This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

paddirn ,

Would it only be Texas though? Is there a chance that other US states might also join along with them, not because they wanted to secede before, but because the GOP is a cult and they can convince their people to go along with anything? Plus, how many military personnel would “defect” over to this new Texas Republic? The idea of Texas leaving and trying to go it alone against the rest of the current US is fairly one-sided, but what if Texas peels away a sizable chunk of the US with it? I wouldn’t doubt that Trump would support it if it meant saving his skin from all the trials he’s involved in (though given the status of most of them it may not be necessary).

Dr. Pulaski Appreciation Post ( startrek.website )

I don't know whether it's a popular opinion or not, but I think Dr. Pulaski was a great character and I found her much more interesting than Dr. Crusher. I don't know if it was down to the writing or the performance but Pulaski is one of the best parts of season 2 and I would have been happy to see her character continue....

paddirn ,

I appreciate that she wasn’t as sexualized as Crusher (if at all), it was pretty cringey in the first season.

paddirn ,

I was just thinking about interactions like this I've had a few times with different nice drivers, where I think they'll be trying to wave me through (no flashing brights or anything), I'm assuming to be nice, but they're far enough away that I can't see them, so I'm not entirely certain of their intent. Usually it's a busy road, so there's very little margin for error, if I misjudge what they're doing, then there's gonna be a problem. And then you both end up missing a chance to go because they screwed up the process, when, if they just hadn't tried to be nice and just went like they were supposed to, we both could've gone. Just follow the dumb traffic laws.

The exception to this though is at my kid's school. To turn into the school, there's a system that most of the parents follow and it works well, we essentially treat the entryway as a modified 3-way stop. Whoever has the easiest time to get in/get out go last in the order. So people needing to pull out and make a left turn onto the main road get first priority, then people needing to make a left turn into the school, finally people making a right-hand turn either into or out of the school go last. Anyone not going into the school just keeps going.

This system works better than when a traffic cop is occasionally posted to direct traffic (for whatever reason). With the cop, traffic gets backed up everywhere around the school and it takes everyone forever to get where they need to go. Without the cop, most people follow "the system" and traffic flows smoothly. When someone doesn't follow the system, it's not necessarily a surprise because they just don't wait, but usually a car or two later follows the system and everyone goes where they need to. You're rarely waiting for long.

paddirn ,

“We’ll have the law of the jungle, the law of the streets,” King said. “It will be who has the most power. It’s potential for chaos.”

So the Supreme Court is definitely going to be in favor of this.

paddirn ,

The cord on the floor looks like a hazard that’s just asking to get tripped on. If you absolutely need it, it looks like you may have more than enough extra cord to just run that along the walls/corners to get to wherever it needs to go. I’d try to tuck in underneath the trim if there’s space, or just try using strategic tape/glue/caulking to keep it out of the way/hidden. Maybe a floor protector for the chair.

Changing the orientation of the desk such that it’s against the wall with the window might help if glare is an issue on the computer screen. You might also look at utilizing the closet as more of an actual closet. Adding doors could help keep unsightly storage out of sight.

Otherwise, it’s a livable area for a single person. The more compact your situation, the easier it is to keep clean. Maybe look at making upgrades here and there as your income allows for, though eventually it probably requires upgrading your space as well, but that’s dependent on where you’re at in life.

  • bed frame to get the mattress off the floor, you could even get extra storage space out of it
  • hangers for clothes, maybe a small dresser
  • carpeting/rug(s)
  • nightstand/table
paddirn ,

“Yes, and she’s scrabbling around to get them back on again, but even before she can get her knickers on, I’ve seen everything. Yeah. I’ve seen it all.”

paddirn ,

What arguments would people even have about Rise of Skywalker? How bad it actually is? Do those that think it’s utter shit get frothy at the mouth if somebody says they thought it was just “kinda bad”?

