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Mew fluids?I need mew fluids for my car.check the catalogue
Yes, grind up those Pokémon and pour them into my car
O dear.
Ahem.
NH, where's Gothbard going in England? Probably London, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
Yeah, we were planning on retiring to Scotland but Boris Johnson and Brexit made quite a mess of things. Love London as well, but everywhere we've been in Scotland has been ah-may-zing. Though we haven't been there in winter; THAT might change GothBard's mind.
As for GothBard, there's that whole tech area in Reading so she's flying in to London but then since she's due west out of Heathrow she's never going downtown. They're going to spend a night in the 'burbs and then her places' office is somewhere north of Reading.
How bad is traffic in the Bay Area? In clear traffic it's a 35-minute drive to the San Francisco airport. I've personally been the driver on one ill-fated 3.5-hour drive (in a stick shift no less), and I've heard multiple other people complain about epic 3+-hour treks.
So it's 4:00 pm, GothBard doesn't plan on getting to the airport until 8:10 pm, but I'm already checking traffic.
(Google has it at 43 minutes right now, but it's a Saturday night in San Francisco. I expect it to keep climbing.)
How bad is traffic in the Bay Area? In clear traffic it's a 35-minute drive to the San Francisco airport. I've personally been the driver on one ill-fated 3.5-hour drive (in a stick shift no less), and I've heard multiple other people complain about epic 3+-hour treks.
So it's 4:00 pm, GothBard doesn't plan on getting to the airport until 8:10 pm, but I'm already checking traffic.
(Google has it at 43 minutes right now, but it's a Saturday night in San Francisco. I expect it to keep climbing.)
Yes, West Coast traffic is truly something to behold.
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OK, wow. "Somewhere north of Reading" was an understatement. She'll be just south of Coventry. In California 100 miles is "in the neighborhood". In the U.K. it's "hours away".
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So... just how much do they know? Is it just, "Every time that thing comes out I get sad," or is it, "Every time that thing comes out my people go away for a long time and I'm lonely?" How complex is their thought process?
I have no idea, but I'd love to know.
I had a lab who if they saw you packing a suitcase or dufflebag would sit on the suitcase and actively prevent you from packing. So she at least was aware that the suitcase was filled up with stuff and then you left. The bigger the packing the worse it was. But if she stopped you from packing she could stop you from leaving.
My newfie who really didn't like the heat could remember not only which magic box that brought the cold was after 6 months, but that "the boy" was the one who put things in, and that "her puppy" aka my sister, was in the way of "the boy" doing one of the 4 things he was needed for... making the box work. So put her head to my sisters stomach, gently pushed her down the hall out of the way, and BARKED to say "here boy, make this work now"
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So... just how much do they know? Is it just, "Every time that thing comes out I get sad," or is it, "Every time that thing comes out my people go away for a long time and I'm lonely?" How complex is their thought process?
I have no idea, but I'd love to know.
I had a lab who if they saw you packing a suitcase or dufflebag would sit on the suitcase and actively prevent you from packing. So she at least was aware that the suitcase was filled up with stuff and then you left. The bigger the packing the worse it was. But if she stopped you from packing she could stop you from leaving.
My newfie who really didn't like the heat could remember not only which magic box that brought the cold was after 6 months, but that "the boy" was the one who put things in, and that "her puppy" aka my sister, was in the way of "the boy" doing one of the 4 things he was needed for... making the box work. So put her head to my sisters stomach, gently pushed her down the hall out of the way, and BARKED to say "here boy, make this work now"
I have a lot of confidence in the larger breeds of dogs, especially hunters and herders. I've seen them do some amazing things.
But in terms of observed intelligence from my viewpoint,
"Working" dogs > large dogs > cats > small dogs.
Since cats are towards the small end, I always wonder what they understand and what they don't.
