I’ve mostly moved in the same sort of bubbles as OP (I think) and while it wasn’t super common, I definitely met people in that bubble, who had to be on the other side of the curve. I don’t have many funny stories about it; people struggling to keep up with their peers in competitive environments are more often sad or frustrating.

OK, there was one kinda funny thing where a PM at a household name tech company cornered me (an engineer with a math degree) to emphatically detail his “system” for craps. I tried so hard to explain why it’s impossible to have a “system” for predicting the outcome of dice rolls, he just wouldn’t hear it. I later told a friend about the encounter who replied “that ought to be a fireable offense”.

That wasn’t the dumbest thing that dude ever said nor the reason l flipped the bozo bit but it was the funniest.

To clarify , he was talking about playing in a casino and wasn’t talking about using altered dice or doing slight of hand where you’re not really throwing the dice.

Yeah. It’s real. Really fucking awesome :D

So his lawyer pinky promises he was horrifically beat up, but was just too noble to press charges? lol

So this dude is absolutely awful and deserves all the hate he’s getting but there was video of the beat down (lemme try and find it, one sec). It isn’t worth pressing charges because no one in Hawaii will ever convict the perpetrator. It would be political suicide for a prosecutor to even try to advance a case. I think a local politician (state senator? Mayor?) even commended the guy.

ETA: found it! Apologies for the shit source (YouTube & NY Post) but it also includes video of the state senator giving a commendation with a delightfully amused attorney in the background

https://youtu.be/7tiL8hbKN9c

Similarly, don’t expect much help with history questions in pub quiz from someone with a history degree.

“You have a whole ass degree, why can’t you tell me when Garfield was president!!?!?!??”

“It’s not like that … my thesis was on medieval crop rotation “

The numbers are comparing 24 to 25 and I’m guessing that a lot of international travel is planned more than a few months in advance. Really big trips may be planned a year in advance. My memory is fuzzy but I don’t think we got to the “oh, shit! They’re locking up random white middle class tourists from the EU, maybe I’ll just take the loss on that non-refundable airbnb deposit“ until maybe last fall?

But you’re right that the numbers are still way too damn high. As a USian I have a lot of be ashamed of and yeah, we should be rioting in the streets but people in real countries shouldn’t get too smug if they can’t even give up Disney World, Jim Beam and Twitter.

Total cost of employment is something like 140-160% of salary for a software dev. So my super handwavy half pulled out of my ass math puts it closer to 20 jr. engineers.

Annually? Try monthly. Are they completely ignoring the cost of insurance? Health insurance costs around $800-1000 per person. I guess if you ignore the cost of insurance when it’s employer provided, then you get insured people spending that much annually before meeting the deductible, self insured spending 1k per month and uninsured people spending as little as possible for wildly inadequate care. This is definitely a case where a straight mean can’t possibly tell the whole story. But why would we want a fucking senator capable of understanding that?

The classic dealer trap, “the first one is free”, it is clear that in five years AI companies will have ramped up the cost of using their models by a LOT.

It’s so obvious that this is going on but all the super geniuses running all the tech companies somehow believe that AI will magically get both better and cheaper and that the AI vendors will generously pass those savings on to their customers. People have been running this scam since Wonderbread was undercutting local bakeries but you can’t tell shit to an executive on a bubble high.

That one is wild. I guess that design is used by some high end fashion house and someone ripped it off and made a pattern that they sell and now they’re big mad that someone else made their own version for their own personal use. Some people just want to make their lives into soap operas. I’ll just hang with the crochet chicks. Those hookers are fun!

Absolutely bananas. I can see if you copy someone’s original design and then try to sell it as their own work but I can’t wrap my head around the entitlement in that community.

I think there might be cross stitch beef because I saw this thing on TicTok where needle point people were arguing that stitch counting is theft?!? Overall it seems like needlepoint might be kinda low on the DIY scale for a crafting community. Like most people seem to only work from pre purchased hand painted canvases and they don’t sew so they send the completed needlework out for “finishing”.

It’s giving “my wealthy spouse funded this business to keep me busy even though I’ve never even worked a retail job before.”

Like it doesn’t do enough business to be a money laundering front so ???

Yeah. It feels needlessly antagonistic. I don’t think that’s the intention but 🤷🏾

I didn’t ask why so IDK their rationale. I suspect that they are just inconsiderate.

I generally agree with you. I didn’t know until I got there. In this case I made a point of going there to get some thread and there were like 3 kinds that I cared about so I just asked about those items and bought what I needed. It would have been a pain in the ass to leave and drive to another store. But they missed out on me making any additional impulse purchases and I will not return.

No. But it still isn’t good.

I would like to live in a world where people can vote for a viable candidate who doesn’t support genocide AND who doesn’t support putting anyone in concentration camps.

Are you familiar with the candidate? Were those statements some kind of hyperbole? I can see someone casually saying “all those ICE pigs need to be thrown in alligator Alcatraz” but that would an incredibly flippant public statement from a real political candidate. Supporting Israel isn’t illegal. It’s immoral and wrong but I’m not gonna support throwing people in concentration camps for their awful opinions.

Yikes! Thanks for posting the details. That’s a whole ball of WTF.

ETA: I do like the idea of locking up ICE agents, but only ones found guilty of crimes. But I’m just picking corn out of a turd

I’m not creating an account to read the article. Are any details provided about what “extreme antisemitic views” were expressed ? The accusation of “attacks on Jewish and pro-Israel Americans and U.S. support for Israel” makes me curious because there is a lot of conflation of these distinct things lately. It is possible to want Jewish people to be healthy and thriving without supporting Netanyahu’s policies and without wanting to give Israel unconditional aid.

How does the person at the register know the prices?

That’s the funny part. They don’t.

When I asked about the price of the thread, she had to look it up on the ipad. There were like 3 main brands and for one of them it took a decent amount of time, like 2-3 minutes to hunt it down. It’s kinda wild because it’s a tiny store with only 2 walls for display or shelves and the thread takes up one entire wall.

Every time someone stops using a Facebook product, and angel gets their wings.