For reciprocal holidays like Christmas, giving cash maybe gets a little too close to exposing the pointlessness. I give you cash, then you give me cash, what are we doing here? And what if I gave you less than you gave me?

A gift card does indicate I thought a little bit about what the recipient might like, even if I know it would be impractical for me to make a choice on the recipient’s behalf, or that my gift wouldn’t be sufficient to cover a typical purchase in whole. (Thinking like gaming systems, expensive handbags etc)

All that said, I generally agree, I’m not crazy about gift cards.

I just switched to Reaper. This was a couple years ago so maybe it’s better now, I don’t know.

Lol spending hours and days is correct but for me it was spent on trying to get the signal from your interface to actually reach the program and then figure out why there’s so much latency.

Nothing because I would punch the nerd bookseller and take the book rather than answer a riddle

It’s a Jesus thing you wouldn’t understand.

I used to have a variety of Christian shirts with “cool” phrases on them

I remember seeing some of this stuff when it came out and thinking “why are they doing this?” A bunch of it I never heard of, and a handful I wish had seen success (Firefox OS). Not sure how this counts as a hit piece, it didn’t seem mean spirited and definitely didn’t seem to be misrepresenting anything.

I’ve seen a few people shit talk discord without expanding, so I will: it’s a proprietary “public space” that’s not web searchable. I don’t mind something like a community/subreddit oriented around a physical place, but I try to avoid supporting spaces that are owned by private capital. Of course that’s nearly impossible, but there are degrees of enclosure.

I like and use signal, but of course the problem is convincing someone else to start using it in order to send you a message.

It could be a career, or religion. For me I was planning to become a pastor, but then became an atheist. It really did throw me off. In my case I think I’m much happier than I would have been, but do kick myself because I could have been positioned much better if I wasn’t making plans in this other direction.

Every business’s biggest expense is labor. Skilled labor costs more. The people in charge like it when you save money.

I think it’s wrong. But only because the interests of the people who own the machines and businesses diverge from the worker’s interests. I’d like to see more worker cooperatives. If the workers own the machines, then it’s good when things are automated.

I also don’t believe anything will ever be truly automated, or that it’s a good idea to try.

All that to say we don’t have to resort to an explanation of “managers must hate engineers” to understand why they would want to eliminate positions.

I don’t think it’s just managers saying hey we could automate such and such a thing away. It’s human nature to think “how could I improve this” which almost immediately leads to “if I get this right it could mean no work at all”

There’s no way this isn’t a known spell somewhere within the wizarding world. Another example of the shitty education system found in the Harry Potter universe

I learned cursive but I’m sure have forgotten how to write it, especially some of the capital letters. Thing is learning it now is really just for backwards compatibility. Yes, it’s faster to write in cursive when writing by hand, but how often is that coming up these days, for most people?

Gather round, children, time to learn how to use a dial up modem, and after that we’ll go over Morse code.

You’re right it’s good to prepare young people for challenges. Still, that should mean challenges that would come up anyways, not artificially making things more difficult.

It’s good to know how to read an analog clock, just like it’s good to be able to read cursive. But both of them are outdated and aren’t inherently required in day to day life. Inserting them into a testing situation that’s meant to test something else is creating an unnecessary challenge.

You’re right, we shouldn’t regulate this type of speech. I’m not proposing we outlaw calling someone “a Karen.” I’m arguing that people who care about how others feel should reconsider this type of joke.

You mentioned that this sort of thing is only a problem if you’re surrounded by morons. Let’s be generous and call them people who don’t see things your way. Isn’t that all of life? I gave the example of a child named Alexa because it’s a literal real life example. It is a thing that happens, not a hypothetical. I have a kind and quiet family member named Karen, and it’s a nuisance in her life.

You mentioned egocentrism. Isn’t it egocentric to think “I will say whatever I want and if that makes someone else feel bad who cares?” I try to live my life in a way where I’m not knowingly causing other people discomfort. Sometimes that’s not possible for good reason. We can still try.

That’s a real boring thing to say.

I encourage you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. The “joke” is there’s this archetypal character who is often named Karen who is entitled and makes unreasonable demands. If your name is Karen, that sucks. It’s not about egocentrism, the villain in this joke is literally named Karen. Imagine you couldn’t go through life and raise a concern about any issue because someone would be like “har har, you’re being a real Karen”. Even if it’s a joke, when you hear it a thousand times that gets old and it sucks.

I have some friends who named their daughter Alexa before Amazon released the virtual assistant with the same name. Kids at school tease her. She can’t go by Alexa, she has to go by Lex. Again, I encourage you to imagine yourself in someone else’s place.

Easy for you to say if that’s not your name. I don’t have any hope of dissuading people from using the name that way, but imagine your name was “motherfucker” and it was a completely new combination of letters, no one had any negative connotation associated with it, then all of the sudden everyone is calling each other motherfucker and it means “fucking someone’s mom.” You probably would be pretty bummed out. Doesn’t matter if you know someone calling someone else a motherfucker isn’t referring to your birth name.

Alt + tab is the best