Sometimes you appreciate a lack of change:
Back in 2017 Verizon charged us $10/day for using our phones internationally. I know because we very carefully designated a "daily" phone for each group: The kids used Impus Major's phone for all their communication, and we used GothBard's. It saved us several hundred dollars over the course of the trip by avoiding using my or Impus Minor's phones.
GothBard just landed safely at Heathrow and texted me, and was notified that she's been charged... $10/day. The price hasn't gone up in 7 years!
It doesn't much matter since she's on a business trip and she can expense it, but it was a pleasant surprise to be paying the exact same price as the last time we went.
Sometimes you don't:
If you're anything like me, "Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze" has been drilled into you since pre-school. Adults got very angry when we behaved like the little disease vectors we were. And yet by adulthood, most people had forgotten or chosen to ignore this advice.
Along came a lethal global pandemic whose transmission was almost exclusively airborne (last time I checked they had three (3) confirmed cases worldwide of touch transmission). Covering your mouth when you coughed or sneezed was imperative, as otherwise you could well be committing manslaughter.
Pandemic ended. Went to the store this morning. A very-obviously-sick guy was shopping. OK. Maybe he lives alone and it was his only chance to get food. Considering our country's support network, I wasn't going to hold it against him that he had to do his own grocery shopping. Considering the extent of his runny nose, I can't really blame him for not wanting to wear a mask.
But he wandered down every aisle of the store, sniffling and clearing his throat, and occasionally would let out a series of racking coughs without covering his mouth, turning his head, or making any effort to avoid infecting others.
Before the pandemic, I considered this behavior unbelievably rude.
After the pandemic, I consider it inexcusable. It should be a ticketable offense.
Yeah, we were planning on retiring to Scotland but....For no logical reason that I can conceive of, our electric company (PG&E) prevents you from putting more solar than you use on your house....And a 1,000 other like posts I will not dredge up and re-post with this querry:
You WFH, right?*
You've been full-time WFH for years, right? Like maybe two decades?
Why do you still live in CA?
Srsly, you could be retired already with the money you could've saved working remote under the jurisdiction of a more sensible (read: less bureaucratic) government.
Less optimal - At least retire out of state.
* Strictly speaking I'm asking questions that are not my business I know but you're posting to a public forum for all to read; and from this distance, and just the thousand or two of your posts I've read, I can't figure out why, with the means to live otherwise, you keep subjecting yourself to these billion little agonies.
My father put it well: California is the best place on Earth to live.
There's a reason it costs so much to live here. And I've read dozens of articles about Californians who've moved elsewhere only to find out that it costs just as much but just in different ways, or to learn that the lack of "California culture", for lack of a better term, is really depressing.
Plus family. I'm not going to upend the kids and destroy their social lives and abandon my wife's family just because California has irritations that I complain about. I can't name a single person who doesn't have some gripes about where they live.
TL; DR: I'd rather work longer and retire somewhere I and my entire family will be happy than retire now to somewhere we aren't.
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Speaking of Californian culture, what gives, Limey?
GothBard's in Reading and just got herself a shrimp and avocado sandwich.
I didn't think a British citizen would recognize an avocado if you pelted them in the head with it.
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I think Nobody does a good job of avoiding the "only negative experiences get ranted about" by bringing up good times, but I'd guess there's a lot of good things we just don't hear about because they don't reach the level of "good things happened in a way that makes an entertaining rant".
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If you're saying you would complain no matter where you lived, well OK then.
TOZ puts it fairly well, but I'll make it concrete: I consider it psychologically healthy to vent when something irritates me. So the local gardeners run power tools for 10 days straight and I vent. I don't vent nearly as often when something pleases me. We live in an area where a 16-year-old girl can wander the entire city at 1:00 am in the morning in perfect safety. If someone doesn't want to spend money on heating or air conditioning they don't have to; the climate is mild enough year-round that heating is for comfort, not survival. I never have to shovel snow. Our roads aren't salted so my cars last for decades instead of years. Nobody has to lock their doors in our neighborhood. Etc.
