I genuinely snort-laughed at this 😂

Well, I mean, can you do better than Justin Trudeau?

Yepper, my dad is now long retired, but he was an old school programmer that kept legacy banking systems in the US alive, running in parallel with newer ones (in case the shit hit the fan on the new ones). Though not American, he’s a big Trump fan and definitely would have voted for him if he could have, even though he himself admits its a good things he retired and returned home before Trump became president, because he would not have gotten his US work visas under Trump.

This is basically Mark Carney, the current Prime Minister of Canada. He ran and won as a Liberal, but he would have been a Conservative two decades ago. He’s been working against the interests of every day Canadians, but the thing is that if the alternative is Pierre Poilievre and his Conservatives, I’d still vote for Carney 10/10 times, because at least Carney isn’t a homophobic, transphobic racist. He’ll defend your human rights while robbing you.

Carney looks great on the world stage because he’s juxtaposed against Trump. And yes, we’re definitely better off with Carney at the helm than with Poillievre who was trying so hard to emulate Trump, but the entire world had been taking a pretty hard shift to the right.

You’re right that interactions are not hugs, but they create friendships with people with whom it is both socially acceptable and emotionally healthy to hug. If you don’t hug your friends, you’re missing out in life.

Essentially what you said, but I’d like to phrase it the way a counselor said it to me when I was under a lot of stress at work. Stress is the gap between our expectation and reality. Say you expect to be/produce/achieve/whatever 100%, but you are only capable of achieving 80%. The stress you experience is that 20% gap. Change your expectations to meet your reality and that stress will be resolved.

Now, it may still be that others might still want or expect that 20% from you, but that’s their problem and their stress. If you cannot produce it anyway (which created your stress in the first place), existing in the stress-gap clearly won’t make you able to do it anyway.

My father exactly. He’s Asian, so I think he feels more removed from the situation, but he worked in the US for over a decade before retiring back here. He’s still 100% pro-Trump, even though we are feeling the negative effects of his tariffs (“He has to put tariffs, he had no choice, look at their economy”), and he even admits things like Good thing I retired before Trump became president otherwise I probably couldn’t get a work visa now. My dad would vote Trump if he could vote.

Not medical advice, but a suggestion of easy things to ask your doctor to check for if you have insomnia, and inexpensive to address if they are the culprit: taking taking B12 and D supplements gave me (back?) my ability to sleep. I’ve never slept better in my life.

Check out this new wee little reader from Boox: https://shop.boox.com/products/picco
I think the idea of mounting it to the back of your phone is interesting, but I’m not totally sold on the idea. I’m amused by it, but not quite sold. I definitely wouldn’t want it as my every day reader, and I feel like someone who would read while standing in line… would be enough of a reader to want an every day reader.

Anywhats, what I really wish for is a Boox phone. The Palma 2 pro is close, but I still actually need my phone number for professional purposes.

Boox has 10.3" and 13.3" models: https://shop.boox.com/collections/all-products/13-3 The 13.3 would be closest to A4 (assuming that’s what you meant, A4 or 8.5x11). They run Android, you can install other reader apps like Kindle, Kobo, Libby. You can load PDFs by USB (which I do). There was a browser interface which I’d tried and it worked, but I just don’t use it. No idea if it’s still available. The built-in reading app can mark up epubs the same as PDFs. I purchased a Wacom stylus that has a side button for the eraser function because the original it comes with has the eraser on the top. I didn’t like having to flip the stylus over.

I have a predecessor 13.3" model, the Max Lumi, which is no longer available, but I am still fairly pleased with it. I’d gotten mine for the purpose of splitscreening a document on one side and notebook on the other side, to take notes for school. If I were to buy again now, I would go for the slightly smaller 10.3 size to be more portable, but unlikely to use spiltscreen. I would also opt for colour (which was not yet an option when I bought mine.)

Hmm, I see what you’re putting down. I may have to revise my thoughts on the matter. Thanks.

While I agree those ladies were a bunch of loonies, I don’t think the test is supposed to be predictive (this is how you will be), rather descriptive (this is how you are).

