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AThing4String

@sh.itjust.works

AThing4String 115 points 3 years ago

Holy cow I thought the screenshots currently on this post were the whole thing and I was horrified??

No, the screenshots are like, half?? THE TAME HALF????

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AThing4String 89 points 3 years ago

Bed sheet suspenders. Dumb problem, stupidly cheap, horribly made, and ABSOLUTELY fixed the friggin sheets being yanked off the corner of the bed twice a night by my tumble-dry-medium sleeper of a spouse.

When they finally broke after almost 2 years I sewed some that'll last 10 years and I don't regret them at all.

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AThing4String 64 points a year ago

I had a nervous breakdown in university, where I had gotten a huge, highly selective merit scholarship under strict performance conditions. I had thrived - relatively speaking - in a traditional classroom, because it was so structured. I murdered tests because it was quiet, structured, and distraction free. Homework was hit or more frequently miss, I struggled socially, and although clearly not malicious my teachers gently noted that my classroom behavior could be a challenge "to the other students' learning", but I was brilliant enough at tests and classwork and highly motivated by my toxic dysfunctional house to get out that I had successfully gotten my golden ticket.

University, where you had to set and enforce your own structure? I couldn't cope. I got a lot of flack on "you never learned to study", "you just don't know how to do really hard things, now that it isn't easy for you". I missed deadlines for administrative work, I forgot assignments, I struggled to remember the instructions to follow them.

I remember a day just before I hit that wall - I was in the study cubicles in the library, trying to work on some critical midterms for a challenging course. I only had the cubicle rental for a set amount of time and needed to meet my long-suffering roommate for a ride home at a given time - they were also very busy and I was not helping their life by being late to everything constantly. I checked the time to see how much longer I had and went back to writing, but realized I hadn't actually internalized the time so I checked again. Within 10 seconds I couldn't remember how long I had again, so I checked again - tried really hard to remember! Said it out loud, was shushed by my cube neighbor. Looked up at them - forgot time. Checked again, pen to paper to write it down - I had forgotten already.

Frustrated as hell, I got up to get a drink at the water fountain, hoping the walk and the water would "clear my head". At this point I had forgotten I even needed to check the time. I sat back down at my cubicle, picked up my pen to start writing for this midterm, began brainstorming -- I was at the water fountain again, although I didn't remember choosing to go or any of the not-short walk there. Puzzled but not surprised, I thought "I must have been thirstier than I knew", and made sure to get a BIG drink this time. Walked back to the cubicle. Pick up pen. "Focus". Deep breath. Consider the themes of --

I am back at the water fountain. Hand to heaven I did not choose to be here. I do not NEED to be here. I am not thirsty. I return back to my cube without getting a drink because "I am not rewarding myself for wasting time".

I walk back to the wrong cubicle because I have forgotten the cubicle number I rented.

I end up back at the water fountain trying to remember my cubicle by retracing my steps - it's not like I haven't walked that path half a dozen times today already, how did I just now forget??

I get another drink. I finally make it back to my cubicle. I start working on the midterm again, but in the-reading the prompt sheet realize I have not been working on the prompt I actually signed up for this whole time - not that I have written even a paragraph yet. Frustrated to tears after years of this constantly and feeling like a failure, my phone buzzes angrily - somehow during all of this NOTHING, 4 hours came and went, and I am now late to meet my roommate, who is threatening to leave without me.

When I finally finish the paper, it is submitted by my professor for a "best paper of the semester" award and places second.

2 months later, seeing the campus psychiatrist after my mental breakdown due to "overwhelming anxiety", he listens to me for 45 minutes. He promises we will talk about the anxiety, which is very real and distressing, but also maybe I should consider this other thing. He takes a paper from his filing cabinet, folds over the top so I can't see what the title is, and presents me with a questionnaire asking me to rate myself from one to five on every moral failing that has ever disappointed and frustrated me and everyone who claims to love me. I am sobbing within 5 questions -- there is a name for this?? This is treatable?? I'm not just a lazy failure?? No, I have no idea what the title of this questionnaire would be.

"Adult ADHD Assessment".

Most people, it turns out, DON'T have a childhood nickname of "space cadet" or "nutty professor", can finish a sentence in a linear fashion, can sit relatively still, don't interrupt their psychiatrist 5 times in 20 minutes, and can remember what they have and have not discussed in a 45 minute time window. It also turns out that being a high achiever in a strict scholarship program as a member of the honors college in a challenging major at a prestigious university with "the WORST case of ADHD I have ever seen" is not super easy, although I can't imagine why.

Within days I am on my first day of Adderall, although I am told not to expect much at this dose. I almost forget to take it, but my roommate forcefully reminds me as we drive, and I never remembered to take the prescription out of my bag so I still have it. I walk the 15 minutes from the lot to the library.