If you're saying that California is big enough that one can find good, even great, places to live outside the chaos, well OK then.
I greatly mislike casting aspersions, but that sounds like the conservative media talking. California isn't "chaos". Proposition 47 caused some hotbeds of property crime around the state for a while. Even those are dying down. Honestly, the worst thing to happen to California was PG&E going private, and that was decades ago.
Still, I don't identify enough with my job to put up with things I despise in order to keep it. And you may be working longer than you plan as Cali will need to tax somebody to cover the deficit they've ran up.
Again, that's the media. California had a $97 billion surplus in 2022. For various reasons that turned into a deficit of $31 billion in 2023. 2024 is an outlier at $78 billion, but having lived here for my entire life we've always cycled between surpluses and deficits. They're not going to raise taxes. The last time they had a large deficit they *gasp* cut spending and dealt with it quickly enough.
Also, why would your "entire family" go with you to wherever you retire? Won't most of them have a career and family of their own to consider? Did you follow your parents when they retired?
You asked me why I don't retire now. So, I just tell the kids, "You're on your own. Get out!" and I'm done?
I'm OK that you like living in Cali, even though one could piece together a pretty good case that you don't from your own posts, but for someone so eminently logical in his rants, your preference for Cali makes no sense from here.
As I said from the top, I vent about the bad because it relaxes me. Bottling up petty frustrations can lead to excessive stress. I don't talk about the good because I was raised by parents who considered boasting the height of bad taste, so saying, "Oh, it's *SO* great here!" isn't something in my nature to crow about.
And honestly, the raw finances tell a completely different story. I quit now, sell the property, and pay off all the resulting taxes and mortgage. I'd probably have a net income of around $50k/year. People say, "Holy cow! You can live almost anywhere in the U.S. on that!"
But... what if you don't want to just sit there in your house when you retire? What if you want to see the world? Spend a month in Japan? A summer in Scotland? A winter in New Zealand? At $50k/year, you're not going to do a lot of traveling. And as you get older, health care expenses will start taking a larger and larger chunk of that, as will housing prices (had to rent to get that income, not buy), and suddenly if you're planning on living into your 80s or 90s you're in serious fiscal trouble.
I don't mind my job. I love my family. I love California. So I will be patient and work towards an ultimate goal of being able to live anywhere in the world no matter what politics brings us to. And I'm still 10-15 years away from that.
So I work.
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I can confirm there is nothing better than living along the pacific coast. There is something magical about the pacific ocean that just can't be explained.
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Speaking of Californian culture, what gives, Limey?
GothBard's in Reading and just got herself a shrimp and avocado sandwich.
I didn't think a British citizen would recognize an avocado if you pelted them in the head with it.
If you get pelted in the head enough times by something, you eventually get curious and see if you can eat it/burn it/sell it/have sex with it. Sometimes you can do all four!
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In other news, I went to boxing training at the local community centre this morning. Unlike we effete historical fencing nerds, those folks don't mess about, let me tell you.
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As what's likely my final post for the day on the subject, at the Babymetal concert I ran into a woman from Georgia who was fairly typical: Her daughter desperately wanted to see Babymetal live, and their only U.S. choices were San Francisco or Las Vegas, so the mother chose San Francisco as the lesser of two evils.
Her take: "I can't believe how nice it is here. Everyone told me I couldn't leave the hotel room or I'd get mugged, and there would be homeless people on every corner. But it's been absolutely pleasant, the weather's beautiful, and everyone here is so nice!"
So I gave her the typical pointers:
(1) No, she and her daughter would be perfectly safe in San Francisco. It has one of the lowest violent crime rates of any major city in the country.
(2) She should absolutely, positively NOT leave anything in her rental car. And preferably leave it unlocked so people can go through it and confirm. The property crime here is real, but the thieves are hilariously polite about it. They'll stack all your non-stealable stuff neatly in the passenger seat for you.
(3) Yes, northern Californians are by and large a friendly lot.
