Haha yes that’s fair! I am extremely grateful to not have had kids during that time.

Thanks for sharing. You’re definitely right about the divide. I just found that I had so much time I could do everything I needed and wanted to do (granted, within the confines of social distancing at the time). Housework was joyful because I could do a good job of it, and have time for hobbies, and have time to relax from both. Aside from all the suffering and madness in the world at the time, it was a genuinely satisfying experience at home.

I noticed over covid that many people were telling me that they were happy to be working again after being furloughed (temporarily paused employment in the UK) because they’d been losing their minds with nothing to do. I couldn’t understand it, I was busy and really happy.

I’ve said it before, but music chords/tabs.

The flag patriotism and intense praise of military action was a lot for me. I remember going to a mall, and seeing what would typically be reserved as disabled parking was instead veteran parking?? And then the cinema in the mall loudly advertising its discount for veterans as well. We do have a general discount in my country too, but it’s not so… intense. Like no one else has to know it’s happening because it’s more of a state benefit than it is a form of patriotism.

Neighbourhoods in general are what I found the strangest when I stayed in the States. Flags everywhere as you say, but also just the intense size, and the lack of walkability (the kurb drops felt massive compared to my country). Beyond that I remember walking for around 20 minutes through a suburb and counting upwards of 10 different company logos on rubbish bins. This neighbourhood seemingly had 10 different bin days rather than one centralised service.

I believe we have it for tax allowance, where say if your partner doesn’t work, you can add their tax free allowance to yours. I think that’s it though.

Similarly in the UK going over £80k in income prevents you from claiming child benefit, and going over £100k makes you ineligible for a host of other benefits. A salary bump from 99k to 100k would be very expensive for you if had young children.

Stupidly though, a married couple each earning £99k would be able to use all benefits, but a couple where one earns £101k and the other £20k would lose out.

I’m pretty sure it’s just trendy to call Google search shit, and to criticise the top product. I’m also pretty sure DDG is just uses Bing search under the hood (plus it’s privacy features), so I always thought these complaints were quite funny. The ads on Google are probably the most aggressive though, which IMO is the worst part.

Is that really the case? Because you can still see all the songs and a basic set of chords without an account/payment.

Ultimate Guitar Tabs. After spending years getting a community to contribute to one of the best music resources on the web, they turn around and lock all but the most basic features behind a pay wall.

I interpreted this as a criticism of the sort of people who make posts for the ‘brain crack’ of maybe learning to code one day in place of putting the actual work in to learn.

Typically when creating API interfaces you’d be better off marking the inputs as unknown, and then using something like Zod to validate the types

I love how Gemini is so sorry that it can’t help you kill children

Absolutely, for many it’s nice to be under one name even if there is no legal need. I do think though that in a world where taking the male family name is not a default and anything can happen, double barrelling becomes problematic as a solution. You can only double barrel so many times! We need a new tradition that is equal for everyone and scales well. My favourite is what I once witnessed at a fantastic wedding. Before cutting their cake, the happy couple literally did a coin flip to choose who would take the other’s name. It was easily the most exciting part of the day.

I have this power, and one little caveat of it is how much I crave dozing, ie being awake, sleepy, and cozy but not needing to get up. I guess could just set my alarm earlier but I need the sleep more

Ha. I just meant staring at the oven is not particularly fun. Fair dos on the decorating though.

What do you mean by ‘never neutral’?

I know at least for French it’s been more controversial as there was no direct they/them equivalent. Instead new language has started to be used, though it’s not standard. I find it interesting as they/them is often defended (beyond the fact that it’s been in use in English for a long long time) as being a language tool in English that’s readily available and a far more palatable alternative to neo-pronouns. However in French (and other languages) I wonder if an invented gender neutral equivalent is culturally perceived as being no different.

“I went to see a doctor about my headaches today.”

“Oh good, what did X say?”

Anyone that doesn’t use ‘they’ here either has more information than I provided or is a bit sexist.

I think this is the most basic change to make that simplifies everything. Particularly online, until you described yourself as an ‘old man’ I had no idea of your gender. Traditional language would mean even without this information I’d still refer to you with he/him pronouns, or broader terms like ‘this guy’ etc, but to be more welcoming to everyone, we should be starting out using generic they/them for everyone.