As I pass the student union building next to the library, I realize something absolutely insane - I know where I am right now, and I remember getting here. Not that I remember every leaf or face I passed, but it isn't like the water fountain where I only know that I went somewhere because I am now there. Despite having the same routine every day of walking to the library to rent my cubicle first thing, I often "overshoot" and accidentally walk past it and head to the buildings for my major without getting my rental and storing my bag, usually only remembering where I am and what I'm doing once I go to open the door of my first class and see that it isn't my class in there yet - I'm supposed to be studying in the library for a few hours more.

But not on Adderall - on 10 whole mg of Adderall I successfully went right where I was supposed to be on purpose at the right time and I remembered doing it, and it was so unfamiliar an experience that I cried on a bench in the quad about it.

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AThing4String 58 points a year ago

And 85% of medical isotopes come from Canada!

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AThing4String 37 points 3 years ago

To be fair, Baby Boomers are actually statistically the reason divorce rates are so high, and also why they've been going down recently.

Not trying to be insulting, just wanting to speak about the statistics I've read, so I'll try to use the full generation title to distinguish.

Speaking about the generation as a general group, Baby Boomers had many marriages and many divorces per capita. Your stereotypical "on my fifth wife" dudes were Baby Boomers and were a disproportionate percentage of marriages that ended in divorce - basically "Divorce Georg".

From a statistics perspective, a large part of the reason divorce rates are going down these days are because as people get older, they tend to settle down and have less energy for those kind of antics basically, and the rate of Baby Boomers marriages and divorces was slowing down in response - with other generations being pretty much stable.

So on that level I'm not particularly surprised that those attitudes towards divorce are still affecting them in old age. It does pose interesting questions for our elder care infrastructure (or lack thereof) though.

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AThing4String 37 points 2 years ago

The fact that he was repeatedly moving them away from each other while checking that they were still asleep, plus finally returned drunk??

"They were staying up too late and I wanted to go to bed" my ASS

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AThing4String 36 points 3 years ago

Many of your points are good, but 4 is pretty weak. I have left my personal laptop for 20 minutes to come back and find that the cat has put me into airplane mode, opened a hexadecimal calculator I didn't know I had, written a complain to Microsoft that only didn't send because of airplane mode (error popup and all), opened my family recipes, edited my family recipes to include actual text-symbol emojis among other garbage, and recorded the whole thing as a...... Gamer Clip???

She does this routinely.

I disable my work laptop keyboard before I even LOOK away from it, I don't want to find out how much damage she could push to production.

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AThing4String 28 points a year ago

Niche show, but Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Holy shit that was a great show and SO well written, but I can see why it wasn't well received on a traditional TV format - if you didn't watch from the beginning and keep watching to the end it wouldn't make a lick of sense. Definitely meant to be enjoyed with a serious watch of an entire series and not episodically.

I would give my left foot for a Season 3.

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AThing4String 27 points 2 years ago

Peak orphan crushing machine

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AThing4String 26 points 2 years ago

Mind you these are companies making billions a year in profits, while reddit reported a loss of 91 million in 2023

So Reddit made a respectable profit in 2023 of 102 million, but Spez felt he was worth twice the entire margin and 2-4 times what even established tech CEOs typically make. If he was happy with the paltry CEO pay that poor companies like Microsoft offer /s, Reddit would have posted ~ 50 mil in profit?

Listen, I'm not a financial expert, but how is that not some form of fraud?? My company posted a MUCH smaller loss (in one region!) than that and we had auditors crawling through our assholes looking for the why. Every transaction was looked at, every expense had to be justified, people lost their jobs, one is under federal investigation!!, and key leadership got busted back down to frycook - and rightfully so.

You're telling me the board (or ownership??) hired someone at arguably quadruple market rates and double their expected yearly margin to make them profitable and then posted basically a 9 figure loss that could be entirely contained in that one transaction....and that somehow isn't some sort of Trump-NY-Esque business valuation defrauding of their existing investors/tax fraud?

"Oops we made zero money for you guys last year because we actually made sure to pay all of it and more to this one guy, more money pls" right before an IPO?

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AThing4String 23 points 2 years ago

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AThing4String 21 points 3 years ago

This is honestly a good question - I'd be more interested to see it as a percentage of their age group than a count.

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AThing4String 20 points a year ago

As a good faith answer to your question that I hope you read with an open mind -

Between the tariffs and what the tariffs have done to the market (reducing options for supply makes the market less competitive and increases demand in other ways), my industry's publicly available market costs went up a few tenths of a percentage point shy of 50% in the last two months alone.

In my industry, to pay your bills (your rent, your taxes, your employees, your lights, your freight, marketing, R&D, liabilities, funds to replace equipment when it breaks, etc) you are targeting 25-30% "direct" margin - minimum, if you're barely treading water - which is (sell price - material costs) / sell price. With that math, a company that was previously reporting a 40% margin (say ($100 - $60)/$100) that had a 50% increase in material costs is now making a 10% margin (($100 - $60x1.5)/$100 = (100-90)/100 = 10%). That's bankruptcy.