(4) There are many, many homeless in San Francisco. She just happened to be in a neighborhood that didn't have any. But considering the friendly natives, perfect climate, and generous state policies, we attract homeless from everywhere west of the Mississippi. Is it any wonder we can't handle them all?
So, I love California for its weather, its friendly and generous people, and its low crime rate. But just like anywhere in the world, it has its stupid as well. And as Jello Biafra put it so beautifully in a Mandela effect of mine (It's not an actual lyric but I thought it was): "You say, 'America, love it or leave it!', but if I didn't love it I wouldn't criticize it!"
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Speaking of Californian culture, what gives, Limey?
GothBard's in Reading and just got herself a shrimp and avocado sandwich.
I didn't think a British citizen would recognize an avocado if you pelted them in the head with it.
American expatriates and visitors and employees from Europe.
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If you get pelted in the head enough times by something, you eventually get curious and see if you can eat it/burn it/sell it/have sex with it. Sometimes you can do all four!Speaking of Californian culture, what gives, Limey?
GothBard's in Reading and just got herself a shrimp and avocado sandwich.
I didn't think a British citizen would recognize an avocado if you pelted them in the head with it.
Yup. Definitely American expats and European visitors/employees.
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She was cursed to never enjoy sunlit gardens. She deals with it rather well.
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I can confirm there is nothing better than living along the pacific coast. There is something magical about the pacific ocean that just can't be explained.
Cyz has looked at other places we could move to with her doctorate when she's done. Washington is another state that doesn't require post-doc work and I've liked what I've seen of it on visits. Not sure I want to deal with the winter though.
Also, it would need to be somewhere with roads closer to Phoenix's grid and not Seattle's spaghetti snarl.
Does the ability to travel from Georgia to San Francisco to see a concert put you in the top 1% wealth group?
If so, I guess I’ll quit my job ‘cause I got it made and didn’t even know it. Of course, without the job, I’d soon run out of money…
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I once drove all the way to Cape Hatteras, just to dabble my toes in the Atlantic. It seemed like a real nice ocean.
... of Atlantic.
A couple scoops of dirt and the Baltic Sea would be a lake.
:)
Again?
Speaking of corporate greed spoiling fine things, a question for NobodysHome:
How did your gaming group handle(d) the Helldivers 2 current mess?
Seeing the Helldivers bombing from extremally positive reviews to extremally negative in matter of what, a week, is disturbingly entertaining...
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Speaking of corporate greed spoiling fine things, a question for NobodysHome:
How did your gaming group handle(d) the Helldivers 2 current mess?
Seeing the Helldivers bombing from extremally positive reviews to extremally negative in matter of what, a week, is disturbingly entertaining...
It's a good question because it sparked quite a bit of debate in the house. I'm a strong proponent of punishing firms financially for mistreatment of customers, so since Steam was offering refunds to some players, I suggested we go that route because cash refunds hurt more than bad reviews. Shiro and Impus Major joined in the review bombing, but Shiro didn't want to stop playing because at the moment it's really his only social outlet with his gaming friends. So I played with him last night, and this morning was rewarded with the news that Sony is backing down, so the pressure campaign was successful.
Those who overruled me were correct.
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Point of reference for you to calibrate your aspersions:
My listening news sources are NPR (daily alarm and car trips as road noise ruins music for me unless I turn it up to unhealthy levels), BBC and DW News via YouTube. For reading content, it's typically Substack or technical sites (e.g. GitHub). Then, if I have to, NYT, WaPo and the Guardian with a random mix of minor outlets as needed (e.g. The Atlantic). Occasionally someone I know points me to a podcast.
This was entirely my bad. I meant to cast aspersions on the media, not you personally. In your list, I'm 100% sure NPR is the culprit -- in the last 20 years I've watched them go from one of the best news sources on the planet to an amalgam of human interest pieces and opinion pieces disguised as "news". It's painful to look at their news site these days and ask the question, "Which of these articles is actually 'news'?" But yes, they are definitely NOT right-leaning.
