I can’t afford to live now, when I’m old and can’t work, I might as well die because I certainly won’t be able to afford to live.

As someone who lives somewhere that’s supposed to be cold for 5+ months of the year, with snow on the ground and everything… Our grass was green last winter, not white because it’s covered in snow.

We had cold snaps but they lasted days, and the majority of the “winter” was spent above freezing. I haven’t seen anything like it in the last 40 years (my entire life), and I expect much the same next year.

Good thing I invested in that snow blower… It makes for some lovely decoration in my garage and does a really good job at collecting dust.

I fucking hope not.

Agreed. I’m less than a decade out from it and I’m a millennial.

I’m hoping to at least make it to 65+.

Though, the prospect of retiring is something I consider to be out of reach, so… I’ll be working until I knock off.

Hopefully you donated it, instead of just throwing it directly in the dumpster.

There’s still people who use them and not all of those people can afford one.

IKR, my SO owns two.

IDK what OP is on about, though, I’ve never used one.

I live in a place with socialized healthcare (Canada), and did a sleep study, which didn’t cost me anything, in January… In about two weeks from now, I sit down with a doctor to review their findings.

The sleep study is very much a non-emergency. I did it because my lady has complained about the noise I make when I sleep, I also frequently get bad sleep for one reason or another.

It’s non-critical, and I’ve spent more than six months waiting for results.

Bluntly, I’d rather wait longer than pay more. I know anything important/life threatening would be completed same-day, and I’ve had that experience too. Though, at the time, I wasn’t really in a life threatening situation.

I do everything I can not to white knight about anything.

I support the right to choose. I support women’s rights, and I support bodily autonomy for everyone.

Once you have the choice, then you can do with that whatever you want. If you want my opinion on a specific scenario, I’ll provide it, I have no issue with that, but final decisions are up to the individual who is responsible for that decision, the person who will live with the consequences of that choice.

Sounds poor.

It was the early days of computers, so it’s not like that’s really saying much. Most of it was a mishmash of stuff

I think the only floppy disk that I know of that I didn’t use was the 7"? I think it was 7. The one that’s larger than the 5.25" that was really common.

From there I’ve used or handled just about every type of digital storage. The 5.25" floppy disks are classic, but easily near the bottom of my list for favorites. They’re down there with anything on tape (which is useful but always a hassle), and early USB drives when they used the cheapest solid state IC they could find and no matter what you did the IC was always painfully slow and there was nothing you could do about it because every manufacturer did that shit.

3.5" was rigid on the outside, floppy in the middle. Still a floppy diskette in my view.

Back in my day, there was a little speaker in the case that connected to the motherboard by a couple of wires.

It sounded terrible and we liked it, because it was better than nothing.

My fairly modern computer, originally released in 2014 (yes, that’s modern compared to a lot of the computers I own), has no sound card.

I picked up a Yamaha AG06, which has a USB connection and creates both audio inputs and audio outputs to/from my PC. I can quickly plug in my phone or a Bluetooth receiver (which my phone connects to), and get other audio into my headphones with very little trouble. I prefer it this way, and if my next PC has onboard audio, I’ll probably disable it in favor of the AG06.

They’re not shocked, mainly because it’s not about the children, it was never about the children.

It’s about exercising control over the choices a woman can make.

Listen fellas, you make your choice about having a kid when you get freaky without protection. After that point, you’ve made your bed. I know, it sucks, because a horny brain is not a brain that makes rational decisions. I’m sorry about that.

You can give your opinion on whether to keep or terminate the pregnancy, but ultimately it’s up to the lady in the scenario to make the final call. You can, and absolutely should have an opinion on the matter, you can and should be heard; but make no mistake, it’s entirely her decision. If she chooses to go against what you want, your choice becomes: step up and be a dad, or pay to remove yourself from the situation. Alternatively (if you want the kid and she wants to terminate), continue with this person, and if she changes her mind about kids, try again, or find someone who will bear your offspring. You can’t force her into one decision or the other… At least you can’t, short of illegal actions, or by living in a state that forbids abortion… I guess.

I will never agree with taking away a woman’s right to choose. Unwanted pregnancy is, in my opinion, taking away her right to choose entirely. The woman doesn’t always have a choice in whether she partakes in a sexual act or if protection is used. As much as any person who forces another to engage in unwanted sexual activity, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent allowable by law, until they’re caught, there’s a nontrivial chance of someone being violated and ending up with an unwanted parasite. Taking someone’s choice to terminate that pregnancy, away from them, is, for all intents and purposes, IMO, psychological torture.

