Spyke

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196

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Laid off rule

While simple, it can honestly be kind of fun to just go in and let them know. When I was recently laid off, it went something like this.

HR: "I know this might be a shock–"

Me: "Yeah, you're letting me go, I know. Here's my work laptop and badge, I've got all my stuff in a box outside, what do I sign? Trying to catch the next train home, so I have like 20 minutes."

It totally threw off my boss and the HR lady trying to do their sombre, dignified thing, and was pretty funny to watch.

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Dentist the Menace

The wild part is what's cut off in the bottom section.

However, "Much of what he championed—patient advocacy, increased access to dental care, and advertising—has come to pass in the U.S.

So I guess, possibly not as bad as the opening line makes him sound, and perhaps even an improvement over the standards of the time

Some other choice sections.

The band attracted large crowds and hid the moans and cries of patients who were given whiskey or a cocaine solution that he called "hydrocaine" to numb the pain.[2] He charged 50 cents for each extraction and promised that if it hurt, he would pay the patient $5.

he Historical Dental Museum at the Temple University School of Dentistry has a display dedicated to Parker, with his necklace of 357 teeth and a large wooden bucket filled to the brim with teeth that he had personally pulled. The bucket of teeth sat by his feet as he lectured the crowds on the importance of dental hygiene.

Almost sounds like the guy may have been maligned by his fellow dentists for calling them out on their BS.

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Kamala Harris Pulled Off a Miracle | The fact that the election is a toss-up, rather than a Trump landslide, is a testament to the vice president’s political skills

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You could certainly say the Democrats should have been able to come up with a better outreach plan rather than running the same old plan that hasn't penetrated into this group for the last several elections. It's not as though the culture war nonsense and insane rightwing elements of the party are novel factors, such that the Dems can shrug their collective shoulders and say "Hey, we did our best, be we were flying blind into the unknown."

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Births in Japan likely to fall under 700,000 for first time | The Asahi Shimbun

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It's hardly the sole cause of Japan's problem, nor unique amongst developed nations. However, given the near total aversion Japan seems to have towards the notion of enabling immigration as a means to permanent residency for immigrants, it takes on a much greater dimension for the problem than it might in other nations that are more open to immigration. Barring a sudden and total reversal politically and socially on the question of immigration, Japan will have to do far more domestically to improve quality of life and work-life balance if they want to avoid a total demographic collapse.

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Anon visits America

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Sremoved is just a variant form more common in the UK, where snicker is the preferred one in the US. Though I wouldn't put it past a 4chan user, it's also a perfectly normal word they may have learned being taught and exposed to UK variants of English.

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what is the most "above your station" thing you have ever experienced?

I got invited to some sort of literary award ceremony at the French embassy a few years back. I, uh, severely underdressed for the occasion. I got the invite for participating in the Albertine book store's bookclub, and for whatever reason, my brain went, "I can show up to this like I would dress for a bookclub session, it's the same people." Spoiler, it was not, and I really should have been at least in a button up and slacks, rather than my hoodie and jeans. As luck would have it, the gentleman who won the award, Emmanuel Dongala, was sat next to me during the speeches. I can still remember the look of "What the classless, American fuck is this guy doing?" as he took his seat next to me.

On the other hand, I went to my first opera at the NY Metropolitan Opera last year basically dressed the same way, and it was surprisingly entirely fine. Turns out, very few people want to be sat for hours in formal attire when hardly anyone can see you in the dark, anyway.

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How to deal with Mom who CANNOT learn how to use a password manager, but demands I "fix it"

Go to another account she hasn't messed up on her phone, and make her watch as you use the password manager to get in. Then, you can tell her for sure that the tech is working, and you've done your part, but you cannot fix her behavior. If she wants to keep resetting her passwords all the time, that's on her, otherwise, she'll have to put a small amount of time and effort into adapting to using the password manager.

