Truly, I am shocked he is alive and looks as well as he does.

These situations objectively suck. One thing that’s stuck with me is asking: will this still matter in 10 years?

It doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck, it doesn’t mean you don’t have to deal with it, but it does mean “this, too, shall pass”, and you’ll still be okay on the other side of it.

Well, to my understanding, Hegseth wants extra-Teed up dudes, yes? And she is not an extra-Teed up dude. This is actually gender-affirming.

Bet they’d take a trans dude who’s already on T and give him even more.

Personally, I am very pleased with my Max Lumi (which has been superseded by other models). It was quite expensive, though, but I can say I have used it very often for five years and expect many more of it, still. However, because of its size, I don’t often bring it out with me. I primarily use it for studying at home.

But if you don’t need the largest size (13"), the smaller ones are less expensive. If I were to replace mine, I’d probably go for a 10" one. I think that seems the right balance of size for writing notes and portability.

I don’t know exactly what you mean by “comparable”. They’re both e-ink tablets. If you’d like actual comparison, may I suggest checking out MyDeepGuide: https://www.mydeepguide.com/articles/categories/e-ink-devices (also search for him on youtube).

This dude started reviewing a few e-ink tablets, and then he became THE guy for reviewing e-ink tablets.

You may be pleased to learn about he 13. 3" Boox Tab X. I got it’s predecessor (Max Lumi) specifically for PDFs. https://shop.boox.com/en-ca/products/tabxc

You can install other reading applications, like Kindle, Kobo, Libby, Hoopla, etc to greatly expand your reading selection.

Is its financially feasible (or maybe barter with something else), to have a sitter just to give yourselves an evening or weekend afternoon off? Just a few hours where you’re not working and not being parents. Have a park or coffee date together.

We have reached the point where I genuinely cannot tell reality from satire.
“Is this real? Am I eating the onion?”
I don’t even know anymore.

I wanted to change careers to something totally different and took a course and found the maths beyond my capability to understand. That was when I found my ceiling. And you know what? That’s okay. I tried, and now I know I can’t do it. I won’t live the rest of my life wondering “what if” or regretting that I didn’t go for it. Instead, I changed directions and I’m about to (hopefully) graduate from a different masters.

In a similar vein, during my undergrad, I took one single class in 3D animation. Up until that point, I thought I would love it. Turns out I HATED it. I could do it, but I hated it. I’m glad I took that class, otherwise (again), I may have spend the rest of my life thinking about this ideal career and regretting not going for it. Instead, I’m so relieved that I never had to do it again.

I know a couple who speak French and Spanish, and English is the majority language here. They speak and reply to each other in their own language. It’s amazing and I love it.

You may be interested to read about the scheme of intellectual and ethical development by William Perry. This website has it discussed only in terms of cognitive development, but I think you’ll see how it directly correlates to ethical development: https://neurolaunch.com/perrys-theory-of-cognitive-development/

I’m going to be the “um, akchually” person:

Lunar calendars, like the Chinese and Jewish ones, have leap months for the same reason the Gregorian calendar has leap days: to keep our seasons in line. It’s an entire, extra doubled-up month. However, one would say that year has 13 months, not 12. (At least for the Chinese calendar, not sure about the Jewish one.)

I loved opening flip phones with a flick of the wrist, and the physical action of ending a call by closing it.

Speech-to-text (a type of AI) has been around for a fair good years, but now they’re being paired with generative AI. This is the kind of thing that shouldn’t be paired with a generative LLM. A language model to identify words? Yes. Generative? No.

May I suggest an iPod shuffle; there isn’t even a screen to interface with.

I understand where you’re coming from, and it wouldn’t apply in this specific context (where locals had rejected the poor boy), but in a general sense, the idea is to partner or invest in such a way to enable locals to lead the change efforts, or at least have a significant stake and voice.

In the business world, there are often silent investors who back entrepreneurs. Their financial input make a business possible, but leave the operations to the entrepreneur. The investor backs the entrepreneur, and they both profit.

It’s a different model and it takes more time and effort to find local partners to build up their capacity over time, but enabling locals will get stronger long-term results for the recipients of charity. It’s the difference between providing food packages to people and giving people agricultural tools to provide food for themselves in the long run. Obviously, in a situation of dire need, providing food is an immediate need, but only providing food instead of also providing tools keeps the recipients in a dependent situation. If they’re dependent on foreign charity forever, it’s just another form of control and colonialism.

What this woman had done, by caring for this poor boy, was long-term investing in him. Now he has an education and will be able to work and care for himself.

Personally, I’m in favour of “mamsir”, which is the obvious compounding of “ma’am” and “sir”. The Internet tells me it’s used in the Philippines, but I could have sworn I first heard of it being used in India 🤷‍♀️

If I know someone is a terrible person, I can’t enjoy their work. Besides not wanting to financially support them, I like to put myself in an author’s, actor’s, writer’s shoes when I watch/read stuff.

That said, I don’t purposefully look into people’s lives; I’m not into celebrity gossip. But sometimes a person is such an outlier or just so vocal about it that it’s unavoidable.

Thanks for articulating it this way for me. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me, at least in my situation. I reported my boss to the directors. He was (still is) planning to cut a guy from our team, claiming he costs too much. But when I did the math, I found that my boss’ personal expenses on food, gas, phone, vehicle, etc. (with increasingly unaccounted-for amounts) are more than that guy’s pay.

My boss isn’t worried about the financial health of the organization, he’s worried he won’t be able to keep spending it on himself if he has to pay the workers.