That’s not completely true though, which is why I find it so baffling. My mother was a professor that taught English literature and Greek mythology, my step father wasn’t nearly as educated but he designed trusses for new buildings. They weren’t / aren’t the bottom 3rd of the bell curve but they still fell for this assholes promises.

I think being an idiot makes it more likely that somebody will like Trump, but it’s not the full story. Conservatism, specifically the desire for a stratified society led by an authoritarian that will protect them and punish “the other” is a far greater indicator I believe.

I grew up in that kind of environment and I still don’t understand it. My parents were the sort that used their bedroom TV as an alarm clock; it was set to turn on at 05:55 to the Fox News channel so they wouldn’t miss any of Fox & Friends while they got ready in the day. Commute to work? Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, Laura Schlessinger, etc. Back at home, up until dinner was served? More Fox News.

And even with the experience of growing up around that – I still just can’t understand it. Yes, those people are dumb as fuck but still; the inability to recognize that he’s a bad conman is just baffling. The same people that ranted about “coastal elites” decided to elect a pompous asshole from a coastal state with a fucking golden toilet and a scam university.

Baffling. Just fucking baffling.

I will absolutely never be able to understand the appeal he has to some people. Nor can I forgive those idiots for falling for his obvious fucking horseshit.

That seems to be the case for many societal changes that come from the common people, rather than being forced by people already in power.

Create a separate card for that ingredient, and in the main card list “add X% of <other card>”

There’s lots of great examples of this across the Netherlands as well, Amsterdam and Nijmegen come to mind personally. After WWII so many places were rebuilt for cars, only for people to eventually realize that was a bad idea and begin designing with people in mind first.

It’s not even uncomfortable, the student is quoted as expressing “mild discomfort”

Which makes this all the more insane. Somebody is “mildly uncomfortable” and so they upend their professor’s entire life.

Absolute insanity.

Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”

Wikipedia’s description is pretty good:

In the book, Klein argues that neoliberal economic policies promoted by Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics have risen to global prominence because of a deliberate strategy she calls “disaster capitalism”. In this strategy, political actors exploit the chaos of natural disasters, wars, and other crises to push through unpopular policies such as deregulation and privatization. This economic “shock therapy” favors corporate interests while disadvantaging and disenfranchising citizens when they are too distracted and overwhelmed to respond or resist effectively. The book challenges the narrative that free market capitalist policies have been welcomed by the inhabitants of regions where they have been implemented, and it argues that several man-made events, including the Iraq War, were intentionally undertaken with the goal of pushing through these unpopular policies in their wake.

Like it matters?

Trump doesn’t need substance; after all they are eating the cats and dogs! Those people are coming to trans-ify your child while they’re in school! Communists want to push you into an electric boat so you can be eaten by sharks!

The man has spewed absolute gibberish for years, he has never displayed even the least bit of understanding of any subject!

There is nothing Oracle could ever do to convince me to use their services or software even if they were free.

Fuck Oracle, fuck Larry Ellison!

There’s a weird level of brain rot going on with AI. My wife recently had some troubles trying to research who owned our home in the past (it was built in the 1880s); she posted to a local forum asking for some specific information about who & where they were buried and so on and was getting replies from somebody that were seemingly plausible but just had no basis in reality when she looked into it further. After pressing him several times for his sources the guy finally admitted it was ChatGPT.

Just… why the fuck? Why would anybody do that? They wasted not only my wife’s time but their own as well, they contributed nothing useful (and if anything, their “contribution” was purely negative).

It’s baffling behavior.

Towards the end of last year I bought a home. It wouldn’t have been possible without my father’s passing just a month into his retirement and leaving me everything he had; it wasn’t much but just enough. He was never very close, to the extent that all I have from him is a couple of small statues and photographs – and now my home.

Do you mind if I ask where you are? I’m in Nijmegen and I just don’t see it when paying in person.

Just earlier I went out to wander through the Vierdaagse parties and all of the street food/beer vendors just offered a straight card reading or a qr code to pay.

They should be prosecuted for their crimes in US courts.

The article doesn’t match my experience either. I see the option to add a tip when ordering from ThuisBezorgd or restaurants websites for pickup, but they don’t offer a percentage: it’s usually an option to add an extra euro or two or five.

I’ll add a few euros if I’m getting something delivered and its hot or raining, because then I feel bad about being so lazy.

I grew up in a hyper conservative family in a super conservative part of southern Indiana. Even with the remote contacts I made online via BBS, IRC, forums, etc; I was still a quasi-suicidal (and incredibly closeted) atheist and bisexual. If I hadn’t had some kind of community to which I could vent some of my frustrations I’m very confident I would have done myself in. I even met my wife over IRC when we were teenagers.

And, weird as it is to say, if the price of my mental health and training in what would eventually become my profession is that I occasionally had people trying to trick me into looking at goatse… show me that horror anus.

Setting aside that train delays are usually no worse than usual auto traffic jams (and even when delayed are still less delaying than a car jam), and that being slightly crowded on a train is still far more pleasant due to being able to relax and read a book or nap, and the fact that I (in the Netherlands) never really see homeless people on the train…

… do you think homeless people don’t deserve to travel anywhere? They have no right to see their friends or family in other towns, or to visit a medical specialist that isn’t where they are? How else would you suggest the poor travel (other than obvious answer that you wish they didn’t exist in the first place)?

It probably helped a lot that I was 19 and had nothing going for me in southern Indiana.

Asked a friend of mine if he was interested in moving too, and he was. I found somebody with an apartment listing on the then-new Craigslist and mailed them a check, then my buddy and I crammed everything we could into my Ford Escort. We stopped to get a little sleep just after Albuquerque.

Advice: don’t make that drive in two days, it should be three. It is so fucking long to drive.

Challenges: apparently Texas’ highway speed limits go down at night, and (at least at the time) the signs don’t indicate this. I got pulled over for going 75 in a 65 at ~2AM, right next a sign that said the limit was 75. Fuck Texas!

Actual advice: spend some time seriously considering what needs to come with. Most things are just things, they can be replaced. Don’t let your things weigh you down.

It doesn’t count if it’s just the tip!

Programmer and systems admin