Layers of protection. It’s worth it when we’re talking about life and death safety.

I’m not sure if I saw it in the same place, but I saw the same recommendation long ago and have stuck with it ever since.

I don’t rely on it for changing lanes though. It absolutely helps situational awareness, but I always turn and look.

As an American, this line short circuited my brain:

Police there still carry guns on the regular

I live in a quiet but growing suburban town that’s closer to rural areas than the nearest city. When I walk my kid to elementary school (how European of us, lol) the police officer working as a crossing guard for the kids still has their gun, taser, bulletproof vest, and all their other gear on.

And it’s not a school-specific thing. You just never see cops without their weapons here. Armed and armored is just part of the uniform, essentially.

That’s true, but I would amend it to say that the EC and our stupid FPTP system, plus the bias of the senate, are what’s keeping the entire Republican Party relevant.

The rabid and mean stupidity is what is keeping Donald Trump in particular in the race. The establishment might actually like to get rid of him and get back to “money good, human well being bad” like God intended, but they could not get away with it yet.

Judging by some of my distant acquaintances it’s something along the lines of HURR DURR GASOLINE WAS CHEAPER 8 YEARS AGO. They focus on a global commodity of all things.

Seriously, the only stuff I’ve seen from them that even approaches a policy comparison rather than “lol black lady is a ho” caliber stuff revolves around money. And some of that might actually be a valid discussion if it were correct and if it weren’t for the absurd amount of other issues.

It’s just a low-information team sport, regardless of how insane reality is.

I think they mean that 2/3 is close to but still not quite as big as 1/4 since 4 is bigger than 2 or 3.

I think “quiet quitting” is just the white collar equivalent to the more blue collar “nobody wants to work anymore!”

I typically stay at work until 5pm because I make no effort to come in early and I take long lunch breaks.

This place is an absolute ghost town by 5, and it makes me happy to see that. It seems people mostly have their heads on straight here.

Yeah, honestly it’s worked fine without any fiddling around. If it makes a difference, I tend to do things like let mint use non-free components if necessary, and I know I do have the “play drm stuff” option turned on I’m Firefox, even though the privacy and security stuff is all strict.

It’s just a Dell laptop with a discrete nvidia gpu in addition to the embedded Intel one. I think it works fine though with either the open drivers or the closed nvidia ones, but I don’t know if it touches that gpu.

I get to dual boot at work (I run mint btw) and the only reason I ever boot into windows every week or three is to make sure it doesn’t get so out of date that it gets booted from the network.

I guess it’s time to stop that shit! Having windows available is not worth the risk of messing up my work machine. Hell I’m tempted to nuke that windows partition and double the size of my /home partition!

Though I will give Microsoft credit that m365 stuff, including video calls in Teams, work great using the web versions in Firefox. That’s even with the security and privacy stuff cranked up. I only white listed those sites for cookies and local storage for convenience.

GSUS

As opposed to G.E.C.K. OS.

A ton can change just based on your mindset. There’s a lot of that subject in stoic and (secular) Buddhist philosophy. It’s not sticking your head in the sand, but rather practicing being more in control of your mental state while processing the things you need to process.

For instance in Buddhism one of the three poisons is attachment, or sometimes called greed. Having high expectations of other people and relying on their actions to inform your mental state is just setting yourself up for failure.

These are the things I can do without: =±*/

Add on top of this “maybe you don’t need to worry about criticizing others in the first place” and you’re well on your way to a happier existence.

Disclaimer: of course thinking critically is important, and there are areas where you’d be irresponsible not to be critical of others. I’m talking about the IV drip of negativity of constantly getting annoyed at things that don’t affect you.

I like to use Oregon Trail generation too. It’s the perfect label for those of us who essentially had computers inserted into our childhoods at some point.

Computers pre-date us by a lot, obviously, but it’s more about the mass market computers (and home video game systems) that normal people could access.

Some people seem to define themselves by the things they don’t like. That kind of negativity is worth working on to push out of your life, for your own happiness.

We had that in the US too, commonly called “cash for clunkers.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System

But I think it was really more about the economic stimulus than the environmental impact. But I’m sure the environmental side helped justify it.

Yeah, at least they’re sticking to their ideals and their suggestion would help the environment. But as you pointed out, it just won’t/can’t happen in much of the US.

In fact, I just recently went on a road trip from Pennsylvania to Tennessee that took me through parts of West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky. I can’t think of any places I saw where public transportation would be feasible. Maybe long-distance trains to augment air travel as an option, but nothing last-mile.

I saw more signs about reasons god might send me to hell, or how Trump is awesome, than any form of public transit. Even buses. Because I saw zero of any of it.