Tinks

Because people can buy stuff off your wishlist and have it shipped to you. In its current form, it doesn’t expose your address to the buyer, but apparently the change may do that.

Seriously! Anyone who thinks about this for half a second realizes the repercussions of only allowing US citizens bank accounts. Are we just eliminating immigration entirely now? Immigrants have to prove that they are financially self-sufficient and doing that without a bank account is… effectively impossible. Every legal permanent resident would be immediately unable to function in society. Most jobs require direct deposit into a bank account these days and won’t issue paper checks. How do you even pay rent or a mortgage without a bank account.

It would be absolute chaos.

And they’re still going to make you work in the office

Based on the article it appears they’re targeting naturalized citizens, but as someone who was born in Germany because my dad was in the Army, this is still concerning. Here I was just thinking I only had to fear for my permanent resident husband… I really hate this timeline.

I work in procurement and the last week and a half at work has been hell. Buying anything that contains RAM, Hard drives or GPUs right now is a circus. Pricing changing after orders placed, 6+ month lead times, insanely expensive pricing and any other problem you can imagine. It’s not just a problem for consumers, but businesses that need hardware refreshes, startups that are trying to launch, and replacements for defective units are all just really hard to get right now. I know this will pass eventually, but it’s a tough time to be in procurement for IT hardware.

What a cutie!

Public holidays are not mandatory time off let alone paid in the US. Many employers that give paid time off do include at least some holidays, but which ones and how many is variable between employers. Some will give every federal holiday and others will be only the really big ones like Christmas, thanksgiving, independence day, etc.

One of the most exciting things about the job I currently have is that I get around 15 holiday days a year off, in addition to my normal vacation time. It’s a rarity. My last two jobs only had 7 holiday days - that stretch from New years day to Memorial day (end of May) was always brutal.

I really don’t understand the hate for the magic mouse cursor lol. I freakin love it!

It may depend on the LG TV or maybe it’s a setting. I just bought a new one and have a Google streamer on it and use it’s remote to turn on the streamer, soundbar and TV with a single button. I never see the LG UI itself unless I need to change a setting, and I’ve disabled it’s wifi entirely. I don’t get any kind of popups from the TV, it just works cleanly with the streamer.

That’s not really true. B&H sells digital signage displays to consumers and you can buy some of them from Amazon and Best buy as well

A 32" TV is not what most people are looking for. In fact I don’t know anyone with a main TV that small these days. The problem is that 40"+ dumb TVs are hard to find. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but very few manufacturers are making them, and the few that are have garbage screens in them.

Unfortunately it’s getting hard to find dumb TVs. The only real options are pro-AV or digital signage displays but even a lot of those are now moving to being smart. Our 15 year old bedroom TV finally died last month and we ended up having to replace it, and we ultimately went with an LG. I’ve disabled it’s wifi though. It’s a frustrating situation. I wish one of the manufacturers with good displays would just offer a dumb line of TVs. I imagine they would still have a market even if they were higher cost to make up for the lack of ad revenue, but maybe I’m underestimating that revenue. Either way, avoiding smart TVs is getting extremely difficult these days.

I have very much adopted and invested in smart technology and even I am massively annoyed by the fact that EVERYTHING connects to WiFi these days. My dishwasher can supposedly download new wash cycles or some nonsense. It’s obnoxious and it will never know wifi. I just like being able to automate things and make my life easier in simple ways. When I dismiss my alarm in the morning my kitchen lights turn on because the first thing I do is go feed the pets. It helps light up the house a bit during winter when I wake up and I love it. THAT is what smart home technology should be. Not a freakin toaster connecting to WiFi so it can alert you when your toast is done.

On the topic of smart toothbrushes, I did get given one to test out and it was actually pretty cool. After you finished brushing it would send a map of your mouth and what you brushed in case you missed any spots. The app ended up being a bit buggy so I got rid of it, but I could see how that type of thing could be useful, especially for certain demographics like kids. They had a way to gamify brushing your teeth for kids as well, which is silly, but could also be effective especially for autistic kids.

I spent two years in college studying the history of the Middle East and specifically the conflict between Israel and Palestine. I have never been on TikTok. Then where the fuck did my pro-Palestine views come from? I know the history very well and Israel has been unreasonable assholes from the beginning. Yes, Hamas and Palestine need to stop leading with violence, but when you’re fighting for your country’s literal existence it’s a bit of a moral grey area. The whole situation is a shit show and it infuriates me that Israel has so much support from the US. Without the 800lb gorilla backing them I feel like they’d have been forced to negotiate a reasonable solution long ago. Instead, here we are with a wildly disproportionate response that is 2 years long and the US has effectively cheered them on.

Hilary and her entire generation of politicians can get fucked.

Supervolcano is also an option!

None of my schools had phones in the classrooms. We had intercom systems that the teacher could use. A speaker on the wall with a button to press to call the front office and another to press when speaking. The only phones I knew of were in the front office and in the teachers lounges.

Exactly this. Public transport in KC is effectively non-existent unless you live in the middle of downtown KCMO.

Also as far as Amtrak goes, my biggest annoyance is that I can’t travel with my dog via train. In Europe many train systems allow dogs with varying regulations and costs, and sometimes you have to buy your large dog a seat which I think is fair. Amtrak in the US doesn’t allow large dogs at all. Now with no domestic airline flying large dogs either (they stopped that during Covid and never brought it back), my only option to travel with my dog is driving. I would happily buy him his own seat on a plane or train, and he’s a certified good boy (CGC and SPOT-ON certificates) so he knows how to behave in public, but nope, not an option.

For me, not having a car will never be an option as long as I live in the US, not because I couldn’t manage to get around without one, but because I like taking my dog on adventures and what little public transportation we have in the US is not dog friendly at all.

Yep. I’m the (apparently minority) weirdo that LOVES the rainbow vomit lights. I have lights everywhere on my computer and desk and it brings me so much joy. It just feels happy to me to have the bright rainbow colors slowly shifting. I find it delightful and will pay extra to ensure devices are not only rainbow capable, but are the right type of rainbow (slow shifting) that I love. My side of our gaming office drives my husband nuts. I regret nothing!

One of my best friends in the world bounces his leg often. He’s a bigger guy and it can definitely get annoying. I try to just let it go unless we’re sitting at a table and he’s shaking it too, then I will gently reach over and touch his knee to let him know. He immediately apologizes and stops, and I feel bad for having to say something, but I draw the line at shaking the table lol. If he’s sitting across the room from me he can bounce to his heart’s content.

Every time I go hiking with my dog I pull one of these little bastards off his fur. I cover him in permethrin, as well as every inch of my clothing, shoes and hat, so I’m not SUPER stressed about it, but it’s still annoying. A couple days ago I found one in his tail floof (he’s a golden so it’s a giant poof.) The tick was near dead already by the time I got it untangled from his fur thanks to the permethrin though. Usually I spot the ticks on him either because they’re on his head (where they’re easy to spot immediately), or because they got tangled in his fur and couldn’t jump off. I’ve never once seen one bite him thankfully.

It’s wild to me because I have only seen other kinds of ticks twice so far this season, but otherwise it’s all lone star ticks, which are not supposed to be the most common where I am. They’re definitely more prominent this year though. Of all the tick diseases, alpha-gal terrifies me the most, so I’m not thrilled by this increase in lone stars.