That's not considering that costs have been increasing for more than just the last 2 months - anyone with a wallet knows that already, our industry number is 80% YOY increase in basic costs (margin math: 40% ==> negative 8%) - or that the true costs of tariffs haven't even hit yet.

We also cannot pass an 80% increase in costs on to our customers without literally triggering industry recession if not collapse. We can barely pass on 40% and "tightening belts" to make absorbing the other 40% possible (margin math: 40% ==> 16%, half the general target) means good guys and gals with families lose honest, hard-working jobs. Even for a highly efficient business, being told the government is going to send you an extra 25-104% bill because fuck you, that's why is going to be a heart attack level shock.

This is local manufacturing - the exact businesses who tariffs are supposed to be encouraging to do business in the US. A LOT of manufacturing is like this - it turns out tariffing the ever living fuck out of literally everything includes raw materials that you can't get here that manufacturers need. This is literally just for our divisions' own internal numbers too - no CEO pay coming out of this. Administratively, we run a skeleton crew already to make sure our costs are competitive, and it costs us hard already in turnover due to burnout.

The number of meetings we've had trying to figure out how on earth we keep our doors open without crashing an industry and then closing our doors anyway has quite literally had people in tears in the board room.

Are there companies who will use this for profiteering? Absolutely, tons of them. The companies who have the luxury of doing so are either are "inflexible demands" (ie food and medical care) or extremely large monopolies. Smaller companies, "discretionary spending", and highly competitive markets like mine are just going to hold their breath and try not to drown, raise prices where they have to, inevitably go out of business in droves, THEN get bought up by a large monopoly who will make an 80% price increase look like child's play because fuck you, everyone else closed.

We don't need to fuck ourselves, Trump is doing that for us, thank you. And yes, people without jobs or who have nothing left after groceries don't buy a lot of luxury keyboards, especially after their costs go up significantly - something I'm sure they have considered once or twice or repeatedly at checks watch 2 in the morning when they wish they could sleep, if they're having the sort of time we're having here.

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AThing4String 19 points 2 years ago

No, no, people will give up if it's just one. You need to do two chests, marked #1 and #3. Film a #2 being buried also, but dig it up immediately.

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AThing4String 18 points 2 years ago

I was at a relatively large chain bar this weekend and that's how it was - one long normal halfway for the bathrooms with rows of normal doors on each side for "stalls". They also used those toilets that have the sink in the top.

It was AWESOME, especially as a lady in a bar setting. Felt much more public and protected in the ways that matter (well lit shared hallway with lots of visibility and traffic) and private and secure in the ways that mattered. Especially with the sink and mirror also in the room, it was so nice to take a second to freshen up without trying to get out of there ASAP or worrying about dealing with some belligerent drunk wandering into the wrong bathroom on accident (BTW, much larger issue than "fake" trans women).

Loved it. 10/10 no notes. Everyone should do this.

Edit to add - it was also really nice from a disability standpoint, I think! Partner recently injured himself in an awkward manner, and it was MUCH less awkward helping him get situated in that setup - there was just the one shared handicap stall and it was right at the front, and no one batted an eye at me helping him all the way to it. No awkward walk past the urinals, haha.

On that note I also think that would be a killer setup with kids - no taking your "slightly-too-young-to-be-alone daughter" into the men's room, no following her into the women's room, and vice-versa. Good stuff.

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AThing4String 18 points 2 years ago

This is legitimately so wholesome from start to finish. No "orphan crushing machine" vibes - just a reminder that most people are generally decent and helpful humans.

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AThing4String 16 points 2 years ago

cough cough Tomb Raider cough cough

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AThing4String 16 points 3 years ago

Ah yes, forbidden snacks

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AThing4String 16 points 3 years ago

There's a small difference between saying

"due to repeated wars by our neighbor explicitly using the presence of their citizens in foreign soil to justify annexation, we're revoking temporary residency of their foreign nationals and deporting them. Return to your home country or go elsewhere." And "Citizen or not, once a jap always a jap, due to our beef over Pacific imperialism we're taking your property and imprisoning you in this concentration camp"

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AThing4String 16 points 2 years ago

In another life, I attended a large geology conference and went to a session with talks about this. They had two speakers back to back, one boiled down to "it was the asteroid" and the other "it wasn't the asteroid".

Not only did the speakers get heated in each other's question sections, the whole ROOM felt like it was about to get into a fistfight - everyone basically taking over each other to the person to their left, right, front, back. Extremely hostile!

I can't remember the evidence but I do distinctly remember thinking that it wasn't my subject matter and I should probably avoid forming an opinion on it for my physical safety in my career.

Now I'm free to offend paleontologists both professionally and unprofessionally and I can't remember how to :'(

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thanks for using Leebra!

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