This meme about something that actually happened would make more sense if it were about something that didn’t happen? I’m not sure you understand what words mean.

Radiohead - How to Disappear Completely

Radiohead - Exit Music (For a Film)

Led Zeppelin - Rain Song

Pink Floyd - Great Gig in the Sky

The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter

Pearl Jam - Black (especially the MTV Unplugged version)

Nirvana - Where Did You Sleep Last Night (MTV Unplugged)

This isn’t every song I could put forth, but it’s a good short list off the top of my head. They’re breathtaking, emotional art when actively listened to with good headphones or speaker setup with volume up and no distractions. Even if you know these songs already, I encourage you to have a focused, active listening session. I think other than Rain Song which is probably like 7 or 8 minutes, all of these songs are only like 4 or 5 minutes long. We should all be able to take 5 minutes out of our day to enjoy some good art. If that 5 minutes is really precious, then I specifically recommend How to Disappear Completely because I interpret it to be about dissociating from anxieties and expectations and responsibilities for just a moment of peace, almost wishing for failure because what success you’ve found is contributing to the lack of time and peace that you so crave, and feeling guilty for that when you know that people would give anything to have what you have. That song didn’t mean anything to me until I put it on in the shower (I love my waterproof Bluetooth speaker) after a rough stretch of work, and it slammed into me harder than any song ever has. It was the exact right time and place for me to be listening, and it allowed me to let go of much more than I even knew I was holding onto. It was like an emotional enema, flushing things out that I didn’t even know were there. It wasn’t fun, but it was what I needed, and it might be what somebody else reading through these is looking for… Have a good cry!

Ground News is far from perfect, but it’s the sweet spot for me. It shows you headlines of the same story as reported by different outlets and tells you where on the left-right spectrum the outlets sit. It also shows a spread of what percent of reports on the story are left, center, and right. My biggest issue with it is that it tends to label some centrist or unbiased outlets as left. CNN is more center-right now and AP is pretty much as unbiased as it gets, but they’re both labeled left.

There’s a paid tier that really narrows shit down, but I’m liking the free tier just fine. I feel informed but not inundated, aware but not overwhelmed. I launch the app usually 2-3 times per day and just spend maybe 2-3 minutes scrolling and reading each time. That’s plenty for me. I do miss the comments at r/politics sometimes because people would call out shitty sources or elaborate further or engage in meaningful discussion.

There is no safe season in Texas. It gets tornadoes in Spring and hurricanes in Fall. And because every year is getting hotter and hotter, Summer in Texas is probably also gonna get pretty rough soon. And every time ERCOT struggles, the price of energy soars because of their bullshit predatory small print. I truly don’t understand why anybody would choose to move to Texas these days.

You’re completely correct, until enough of us buy other products to impact their bottom line. Scaled up production makes things cheaper per unit, but if demand drops out because we’re buying it less, then their cost per unit goes up. Then they raise prices to make up for it. Eventually alternatives become relatively competitive and then there’s a domino effect of more people jumping off of plastic. At least for some things. We will never get away from plastics entirely, but we’re way more wasteful than we need to be. There aren’t enough systemic incentives for companies to change their production, and there aren’t enough legislators willing to change that, but we can influence it a little bit by voting with our wallets. It’s very low impact, but talking about it in places like this can make the low impact a little bigger and lead to a bigger conversation about the global responsibility of industrialized nations to bear more of the burden because we can afford to. Idk I just don’t want to grow old and tell younger generations that we knew what we were doing was wrong and would hurt them but we just didn’t feel like doing anything about it.

Barely related, but a lot of people don’t know as much as they think they know about recycling. That symbol on the bottom of your plastic jugs, jars, etc that looks like the recycling symbol was the result of a campaign to intentionally mislead people into thinking that the containers are recyclable. Those symbols along with the number are identifiers for the types of plastic involved. Different recycling plants are equipped to process different materials, so I’m not saying that no plastic is recyclable, but you’re probably best off just assuming that your plant can’t handle your plastic. Why? Because if they can handle any plastic, it’s probably just one or two of them and you’d need to ask them to be sure, and you’d need to wash away all the food particles and remove labels and adhesive. I’ve heard that failing to do this can contaminate other material which renders that stuff unrecyclable as well, but I’m not sure that’s still true or ever was so don’t @ me on that point lol. I’m also not sure about sorting, but that could be necessary too. And after all that, it’s still very hard to recycle plastic, and you can probably only do it once or twice before it’s not usable anymore.

So what should we do with our plastic? Easy. Stop buying it. Okay, not so easy, but you can choose aluminum or glass containers instead wherever you have the choice. Any reduction is an improvement. Going a step further, see if you can’t reuse your plastic for something else before disposing. Once you’ve gotten a few uses out of it, then you can go through the process of recycling if it’s possible. I’m no genius for suggesting that, btw. That’s literally just what “reduce, reuse, recycle” is telling you to do. It’s in that order for a reason!

TED Talk complete. Hopefully most of you already knew this, but this was for the handful of people who didn’t know!

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Why do that when my bed is so much more comfortable?

I think I’d probably pack a bed, TV, microwave, and mini fridge into it and go travel and see a bunch of the world without worrying about lodging. I could also use it at work to eliminate my commute and save myself the high rent of living in Northern Virginia lol.

