• 17 Posts
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Joined 3 年前
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Cake day: 2023年10月18日

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  • I won’t speak for anyone else, but Google has a 20 year track record of quietly breaking a fair chunk of promises they’ve made. Especially anything that gets in the way of them making a profit.

    I remember back when their core tenet was “Don’t be evil”.

    After a certain point, continuing to trust them, continuing to do business with them is consenting to be in an abusive relationship.

    Not my jam, sorry.



  • “Hi, my name is…”

    Admittedly, most of my friends are made at work, however it’s not impossible to meet people in other places. It really just boils down to going places other people are, smiling, and saying “Hello” or “Cool <whatever you find interesting about them>” to a lot of people. If you’re at a store and see someone struggling to load their car or truck, ask if you can give them a hand.

    Probably will go no further than that most of the time, however, it might just make their day. Which they will remember. Might have been the first compliment they’ve gotten in a while. Might have been the first time anyone has offered to help them without asking anything in return.

    Ever now and then, though, you’ll find yourself with a new friend with a common interest. Probably just for the moment, but if you see them again, say “hi” again. If you’ve got something you think is cool that they might also find interesting, perhaps show it off.

    And remember their name. It can help to work it into the conversation. Seriously, Bonje. People like hearing their own name in friendly contexts.

    Relationships are really just a longer term version of this with people you already have met.

    If this sounds a bit like sales, you ain’t half wrong. What you are selling is you. The payment you are asking for their time, their attention.

    Don’t be pushy. Accept no as an answer. But say “hello” to everyone.






  • A point. However, how far do you need to go to reach an area, that doesn’t speak your native language commonly?

    We recently moved a fair distance, not too far as things go here. Roughly 2000 km. English language spoken by almost everyone throughout the entire trip. Plus 15 random languages from tourists and immigrants from around the globe. I could have gone another 2000 km and I still would have had to dig to find a community that had a common language other than english.

    I would have had to travel 2000 km the other way to reach an area where a single language other than English was spoken by more than 5% of the population.

    Maybe 1000 km, I forget about Creole in Louisiana, though I’m not sure how common that language is in the State. I just remember running across the language frequently while driving trucks in that area for a living.

    We are a truly massive nation that largely shares a single language. Most of us, rarely ever leave a 250 km radius from where we were born. Most of us don’t have passports and will never leave the US.

    Hell, I’m well traveled. I’ve been to 45 on the 50 States, and in all my travels I’ve only needed another language once. In Larado, TX, which is right on the border with Mexico.

    There are small enclaves that speak an alternative language, but they are few and far between.

    Would it be to the students benefit to learn a second language, sure. But it’s unlikely that the student would ever use whatever random language they were required to learn. Spanish and perhaps Arabic might occasionally be helpful, but not necessarily, depending on what part of the country (or trade) you’re they are in.



  • I just had to deal with this. Moving two households from Alabama to Minnesota, with myself, my wife and her mother (all 3 of whom are pack rats) and more than 1 one way truck and a car hauler was not in the budget.

    What I did was rent a storage unit just large enough to match the volume of the truck I was going to rent. Anything that could fit in the storage unit could be kept. Everything else had to go. Anticipating trouble, especially from my MIL, I divided the storage unit into halfs using gaffer’s tape and one half (me and my wife’s) was again divided into half with one section reserved for me and the other for my wife.

    Me and my wife downsized fairly problem-free. I got down to about 10 plastic footlockers and let my wife have the rest of my section. Our half was full, but not horribly so even after the furniture we wanted to keep. My MIL however was another story.

    She kept saying we were trying to force her to give away everything she owned. She calmed down and started downsizing seriously when we finally packed up her house to move it to the storage unit and we completely filled U-haul’s largest truck, Tetris Style, with not even enough room left for a rolled up poster, and my MIL still had another half truck’s worth of boxes that she had, till that point, claimed she couldn’t bear parting with. I put my foot down and told her that, while I was willing to make multiple trips (neither of them were comfortable with the idea of drive the U-Haul) she would have to pay the full cost of moving everything that wouldn’t fit into the 1st truck and estimated that it would cost an additional $4K per trip, all in. That got her.

    We wound up renting a second storage unit for interim use as she decided what would go on the truck and what she would have to sell, give away or toss. I think we may have single-handedly crashed the second hand market in our old town with everything we three donated. In the end, it was noisy, stressful and there were times when my MIL didn’t want to talk to me or my wife, but we eventually got it down to a single truck, and 3 cars, but damn, were they packed.









  • Living in the US South for the last 30 years, my experience has been that most of the "Don’t tread on me " crowd are very much only interested in protecting themselves and their families. That often means keeping your head low when trouble is about.

    Additionally, ICE seems to have been keeping a low profile in areas where that mindset is most prevalent. Still active, but keeping their wits about them.

    Sooner or later, though, ICE will fuck up, knock down the wrong door, and multiple people (both ICE and citizens) will catch a bad case of lead poisoning. And then things will get bad.