My biggest resume gap was a 6 month gap. I was laid off (technically "my position was eliminated") and immediately started looking, but opportunities were slim.

I knew the gap may not look good, even if I was searching the whole time, so I enrolled in a few classes at the local community college when the new semester began.

As it happened, a few weeks after my layoff, my grandfather fell ill as well and it turned out to be a relief for the whole family that I was able to pull the overnight shifts caring for him at my grandparents' home in the last month and a half of his life.

Though my stretch of unemployment lasted long after he passed, the few times I've been asked about this gap in an interview, my response has usually been "I was caring for my dying grandfather" with no elaboration.

At that point, the majority of interviews who asked either let it go and move on or express sympathy and continue. The one interview I've been in where that wasn't enough and they tried to get into specifics, I wrote off that position mentally in that moment and it was just going through the motions until I could get out of there. I figured any place that would pry for details in that situation to see if they felt it was justified was the type of place that would feel justified prying into my private life if I were employed there.

I mean...the moment any large corporation figures out a way to replace human workers that need things like bathroom breaks (and basic human rights, and paychecks) and do the same work with robots and AI... literally the next moment, they'll have the AI start generating layoff notices.

It's just less flashy when it happens that way because there's no need for that AI to look like a beautiful young person.

Right?

"Nobody wants to work anymore!"

Like no shit man.

News Flash: nobody has wanted to work ever. They work because the compensation lets them live the lives they want outside of work. If nobody wants to work for you, it's because you either aren't willing to compensate them enough to do that, or your job makes them so miserable that it's not worth it for them to trade away that much happiness for the compensation.

Or both. In lots of cases it's both.

I mean...those are all valid questions.

Any or all of which could've been asked.

Because Trump, as weirdly as he may go about it, has made his way through life on his (inherited fortune from his from his crook of a father and) force of personality.

He gets people to do what he wants them to do by projecting an image, a brand, through the way he acts and speaks. Look at The Apprentice. He's playing this role that says (without saying out loud), "Look at me. I'm a straight shooting, no nonsense business leader and my personality and business sense have brought me success, money, fame, luxury, and power. You want that too? You want to be like me? Then do what I say."

Not saying it's authentic or that it should work, but Trump's entire existence is based on this tactic. He's constantly projecting an image, and it's that projection of that image that gets him his way. His force of personality is just as, if not more central to his power as his money (make no mistake, the money is necessary too).

This, in contrast with Musk, who's typically cultivated his following based on ideas and drive. He gets people to go along with him because he's seen as a modern day Edison (and to be fair, the comparison, in some ways, is apt... especially the less flattering ones), a groundbreaker, rules breaker...a visionary.

Simply put, among the people who follow these guys, people follow Musk for what he says (in terms of his big ideas), people follow Trump for the way he acts (in terms of the image he projects). It takes a strong set of blinders to ignore Musk's sharing of his worse ideas and Trump's less than impressive antics, but their respective cults have had plenty of practice in those mental gymnastics.

Thus you're left with the mind boggling (to the rest of us) situation where Musk's followers don't care how he acts, because they are laser focused on his ideas, while Trump supporters couldn't care less about the crazy or incoherent stuff he says, so long as he keeps projecting that macho, confident persona.

So that's how Musk gets away with being "Trump, but more childish": he's not depending on the personality like Trump, so he can act that way without turning his supporters off, because they don't care about that in the first place.

Musk's entire angle is "it's okay to be a humongous asshole if you achieve your goals.

Trump's is, "It's okay to be a humongous asshole, as long as you can sell it as arrogance bred from success."

Also 17 year old kids, the vast majority of which have never taken on significant debt and have no frame of reference for the scale of obligation they're taking on.

It blows my mind that we look at an 17 year old and, as a government, we say, "Alcohol? Too young and immature. Handguns? Too young and immature. Tobacco products? Too young and immature. Voting? Too young and immature. Enlisting in the military or want to take on 5 or 6 figures of debt that will drive your major life decisions for the next few decades? Sign here."

Everyone over the age of 20 thinks they're old now.

Everyone older than them responds with some variation of, "Just you wait!"

Always been this way.

And she's also wildly incompetent and biased, with this just being the latest in a long string of obvious moves to help him.

Yeah, all Google accomplished with this bullshit was finally getting me to switch from Chrome to Firefox as my main browser on desktop.