But here's the issue in a nutshell: Take the nearest city to you with a population of over 100,000 people. Now turn it into the center of a culture war over social policy: The right-leaning newspapers report everything that's terrible about the city to demonstrate the failure of liberal social policies. The left-leaning newspapers do endless human interest stories on how terrible things are to emphasize how much more we could be doing to help these people.
Suddenly, your city sounds like a hellscape. Anywhere in the world. Get a big enough city, it'll have bad neighborhoods, and you can make it look godawful. I'm reminded of the 1989 earthquake coverage. Over 99% of the Bay Area was absolutely fine. So every camera angle in the national news media was designed to hide any non-damaged areas so it looked like we'd been devastated. We lost what? 163 people, an overpass, and one 100' section of bridge. But the media made it look like we were near-annihilated.
This is what's happening to poor San Francisco. I just saw an article yesterday about the poor beleaguered Tenderloin escorts who had to escort their elementary school kids through what is essentially a war zone. I've walked in that area recently. The report should have been labeled, "Based on a true story."
And that's the real danger of San Francisco. Most large cities have good and bad areas: In Richmond if you stay out of the Iron Triangle, you're fine. San Francisco has good and bad blocks. You can park just off Market to walk 4 blocks to the theater, and two of those blocks will be safe and clean, and the other two will be littered with detritus and have several homeless encampments on them. I have no idea what it is, but in San Francisco if you're downtown, you're never more than 3 blocks from a really nasty area, so if you're looking to show San Francisco at its worst, it's easy pickings.
His answer (paraphrased):
The neighborhood he lives in is amazing and he loves it. However he has stopped jogging into work as it has become impossible for him to avoid stepping in human excrement (literal - not pejorative) at a jogging speed. After one expensive pair of shoes became bio-toxic waste, he dropped them straight in the garbage can and now walks both directions. And yes, the downtown core is a shell of it's former self. And if the situation downtown spreads into his neighborhood he'll move and commute in a more traditional manner.But again, this is the answer of someone who is a 99.x% income bracket American. So YMMV!
You can also get a doctor who says that shoving jade balls into your various orifices will somehow cleanse your aura and make you healthier.
More seriously, I absolutely believe this doctor's characterization to be 100% true from his point of view. If he's a doctor and he works downtown, he's at some kind of medical facility. Where do they take all the homeless and drug addicts who need treatment? Downtown. So where are the worst congregations? Downtown. So yes, jogging from any area of San Francisco to downtown, you will necessarily have to run through several of the really bad blocks, and if you're not paying attention you'll step in something. If you're a native, you can reroute around the "bad" blocks, but considering his occupation I suspect he ended up working on one of them. As for downtown San Francisco being a "shell" of its former self, I've heard that about pretty much every major city since work from home became a major option.
So I see his experience as:
(1) Absolutely believable because of what he does for a living and therefore where he works,
(2) associating something that's happening nationwide as something unique to San Francisco. Since San Francisco is a major financial and tech center, I'm sure a greater percentage of workers are able to WFH so the problem is exacerbated, but just like the California budget, give it a couple of years and it'll stabilize.
EDIT: Oakland is a fantastic counterpoint. Oakland's murder rate is over TEN TIMES San Francisco's. When I did jury duty there a few months ago downtown was a wasteland, with at least half a dozen closed down restaurants or shops that I saw. Oakland has massive homeless encampments under almost every freeway overpass. But, because Oakland isn't at the center of a national culture war, I doubt you've heard much about the staggering issues facing Oakland (except NPR is very Bay Area-centric so you might have heard at least a smidgeon about Oakland's issues on NPR). Oakland is in MUCH worse shape than San Francisco, but it's not getting the press because it's not "shiny" enough.
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State forensics is done. One of our events got 3rd. A second made semifinals. Not bad!
