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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • Not the lowest, for sure, but I’m going to put my hat in for auto technicians. Master techs can make over $100K in southern New England but the cost of tools can easily rival college tuition by the time you’re a master tech. Everything except proprietary equipment and the car lift needs to be bought by the technician, which can cost thousands of dollars. Health insurance is prohibitively expensive, the flat rate pay system means you only get paid when you complete jobs, and it’s an ergonomic nightmare because you’re picking up heavy objects and working in cramped areas all day.

    As someone who whose fiance was a mechanic until last year, I think it’s really disingenuous to hear so many people say that the trades are your fast track to making money. Very little of that $150/ hr that you pay goes to the person working on your car. For every lift the shop has they’re taking 80% or more off the top of that $150/ hr, and if the job takes longer than expected the mechanic doesn’t make any more money. In fact they’re losing money because they’re stuck figuring out a solution instead of moving on to the next car.

    And don’t even get me started on tool loans. It’s straight up worse than student loans because they’re classified as personal loans. My student loans all hover around 5% interest, but right now personal loans go up to 18% depending on the term. The only saving grace I can think of is that they’re usually dischargeable in bankruptcy.

    I really could go on all day about how broken it all is because I’ve lived it secondhand for a while now, and now that I’m trying to gain more of these skills for my classic motorcycle hobby it’s all so obvious. Not sure if the other trades like plumbing and welding have the same “take out loans to pay for tools to make money to pay for the loans, then learn more skills within the trade to make more money, and then take out more loans for tools to do the more advanced work” cycle but no one ever mentions this when they talk about how this kind of work is so lucrative.

    Don’t get me wrong, college is really badly overpriced in the US, but the trades absolutely can be just as expensive once you’ve made it your career. And I don’t want to dissuade people from considering it as a career, either, but it’s a monetary risk that you need to really sit down and calculate before you take the plunge, just like college.








  • Trump would absolutely make the genocide significantly worse than the track it’s currently on if he wins. And he’s gonna make life in the US worse too. The “both sides are equally bad” rhetoric has absolutely failed over the last 8 years. If he lost in 2016 the entire world would be on a completely different track and if you don’t want to believe it then I’m confident that you don’t actually know the differences in policy and ideologies between the Democratic and Republican parties.

    And before anyone says I’m accuses me of being a liberal, I’m a libertarian socialist and I’m registered to the Socialist Party of Massachusetts. I voted Bernie in both primaries then Green Party in 2016 (which I’ve come to regret even though Clinton was going to win my home state by a huge margin) then Biden in 2020. I voted this way in '20 because while Biden ignores socialists Trump wants them all dead.






  • The most expensive thing I’ve had that was really notable (as I’m sure I’ve ordered something pricier and thought nothing of it) was half an A5 wagyu steak from Wegmans. I think it was originally around $250/lb but it was on a manager’s special sale. I think it was around $80 for a ½lb, which is genuinely insane to me knowing that manager’s special means it’s the last chance to buy something before it goes bad.

    Anyway, it was really good. A very odd experience though because afterwards I kinda stopped craving/ cooking/ ordering beef for a couple months. It was like I achieved some superlative thing and was just done with the concept of beef for a little bit. A strange reaction to such a positive experience, that said I do still eat beef occasionally.



  • He doesn’t just “give a platform to everybody” for the sake of free speech, that’s not how free speech works when you’re a host and/ or owner of a media company. He hosts a certain crowd because he wants to. It’s his show.

    Literally all media is biased. If someone tells you that they are unbiased or if some other show is, they are lying. Rogan is friendly to capitalism and drug legalization, and there’s nothing wrong in disclosing it (even if I don’t personally agree with the former).



  • I had your start dose and kept with the for, I think, 3 months (I was about 80kg when I was on it and also took 7.5mg Adderall 2X per day).

    I felt around half of the same effects as you overall. Like it could split the difference between an antidepressant and ADHD medication. I was generally just a little more at ease, better at planning my actions, down to the wording of my conversations. I think it helped me reduce my use of melatonin like you.

    But my deal breaker was feeling so sedated for the second half of the day. Nothing else got in my way like coming home (from a desk job, of all occupations) and immediately passing out on the couch. I don’t know what your biggest detriment is with those side effects but personally, I’ve stopped meds for fewer negative effects than that.

    That said, I’m not saying to stop taking it right now or stick it out longer than you can handle. Your doctor should know which effects are transient, I don’t. What I am saying is that all of your opinions, both positive and negative, are worth talking about with your doctor. Ideally they’ll use your feedback to track transient side effects or change the dose. Psych drugs are trial and error and it’s really aggravating when you get exactly the positives you need out of one medication and then some side effect just hits you like a brick out of nowhere or when little things just pile on over time.




  • And definitely lighter electric cars so the roads and bridges that already exist can support them like they can support ICEs (sorta). And batteries that don’t use conflict minerals like lithium so you don’t have to violate human rights rules so often just to build a car.

    Maybe we could just expand public transportation in and between population centers so we don’t have to rely on our cars so much, which could lead to the act of driving being more enjoyable again?