Seconded. I think they are usually $2-3 per month depending on the frequency of use.

Lol, what? WTF kind of advice is this?

NO. You talk him like a peer and respectfully say “stop,” you don’t run to the fucking work police and try to get his ass in trouble because he’s annoying you and you never told him you were annoyed. Why would you complain to HR because someone annoyed you when they don’t even know they did it?

Sure, let’s just escalate this shit and make his life worse, guarantee he’ll be pissed off at you because you didn’t react like a reasonable person, you did what the institution that most alienates you from your humanity suggested ( your workplace, complain to HR), and make the entire situation worse than it ever needed to be. Let’s just jump to firing the guy while we’re at it, because a negative tip to HR for a person in their probationary period might be that anyway!

Fuck off with this advice.

Going to HR at this point in this situation DOES mean you aren’t a team player. It’s like shooting your teammate’s knee out instead of passing the baton if you were running in a relay race.

Talk to the man like a human.

Michael Parenti - “These Countries Are Not Underdeveloped, They Were Over-Exploited”

In 2023, the US government returned the remains of some children who were sent to the boarding schools (it’s still ongoing). Aside from the bones of children, there were also animal bones. Why were there animal bones mixed in? Because the children’s remains were pulled from where the school’s rubbish was buried. Separating the bones after all this time would be difficult.

I can think of no better reflection of how the US government treats indigenous people wherever it encounters them. Indigenous Americans have probably received some of the worst treatment. As always, actions speak louder than words.

The people who dug up graves in the early 20th century just didn’t see the locals as people, though, which is also why most of those museums were in Europe, not anywhere near where the artifacts were found

The people who inherited those artifacts also don’t see locals as people.

Also

A pharaoh is a king, and fuck the king.

Agreed. We should let the descendents of those they ruled over decide what to do with the legacy of those kings, not the thieving invaders who likewise viewed themselves as better than the locals.

Pretty sure they call rolling stops “California stops” in Idaho.

I’m personally not a fan of most of their albums, but I have to say that put on a great live show. They started as a cover band and last I saw them, they did a bunch of covers of 70-80s rock, all of which were very well done.

I appreciate this and will do the same. 10 hours of They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard. Anyone who can make it at least 3 hours and is singing along instead of stabbing me is a go for date two.

Give it time, eventually we will do an imperialism to your country too.

Yes, recognizing there is a wider environmental impact than the fuel your vehicle uses means you must give up all technology. What a reasonable conclusion to take from that comment.

More improvement in the area of vaccine technology, acceptance, and adoption of these techniques: alternative forms of administration, less reliance on boosters, improved thermal stability. A better understanding of the immune system, neuroscience, and human biology in general. I expected more infectious diseases to be eradicated such as HIV, TB, and malaria.

These things are progressing and I see hope in how technologies are progressing, but I believe vaccine and infectious disease research and development have been severely limited by the industry’s obsession with intellectual property and pursuit of profit. Our understanding of human biology has improved, but thinking back to my teenage years, I was naive as to how complicated biology is and how little we actually understand.

I’m still a bit salty no one ever brought dinosaurs back from the grave. Our progression in flight technology has been disappointing without flying saucers too.

The phrasing was weird, but this guy was born in Egypt and the statue was taken from Egypt. This isn’t a matter of private property, he’s commenting on how the UK exploited Egypt.

Sure, race and nationality are social constructs and genetics don’t support the divisions we make along phenotypic lines, however, you can’t just hope to solve racism and colonialism by saying they are gone and meaningless. If you say they no longer exist, that doesn’t erase the impacts racism and colonialism have had on a people.

In essence, it’s like punching someone repeatedly until they are bloody, stealing the money from their wallet to buy yourself a house, and then saying, “why can’t we forget our differences and just be friends?” Is everything alright? Is it ok that you now have a home and the other person is destitute because you stole their money? Does it make it any better if it was your parents or grandparents who did this and now you’ve inherited the house?

Just claiming it’s a social construct and wiping your hands of the issue does not fix the problem. And that metaphor I made does not even encompass the entire issue! Reality is more along the lines of: now that you own this house, you enforce policies that continually raise the price of housing and put a tax on people who don’t own a house. The exploitation many people have suffered at the hands of racism and colonialism never stopped, it just changed it’s form.

Damn, beat me to it. Colonialism is a hell of a drug.

That makes sense and sounds like how I used to be too, no real TV, just a computer or laptop and I also don’t like how they are made the center of living spaces.

