Of course the kids don’t know how to read them. Kids rarely encounter analog clocks and when they do, they have several digital clocks within arms length. Most people wouldn’t reach for a slide rule when they have a calculator.

And to be fair, analog clocks are objectively worse than digital clocks in every way aside from aesthetics.

I don’t really want to play adversity Olympics with you but since you insist.

My parents were on food stamps and going to food pantries when I was a kid. Father was an absent alcoholic and drug addict. I myself struggled with heroin addiction in my teens and 20s and ended up ruining my life - or so I thought.

I managed to climb out of that hole (using Obamacare and the support of my family) to find a whole new perspective on my life.

I was angry, bitter, nihilistic, and selfish. I was obsessed with how bad and unfair the world is, and it gave me every excuse to keep buying bundles and nodding into oblivion.

Once I got clear of the horrible opiate withdrawal and paid back the considerable money I owed - once I stopped wanting to overdose and kill myself - I realized how nice it is to be able to take a walk on a warm day and just check out the birds. I realized a cup of coffee and a sandwich is a blissful experience, especially when shared with a friend or loved one.

When I think about the eternity I will spend in non-existence after I die, I know that I have very limited time to enjoy this strange and beautiful trip I’m on. I know this little blip would be the envy of the non-existent. If ghosts were real, I bet every one of them would kill to come back and just feel the sensations of smell, taste, touch, and sound. Or to look at something pretty.

Like dude, I’ve had parts of my life that were fucking miserable. Please don’t tell me it’s so easy. I’ve just decided to enjoy it and practice gratitude. Whatever happens to me, I remind myself that it’s better than going through opiate withdrawal on a plastic cot and wishing I was dead while everyone was disgusted with me.

Life, on average, is much easier now than it’s ever been. The wealthiest men alive didn’t have access to basic over the counter medicine that we have today. If you die of some horrific disease tomorrow, you’ve still had a higher quality of life than most of the richest people who have ever lived.

You know why my ramblings about the beauty of life sound so corny? It’s because a lot of people have realized it before. Because it’s so often said that it sounds cliche. There is a reason so many people have come to these conclusions.

My advice to you is to touch grass. No joke. And if you don’t want to touch grass, go watch a movie that makes you feel awe. Go read a book that moves you. Otherwise you’re going to have your eyes opened on your death bed and wish you had lived differently. Happens all the time man.

Bidet attachment https://www.amazon.com/Bidet-Non-Electric-Mechanical-Attachment-Self-Cleaning/dp/B00P2XZDGG

And I grew up with window unit air conditioners. They kept a couple rooms cool no problem.

I don’t see how I’m talking out my ass.

I actually think life, for all its faults, is a beautiful and amazing opportunity. It’s a special blink of existence where we get to witness the unimaginable beauty in our universe.

Perhaps our lives (in the West, at least) have gotten too easy. Not that I want to go back or live a harder life - I don’t. But for most of human history, there was a pretty solid chance you were going to live a sick, miserable, religion-filled life as a soldier, slave, or peasant. All the while, you’d have pretty much no control over what happened to you. Even the wealthy and powerful were shitting in holes and sweating in the heat. Today, it costs you about two hours of easy labor to get a bidet and maybe 10 hours of labor to get an air conditioner that will keep you cool for many years. People still found meaning and reasons to keep going through the thousands of years of famine, plague, war, and slavery. They kept seeing something that made them want to have babies and love them.

The world isn’t perfect but it’s better than it’s ever been in most ways. Even if we don’t survive climate change and late-stage capitalism, I think the time I’ve already had with my son has been beautiful and meaningful. I only hope he gets to experience love, satisfaction, simple pleasures, etc. Even just a comfortable nap or the feeling of accomplishment after completing a task. It’s all so fragile and temporary. We are the universe experiencing itself and it’s really beautiful despite the miserable parts.

I think anyone who has worked HR knows why you ask for references.

Because some people literally list their mother.

Because others list previous employers or even best friends who have nothing nice to say about them.

And because some people, having really thought it through and providing the best reference they can come up with, list their buddy Steve who will get on the phone and say something like:

“Jack? Great fuckin’ guy man. Works hard and parties hard, ya know? Just keep his psycho ex away from the job site bro, that bitch is crazy.”

You can weed these people out without wasting time. Half of what a job interview is about is seeing if people have a good head on their shoulders. If you pick a bad reference or lack a good reference and don’t even have the brains to have someone lie for you, it’s probably the tip of the iceberg with your bad choices.

Donald Trump’s presidency pretty much removed any doubt I had about the official 9/11 story.

He proved that our government is full of regular idiots who are just barely able to work together. Of course the 3 letter agencies have a lot of power and fancy technology, but if the CIA or NSA was seriously that in control of this country, Trump would have never happened. He is a bumbling moron who did a ton of damage to this country and nobody lifted a finger apparently? Damaging alliances, burning undercover assets, etc.

Our Congress can’t work together long enough to pass basic bills. No way the Patriot act was planned with a false flag in mind.

The 9/11 conspiracy is just way too big and would need way too many participants to keep it under wraps like that.

Plus, every big disaster has conspiracy theories. If you believe all of them, you’re pretty much saying bad things never happen without the overlords planning them. 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, JFK assassination, RFK assassination, Pearl Harbor, and every other major event have had massive conspiracy theories and claims that they were inside jobs.