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Point of reference for you to calibrate your aspersions:
My listening news sources are NPR (daily alarm and car trips as road noise ruins music for me unless I turn it up to unhealthy levels), BBC and DW News via YouTube. For reading content, it's typically Substack or technical sites (e.g. GitHub). Then, if I have to, NYT, WaPo and the Guardian with a random mix of minor outlets as needed (e.g. The Atlantic). Occasionally someone I know points me to a podcast.This was entirely my bad. I meant to cast aspersions on the media, not you personally. In your list, I'm 100% sure NPR is the culprit -- in the last 20 years I've watched them go from one of the best news sources on the planet to an amalgam of human interest pieces and opinion pieces disguised as "news". It's painful to look at their news site these days and ask the question, "Which of these articles is actually 'news'?" But yes, they are definitely NOT right-leaning.
But here's the issue in a nutshell: Take the nearest city to you with a population of over 100,000 people. Now turn it into the center of a culture war over social policy: The right-leaning newspapers report everything that's terrible about the city to demonstrate the failure of liberal social policies. The left-leaning newspapers do endless human interest stories on how terrible things are to emphasize how much more we could be doing to help these people.
Suddenly, your city sounds like a hellscape. Anywhere in the world. Get a big enough city, it'll have bad neighborhoods, and you can make it look godawful. I'm reminded of the 1989 earthquake coverage. Over 99% of the Bay Area was absolutely fine. So every camera angle in the national news media was designed to hide any non-damaged areas so it looked like we'd been devastated. We lost what? 163 people, an overpass, and one 100' section of bridge. But the media made it look like we were near-annihilated.
This is what's happening to...
hmm. Could say the same with what is happening in some areas of NYC.
Speaking of curious user interface designs, I set the motion-sensing camera to do a 12-hour time-lapse video of my street. I left the rest of the settings at their defaults. It dutifully recorded the 4 frames I obviously wanted (one at 0 hours, one at 4 hours, one at 8, and one at 12).
Call me a stickler, but if I were to set up default settings for a time lapse video I'd have them at one frame per second, not four frames per recording...
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Neighbors dog behind the fence for years "RAR RAR RAR I WANT TO EAT YOU"
Neighbors dog while walking "RAR RAR RAR I WANT TO EAT YOU" attempts to pull owner into eating range.
My nieces dog escaped, ran over to the fence. Turns out other dog is very dog friendly. I actually don't let my niece go over to get the dog because I'm worried it might jump the fence and bite her. Go over... dog doesn't care just wants to play with my dog through the fence. I give em a minute and haul my dog off.
Since then, neighbors dog doesn't LIKE me, but no longer wants to tear my face off.
So.. did nieces dog vouch for me? Did neighbors dog just see I'm a dog person, finally get close enough that I'm not a stranger...
Usually animals make perfect sense from their own point of view if you think about it but this one is weird.
I can confirm there is nothing better than living along the pacific coast. There is something magical about the pacific ocean that just can't be explained.Cyz has looked at other places we could move to with her doctorate when she's done. Washington is another state that doesn't require post-doc work and I've liked what I've seen of it on visits. Not sure I want to deal with the winter though.
Also, it would need to be somewhere with roads closer to Phoenix's grid and not Seattle's spaghetti snarl.
Seattle has some pretty crazy geography, once you get the hang of how the streets and avenues run it's all pretty easy getting around.
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Teachable lesson that was taught: Chickens don't poop sideways.
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More bullshit at work today. Yet another reason why trying to break into commercial construction as a small company is a terrible idea...
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OK, THAT is funny!
The kids' ju jitsu instructor is old school (surprise, surprise), so when he told the class their essay was due today, he actually, honestly, meant that he wanted printed out sheets of paper turned in to him in class.
Of course 90% of the students (my kids included) assumed they were supposed to turn in the paper digitally by midnight and showed up to class empty-handed.
He was... displeased...
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Shouldn’t there have been something about catching a fly with chopsticks?