The first interracial kiss on TV was between Kirk and Uhura in 1968. Star Trek is and always has been set in a time when humans have achieved a post-scarcity leftist utopian. Shit’s been this way since way before your uncle started calling everything he doesn’t like “woke” which was only like 4 years ago for the record.

Know what was really woke? Keeping watch for police brutality and unjust police tactics. For real. I’m quoting this article lol.

And all these “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” keep on voting to keep it that way.

Somewhat related to this so I’m piggybacking here, look into power plants. Once you’re generally competent holding wrenches and understanding OSHA compliance, you can easily become some form of laborer at power plants. From there, learn everything you can about power plants while getting friendly with some in-house people and you might get yourself into Operations or Maintenance. It took years and luck, but I got in as an entry level outside operator at a bit under $40/hour a few years back; after raises and a promotion I’m now operating the on-site ZLD plant for $52/hour. Control Room Operator starts around $60/hour here. This area is expensive so these rates might be higher than you’d find near you, but I’ve heard of higher rates than this in some plants. The only real drawback is that rotating shift work is pretty standard.

I’m not sure what it might be called, but I totally get that. I think it has something to do with the anxiety of expectations. Maybe you feel judged for how you’re choosing to spend your time, or maybe you feel like there’s an expectation that you’ll get better at whatever it is that you’re doing, or maybe it’s as simple as just not wanting to be viewed as predictable. If you’re unhappy with this tendency that you have, I highly recommend working with a therapist to either find a way to change your behavior or change how you feel about your behavior. It sounds like you’re not hurting anybody, so it seems like there’s just some unhappiness for one reason or another that a professional could help you out with so that you can get a little more enjoyment and peace of mind. If the 94 in your username is your birth year, then you’re 30ish and maybe just struggling a little with being comfortable with your identity in some capacity, like you “should’ve” figured out who you are and become comfortable with it by now, and you might be feeling some additional anxiety for not achieving that? Idk, I’m just some guy on the internet who had a similar thing, and it’s helped for me to adopt a slightly more complex version of the hakuna matata philosophy, which I think of as a sort of optimistic existential hedonistic nihilism: nothing matters, so there’s no sense getting spun up; just do what you feel like doing so long as it isn’t fucking others over. You like CAD? Then fuck around in CAD. Enjoying a video game? Hell yeah, that’s something cool to look forward to spending some time with this weekend. Knock out chores and errands for a bit and then you’re free to do whatever the fuck you feel like doing. Hell, light a scented candle while you’re at it. Really enjoy it.

When wages stagnate and necessary expenses like rent and groceries skyrocket, people stop having extra money to blow on “films and high-profile concerts.” Runaway corporate greed did this. As for unemployment, if you weren’t gonna afford rent whether you worked your shitty job or not, wouldn’t it make more sense to just not go to work?

A lot of top American companies have drastically inflated value based on stocks rather than actual profitability; eventually that will become too obvious to ignore and there will be a feedback loop bank run that crashes the market. Once that finally happens, then we can maybe see something like a 21st century New Deal. Since we’re apparently not gonna reform our economy, it’s doomed to fail and then it’s either reset or it’s the fall of the empire. And because economies have become so interconnected, it won’t just be America that feels the crash, and probably not just the western world either. We’re all pretty well fucked because we’re all in this together.

I wish you were right. If I thought there was an actual shot at Google suffering consequences for bullshit like this, I’d short the stock. In reality, they’ll somehow be up. They’ll launch some stupid new thing and this will be completely forgotten. It’s bad enough that every time Maps updates, it resets my customization to avoid tolls. I live in NoVA. These tolls are absolute fucking bullshit and I ain’t paying it.

I’m genuinely not sure whether this is a teachable skill or something more like a character trait.

But what if he officially ignores the courts?

income inequality is required for our capitalist based economy to function

Yeah, that’s kinda what capitalism is. The system itself is the problem. It only “works” if there are workers for the owners to exploit, and the goal of the owners is to accumulate more and more capital. Infinite growth is impossible because the resources are finite. It’s time for our economy to evolve.

I’m okay with seeing an acceptable level of advertisement. Content creators have ad reads within their videos which are skippable, and they’ve resorted to that because YouTube doesn’t pay very well. It used to be that you’d get a short ad at the start of every video or two, and maybe another short ad per 7 minutes or so. Now, it’s pretty common for every video to have at least 20 seconds of ad before starting and another 10-30 seconds of ad every 3-5 minutes or so. I like watching on my PS5 while doing chores, so I’m subject to all of these ads. I actually have fully abandoned videos halfway in because of ads that were 60 seconds before I would have the option to “skip” the ad.

I pay for enough things in my life that I was okay with the trade-off of the ads on YouTube. Now, it’s (no joke) about 5 minutes of ads interrupting a 20 minute video, and there’s usually a 2 minute ad read within that 20 minute video, so really 7 minutes of ads per 18 minutes of content. But it’s not really 18 minutes of content because there’s an intro, an outro, and a “remember to like, comment, subscribe, and smash that bell” bullshit too. It’s roughly 2:1 ratio of actual content to ads and fluff. I’m not fucking paying to take it from 2:1 to 3:1 and they can eat my entire asshole for even suggesting such a thing. Maybe instead of trying to hold eyeballs ransom with the choice of either subscription payments or and overabundance of ads, they should charge for uploading videos to their servers. Sound like a terrible idea? Then I’m sure they’ll do it within 5 years. Because fuck everybody, that’s why.

