They’ve put a lot of work into locking people into an ecosystem. To pick one example, if you’ve got a Logic project you want someone to be able to edit, even if you manage to migrate it with all of the required stuff, they’re still going to need a Mac to open it.

To borrow a phrase from Steve Hofstetter, I’ve never flown a helicopter, but if I saw one in a tree, I could still be like “dude fucked up.”

and what pray tell would cause a neck kneel to be absolutely necessary

True. A distressing amount of the time, you can make far more money from a problem existing than from solving it.

$20? That’s amateur stuff. Buy my $999 course and you’ll learn from a master how to apply capitalism to problems!*

*For legal reasons, note that I did not say “how to apply capitalism to solve problems”

My car is a bicycle. Specifically it is a 2017 Masi CX Comp.

Why own a Ford when I have my Chevrolegs?

that’s the joke

They claim to be on track to make another profit year in 2024.

I’d give better odds to me becoming the king of Thailand in 2024.

I am now inside my desk. I die a slow and painful death.

set maximum profits aside

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Which was the fashion at the time.

I was at cat lounge/rescue/adoption place in my area recently (not to adopt, just to pet the cats) and one of the cats, a maybe ~7mo female tabby with a slightly fucked up ear named Maggie, after spending most of the time I was there hiding in a corner, decided she liked me, came up to me, sat down on my lap, and refused to budge. One of the staff members came up to say “hey man you’re at your time limit, but I can see you’re in a situation here so just… whenever is chill”

The person I’ve started seeing from Hinge in recent days told me that the biggest reason she rolled with my profile was because I seemed like I was “relatively normal” and not a techbro or finance bro. Apparently this is prevalent enough around here that for someone who’s not into it, a profile that features a dad joke about the members of punk and metal bands standing really far apart because “your band width determines your speed,” offers “Live Without at an abandoned Denny’s in Houston” as an option for a past event to time travel to, and lists “worker ownership of the means of production” as a “simple pleasure” qualifies you as “normal.”

But hey, that in turn means I’m not attracting the kinds of girls who go for techbros, which I see as an absolute win.

You trying to give them lasting psychological trauma?

1312
That’s the code to my heart, I go
1-3-1-2
Star

I was 19 when I had my so-far worst one, now 28. I dealt with it by going trail running. I had an intramural trail running club I was helping to lead at the time, and wound up captaining for a couple of years, and I would go extra hard with the lead group because at the time it felt like pushing myself through the pain helped my mental suffering (and it was healthier than self-harm). About six months after the breakup I set a five-mile time at a community race that was a good two minutes faster than my previous PR, and which I haven’t come close to since.

I also had really supportive friends and wrote some really angsty songs.

That being said, I also almost had to drop out of college because my grades tanked, and only got to stay because I was lucky enough to qualify into the music department on a good audition for a probationary quarter, and then get my shit together long enough to pass the classes I needed to declare the major. So your mileage may vary.

There’s a rail station in my neighborhood (in the middle of the freeway that also runs through my neighborhood, fucking awesome thanks California) that has some five-story apartment buildings near it, but the nearest grocer is 1.7 miles away. It would literally be faster to walk to the train station, take the train to the city, get your groceries, and then take the train back than to walk to the one that’s actually close. Whose fucking idea was this?

I can leave the house if I wanna see that

too bloody right

Yeah, like I said, I didn’t see any concrete evidence of what I would expect from the name of their organization, and the actual policies they support are mostly things that I also support (increasing density, investing in infrastructure, generally pro-transit, stuff about healthcare, education, allowing remote work, etc). I guess I just find it weird that they’re supporting all of that specifically because it gets more people to have kids, and not because they just make people’s lives better, which is my reasoning. Maybe it’s my personal bias as somebody who doesn’t want kids.

This is good news.

The framing of the organization being called “stop population decline” strikes me as weird given that the global population is far from declining, and either already has surpassed or will soon surpass eight billion. It is true that data is more granular than that: some demographics have more children than others, which leads to shifts over time. All of this is normal and, if not good, at worst neutral. The problem arises when by far the most common voices to say anything about “population decline” or “overpopulation” or anything like that are typically using those terms as dogwhistles for white supremacy/Great Replacement bullshit.

I’ll grant that their About page seems to mostly be stuff I agree with, and from a cursory look at their website, I’m not seeing evidence of white supremacy on it. But idk, the vibes are still off for me.