Well, you’re both right. IQ means something, but it’s only a predictor for outcomes. Many high-IQ people have led very mediocre lives and many low-IQ people have had very successful lives. Certainly, a high IQ can make life easier for you, as can being born in a prosperous country, having a wealthy family, knowing the right people, or getting lucky. The other half of that equation is hard work.

From what you’ve said, you don’t have good family connections, high IQ or know the right people. You haven’t said where you live. There may be resources there to help you, or not. Either way, accessing those resources or getting ahead without them will be hard work. If you decide to go down that path, there will be pretty menial jobs, long hours, and not much money. There will be a lot of hard work in your down time to see what you can do to improve your abilities so you can improve your prospects in the future. Likely you will find none of this fun. There’s no guarantee it will succeed. But, like with many people, those are typically the only options before you to get someplace better.

Anything along the lines of “birds num nums”?

Why would you convert to decimal naming conventions when using a binary numbering system? Or do you think numeric values like 42(dec) have inherent names? That’s as silly as thinking that the freezing point of water is 0 degrees or, even worse, 32 degrees.

This is programmer humor.

10…

1…

0. Why are you still here?

Sure, 10% would be a pretty big deal, but 1% in the right places is enough for a different outcome. As this article shows

Given the fact that Stein’s share of voters in 2016 exceeded Trump’s margin of victory over Hillary Clinton, Clinton would have won Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and thus the presidency, if Stein had not been in the race.

Now, I won’t assume that all those voters would have voted for Hillary had Stein not run, but it’s clear that third-party voting can have an impact on who wins, even if they have no chance to win themselves. But the GOP seems to think this could help them, and is willing to spend money on that chance.

I don’t think it even makes a point, but it will salve their conscience, allowing them to firmly believe they stood against genocide while actually doing nothing more than this token gesture that at best has no impact on anything.

I don’t even like sweet potatoes but like that there’s enough salty/sharp stuff

I like sweet potatoes, but I get you. I don’t understand this thing where people add marshmallows. It’s already sweet! Now, bake a sweet potato, mash it, and add a little bit of salt and some hot sauce to preference, that definitely works for me.

This is the single biggest reason I don’t want my own instance. It would either be an instance of one or it would be a giant hot mess (or both). I don’t have the time or energy to moderate a bunch of other people. It’s enough trouble moderating myself.

Holy fuck, you come across as such an entitled asshole! “How can I make my life better. No comments about other people’s lives getting better in the time frame I mentioned, those things weren’t a problem for me and I don’t care.” Also, “I want the blissful ignorance of my childhood [guessing here] without acknowledging the reality of that time that led to the consequences I wish I wasn’t living in right now.”

So, back to the question. I don’t know l, maybe hit yourself in the head with a rock until you have the intellect of a six-year-old and have your parents take care of you for the rest of your life? Find some other way to reject the negative reality of the present as much as you reject the positive reality of the present and the negative reality of the past?

If wealth is accumulated due to merit, why does wealth tend to accumulate within families? Are these families somehow more meritorious than the rest of the population? Is it perhaps the multi-generational connections made in industry providing additional benefit to those families?

As for the free market, the FDA was formed because bakers in the free market realized that sawdust was cheaper than flour. The free market also requires perfect information to function correctly, but even if you have that how will it help if there is no better regulation. Once upon a time the only kind of match you could buy were made with white phosphorus, despite how dangerous it was to work with. It took regulation to switch to red phosphorus, even though the expense was only slightly higher.

To add to this, the Primitive Technology channel on YouTube shows how to make a fire with two sticks. The key to his preferred method is a harder stick with a point and a softer one with a notch. Then you have a lot of work, prep, and trial and error ahead of you.

They didn’t wear pyjama’s to work, but they did wear them out of the house to go buy snacks or such. Also, a number of us didn’t normally wear suits or ties to work, especially if we were technical and not sales or administrative. This might have been due to not being in Canada. I did a few weeks in Toronto, and a number of guys followed the same rule.

Edit: the most frustrating programming error.

I had coworkers in the early 2000s who would do this, working in a white collar profession, and pretty sure they weren’t alcoholics or doing (hard) drugs.

I’m not the best guy to ask for sensitive responses, but try to take my blunt and possibly obnoxious response in a positive light.

There are a lot of people saying terrible things on the internet, to the point where only the more aggregious ones stand out. Most things will be ignored or forgotten by most people, whether they were good or bad, but I appreciated this post, and you for putting it out there.

I was trying to make a lewdly suggestive comment about vintage balls leaving them hanging. Apparently it wasn’t done very well, but it did have unintended and appreciated consequences.

And he just leaves them hanging.

I’m referring to the users asking the questions.

While this is true to a degree, there also seems to be indications that some people are more susceptible to addictive behavior than others, so some will only be inclined towards addiction if their circumstances are bad enough to make it more attractive.

I suspect this is similar to smoking causing cancer. Sure, it will likely shorten your life and cause cancer, or you can be like George Burns and smoke regularly for over 70 years.

Ultimately, it’s hard to know how susceptible you are to addiction (or smoking-related cancer) until you’ve taken the chance.

I could buy this. Also, the fonts are very jarring and intrusive. I rarely want to view what’s behind the spoiler tag, just give me a line for bias and a line for credibility, no need to be bold and a smaller font if anything, and hide the rest behind the spoiler tag if I’m interested. I already know where MBFC’s bias is, and I can adjust that to get an idea that when they say left, I think center or maybe left-center.

All of that seems pretty reasonable to me, but not if your goal is advertising…

There have been plenty of studies that refute this, from various countries. I can only conclude that this belief/wish stems from a variant of the puritanical work ethic where hard work will lead to prosperity, and winning the lottery isn’t hard work so will obviously not lead to prosperity.

I’ve won the lottery. Sure, it was only a few grand and my life didn’t significantly change. Studies on winners of truly large amounts of money, in the millions, tend to have more successful outcomes, with the studies I’ve seen putting between 66% and over 80% retaining their wealth for 5 or 10 years after winning.

Ditto. I think he could bring out the exasperation and pessimism that so much of my life warrants. And the transition to the good parts would be even funnier. “Oh, sorry honey, you’re why I keep going. I should have said that to him.”

Doing something that demonstrably doesn’t work isn’t how you get what you want. If you want an option besides Democrats and Republicans, voting for someone else where those two options have a lock on winning does nothing besides vent some spleen.

I’m not saying doing nothing is the solution, or even voting for the two main parties is the solution, but doing something that has been shown to be completely ineffective is not the solution.