Although I’ve had this same argument with people over the function of dictionaries being descriptive (this is how words are used) rather than prescriptive (this is how you should use words).

A tenet of Taoism is that nothing is constant and everything changes. We can have peace and be clear-minded by moving with, around, even redirecting the changes, rather than directly resisting them.

I’m not a taoist, but I think that’s pretty damn wise.

FYI, the wait for processing is now years-long, due to the large influx of applications and the lack of foresight to increase staffing to manage that. Also, if you don’t already have the documentation to prove who your grandfather is, his citizenship, and who you are in relation to him, archives across the country have been inundated with requests for this kind of genealogical information, and they, too, are under-resource to handle it. (And not only so, but arts, culture, and heritage institutions have had budget slashed all across the country, so there are actually fewer people now to handle these requests.)

Exec was committing fraud and self-enrichment thru work. Snitched to the board with evidence, they did nothing. One even told me he wasn’t concerned. Noped outta there and snitched to the government instead.

The semi-vertical ones help compared to a standard (horizontal) mouse, but as someone who had a lot of pain, they were not enough for me. For example, I had the Microsoft sculpt mouse, which came with their split keyboard (the main reason I bought it) and still experienced pain. Then I went more vertical to the Logitech Lift which was better, but did not eliminate the pain entirely. Finally, I now use the Evoluent Vertical mouse and now no longer experience pain in my mousing hand.

The only drawback is when I used a standard mouse (totally horizontal), I used to switch hands and use it ambidextrously. Now I obviously can’t switch hands with these mice.

I think for someone who doesn’t experience persistent pain, a semi-vertical mouse may be well enough.

I know someone who flies down about once a month to help his elderly older brother and sister. (He is himself a retired senior, they are even older.) I presume he counts as 12 visitors a year, but of course, he’s just one person with family obligations.

This was the big discussion back when I still worked in insurance while years ago. The discussion was that insurance companies would not accept liability for the owners of self-driving cars because its not the driver creating the risk, but the car company and its programmers, but that car producers would have to insure their own vehicles. The discussion was how the industry will have to adapt to survive this change.

Current models of insurance (and prices) is based on statistics, including the driver’s age, gender, location, and characteristics of the vehicle (make, model, age). Some companies give discounts if you are willing to give them telemetry on your driving habits. (Personally, I’m not willing, but at least that’s based on you individually rather than a statistical average version of you. )

Those all to out the window when the car is self-driving. Driving behaviour is determined by the competence of the programmers who programed the car, which is entirely opaque to the public and insurers. An update can totally change the driving behaviour anytime, in ways no one can know. That is not an acceptable risk to a risk-calculating industry.

When I was still around the industry, the current issue was exactly when did policy coverage start and stop for ride share drivers (the moment they accept a ride in an app or when a passenger enters the vehicle?). I have not seen a policy for a vehicle that has some autonomous mode, but I would imagine that, in these years since, wordings have been added that state a policy does not cover the owner when FSD is engaged. But I also haven’t seen that car companies are actually offering insurance either.

So, owner or car company? Maybe both, but there’s a reason that Tesla specifically states that drivers have to maintain control of the vehicle, for exactly this reason: to disclaim responsibility.

A generation ago, Iran was not like this. Islam itself does not require any of this. An important part if Islam is that the Qur’an cannot be translated, so it is in a form of Arabic few people can really understand. People must depend on the mullahs to tell them what it says. (Which was once also what Christians said about the Latin Bible, though that makes even less sense than the Qur’an because the Bible was translated into Latin.) This is anti-women conservatives using the guise of religion to push their hatred on women and control the population as a whole. As you say, Christianity was once used in the same way, but it still is now, isn’t it?

In the US, abortion is a bogeyman used to threaten women from getting healthcare (even to the point of death), and monitor and control their movements. It’s being done under the guide of “Christianity”. “Christianity” is used against people of different races (because they can’t really be Christian if they’re not white), actually other religions, sexuality, and gender. Yet, how much did Christ ever talk about these things?

Modern trucks are just emotional support vehicles for the egoistically challenged.