Hear hear!

When you bust your ass all year for that great review and much needed raise…only to go in for your evaluation and be told, “Great job! Unfortunately due to budget cuts and corporate policy, we can only give you a 1.5% raise, but you’re welcome!”

Don’t tell them, but remember that.

Remember that regardless of the work you give them, they’re only paying you 1.5% more. And that’s not even factoring in information inflation.

At the most generous, you should only give them 1.5% more productivity than it takes to not get fired. If you look at it based on value…the value of your time and experience and productivity against the purchasing power of your take home pay… you’re getting a pay cut vs inflation as their way of thanking you.

As such, cut your productivity, attention to detail, reliability, and shits given by the same amount as the purchasing power you’re earning.

They call it quiet quitting, but in reality it’s the market economy working both ways. If they’re buying less from you, give them less.

I mean, it’s all very subjective, so “too much” for you seems to be what is a good amount for everyone else…but realistically, I don’t think this is a legitimate complaint since you still need to be able to make all these adjustments anyway… it’s just a matter of the way the adjustments are being made.

All a touch screen changes is that it can play host to multiple functions depending on context…but it loses much of the visual recognition and almost all the tactile feedback of a physical control.

And while vehicles keep getting more and more complex for sure, I feel like when I’m riding in a more touchscreen heavy vehicle, that screen is displaying the same static set of controls 99% of the time…and at that point, the flexibility it offers is largely irrelevant, and the tradeoffs mean giving up a lot to get very little in exchange.

They get really spicy!

Disagree.

Personally, I feel the problem is absolutely touchscreens.

I’ve only got five senses, and taste and smell aren’t helpful in a driving situation.

Of the 3 left, sight is the most important for the most important task: driving.

For other tasks, sound is best used to alert or remind about something, and is frequently diminished as a driving aid by music.

That leaves touch and sight for all remaining tasks.

Touchscreens are, despite the name, effectively 100% reliant on sight, since there’s no real tactile feedback to enable the user to make eyes-free adjustments. To use a touchscreen, you have to take your eyes off the road to see what the screen says and make your selections.

While some are better than others, I also feel like touchscreens are still embarrassingly and frustratingly prone to errors, missed touches, and generally not doing the things the user intended, requiring even more eyes off the road to undo whatever actually happened, get the interface back to the place you want it, and try again, hoping that this time it’ll work.

My mid-teens vehicle has a mix of a medium sized touch screen for the entertainment unit but physical controls for climate, driving, and a few of the entertainment adjustments, and while I was all about the advanced new touchscreen when I bought it, I find it’s my least favorite part of the controls this far along in ownership.

“I want things to be worse for everyone who isn’t exactly like me.”

You’re the worst kind of person.

I feel like most people I have heard talking about them while supporting Trump seem to know that tariffs are taxes, but have no concept of how they play out in a real economic situation. Most fall into one or both of two camps:

A) Tariffs are taxes, but they’re taxes for companies not individuals, and they’re only applied to importing, so they won’t affect me.

B) Tariffs are taxes for foreign companies, to level the playing field and keep American business competitive. Since the companies that have to pay it are foreign, it won’t affect me.

Spoiler alert, guys: no matter where the tax is levied in the system, the consumer is the only person who ever pays for it, since they’re the only ones that can’t pass that cost on to anyone else.

Also, while this can make domestic competitors more competitive, it’s important to remember two things: first, if it works, it’s only working by making things more expensive for consumers, and second, this assumes that the domestic competitors want more business, have the ability and posture to increase their production to meet the new greater demand, and will operate in good faith. Much more likely is that they simply also increase their prices in reaction to the tariffs, so they’re not producing or selling any more volume and aren’t creating any jobs… they’re just padding their profit margins at the corporate/shareholder level while doing nothing for their employees, all while having the average consumer foot the bill.

That’s exactly what happened with the steel tariffs in the first Trump term and that’s exactly what will happen now…the only difference is that this time it seems like there will be significantly fewer economic buffers between the tariff and the consumer, so more people will more directly feel the sting here…and presumably the mental gymnastics from the MAGAts will be even sadder in their attempts to somehow make it not a criticism of their orange leader’s incompetence.

Telling a person wandering through the desert “I also get thirsty” maybe deflects from the issue at hand.

Or… That may be a show of support, in sharing of a common burden, a message of, “You are not alone in this struggle.”

Rather than always seeing it as a negative, maybe allow for the possibility that it’s coming from a different place.

Honestly, I feel like this whole sentiment of, “Don’t attempt to bring any context into a conversation. Only stick strictly to what one person has decided to talk about.” is not only counterproductive in that moment, but also in the medium and long term has a marked effect in shutting down future conversations about difficult and uncomfortable topics.

I mean, how many times does a person get into a conversation that starts with, “Can we talk about X?” or “Let’s have an open, honest discussion about Y?”…only to add something to that conversation and be told, “No, you’re wrong for bringing that up. We’re only talking about X and why it’s the worst thing ever.”… before they get to the point where the next time someone says, “Can we talk about Z?” they just say, “No, sorry. Not interested.”?

For me, while I get where the post is coming from, a lot of the narrative seems to revolve around the dynamic of:

“We need to have an open dialog about XYZ. Let’s have a conversation.”

“Okay, then here’s ABC for context, as a comparison to XYZ.”

“Actually I’m here to talk about XYZ, not ABC. And you’re the problem for not strictly limiting this open conversation to the specific scope I want to consider.”

Like… you can either ask for open discussion or you can say, “Everybody shut up and listen to what I have to say, and unless you’re opening your mouth to completely agree with me in every way, don’t bother because I’m not here for anything other than letting you all know what I think.”

I’m not saying that the points are wrong or bad, just that it’s a bad look to start out with talking about an interest in having a dialogue, then as soon as there’s any expansion of the scope of discussion, suddenly being unhappy that there’s thoughts different from where it started out, and playing the victim or worse, blaming whoever took the invitation for an open dialogue at face value and engaged in good faith.

This is one of those things that works in a simulated environment but not in practice in the real world.

Exactly.

My thought when opening the post was basically, “Can you imagine the depths that American corporations would sink to in a market where they can totally conceal the flavor, size, quality, etc. of their products until after the sale, and not have anyone from the company present, making them totally immune to any negative feedback?”

Presumably the companies behind these things in Japan are at least delivering a somewhat acceptable food item. I wouldn’t be surprised in any way to find an American version of this thing dispensing literal dead rats.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Marjorie Taylor Greene looks like the second or third pic from an Animorphs cover.

Share your art, not your fart!

Well…fuck em, I guess!

If they’re charging so much that the local govt needs to pass that on in the form of a $5 fee on a $9 payment, they’re either gouging, or have an unsustainable business model.

Either way, fuck 'em.

There’s no justification from a pure convenience standpoint, but I could respect the pettiness if the electric company ran their shit like one local government office in my hometown, where there was this small annual fee they charged like $9 for…but then to pay it, you could either mail in a check, hand deliver cash or check or card…or pay online…where they added a $5 “convenience fee” to a sub-$10 payment.

You bet your ass that I paid that shit in person every year, in loose change, and requested a receipt (which they had to write up manually because they didn’t have a system to process and print one).

Would the victim be officially dead?

The game isn’t canon.

Which…okay whatever, weird comment…but that’s what they meant.

Which is why there should be legal mechanisms to place legal responsibility for decisions like this personally on those in leadership positions when they’re being made, even if those people no longer hold those positions.

You bet your ass the chucklefucks who came up with this little stunt would’ve thought twice about it if they knew that there was a decent chance they’d go to prison for it.

Also gotta make this shit sting the shareholders too: make the company pay the victims not only the estimated value of their data but also a portion of all profits made while a policy like this is in effect. Since there’s no easy way to tell how much money was made off their data, unless the company has the numbers, let’s say half.

Suddenly the quarterly report’s got a nice repayment shaped dent in its side and all the sudden the shareholders care about following the law and respecting the rights of customers.

The bounty is posted by Iran… wouldn’t it be better for everyone if we dropped him off at Tehran?

Chocolate with raisins is super common though…

A properly run nuclear plant will also expose people living within a 50 mile radius of the plant to less radiation than if it were a coal fired plant.