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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • Corporate cuts should always start with the greatest fat that does the least work - the ones at the top.

    Because if the company has found itself in a place where headcount needs to be reduced, these are the people who led it there and deserve all of the blame for hurting the company to that degree. Plus, you should always start cutting where you get the lowest volume of productive work for the greatest money spent, and that is always at the top.



  • I have a tube-based distribution system from the second-floor window that I started using during COVID to keep my distance from those plague incubators that came calling, and just never stopped using it.

    I live in a moderately cold climate, and Halloween evening nearly always drops to around -5℃ to 5℃. So it’s much nicer to just sit in a cushy armchair by the window with a warm blanket over my legs and drop candy through the tube. A surprising amount of adults, teens, and tweens are tickled pink by that system, although a lot of little kids need a surprising amount of direction to get their candy.

    And yes, I always drop either two pieces or - for those in dark hoods and carrying scythes - full-sized snickers.


  • rekabis@lemmy.catoUnpopular Opinion@lemmy.worldqqqqqq
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    15 days ago

    To me, it is a balance of both.

    Life is definitely what happens to you. That alone is strikingly important, as much of it is not stuff you have any control over. You are quite literally a victim of most of life.

    However, how you react to what you can control is also critical in dealing with it, in that you can identify things you can very much directly affect in some way.

    Stoicism includes the ability and skills to tell the difference between the two, coping with the former as best as possible (to retain your mental health), and actively strategizing on how to deal with the latter as effectively as possible in order to minimize any negative outcome or maximize positive outcomes.



  • I make a meaty spaghetti sauce with various spices, but I cook the ground beef in the pan at a low simmer for about 2hrs before I even add the tomato sauce, in order for those spices to penetrate the meat.

    I call it a nuclear time bomb because it tastes totally normal - very delicious, even - but about 10-15 minutes in, you are reaching for a hand towel to wipe away the sweat which is quite literally dripping off of you. And you have felt NONE of the hot spices on your tongue.

    A much quicker dish involves Cæsar dressing, which I add copious amounts of garlic powder to (4-5 tablespoons), then prevent the dressing from solidifying by adding lemon juice, then wrapping up with freshly ground garlic. As in, a paste, *not chopped or minced._ For a salad using a single head of Romaine, the paste alone uses 15-30 garlic cloves depending on size. And this is on top of the garlic powder. Tastes amazing, but it can get garlicky enough to be barely edible. Think the same kind of burn when chewing down on a fresh raw clove. I sometimes get an “addictive overwhelming thirst” for this garlicky dish that has me gorging on it almost exclusively for an entire week.


  • I think you are ascribing to an entire community that which only a few descend to.

    I’ve been a mod on forums before, and my only concern was keeping the signal::noise ratio high. In that regard, new “I’ve got the same problem” posts made many months or years after the current thread had gotten wrapped up only increases the noise; a new thread is far more appropriate for the latecomer and anyone who replies to them than continuing to use the old thread.

    The difference is temporal, and dependent on the activity level of the forum in question: highly active forums should see new threads spawned after only a few days or weeks, slow forums could see follow-up comments in the original thread still being appropriate many months or even years later.

    Being a good mod isn’t about power or control, it is ensuring the forum operates as effectively as possible for it’s users. Sometimes that means spawning new threads, locking old ones, or even banning bad-faith or misbehaving users. Once you moderate, you discover very quickly that moderation is a highly grey zone, with surprisingly little black or white.








  • Because the average person doesn’t have any real time to think deeply about politics.

    Because the economic elites have engineered it that way.

    They flooded the workplace with double the workers (both men and women), thereby depressing wages and forcing both parents to become wage earners to survive. Then, with both parents working outside the house, childcare and chores sucked up all available free time, and even more household costs went towards outside help (daycares, etc.).

    Then they began a tradition of kicking children out of the house when they became adults, thereby putting strain on infrastructure and increasing the demand for housing.

    Then they began a push for higher education, thereby saddling young adults with ridiculous amounts of debt at the point of their lives when they could least afford to shoulder said debt.

    All this makes us extremely time poor and resource poor, such that we cannot afford the head space to consider anything beyond where we put the next step or two that we make. As a society, the common man becomes far too busy just treading water to be concerned about in which direction they should swim.

    As such, most people take massive amounts of cognitive shortcuts, relying far too much on things spoon-fed to them from the very news sources that should be unbiased and impartial, but which are nearly always owned by the Parasite Class, which favour deeply regressive conservative policies that benefit only themselves at the expense of the common person.

    And most people don’t think deeply not because they cannot be bothered to think for themselves, but rather because they have far too much on their plate to afford to do so. They quite literally would mentally burn out if they were to do so.



  • rekabis@lemmy.catoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlLeast favorite book?
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    1 month ago

    TBH it’s meant for children, and essentially plays to their sense of humour and simple imaginations. Honestly, I found the first movie - with all of its hand-holding exposé and slavish devotion to the book - to be far more cringe. The original readers - and what person, really, went to see the movie without having read the book first? - could have benefitted from a more subtle and better-presented script.


  • David Weber, Out of the Dark.

    The book has an excellent premise: an alien invasion by technologically superior forces where not even asymmetrical warfare (guerrilla warfare) works. Humanity was getting it’s arrogant arse kicked all over the planet.

    I guess David realized he bit off more than he could chew, because the premise was working itself into a multi-book series. So about halfway through that book he employed a Deus ex Machina by pulling the most perfect opponent to the alien invasion out of his arse: vampires.

    Yes, vampires. a force that so perfectly neutralized all of the alien’s advantages that the second half of the book amounts to teenage revenge wish fulfilment as the vampires steamroll the aliens back into orbit - and then eliminate them in orbit - by riding on the outside of their escaping shuttles. Because vampires don’t need to breathe.

    I got so disgusted at the lame-arse way of avoiding a truly great story that I nearly threw the book across the room. I forced myself to finish the book to see if it got any better. Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

    And now, a decade-plus later, he’s released two sequel books.

    smh facepalm bridgepinch sigh