When I was younger, you got $20 from a friend if you were lucky, and that was fine by us because no one wants friendship to feel like an obligation. Today with inflation that might be more like $50, but still not a big thing.

$100 is typically what family would give, I wouldn’t go that high because it honestly may be seen as stepping on the toes of family members if they don’t give that much.

Honestly just a card is fine.

Leviticus is from the Jewish part, though, and is therefore inherently less valuable to Christians unless there’s anything in there about murdering gays or treating women like property.

I guess Microsoft really changed the world.

American sports fans literally don’t know any other chants besides “Let’s go (Team Name)! clap clap clapclapclap” for domestic games, or “U-S-A! U-S-A!” for international ones.

The only thing I did recently was buy a replacement device for one I had that was crapping the bed and would need to be purchased soon anyways, but decided to buy something now before it completely died just in case prices sharply rose in the next few months.

Other than that, nothing really. I am putting away as much money as I can in savings, avoiding large purchases/being generally frugal, and taking good care of my things so they last as long as possible. Life’s not perfect, but I’m making as soft a cushion as possible in case things do get worse.

Not to say the future is set in stone or that we shouldn’t be worried, but even the Great Depression only lasted about a decade, and it’s still crazy to me just how quickly the last one went by. I have a place to live, enough money put away that I could probably last it out that long one way or another if I was laid off tomorrow, and a generally supportive community around me where people look out for one another.

But I’m lucky, I know not everyone else can say the same, so I hope you’re all doing alright out there.

I don’t think it’s building materials that is the question, but rather the multi-million dollar machines that are often designed and imported from elsewhere.

Those fancy Bosch assembly lines your widget factory needs will be hit by that 20% tariff coming from the EU, even if the building they sit in is made of American brick and lumber.

It could, in theory, if he succeeds at his plan of eliminating birthright citizenship.

Not European, but on my mom’s side, my mom is only an American citizen because she was born in the US, while my grandparents didn’t become naturalized until a little bit after. So that sort of thing terrifies me.

Well first you ask, and then later you give a completely unrelated donation. After all, buying favor would be illegal, this is just free speech, which is fine as long as you don’t talk about Palestine.

I think they mean not letting the ideas go unchallenged. If someone is reading through and sees a bunch of Nazis posting hate all up somewhere with no one else saying anything, they might assume that sort of behavior is just tacitly accepted and influence their perception of the community as a whole.

Yep. Even if you’re buying a product which is by meaningful standards “100% American made,” consider the invisible costs. The cost of the packaging that they use, the cost of the supplies/equipment they use in production and the upkeep required to maintain them, the cost of the infrastructure they use for logistics and operations, etc.

All these less visible dependencies affect the cost of doing business and can still be impacted by tariffs if anything comes from overseas, even if the product itself is just a bottle of maple syrup made in Vermont.

“Jesus lived in poverty and he did alright.” - A (thankfully former) coworker who disagreed with my assertion that minimum wage should be livable.

Jesus was also murdered by his government, Ian! That’s not what I’d call alright!

It doesn’t matter who the hell wants to buy TikTok if ByteDance still doesn’t want to sell.

I don’t know why we keep having these sorts of conversations when they’ve signalled they have no intent to give in to the demands of the US.

I mean, we’re here talking about it, aren’t we?

2 is a maverick.

…What?

Even numbers are the purest numbers. Perfectly balanced. Most odd numbers are flawed but can be made perfect together.

Primes, though. Primes can fuck right off no matter what.

I’d like to stay optimistic and hope they did as well, though if my own experience is any indicator, there’s equal chance they fell into the pit of “Maybe climate change is real, but it’s not that bad/it’s better for me.”

“If you had just picked a better water bucket, we wouldn’t be in this mess. It’s your fault if the house burns down.”

Humans (and most other animals) see better side-to-side than up-down. Your eyes are spaced horizontally, giving us a wider horizontal field of vision. People generally prefer putting things side-to-side in work environments, maybe also reflecting how much easier it is to move and work within a horizontal plane than a vertical one. So the upper threshold for monitor width would be longer than the upper threshold for monitor height.

That being said, I know reading is best done in narrower columns, to reduce the amount of left-right movement your eyes need to do which can cause you to lose your place when skimming lines. Three columns of text on a 16:9 monitor is way more readable than one column of text that spans the entire monitor.

And then why do we make an exception for phones which are predominantly used in portrait mode? I guess maybe just for easier 1-handed use? Maybe also to give us more peripheral vision of potential hazards and other things happening in the background when using them, since they’re mobile devices.

Ending it as quickly and painlessly as possible then, I guess. I stick by the opinion that a life without agency and with no means to obtain it isn’t really living at all.