If you’re any good with STEM stuff, look into power plants. I had to be a basic laborer to get my foot in the door but shifted to water chemistry. It took a lot of effort, but eventually I got in as an operator and have since gotten a couple of raises and a promotion. The downside is the schedule of rotating shift work, but that’s why they pay so well. On nights and weekends, it’s just me and two other guys running the ~750MW power plant, sometimes running our asses off to keep it running on the grid, but usually just keeping up with general preventive maintenance, minor upgrade/replacement projects, calibrations, and responding to alarms.

Another option especially right now is to look into data centers. Learn refrigeration cycles, UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), and refresh your mind on chemistry 101 and physics 101. I interviewed at and got an offer from one but turned it down because they were offering $40/hour plus up to 4% bonus while I was at $42/hour plus up to 10% bonus, all while HR was kinda being shitty with me during negotiation. So I walked away and contacted the supervisor and manager I interviewed with and thanked them and let them know that I thought they were great and that it was the money and disrespect from HR that made me reject the offer.

In a span of like eight years, I did this 4 times to go from $11.25/hour to now $52/hour. All with a gen ed associates degree from a community college. The best time to look for a job is when you already have one. It’s your safety net. It enables you to walk away from the table when negotiating after crushing the interview. You are also interviewing them to see if they’re worthy of your valuable labor. They have no revenue without workers like you, and they have no profit if they pay you what you’re actually worth, so understand that technically every offer they extend to you is a lowball offer. Having the confidence of knowing this makes you appear competent enough to merit higher pay. They will look at candidates and remember that you were the one who had the sauce and stuck out.

Also supply chain, egg prices, Biden “I did that!” sticker. Damn lazy avocado toast is killing diamonds with tiktok.

Marriage isn’t for everybody, and that’s okay. As long as you aren’t stringing partners along who are looking to get married when you already know that you aren’t, then your choice doesn’t seem to be hurting anybody.

I’m 35 and married. Sure, tastes change, but my wife and I chose good partners in each other; we won’t hate each other or get irreparably sick of each other, we make a great team, and we understand each other’s limitations and are mature enough to ask for help. We let each other in. There is security and stability in marriage. I’m not great at meeting new people, so not having to go on another first date again is a huge relief for me. Making a good first impression is fucking exhausting. In contrast, I know how my wife is feeling pretty much just by glancing at her, and it’s really fulfilling to be on the same wavelength as my partner like that, especially because we’re also open communicators who can share the honest, fucked up feelings without worrying about judgment. So we’re basically each other’s therapist, but we share housework and meals and money, and we snuggle and kiss and fuck. I can understand that that’s not appealing to everybody, but it’s hard for me to imagine a version of myself who doesn’t want this. But again, it’s not for everybody, and it’s perfectly okay to not want it for yourself.

It’s really funny to me that he chose “Ted”. When’s the last time you met a Ted who didn’t suck?

Yes. Vote in all elections. Vote locally since that’s where real grassroots politicians get their start and can have the opportunity to build their reputation. Do some active research and donate time or money to campaigns you really support. Vote in primaries to get your preferred candidates into the general. Vote the best or at least the least bad electable option in the general. Bitter old assholes have nothing better to do than consume media that will try to scare them into getting their asses to the ballot boxes to vote in ways that help those media companies grow more profit. We need to similarly remain aware and active to contest their weaponized gullibility. These are the same demographic who get tricked into buying iTunes gift cards to hand over to scammers posing as the IRS.

For now. My knees and back ache, I don’t understand a lot of new slang and memes, I have pairs of “good socks”, and it’ll all happen to you one day too.

But if we assume a movie that made a billion dollars, and assume a high ticket price like $20, then that’s 50 million tickets sold. That math only checks out if each person paid $0.01 per worker. If we cut out useless executives, that number goes way the fuck down. So yes, let’s pay artists directly, and we’ll save money at the same time. Even if it were a tenth of a penny to each credit per viewer, that’s $50k on average, which is higher than the actual average wage for crew.. I know actors and directors make more, but that’s why I’m not going so far as to say we should only pay $2 for a ticket.

Honestly, this assumes that the content is even worth that. The older I get, the more conscious I am that my time left is constantly shrinking. Do I really wanna spend 3 hours watching a shitty movie? Do I really wanna spend 6-12 hours watching a shitty season of a shitty show? Nah, I’d rather enjoy an active activity than passively pass the time. I’ll pay a little for the little amount of content I care about at a time to be presented in a convenient way. I’m probably not gonna pirate until they make it impossible to cycle between services, and I’m sure that’s coming within a few years. Get ready for 2 year contracts for Netflix, $8/month (“for the first 6 months” in tiny print).

Let’s assume that this hypothetical movie had 2,000 people working on it, which isn’t a crazy number to assume. You think people should pay $2,000 to watch a movie?

Agreed. I’m just kinda surprised that I’m cool with something that sounds so terrible on paper. Ultimately, if it does become the norm, I’d expect another renaissance of indie titles, but probably PC only at first at least. If the only way to play games becomes subscription bundles which would obviously come with a paywall for devs to get access to customers, it gatekeeps smaller devs out. Until these same execs see that lost revenue and create an indie tier subscription with fewer hurdles to get your game in it, so that’s totally gonna be like 80% shovelware.

So basically, it’s pretty okay right now but it’s gonna be a bloated, greedy, saturated shitshow soon just like streaming services are. Wonderful.