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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2023

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  • If you’re in an HOA, check the bylaws before replacing with clover.

    Having said that, depending on where you’re at, clover can work incredibly well. A couple years ago, I changed the layout of my yard - moved flower beds and such. I put down clover in the areas where the beds used to be and it’s taken over a significant portion of my lawn. It’s great. I don’t have to mow as often and my lawn looks nice.

    I get a ton of bees in the yard now too; which are fun to watch. I sware my vegetable garden has much better yield since doing it too. I thank the bees, but a friend of mine insists it’s just my imagination.

    Regardless, I’m in the midwest and clover has grown well with very little maintenance. Of course, your milage may vary.


  • I’m sure the CEO saying this has absolutely nothing to do with the administration’s attempt to force the drug manufacturers to justify the validity of the vaccine. There is no way he would say something like that, just to create headlines tying the president to the success of vaccine. The president is way too smart and well adjusted to be manipulated by someone implying that if the president questions the vaccine, he is saying he didn’t deserve the Nobel. It must be a complete coincidence.

    /s… in case I was somehow more subtle than the Pfizer CEO.





  • Every year, we do an employee survey to see how management is doing; like a report card for management. In the last 3 years, mine has come back with the highest company scores for employee engagement, job satisfaction, and project completion rate. I was asked to give a presentation to the other officers and managers about things I do to get those scores.

    The presentation was basically one slide that I expanded to 10. It came down to creating the expectation, for the folks who report to me, that a work week is 37.5 hours (our full-time week) and no more. I make it clear that if my team is working overtime, I’ve failed. If that happens, together we look at their project commitments and reduce the workload, or get training, or whatever is needed.

    Working folks to the point of burnout is NEVER a valid solution. Respecting personal time pays dividends to everyone. It’s amazing how treating people like adults makes them happier and more productive. It’s such a low bar and yet seems so foreign to people.

    After my presentation, multiple execs argued thar I’d get more done if I pushed my team harder. Our company President pulled up all of our project completion rates, and asked them to explain the discrepancy. The three who complained the most about my approach were in the bottom five.

    Data continually shows people are happy when they have a solid, predictable, work life balance. Happy people are more productive and are willing to do more in the long run. And they stick around, so you don’t have to keep looking for new employees. Everyone wins. Yet, there is such a resistance to it by certain people, and I don’t understand why.

    Tldr: Expecting your people to give up their personal life for work, it’s a clear sign that you are a terrible leader.





  • “Without sacraficing university values,” implies the university values never included integrity, morality, or common fucking sense. Brown keeps their academic independence… as long as they do what they are told.

    And this is how rights are stripped away. One at a time. This time, it’s about archaic definitions of “male” and “female.” What’s next? Sexuality, right? No gays allowed, or you’ll lose funding. Followed by people of color? Then women? It will be one concession after another. And Brown just said, they are not only fine with it, they’ll pay $50m for the privilege.

    Doesn’t sound like a school that has their students in mind.


  • My guess, and it is just a guess… it’s a storm water control system being used as a basement drain, possibly flowing into the sewer line.

    I’ve seen older houses where someone cut into the basmeny floor directly into a sewer line to put in a basement drain.

    Based on you saying water was in there when it was raining, someone might have cut into the storm water mitigation line for a basement drain. Then someone tiled the floor and put a vent over the hole because that’s what they found that fits.

    With older houses, a lot of times, the storm water system was tied directly into the main sewer. If that’s what this is, I’d be concerned about sewer gasses coming up from it.

    Again, with only seeing one picture, it’s just a guess.

    Edit: It could also just be a cleanout for the storm water drain too.




  • Do you really think the US has any real concern about being attacked? There is plenty to say about US policies, both good and bad. Part of that is the nearly $1T per year spent on the military. I don’t think you’ll find many credible people who think attacking the US will be good for whoever does it.

    Attacking the US has been, historically, one thing that tends to unite the country. We - Americans - like building shit and we like fighting people. We never stop building new weapons. But when there is no-one to fight, we fight each other. There is a huge social divide in the US right now. You want to fix that, attack us.

    *Edit: spelling


  • It would take a lot to convince me that they haven’t been discussing this for years and have been waiting for the right time. The market is now loaded with others to do the delivery, which was probably one of the considerations. I’m sure another was how to announce it where they can blame someone else; at least to the point of ensuring some will defend them.

    The minimum wage increase is their excuse. What they are doing is outsourcing their delivery to a 3rd party (GrubHub, Uber eats, etc). They wont have to pay them anything, the customer will. They are decreasing their head count, payroll, insurance, taxes, benefits, etc. They will lose some sales, but that wont even be close to their cost savings. They will easily make more money while selling their product at the same price. Any business would love to be in the same position.





  • More of a physical representation of a debt, but in essence, yes.

    I buy a rock from you with $5, that $5 represents the debt I incurred by taking the rock. You have the $5 that you can use to barter for something else. At the end of the day, the government is backing my debt for the rock with a physical piece of paper. Except it isn’t physical anymore now that everything is digital. So, I suppose its more like the bits of data that represent the physical money that represents the debt for the rock is backed by the government. Although that money is actually physical at the bank that conducted the electronic transaction, and they borrowed that physical money from the fed. But even then, it is inflated since not every dollar a bank transacts with, is backed by something physical since the reserve ratio is not 100%. And that is when it starts becoming confusing.