Oh no, I wasn’t trying to disprove your point at all! Just showing how extreme the situation needs to be to justify a suit. From what I remember most of the guests didn’t wear a suit either, but I can totally see it being a thing on the east coast.

Also Colorado. Granted, covid didn’t give me much opportunity here but I wore a suit this summer for the first time in about 5 years. It was a wedding and I was the officiant 🙃

Assuming not-Montana US, you can be fired for any reason other than membership in a protected class (race, religion, etc). Attending an ice cream social, even a company one, is not a protected class.

Machine learning has some pretty cool potential in certain areas, especially in the medical field. Unfortunately the predominant use of it now is slop produced by copyright laundering shoved down our throats by every techbro hoping they’ll be the next big thing.

That’s cool, and I’d love to see it. “wage” means hourly payment for time worked. Anything else is a benefit or whatever - but not wage. Wage theft is not getting paid wages due.

Vacation time is not the same as hourly wage.

I don’t think we really disagree here. You’re focusing on what people are. I’m focusing on how they see themselves. They’re not necessarily the same things.

Doesn’t mean you don’t call yourself middle class, because at least you’re not homeless. At the very least, “lower-middle class”

20-something years ago PBS had an excellent documentary called “People Like Us: Social Class in America” to show, well, social class in America. If you can find it, or at least clips of it, I’d recommend it. There was one cutscene with a bunch of people being asked which class they see themselves as, and pretty much everyone felt they were “middle class” - but you could tell by the way they presented themselves (clothes, jewelry, etc) that they were all over the place.

Pretty much everyone calls themselves middle class. Outside of the extremes one would expect, there will always be richer and poorer people among you, meaning you’re in the “middle” - whether you’re struggling to make rent or debating whether or not to go to the vacation home this weekend.

Use it or lose it is very common, even in (US) government employment.

If everything is running on renewables, cool. Until then, there’s still the opportunity cost.

Hard bread with hard ingredients (like meat chunks or salami), soft bread with soft ingredients (like egg salad). I’d call a burger medium soft, and ciabatta is too hard for that

($93k vs $9300 for those who prefer USD)

This was the same company that refused to ship to Rhode Island, suggesting you had their product shipped to a friend on “the mainland” who could then forward it

Oh please let that be a reason accidentally spit out by one of those plagiarism machines some day

My dad thought it was silly for me to replace my gas powered motor with an automatic throttle control that doesn’t really work with an electric one, but having no knowledge or desire to rebuild a carburetor (like him), I think I made the right move.

Yes! I’m amazed at how few responses here bring up the lack of attraction in a mall. Nearly every square foot has been given up for dumb kiosks for cell phone cases or something like that. There’s just nothing to give some warm fuzzies about visiting - a water feature, a kids play area… Heck, I grew up near the first indoor mall and at one point they had a giant parakeet cage. If one landed on your finger, you could keep the bird.

the 90ies

The ninetieies?

Not the one you replied to, and I have a slightly different model (OpenRun Pro) but in my experience, not at all.

They work a little differently with bone conduction. This requires a tiny bit of pressure just below your temple in front of your ear. It doesn’t hurt, but if I wear it all day long (way more than a couple hours) I find myself a little bit… Annoyed with them? Just a little. I still happily put them on again the next day. Zero pain.

Oh, and bass comes out a little differently and kinda tickles a little bit. If you listen to stuff with a lot of bass frequently it may not be your best option. Sound quality is generally like a pair of Sound Blaster speakers from the 90s: it gets the job done just fine, but it’s not for audiophiles.

Also a huge fan of mine (OpenRun Pro). Worth mentioning that they’re pretty lousy in noisy settings, like airplanes or mowing the lawn, but I love being able to listen to things without separating myself from the outside world