When I’m feeling too happy, I wonder how long it would be before someone found me dead. I live alone and work remotely, so my boss and coworkers might be confused or annoyed if I didn’t login to work for days, but probably wouldn’t call the police or anyone for a while. I have group chats with friends and call family, but not really on a regular schedule, so not responding for 3-4 days wouldn’t be weird. I just hope my cat would find food or eat my corpse to survive.

They do have courses, but there’s also a lot of good quizzes to evaluate your critical thinking skills at ClearerThinking.org

No, the sign creates a drug-free zone. So if you even try to get near the school with drugs, an invisible forcefield stops you. Please ignore those teens smoking weed behind the school; they’re obviously hallucinations.

Would your answer change if she was actually 18? It still seems crazy manipulative. In some countries, the age of consent is 16. Would this be okay if she’s 16 in one of those countries? (Let’s ignore countries below that age)

I struggle between two ideas: One, where I believe that at the age of majority, a person should get full rights (voting, emancipation, legal, consent, medical, etc.) and it seems wrong to let people vote but not make choices about their body (like drinking alcohol). And two, protecting the young from themselves, like by restricting labor, or setting smoking and drinking ages higher than a majority age, because those damage still-developing brains way more.

We can fight about what the age of majority should be (16, 17, 18, 21?). I would definitely be okay if this tweet was about a 30-year-old, but I’m not okay with it being a 10-year-old. But whether it’s 16 or 18 or 22 where it crosses the line is tough for me.

I feel like important context is that they were kids of the manager. That changes this from a bad corporate governance and exploitation of labor situation to something else: a bad parenting/child abuse, bad corporate governance and exploitation of labor situation.

Space is hard. You’re strapping something inside a big tube with basically directed explosives at the bottom, hoping it survives the trip, then subjecting it to constant radiation, huge temperature swings, and other brutal environmental factors like micrometeoroids. Just because we’ve been sending satellites and people up to space for nearly 70 years doesn’t mean it’s gotten easier; we’re just better at knowing what to expect so we can test for it. Failures in rockets or satellites or even manned spacecraft are going to happen as much as we work to prevent them.

A 2021 survey of 44 gender nonconforming people incarcerated in New York state prisons found that three-quarters had experienced some form of sexual assault or inappropriate touching by corrections officers. Over a quarter reported being forced by an officer to perform oral sex.>

What the fuck? I wondered what the number is for cis people. Best I could find was a report from 2020 that said the total rate of sexual misconduct/harassment by staff was 12.3 per 1000 (1.23%). Versus, with a low sample size, 75% in the article’s survey. What. The. Fuck.

Yeah, I’d rather have a thousand news stories of near-misses than one about a crash with casualties

Maybe not the first book to read, but one of the ones that made me think the most was The Dispossessed

Le Guin is one of my favorite authors, so I’m excited to see other people reading her for the first time!

Find porn sounds and mute the tab. Now not sure where porn music is coming from.

A garlic press - saves so much time and effort over mincing garlic with a knife because I’m not a pro chef, and can be used in about 95% of situations where you need garlic. I don’t use it when I want the garlic texture, but otherwise I just adjust the amount or the cooking time versus minced garlic. There’s some hate floating around from professional chefs, but I bought one a few years ago to try it and haven’t looked back.

Yeah, the lawyer did a great job creating “reasonable doubt.” I think if we want a justice system that defaults toward innocence, we have to be willing to let a murderer out on the streets for every 100 innocents who also walk. I’d rather have that result than jailing 100 innocents so we can catch the one murderer.

I misread the headline as “only if he was being given last rites,” and was confused until I actually clicked the article. Made me think of people who supposedly only converted to believing in a god on their deathbeds, when suddenly it seemed like it mattered to them.

“Family and friends, good father, forgive me for my stubbornness, and bring me a ballot so that I may change my vote upon seeing the light.” ~Markus Cubano, Nov. 2024

Anyone else hate that the Gadsden flag has been appropriated by ultra-libertarian jingoists? It’s an awesome-looking flag with a cool history and symbolism, but I feel like I couldn’t fly it without looking like a twat.

I wish we treated “minimum wage” in the US like the name was supposed to imply, i.e., the minimum wage needed to survive. I would be okay with minimum wage if it allowed someone to afford shelter (maybe with roommates), food (cooking at home), utilities (electric, gas, internet), and other basic necessities like clothing. I would have included health care, but that’s a whole different topic. Minimum wage in Bumfuck, Texas should be different from Cityfuck, California. But instead we treat it as the minimum employers can pay someone, regardless of a typical human’s everyday needs.

Now, a “living wage” might be a step above that minimum, covering amenities/situations like living alone, having kids, entertainment, travel, advanced education, etc. The kind of things that are a step up from the survival-based minimum, but things everyone needs for a fulfilling life. But I want to start with a minimum, because that’s more achievable in US politics right now, has wide support, and is truly necessary for the people struggling right now.

Well, with that memory unlocked, it’s time to go pull out my Dune II CD and fire that one up again. House Ordos! In the meantime, I guess I’ll check out BAR.