If she isn't going to follow your suggestions and advice, why is she asking you for help? If she sincerely wants help, she needs to make an effort on her side to follow through.

This is a problem with psychology and boundaries, not a tech issue.

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How did you hurt yourself in a very stupid way?

Got a concussion in a pillow fight. I was in the top bunk in a lean-to at summer camp when I was maybe 13 or 14. Forgetting the low ceiling above me, I jumped to my feet, planning on launching a pillow at someone poking around another bed. Promptly slammed my head into the ceiling, knocked myself out and wound up going to the doctor shortly after. Pretty sure I still have a disc somewhere with images of the small minor brain bleeding I got as a result.

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That lawsuit against Steam’s 30% cut of game sales is now a class action, meaning many other developers could benefit

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SteamOS can really only be a good thing for devs, as I understand it. The steam deck gives them fairly limited hardware to target for development if they're inclined to do so, and Valve's effort with Proton have done wonders for general Linux compatibility, even in the absence of a native Linux version of their games. That's opened up a sizable market for them that was previously unavailable.

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How do I realistically get out of the US?

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There are countries that do, but you'll still need to demonstrate that you have the financial means to support yourself without working or needing recourse to public services for the duration of your study, so there's still a fairly significant financial barrier to entry for most individuals. If you have the money to put down for 3 years of rent, food, utilities, etc, while you complete a degree in Europe, I imagine you're generally doing pretty okay for yourself in the US.

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Anon gets rid of crackheads

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Respect is a two-way street, though. People don't deserve to be disrespected or dehumanized just because they've fallen on hard times, it could happen to any of us, after all. My respect for crackheads is about as limited for my respect for the guys jerking off to lone women on the subway, though. If the system has chewed you up so thoroughly that you need to smoke crack to get through the day, you have my sympathy Go do you, hope things get better for you. On the other hand, I've got effectively no sympathy for the crackheads where I used to live that would get high as hell, then shit in the staircases, get into fights with the only elevator in the building until it broke, or just sat outside all night, screaming and blasting music.

I'm a reasonably healthy younger person, so having the elevator out of commision for months at a time because of their antics was a nuisance, especially when it came time to haul groceries up to my apartment on the seventh floor, or bring my laundry down to the basement to wash it. It was outright dangerous for more elderly residents on the upper floors, who essentially became housebound, though. My mother-in-law couldn't deal with all those steps, and there were elderly people on higher floors put at risk because paramedics couldn't reach them nearly as quickly if they had an emergency, not to mention the challenge of bringing someone down a bunch of narrow stairs on a stretcher.

Just because they're suffering at a given moment doesn't give them the right to degrade everyone else's quality of life, if not outright endanger their lives.

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Democrats should have listened to Bernie Sanders, historians say

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Turns out the "Please don't vote for fascism" vibe isn't very appealing to the country.

That was one vibe. Unfortunately, the rest of the vibe from the Democrats have been, "Well, things are actually pretty good, just look at our charts. Economy is doing great!". I think that's where they really failed the vibe check, telling people not that they will improve things in a major way, but that the status quo is mostly acceptable and they'll keep things from getting worse.

Change was the order of the day, and they ran a campaign on stability instead.

196

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Rule

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Despite growing up in the 90s, a Commodore 128 was the only computer we had until maybe 1998, when we upgraded to some sort of Macintosh. It was just Frogger, Montezuma's Revenge and OutNumbered! for me on computers until we finally got a Dell of some sort running Windows XP in like 2004.

I got all the pain of different OSes growing up, but now it's just Linux and OpenBSD for me these days.

usa

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Democratic Leaders Get Worst Polling Result in Over Two Decades

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People also remember how, when the Democrats were the majority party, the Republican minority could somehow obstruct, delay and water down anything they proposed that even approached being progressive policy that would help large numbers of working class people, yet the Dems have somehow forgotten all those tactics that were used against them to great success now that they find themselves the minority party.