I still think it's bullshit in this case.

Honestly, Guinness is a shitty outfit when it comes to the records, and they shouldn't be considered the final word on things, but they have the name recognition.

I can't think of any metals or anything that there would be enough of in river water to hurt you

We're talking about rivers like the one in Cleveland that they caught on fire?

Twice?!

IDK what's in that but I'll leave my cup for you haha

Good.

The more the old lies are proven as lies, the closer we get to the truth:

Just as important as "getting the job done" is the notion among many employers that they truly believe that with their payroll they are buying human lives and happiness. That if they are paying a worker for their time and labor that they are entitled to also dictate how that person feels about it...and if that worker is not sufficiently miserable, then they can be squeezed further.

I used to think that it was purely about money...that the idea was that if a worker ever got "all caught up" and had free time, then they should be generating more wealth for their employer in some other way...but then we had the pandemic.

The pandemic where lots and lots of workers had to suddenly do the whole work from home thing. And in that time, these employers were thrilled to go along with it, since it meant continuing to make money. And in that time, most office workers eventually turned out to be happier and even more productive.

...yet in the wake of the pandemic, many of these employers have chosen less productivity in exchange for bringing their employees back to offices. The only explanation for bringing employees back in who were happier and more productive from home is that these employers value the image of control and the ability to make their workers unhappy more than they value productivity and money.

There it is.

The stupidest thing I'll read all day.

And the sun's not even up yet.

This.

A friend of my parents desperately wanted one of the new Broncos, and they were just selling out everywhere, so they decided to work with the small local dealership and order one direct from Ford.

So they picked out every last detail, placed the deposit, and waited.

It was like 5 or 6 months then they finally got the call to come down, it was ready.

Well when they got there, the fucking piece of shit dealer tells them that he's increasing the price by 10k.

They ask why and what happened to the price they agreed on, and the guy tells them that basically these kinds of customer orders are the only way he can get more broncos from Ford, but he knows he can get more for this one so he's going back on their agreement. So they can either agree to the higher price right now, or go home empty handed and he will still sell it within the week.

I don't know how they walked out of that place not in handcuffs, because I'd have assaulted the guy.

They get home and call up Ford and Ford basically said, "Sorry you had to go through that, but we have no control over our dealers, so they can do that and neither you nor we have any recourse or any way around it."

Basically that story alone meant to me that A. I'll never drive a Ford, and 2. I will badmouth that little locally owned dealership any time anyone I know is considering using them, and I hope they go under.

The thing is, Ford can control that shit, they just have no desire or motivation to do so. Contrast that story with Subaru. Post pandemic when car prices were insane and demand was through the roof, Subaru of America mandated that all their dealers were not too MSRP on any new Subaru vehicles. If they found any dealership price gouging, they got one warning, then SoA pulled their fucking license to sell the brand.

No, that sounds ridiculously boring.

I feel bad for anyone who's identity and self worth is so tied to their job that they'd feel this way.

If I woke up tomorrow and was told I could keep receiving my current income for the rest of my life, but I just wouldn't have to actually put in the time and do the work?

I would never touch that work again.

There's so many things I could do, activities to try, things to learn, and skills to develop that I could never imagine getting so damn bored with my life without work that I'd ever remotely consider getting back into the work force.

Work is what I do in order to afford the life I want. It's not the life I want.

Even Star Wars has Luke drinking his blue milk early on.

Right?

I'm no fan of hers, but jeez McHenry... let's see, what's more important: try to get the House back on track, or engage in petty, vindictive partisan bullshit?

I'm glad the House passed that CR, though I'm not sure they'll have a new speaker before it runs out.

I don't disagree...but the party-line Democrats have been telling progressives exactly that since the Clinton administration.

Again, to be clear: I'm happily voting Biden this November, but the Democratic party has become very good at doing just enough to keep their core loyal while also doing nowhere near enough to keep the country out of constant existential peril, effectively cultivating that crisis as a (pardon the pun) trump card that they then use to tell progressives "what you want is less important than the current crisis! Just go along with us in this election and we pinky swear to do more for your causes!".

They know if they move left they'll be displaced by a combination of progressive candidates and centrists, so they have basically adopted the strategy of keeping the right just dangerous enough to be credible while keeping their left flank secured with a drip feed of snail's pace "progress".