[US] Consider a brokerage account for your main bank

Most people take a simple view of cash: they have a checking account for spending and a savings account for savings, and if they get fancy, they’ll have a CD for longer term savings goals. Power users will change to an online bank with better returns, and that’s about as far as it goes. That certainly works, but we can do a...

paddirn ,

I have accounts with Ally, Fidelity, and Schwab currently, though Ally has been my main e-bank, Fidelity for an inherited IRA with various stocks (though I’ve only been selling these off as I need to eventually clear the acct), and Schwab is for a few $100 in “play” money I blew on meme stocks that have since gone to shit. I was planning on cashing everything out of Fidelity when the market improved a little more (knock on wood) and moving it all to Ally, but I may rethink that after reading this.

I didn’t realize the SPAXX fund was a money market acct that earned interest (I know it’s literally in the name), it’s just the default position if you sell off stocks. When it’s listed aside all the other stocks in the acct though, it doesn’t give any indication that it earns any interest.

Is there a good amount to buy t-bills at if doing a t-bill ladder, or would you just take however much you plan to invest in total and divide by ~26 (every other week for a year)? What’s the min amt you can buy at?

paddirn ,

Not to be confused with Perry Farrell.

paddirn ,

Maybe not happiness, but it does buy peace of mind.

paddirn ,

Years ago I had been out of multiplayer gaming for a number of years and had really only had experiences with PC games, where multiplayer is/was just this standard thing. You already bought the game, playing multiplayer with other people is just a thing you can hop on and do whenever you want for free (provided there’s other people to play). I owned consoles, but never played multiplayer games on them, so never dealt with game passes or anything like that.

When my oldest son started getting into gaming, we wanted to play couch co-op on an Xbox game, but then ran into a problem with it requiring an Xbox game pass for a co-op mode (it had been couch co-op in previous games from the series; basically a horde mode where you go against bots, so no reason to go online). Requiring a game pass for that just seemed like a shit way to get more subscriptions.

When I complained about it on Reddit, people swarmed to tell me what a jackass I was and that of course you have to subscribe to play with game pass, like what kind of world was I living in where I expected free multiplayer gaming? Apparently I hadn’t realized what a golden age I had lived in when something like free multiplayer gaming was just a standard thing.

paddirn ,

Why not just vote for him as the new Speaker, rather than changing the rules?

paddirn ,

Hitchhiker’s Guide is more like a sci-fi fairy tale, though without any sort of moral teachings or any life lessons outside of “Don’t Panic”. It’s just characters going from one improbable situation or interesting conversation to another. Outside of maybe Marvin the paranoid android and Zaphod, none of the other characters are particularly interesting, they’re just sort of blank vehicles to keep the story going or Arthur as the cabbagehead/Watson-esque character to ask questions for the reader.

paddirn ,

Isn’t Gaetz himself likely to get ousted after a House Ethics report comes out on him?

paddirn ,

On the one hand, as a worker, I absolutely think it should be considered part of the work day, HOWEVER, there’s so many factors that go into what constitutes your commute, that I’m not sure how businesses would account for that. Is it based on distance, so the farther away you live, the more compensation you get, just because you live further away? That seems to unfairly reward people people who live farther away. Do you just give a blanket extra 1 hr (30 min before/after the work day) to everyone to account for it, assuming that that covers most cases?

It does seem to be a standard for most businesses that travel, you’re paying for their time just to come out. I’ve had plenty of plumbers/handymen/house fixerish people who have charged just for gracing me with their presence for <10 min, even though they didn’t actually do any work, there’s usually a ~$50–100 minimum charge for house calls. I’m assuming their travel time is getting factored into it, so why shouldn’t other workers travel time be factored in as well?

CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978 ( www.epi.org )

“average top CEO compensation was $15.6 million in 2021, up 9.8% since 2020. In 2021, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 399-to-1 under the realized measure of CEO pay; that is up from 366-to-1 in 2020 and a big increase from 20-to-1 in 1965 and 59-to-1 in 1989”

paddirn ,

Yeah, but look at how much Elon Musk tweets/xcretes/whatever. He’s obviously doing 1,460% more work than anyone else at Twitter.

paddirn ,

Trump getting brought down by archivists and IT managers is one of the funniest things about this whole thing. Revenge of the Nerds.

paddirn ,

“The Reading Rainbow guy on MY Star Trek?! Oh god, is he gonna read a book to the shields to get them to hold?”

paddirn ,

I watched it as an impressionable 6 year old and loved every minute of it, but yeah, watching through it again, the first season was rough.

Almost all remote-work news is negative now but was positive in the beginning of the pandemic. Have you noticed this or am I going crazy?

Earlier in the pandemic many news and magazine organizations would proudly write about how working from home always actually can lead to over working and being too “productive”. I am yet to collect some evidence on it but I think we remember a good amount about this....

paddirn ,

I’ve got small kids, so while I generally like WFH, there have been times where I absolutely just wanted to GTFO and go into the office. Our company did full WFH for awhile, then gradually phased us back in to the office, but for me the best schedule we had was where we were one week in-office, one week WFH, that was the absolute best and gave me the best of both worlds. Without kids though, I would probably prefer WFH a good portion of the time, just so I could have some freedom during lulls in the workload to catch up on home stuff.

paddirn ,

One University study suggests that primates have been masturbating for around 40 million years. I think it’s safe to say we’re probably ok beating our meat a little now and then (though obviously excessive masturbation can be an issue). Interestingly, prevalence of masturbation seems to go up with primates in captivity, which to me suggests it’s either a stress response (relieving tension), a reaction to the more limited activities available (boredom), and/or a reaction to the safer environment (more free time not worrying about getting killed).

An interesting case of moderation in the fediverse ( blog.ownlifeful.com )

A small group of people were offended by a joke that unintentionally came across transphobic, and as a result this persons account was blacklisted. Even after getting the account reinstated, there were lasting complications with the state of the account (these probably technical issues) and the account was basically lost for...

paddirn ,

In general, I consider myself fairly open-minded, I have no issues with the LGBTQ+ community and find it infuriating that the Trans community especially is being targeted by Republicans. It’s obvious they’re being made into scapegoats to get Republican voters to the polls. They’re exploiting people’s misunderstandings and fear for political gain.

HOWEVER, I think the Trans community is its own worst enemy at times, due to their excessively heavy-handed tactics online and this constant drumbeat of accusing anything under the sun as being transphobic, no matter the actual intent. There’s no attempt to educate or help people understand, it’s just bringing the ban hammer, reporting transphobia, accusing people of bigotry, for relatively mild and innocuous comments or actions.

This situation could’ve been resolved by somebody just saying, “Hey that term ‘tranny’ is offensive, you shouldn’t say that,” to which the poster would’ve responded with their background and everyone would realize it was just a joke from someone who was obviously not a bigot. The country is still coming to terms with the Trans community “entering the mainstream”, it’s all new and not everyone knows what’s acceptable (poster probably should’ve known, but probably thought people would know him better). I get that they’re under attack, but the Trans community could afford to chill out online and not go on the attack at the slightest perceived provocation, else they’re gonna start turning people against them.

paddirn ,

Meanwhile, getting a DUI in some places still means that you can be forced to attend religious-leaning AA meetings.

paddirn ,

And ~50% of American people who will actually vote will check that box and be fine with it. I wish I could say I had faith in my fellow Americans to not do that, but look how 2016 turned out.

paddirn ,

I worked for JPMorgan Chase before and this doesn’t surprise me one bit. Such a backasswards company that cares little for its customers or its employees. I will forever avoid doing any sort of business with Chase for as long as I live. Complete trash.

paddirn ,

I don’t know enough to have any brand loyalty, though there might be a handful of brands that I probably won’t buy from again. If I could buy some of my cordless tools again though I’d try to consolidate down to a single brand so I didn’t have so many dumb chargers to sort through.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • random
  • All magazines