There’s a ton more I can say about it, but bluntly, anyone still reading, and not furiously typing a response about how I’m evil for wanting abortion to be legal, already knows all about it. Her body, her choice. Until such a time that we can communicate with a fetus to determine whether it wants to live or not, the only voice that matters is hers.

I generally consider the (non-theist) Commandments to generally be generally good rules to live by.

I have to say the non-theist rules because several of them are about God and religion… Like, having no other gods before [him], not taking the Lord’s name in vain, the whole idols thing…

If you take all that theist stuff out, you basically get: don’t lie, steal, cheat, or kill, don’t covet others stuff, and respect your mother and father.

Pretty decent rules overall. At the very least, a good starting point.

This is true but it also goes hand in hand with men’s health being an equivalent level of disregarded.

Unless your obviously physically injured, your problems are simply not important to people. Emotional distress, mental health, and pretty much any discomfort/pain/feeling that isn’t associated with a physical injury is generally bushed off and anyone who tries to be heard about it, generally gets ridiculed by their peers.

Obviously family/friends can be an exception to this rule, but co-workers and acquaintances generally just tell you to stop whining and get back to work.

It’s a trade off. People who present as female generally get too much of people’s attention to their personal situation, while those presenting as male get far too little.

There are obvious problems with both; for men, issues can be ignored to the point where you are actively being harmed by inaction, meanwhile, people always and overly concerning themselves with the well-being of women, can be equally harmful. Most of the time it’s the same kind of harm, usually both mental and physical, but it varies from case to case, regardless of gender.

I’m not saying any of it is right, at all, nor am I endorsing any of it. I just want people to care about others equally regardless of how they present themselves, their gender, or what’s in their pants, but don’t concern yourself with others so much that you’re actively doing them harm either.

A big part of the wait times is because of the healthcare coverage IMO.

In the USA, if you have a non-life threatening issue, that is more annoying than an actual problem, it usually gets ignored because nobody wants to go into debt for that… Unless you’re a millionaire or something, I guess.

Meanwhile in countries with socialized healthcare, if you’re even slightly unwell (and even in cases where you’re not unwell) you can get any number of procedures done to rule out any possible illness.

There’s simply no good reason to not get checked out if you feel the need to be checked out.

sometimes people just ask if I didn’t sleep well last night if I don’t.

I’ve heard this is a thing.

I’m a dude, I never sleep well. Anytime I look in the mirror, I can certainly tell that I didn’t sleep well, but I’m almost never asked about it.

I went for a sleep study earlier this year, I’m meeting with a doctor to discuss the findings in a couple of weeks. Hopefully I can get better sleep soon…

Even with that being said, it would be nice if someone cared enough to ask about it. At the same time, I can also see that getting asked that question a bunch, regardless of how well you slept, would be pretty annoying.

IDK. Everyone asks what I’m doing, never how I’m doing. It’s fine. I survive.

Yep, I’m sure they do.

Realistically, does any average consumer know what’s on which circuit?

Spanning the split phase will screw you up, across breakers won’t be fun but shouldn’t pose any serious problems, as long as it’s not in different sides of the split phase.

I’m pretty sure they say this because actually explaining what will work and what won’t either requires significant prior knowledge of power systems, or a couple of paragraphs of explainers before you can get a rough picture of what the hell they’re driving at.

Everyone I know who has used powerline, just plug it in and see if it works. Those who were lucky, say it’s great and works without issue, etc. Those who were not lucky say the opposite.

I’m just over here watching the fireworks, eating popcorn.

IMO, billionaires are a symptom of the system in which I’m underpaid, which is the cause of a nontrivial number of my concerns.

Financial stress has been a constant companion for me, money doesn’t solve all my problems, but it certainly would relieve my financial stressors.

If billionaires were less common, it would be because they invested more into their workforce, and paying them appropriately for their contributions to the business. Billionaires exist because a large group of people worked very hard for less money than they deserved, so that they could become a billionaire.

The reason we should be angry at billionaires is because they’re usually the one dictating how much our contributions are worth (or rather, how much they’re not worth). They make the rules, set the goal posts, and determine how valuable we are (how much we are paid).

They’re a symptom of a broken system, they’re also the reason why the system is broken.

So I disagree with the initial assertion that my problems are not because someone is a billionaire. A nontrivial amount of my problems are exactly because someone is a billionaire. They stole the wages that I deserved (along with untold numbers of my co-workers), so they could become a billionaire, and I can be drowning in debt trying to make it through, paycheque to paycheque…

Fuck billionaires.

I will say that the support I got from co-workers when I was no longer working there. I got a number of messages about how disappointed they were about losing me from the team, etc.

None of that helped me find new employment, nor did it help me move up while I was there, but I was well liked.