I think it became a social thing for me, watching movies or listening to music with others while we sit around. I also exercise on a bike or something while watching a show if it’s too cold to actually enjoy going on a ride just for leisure. If I’m alone, I don’t end up watching it much, I’d rather read or listen to something while on my computer.

i dont even own a physical TV

Damn, do you not enjoy things like watching a movie in a theater (given all the bullshit was removed besides the movie)?

I wasn’t big on watching movies for a long time, but then upgraded my sound system for music and eventually got a decent TV, if a bit outdated. This made it more enjoyable for me to watch at home what I would have seen in a theater before, but I hate the theater experience, so I found myself watching more movies.

I agree with everything else you said sucks about the experience, I’m just curious because I don’t meet many people who don’t have a TV unless they can’t afford one.

As someone who meets your criteria, why would I ever put an antenna on my shit again when I can just pirate things or block the ads? An added benefit is that companies think both hurt them as if they are people and subverting their BS fills me with joy.

Whether the commenters are talking cable or not, both are arguably garbage alternatives to more contemporary methods of streaming media except in special circumstances due to the abundance of cell tower coverage and bandwidth. I wish I could say that radio was not also lumped in with this, but again, 50% of airtime is ads and I find the radio in my car less useful with each passing year.

You’re allowed to like something and have people younger than you disagree. Fighting and talking down to them isn’t going to change their minds. It’s cool that you still get use out of older technology for free, but not everyone gets the same value from it.

If anything, don’t blame young people for ruining your technology, blame capitalism for enshittifying it.

The cost to be born and continue existing in the US is also quite steep and if you hope to avoid these costs, dying is also quite expensive and in some cases illegal.

I’ve been given some books on writing through the years, but never thought much of them. I didn’t read these full articles, but what I saw looked good: Article 1, Article 2 (mostly contains links to other articles on the topic).

There’s a lot to consume there in terms of writing theory, but one of my favorite exercises is taking a certain writer’s style, identifying some of what is interesting about their style, and applying it to your own writing. The writing needs to be something connected to you and it helps if you can pick a topic that evokes emotion in you, even if it’s otherwise not something you consider to be a notable story. The important part is being able to tap into your own vulnerability because it can help what you put on paper to be genuine. This doesn’t mean everything you ever write needs to be this way, it’s just helpful and a good place to start and learn. It’s the whole idea of “putting your heart and soul or a part of yourself in your writing” but that people sometimes talk about. Once you learn to tap into that and break down the barriers, you can channel yourself into other writing much easier. Writing like you naturally talk can help, but it’s probably bad grammar for writing (except when writing conversations).

Again, it’s not always easy and I have no clue how much harder this is if you live somewhere without native speakers in the language you are writing, but you need others to read your work. That’s what most writing is for!

If you end up doing technical writing for science or similar, my best advice is keep the layman in mind. Most science writing is overly clunky and full of jargon and buzzwords that not only drive off the layman, but drive off scientists not in that particular field. It’s stupid and bad writing all to stroke the ego of the writer to get a false sense that they sound smarter. To many, it just makes the writing hard to consume. Technical writing should go into sufficient technical detail while aiming to be as easy to consume as possible, even if you make assumptions that the audience understands a topic. Here is an example of good technical writing.

While everything above and reading in particular is good advice, being a good reader doesn’t make you a good writer.

You must read to learn and then apply those concepts in your own writing. Better yet, have your writing critiqued by a varied audience that includes at least one person with some training in English writing. Universities and libraries often have editors to help with writing or hold writer’s workshops where you can find these people and get help for free.

To get good at writing, you must write consistently with pointed effort at improvement. This doesn’t start at writing many pieces, but at repeatedly revising a single piece. Even the writing of the most experienced author begins to shine only after polishing. The revision steps are some of the best opportunities to learn and to reach out for advice on how to improve a piece of writing.

All neutrality is false.

This is media literacy 101. Once you can get past this, you find that outlets that wear their bias on their sleeves are refreshing over those who feign neutrality. They begin to come.of as aloof and condescending, because that’s exactly what they are. It’s not journalism, it’s theatre. Same thing goes with regurgitating exactly what government spokespersons say: that’s not journalism. Journalism includes investigation and critique. It’s not possible to give an unbiased critique.

Looking at you NYT, you fucking dumpster fire. I only keep you around because a dumpster fire can provide warmth.

I read from multiple sources to cross-reference what narratives are being pushed, and I find news outlets who are often labelled “biased” are the ones most likely to just lay everything on the table. They aren’t deliberately trying to direct you into how to think because they assume you agree with them. “This happened and we think it’s bullshit!”

You’re also more likely to hear about stories that are left out or considered unimportant or are intentionally censored by the mainstream outlets. It’s more often the case that they will censor themselves than the government will directly get involved and this is far less from smaller news groups who don’t worry about being labelled as biased.