House. It’s my own space and I can customize it in any way I want.

“Packard Bell Desktop Computer. 240 Mhz CPU, 128 MB Ram. Comes with Windows 95 installed. The sound card alone is worth $100. MAGA. Let’s go Brandon. $1400. Will paint a custom ‘TRUMP’ logo on case for an extra $250.”

Something for poor people to worry about.

I can think of two reasons.

First reason: because things can and probably will get much better. Joy in life comes from the little things. That sounds cliche but it’s true. If I could talk to my 14 year old self, who was severely depressed to the point of trying (and thankfully failing) to take his own life, I would tell him about the next 20-ish years. Even though much of it will be hard, it will still be good. And he will grow in ways and get to experience things that he can’t even begin to imagine. That’s one thing I’m glad he failed at.

Second reason: because believe it or not, you will leave a giant crater in the life of someone (or multiple someones) where you once existed. My great grandpa hung himself in 1929. That’s all I know about him aside from his name. I never met my grandpa (died of cancer) but I remember my dad telling me a little about the impact it had on his dad, who was about 15 at the time of his father suicide. Long story short, my grandpa basically stopped growing emotionally at 15. He was a teenager who was very suddenly thrust into the role of an adult.

I don’t know what was going on with my great grandpa that led him to take his own life. I do know that what he left behind was a disaster. Including three generations of trauma, manifesting itself as a cycle of physical, verbal, and emotional abuse. He effectively destroyed his children who proceeded to pass that destruction all the way down to me.

If you’ve never watched Ted Lasso which I highly recommend, one of overarching themes is Ted’s difficulty dealing with his father’s suicide, which occured when Ted was 15. It’s a light hearted show overall but there are a few scenes that really hit right in the feels.

Even if you don’t have kids, there are people who’s lives will be permanently altered for the worse by your untimely death. Some will blame themselves, wondering what they could have done to prevent it.

Interesting. I guess I must not talk to people on the phone a lot because I hadn’t really experienced that much before.

One of the strangest things, to me anyway, that came out of the pandemic is this habit of texting/messaging people to ask if you can call them. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. It’s just an interesting change in communication dynamics.

It sort of makes sense for Teams, Slack, etc. where even if the person is available, they may not be prepared to receive a call for technical reasons. But a lot of people do the same thing for phone calls.

Something that would actually help you? Lol. No. We can’t afford that.

To me it seems like the DNC has kept with the strategy of pushing the candidate that they feel has the most cross-party broad appeal. Both parties used to do that to a point. Republican’s really began to pivot hard in the late 80’s-90’s.

Now we’re at the point where there the GOP has embraced a cult of personality and anyone with half a brain or any moral fiber has either abandoned or effectively been exiled from the party. If Democrats were going to secure any more of those votes, they would have already done it. The third way Democrats are DOA whether they want to accept it or not.

Analog wrist watches. Seiko is my preferred brand and I have a few of them but my favorite is a Timex Indiglo from somewhere around 1989.

It was my grandpa’s. It was the only watch he owned and probably cost $20 at the Walmart jewelry counter. The glowing dial still works 36 years later.

No. Junior Devs usually can’t code. Anyone who lacks experience in a given field usually is not proficient in that field. That’s not specific to software engineering.

The fix for this is pretty simple. It’s just one that not every senior dev is going to want to hear. You have to do the one thing that a lot of us don’t want to do: talk to people. You’ll find that if you make an effort to build rapport with the juniors and be at least as quick to point out their successes as you are to point out their failures, more often than not they will learn to trust you and come to you for guidance.

Look at me. I’m a human. I pay taxes, I have depression.

Ha! So relatable.

I’m behind on chores.

Ok, why did you have to bring that up? I said I would get to it. Stop reminding me already!

CB radios are still widely used by truck drivers. Listening to the CB on long trips can sometimes be very entertaining.

Exactly. AI chatbot’s also cannot empathize since they have no self awareness.

That is one bullshit headline. Forbes keeping the AI pump and dump scheme going.

TLDR: People correctly discerned that written responses were from an “AI” chatbot slightly less often than they correctly discerned that responses were from a psychotherapist.

“AI” cannot replace a therapist and hasn’t “won” squat.

Oof. That hits in the feels a little. I’ve told my wife that I hope she outlives me. Maybe it’s a little selfish in a way but I honestly think she could handle being alone better than I could. She’s like my center of gravity. The person who keeps me grounded. I’m not sure what I would do without her.

“How did he die?”

“Believe it or not, every single preventable illness you can imagine. It’s the damnedest thing.”

Ah. So they do recognize the problem and are going with the worst possible strategy.

Trying to compete in the field of “digital landfills”, which is already completely saturated, seems like an incredibly stupid idea but what do I know.

Huffman and Co. are apparently oblivious to the fact that Reddit is and has always been a niche “social media” platform. They’re more closely related to forums than mainstream social media.

I’m just making wild assertions here but somehow I think that the thing I liked about Reddit is also the thing the average TikTok/Insta/Snapchat/Facebook user does not like. That being that Reddit is mostly text based and requires lots of reading and writing (if you want to interact on any meaningful way). The only other thing they offer is meme scrolling and that can be done pretty much anywhere.

Adding any substantial user growth would require basically abandoning their entire format and would have a minimal chance of success at best.

Turns out unfettered greed turns everything it touches to shit.

Sodom. From the story of Sodom & Gommorah, but I would choose the name based on a passage from Ezekiel.

“This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”