Yeah, the official story has holes but reality is messy. It was a big attack involving/affecting a lot of agencies, corporations, and people. It’s pretty much guaranteed that out of the measly 365 days in a year, a lot of these groups and individuals would be doing their “once a year” inspections, misremember details in their panic, deal with other terrorist attacks, intersect with ongoing crimes that were being committed separately, etc.

Seriously, a plane crashed into one of the biggest and wealthiest business centers in the world. The conspiracy theories write themselves no matter how clear the evidence is. Of course one of those companies has ties to foreign governments, obviously one of the CEOs is commiting fraud, one of the employees is bound to have worked for the government in a sensitive role. Imagine the ties you could find on one of the planes alone. Every plane in the sky right now has a politician’s relative, a political activist, a criminal, a foreign diplomat, high-ranking military, or all of the above. All of these things would spark a great conspiracy theory. Imagine the things you could find if you wanted to blame Boeing. Start looking into details about every employee they have and connect some dots. It’s easy.

Schools are absolutely guilty of underpaying teachers and overpaying admin. Many probably mismanage their funds to some degree. And a lot spend way too much on sports stadiums and other things they probably could do without.

But don’t forget, they also have to shell out tens of millions of dollars all at once when their infrastructure needs to be fixed or updated. If the student population grows, they may be on the hook to build entire hallways full of classrooms and the necessary technology for each room. Usually they sock money away knowing that things have limited lifespans. Even still, many unplanned expenses and planned updates have to wait due to lack of funding.

1. Listening to AM 740 out of Toronto. I’m in the US but it comes over here. My grandma listened to it and I find it calming when I’m stressed because my grandma was the only person who truly loved me unconditionally and without question.

2. Eat bits of granola cereal one at a time and chew them slowly. I don’t even really like it. It’s just such a simple food and I can kind of meditate on how simple it is.

3. This isn’t odd but a hot bath. Truly a portal to another world for me.

4. Listen to Dreamscape on YouTube and imagine dystopian fantasy/sci-fi worlds I could live in. Maybe I’m stranded on an alien planet, maybe I’m in a dark forest and creatures are hunting me, or maybe I’m driving through a foggy, wooded hillside and I see something weird I need to investigate. Whatever the scenario, it gives me an escape from emotions I don’t want to feel and allows me to create situations where I can feel whatever emotion I do need to feel.

It’s harmless and I love it, but it’s definitely odd my friend!

I don’t have to trust it though? I just told you I revise and edit.

It doesn’t do my job for me, I still have to understand how to do the work properly. But I can use it to save time and then revise, check for errors, etc.

You’re basically arguing that spell check is useless because it’s wrong sometimes. It’s just a tool.

Perhaps you just don’t have a use for it?

It doesn’t do the thinking for me but man it’s a time saver for busy work.

It turns a lot of my work into “editing” rather than writing and then editing.

It’s very good for teachers to differentiate materials for students with a variety of reading levels.

While it would be really nice to have January 6th off of work every year, I unfortunately can’t get behind the creation of this holiday.

Perhaps a compromise? We celebrate the day Trump lost the election. The right can celebrate it the way they celebrate the death and rebirth of Jesus, while the left can celebrate it more like Festivus.

Imagine what their demographics would look like if they also started a war and killed their young people though.

Not saying they won’t do it, and they do currently have an excess of young men specifically, but a country with a population problem isn’t in a great place to start a war imo.

Makes total sense to me that you think this way then.

I teach middle school and I think mostly verbally with pictures thrown in.

“I should staple this” plays in my head and I have a dreamlike image of a stapler I’m looking for, or perhaps its location. If I focus, I can make those pictures very vivid, but usually they aren’t in my day to day.

I talk to myself in my head literally non-stop. It’s a full day dialogue with myself - which I suppose makes it a monologue. But it’s pretty involved with a lot of back and forth.

Do you enjoy coding, math, and logic?

I’m sure it depends on how you define intelligence.

There are probably people without internal monologues who can solve any problem you put in front of them. But I do think there is a certain level of emotional intelligence that can’t exist without an internal monologue. I suppose one could externalize this process and just talk aloud to themselves in order to mull something over. But even then, you likely couldn’t do that all day every day. Those of us with internal monologues must glean some sort of benefit from essentially self-reflecting all day.

Granted, all of this hinges on my limited understanding of consciousness being somewhat accurate. It’s possible that everyone has an internal monologue and some people just lack a connection in their brain that brings it to the forefront of their consciousness. Maybe some people’s IMs are in their subconscious and inform their actions in ways they simply aren’t aware of.

Just put an old 960 in a PC and gave it to my sister-in-law for Christmas so her stepdaughter could play the Sims 4 on it.

I was absolutely shocked to see several games running on ultra settings at 1080p without any issues.

Just not sure where they would even go with this or how it would be very fun.

I think Bully happened at a time in gaming when it was pretty groundbreaking and unique. I don’t think they could recapture that.

Upon replaying Bully as an adult, it felt like it was a good story built atop a lot of mediocre mini-games.

Sorry - I really loved the game when I was young so this was hard to admit to myself.

Please don’t pity him. His first episode on his new show (Tucker on X), was him interviewing a lunatic who claims to have had a gay, drug-fueled orgy with Obama. Tucker literally interviewed this guy as if it were a serious claim, ignoring the fact that the guy is a convicted felon who is known for lying about crazy shit.

I think it’s relative.

But yes it’s valuable. Even at only 30 years old, I often learn from the 8th graders I teach.

Adults overcomplicate things and rationalize bad decisions. All it takes sometimes is one kid with a “naive” outlook to ask, “Why would you be friends with someone you don’t like?”

Then you think, yeah… Why would I?