“By official decree, all education shall now be free, and all debts accrued for the purposes of education are forgiven. If this should result in the dissolution of predatory lenders and universities whose business existence depends on this type of debt, then so be it. It’s time to adapt or go extinct, Jack.”

Depends. At a meh bar with bar food, probably an IPA. Mexican place with Mexican food, probably margarita or tequila sunrise. At a cocktail bar, I’ll pick a signature cocktail, probably one with a whiskey of some kind. If it looks like they know what they’re doing but they focus on botanical type stuff (which I don’t really like), then I’ll usually go for something like an old fashioned or a Manhattan, and if it’s not too busy I might request it with the bartender’s choice of unique flair on it. Or I might order a carajillo if they have an interesting one on the menu and if I see an espresso machine.

I disagree since I met the woman who is now my wife through Tinder lol. We both were looking for something casual and found something worth much more. But it’s almost certainly gotten shittier like everything else, so I understand your reluctance to try it.

In that case, get yourself cleaned up and head out to a bar/club and see if you can meet somebody organically. Be ready to talk about your job, hobbies, and interests. Maybe get a few clever jokes locked and loaded. Passionate, nice, and funny will make you a magnet to decent people. Just temper your expectations because it sounds like you’re probably gonna a swing and miss a few times until you find a comfortable batting stance.

It varies from person to person. The act itself imo is pretty good, but I don’t really enjoy it unless there’s a real connection. Others mentioning things like hiring prostitutes here are recommending that you miss out on what I think it’s a pretty key part of it, plus I think you’d be assuming some real risk in terms of whether that’s criminal, will you be robbed, could you get an STI from them, and of course whether it’s even affordable in the first place. I can understand the desire to try it once, but I can’t imagine it being much better than masturbating compared to the risk and cost.

I think I’d recommend getting on Tinder or something similar and just making it clear in your profile that you’re looking for something casual but want to message a bit first to make sure they’re at least somewhat of a match for you. Sometime before getting naked, it’d be a good idea to say that you haven’t done this before and ask for clear communication so that both of you can enjoy yourselves. You want to be on the same page. And go slowly. You almost certainly won’t have a good time if you’re feeling pressured and rushed.

Overall, yes it’s worth trying, but a lot of people stop thinking rationally entirely when sex is a possibility and I think that’s a bit silly. It’s okay to come to the conclusion that it’s not worth the hassle or even not enjoyable at all to you. It’s totally subjective. Just don’t do anything you don’t feel comfortable with.

He’s spelling it out for voters to get them off their asses. People said “yeah right” in 2016 when the ones who were paying attention said that the scotus was on the ballot, and it turns out we were right. It’s probably good to hear the calm warnings straight from him rather than just from “alarmist” friends, relatives, and coworkers this time.

Innocent until proven guilty; if Gorsuch and Barrett suck but haven’t done anything objectively, legally wrong then we need to give them a pass for now. Otherwise, it delegitimizes the very legitimate cases against Thomas and Alito. I think Kavanaugh has worse skeletons than perjury to go after. He had mountains of debt that conveniently vanished right around the time he was nominated, and I can’t definitively say that that’s evidence that he was bought and paid for but I can tell you that if he were bought and paid for that this is one of only a few avenues that it would happen through. He absolutely should not have been confirmed and there should’ve already been an investigation into whether he’s beholden to anybody due to financial insecurity. It’s why you get a credit check in addition to a background check before you can have any kind of security clearance. After all, we wouldn’t want to have anybody stealing and selling classified documents and national security secrets, would we? 🙃

They say of the Acropolis where the Parthenon is

Lol happy to help! Yeah, nowadays it’s easy to hit a gig in data usage without even realizing you’ve used any at all. I wish the unlimited tier were cheaper. It feels like we have gotten to a point where we should be able to use GPS or do a Google search without considering a cost. Kinda feels like if anything, they should be paying us for allowing into our pocket this ever changing billboard that scrapes our metadata. But that’s unrealistic to get anyone else onboard with, so I’ll settle for free connectivity to knowledge in exchange for advertising and spying on me.

What state are you in? I’m in VA and considering going from Google Fi to Mint mostly because we would go from minimal data usage to unlimited for about the same price. Definitely not making the switch if you’re also in VA and can vouch that it doesn’t work here.

I’ve been on Google Fi for 3 or 4 years and it’s been pretty much flawless. I’ve traveled to Mexico and Spain with it, and there’s a sort of calibration period of like 30 minutes before you have service in another country, but that’s literally the only time I’ve been without service for any period of time. My wife and I are on it and use very little data, so covering both phones is typically about $60/month. We usually have 5G service around our home in northern VA.

Proof of bill cost: