Somehow I’m also an idiot with finances. I guess the moral is I had a hands off dad who didn’t know shit.

This is what happens when you have a banker for a dad.

Rolled up to the front desk of the Paris hotel in Las Vegas. Chaotic lines and staff were doing nothing to organize it. Finally got someone to help me. Nope, they don’t have my reservation. Here’s my confirmation number and everything. “Nope! Don’t have it. You can call your travel service,” she said. I asked her to try again on a variation of my name and then she found it. “You should have said that the first time!” she complained.

Every step in the checkin took 5 minutes to complete. Twice she just wandered away from the desk and started talking to someone else, making me wonder what the hell was going on and if I would get checked in. Finally I get my key card, schlep up to the room, and it doesn’t work. I schlep back down and walk straight up to counter where this woman was, bypassing the line, like you do. “Back of the line!” she said. I tried to explain that she had made an error with the keycard. “Back of the line, please sir!”

So I waited in line again. Then I rolled up to the desk. She said “You look like you want to kill me! It’s not my fault!” I said did I say anything? Did I blame you? “That expression on your face! You look like you want to kill me!” she repeated.

At this point I leaned over to read her name off her tag and began writing it down, intending to have a conversation with the manager later. “Yes! You can take my name! And I will take your name!” And she made a big show of ripping off a piece of paper and writing my name on it, copying from her computer screen.

Somehow in all this I took possession of another key card which finally worked. What a shitshow. Took two visits to even find a manager to complain to, and when I did he just nodded and nodded, staring into the distance like he was dead inside and couldn’t possibly give a shit.

If the stereotype about rude service in France is true, they sure were authentic! (It’s not true by the way. I’ve visited three times and never had a moment’s trouble).

For years I just drew a line and then sawed down the middle of it. 🙄

If you already knew this expression, here is chapter two:

Account for the width of the blade.

Or they even say this is a sign of wear and means you should throw it out.

And because I enjoy sharing knowledge more than boasting I know more than others: the reason it moves is to account for the thickness of the metal hook itself.

It makes a difference if you are hooking it onto the back of something and measuring from there, OR butting it up onto something and measuring from there.

If you want accurate and consistent readings in both of these situations, the hook has to move. It basically pivots around the true point you’re measuring from.

There’s no way I’m going to let you characterize the Great Leap Forward as “famine happens.” That is absolutely criminal apologism.

Religion. The all-time champion, no contest, just as George Carlin said:

https://youtu.be/2tp0UNcjzl8

“For here or to go?”

They ask this because the tax is different. Yep. You get taxed more if you eat it there. Why? Fuck if I know.

Massage school. They say they’re teaching you a trade and will help with job placement but there is a glut of graduates and not enough jobs for them. Yet the school keeps signing up new students because that’s how they make money.

The real purpose of profit is to incentivize investment. Without starting liquidity, industry and business can’t get off the ground.

China has only moved away from a state-run economy in the last 50 years, resulting in its current, larger and much more dynamic economy. It’s probably the world’s best current example of a country abandoning communism for capitalism, and reaping the benefits. There is wealth inequality, but fewer people are starving. All they’re keeping from their former regime is centralized single party political control.

Under economic Communism they proved over and over that a central government can’t command a entire set of industries and markets better than they can run themselves. People starved in the tens of millions finding this out. An uptick in suicide rates is nothing by comparison.

That’s somewhat either/or thinking when the emergent ideal is capitalism held in check by sane and compassionate social policies. You could call some of the latter socialistic if you want. But where in the world is Communism providing anyone a relevant alternative to the “decay” of capitalism? Capitalism is in its energetic teenage years still, in Asia, if you’ve noticed.

Yeah, and this is not a view of “the right” anymore. I know that leftism used to terminate with hard capitalism but if anyone is still advocating for that, I think they are on a different scale entirely. Being leftist these days is about proper environmental regulation, policies that encourage wealth equality, and using government to address the needs of the most vulnerable. It terminates at something like The Netherlands. Capitalism is no longer up for debate. Very little about foreign policy is either.

It’s good to hear that even small instances benefitted from Reddit Day and not just lemmy.world

Why’d you start an instance?

I had an account before I even knew there were many instances. I thought it was just a website.

Yeah. I would also say that WE don’t understand what it means to “understand” something, really, if you try to explain it with any thoroughness or precision. You can spit out a bunch of words about it right now, I’m sure, but so could ChatGPT. What’s missing from GPT is harder to explain than “it doesn’t understand things.”

I actually find it easier to just explain how it does work. Multidimensional word graphs and such.

It’s super weird that it would attempt to give a time duration at all, and then get it wrong.

Take heart. America, like all developed nations, can’t live without immigrants to counteract its declining birth rate. If you live in fear that all immigrants will be expunged, you can relax.

Meanwhile women have already been targeted and shot at and hit because one of the last elections didn’t go well. Gay and trans people are being erased from places like a Florida and Texas right now.

Turn that anxiety into volunteer hours registering voters, or helping women access critical healthcare.