedants who choose to make big deals over minor issues are always out to prove something and are objectively not smart.

Some people sincerely have trouble adapting to different precisions of language in different situations. I know some very smart and successful people with autism who struggle with this. It can be super annoying when they are way too pedantic for the context but I don’t think being deficient in this one area makes them dumb.

Up gets me every time.

If no one is allowed to wear any flair then that’s fair. But everyone is allowed (and possibly encouraged?) to wear pride stuff in June as part of the anyway corporate rainbow-washing. So I have to ask why it’s OK to wear “LGBTQ+ folks deserve life and civil rights” stuff but it’s not OK to wear “Black folks deserve life and civil rights” stuff? Why is stating that Black lives have value so offensive that it’s worth fighting all the way to the Supreme Court to ban it?

I’m mad at both. Amazon is trash. The current court is trash. And all the ghouls that got us this shit ass court are trash, from Mcconnell to Trump to every dummy that votes for Trump to the stupid stupid Democrats who didn’t fight tooth and nail when Obama’s pick didn’t get a hearing and didn’t pack the courts at the 1st opportunity. Oh and fuck RGB who should have fucking retired at the start of Obama’s 1st term. Octogenarians who survived multiple bouts of cancer don’t have the luxury of hanging out so the 1st female president gets to appoint their successor. Democrats are so fucking inept it’s hard to believe that they aren’t sandbagging us on purpose

Cool. I’ll be able to breathe during the water wars :) Do you happen to know if we would still get good oceanic photosynthesis levels with increased ocean temperature and decreased ocean ph levels?

If all the places with forests become desert, what are we supposed to breathe while we wait for trees to grow in the new green regions? How exactly is global food production supposed to make an efficient and orderly transition to completely different continents? Is 90% of the world’s population supposed just pick up and move to the yet to be built futuristic cities in different countries?

This is some fairy tale magical bullshit thinking. This looks like almost everyone in the yellow regions die (exceptions are those wealthy and politically connected enough or lucky and useful enough to be taken into a green region). There will be wars over food, water and habitable land. The global refugee crisis will be unfathomable. What happens when hundreds of millions or even billions of people need to get into a neighboring country to live? What if those people are in a country with a sophisticated modern military and are a nuclear power? Dude. We are so fucked.

Not the main character but Gus Fring was a remarkably intelligent gangster.

Buttons can move but designers need to weigh the benefits of moving the button against the time and frustration users will experience from the move

That isn’t true. McDonalds sells tons of french fries and they rarely change (and when they do change, they take great pains to make the change undetectable)

Why? Because no one ever gets promoted by saying “leave it alone, users like it the way it is”.