My work does a weekly “meeting” that’s specifically just a hangout for everyone in the company, just to hang out and talk about whatever.

It’s like a social hour every week, so we can get to know the boss and eachother.

I’ve worked at the place less than a year and there’s been two in person social events so far with everyone, and at least three with my team additional to that.

The culture of the company is clearly important for them, and I’m happy about it. They do what’s needed, and losing an hour of productivity every week isn’t as important as giving everyone the opportunity to connect with eachother.

Is that what we’re calling it now? Insulting someone’s “manhood” is now “body shaming”?

Oh, I wouldn’t rat anyone out over it. I’m just saying that it happens. I’m also in Canada, but I think the same applies (felony/fines/loss of license for inspection).

I’m a bit of an amateur mechanic, I’ve done a lot to cars in my time. I’m nowhere near the skill of an actual mechanic, but I know enough to know when something isn’t safe. I see significant rust/rot, I’m probably not going to even try to get it certified/registered until I’m happy that it’s safe enough for me… I know that many are not as knowledge/discerning. They’re not my concern though. I wouldn’t bring it to a mechanic to be inspected unless I felt safe in the vehicle.

That said, that was a former “beater” vehicle that I no longer have. I kind of killed the motor on it… I think that’s the one that the motor died on me. I was pushing the old beater well past what I normally would because I was in a rush. I got well over the speed limit on the highway. When I came to a stop, the poor thing stalled and would not start again. I never found out what actually went wrong, and the vehicle went to the scrap pile soon after afaik.

I currently drive an off-lease vehicle, it was about 2 years old when I acquired it and I’ve kept my eye on its condition since then, about 10 years now. I do regular maintenance, and all the things I need to in order to keep it in good condition. There’s a little rust now, but it’s pretty limited. Nothing that concerns me. I don’t have a desire to replace it, as the car market is nuts. How is my 12+ year old car still worth like $9k? It’s a civic!

Anyways. I don’t have any desire to make anyone’s life harder than it needs to be. I knew the car was safe, so I didn’t have a problem with it. My only concern is that others that don’t know better are going to end up driving around in unsafe vehicles because their mechanic can’t be bothered to actually inspect the cars during an inspection certification.

I don’t know why he did it, maybe he just knows that vehicle doesn’t really have the problems that would cause it to fail an inspection? I have no idea. I think that one was an older accord. Maybe he knew that car specifically? IDK. I didn’t ask. I took the win and went on my way to register the car. I was a broke college student/grad at the time (I can’t remember if I had graduated at that point or not).

I was informed by Google music, when they shut that down and forced everyone on Yt music, that all my uploaded data would be erased.

I downloaded it all and sorted it into my personal music on my PC.

May I ask what app you’re using there? I don’t see that on Yt music on Android… At least, I can’t find it if it’s there. Maybe I’m blind.

I’ll have to look into this. I appreciate the heads up. There’s a few things I’d like to put on my library if I can.

That’s fair. Take my comment more as a clarification of what you were saying.

Being single and childless or being in a relationship and childless, isn’t in and of itself a problem with someone being selfish.

Personally, I choose not to have children because gestures at everything… I don’t even want to be here, why would I forcibly make someone else live with gestures at everything again all this… The world is crazy. I don’t want to subject my offspring to what’s happening. I’d rather that they don’t exist than to do that to someone who I love more than anything.

They don’t and will never exist, and I love them enough to not subject them to the insanity that is our society.

Unless we get to star trek levels of prosperity before I’m beyond the age where I am able to create offspring, then I don’t see me having any. I’m not even talking about space ships, and FTL/warp speed, I’m taking about the principles under which they lived in the federation. Unified, peaceful, and free.

Realistically, that won’t happen in my lifetime, so I guess I’ll never procreate.

And a note before I go. While I don’t want to be here, I’m trying to be a net positive for the world while I’m here. I’m not depressed nor suicidal, I have no inclinations to harm myself or others. I’m here, I’ve dealt with that fact, I’m making the best of it. I just got engaged, and I’m looking forward to growing old with my partner, and peacing out after another 30-40 (maybe more?) years on this planet, hopefully making everything I touch just a little better as I go for those that will survive after me. My entire life is in the service of others… and I’m not religious. Go figure.

Yt music for me because I needed more Google drive storage. I just couldn’t get around it anymore and had to get more (long story explained elsewhere). Anyways… The recommendations are generally trash but it’s free and ad-free with my Google one thing, which I share with my family, so there’s like four or five of us getting it for the cost of one subscription. It’s one of the lowest tier subscriptions too.

I also know the Plex/radarr gambit, and it’s been wild to say the least.

I swear that if there was a unified online video platform, the same way that music is distributed, where it doesn’t matter if you’re on Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime video, Netflix, Paramount+, whatever, you just get all the content regardless of platform and the platforms are affordable, then I’d turn all that shit off. It’s not worth the headache.

Music companies are fighting with very little piracy as a result of their openness with people like YouTube music, Amazon music, Spotify, Apple music, etc… Specifically because no matter which one you get, you have pretty much all the music ever. It’s packaged slightly differently per service, but it’s all there. Sure, it still happens, but it’s pretty rare IMO. I hear more and more stories like yours so over, and very few where anyone feels the need to start warehousing music data.

There will always be a market for high fidelity/physical music, and there will always be a few that want their own copies of the music to have, and some of those may get that through piracy, but the fact is, it’s way down from the days of Napster, when just about everyone was doing it.

I’ve long thought that the video media companies should take a page from the music industry and just open up the licensing, but they’ve gone the other way on it. IDK. Seems dumb.

They’re still fighting with piracy and shit, so…

The drought ridden area that is the great lakes, yes. Of course.

I did/do. I share gdrive stuff with friends and family for all sorts of reasons, bluntly, I don’t trust most cloud storage providers, and I certainly don’t trust them any more than I trust the big G… Not saying that the big G is without flaws, but I haven’t seen any major data breaches from them that were handled poorly, unlike a lot of other providers. Meanwhile, they’re one of the biggest online entities, making them prone to getting attacked.

As far as security of my data from bad actors on the internet, the big G seems to have it where it counts for security…

There’s obvious problems with them willingly sharing data to other organizations, but that’s a risk regardless of who you give your data to.

And please don’t start with the self hosted stuff. I can’t even begin to describe how tired I am with trying to get people to use anything that’s didn’t ship pre-installed on their phone. I have a handful of friends that could navigate a FOSS file sharing system, and a large number more that would need to have their hands held through the whole process every time they accessed it, which bluntly, I don’t have time for.

Plus, everyone in my circles already has a Google account for one reason or another, so they already have some idea how to use it, and access controls are made easy by that fact. I really don’t want to have to set each of them up with an account and guide them through the process of accessing it and everything. They are used to Google drive at this point and I’m not going to change that, since it took so much damned effort to get to a point where it’s actually functional for everyone.

I get stuff like spreadsheets shared with family where they can input stuff like their bills and stuff (for tracking payments and trends), and sharing pictures and video, to keeping backups of important files. I can build a FOSS file depot for that, but once I move everyone over to it, I need to spend even more making it redundant with offsite backups and shit…

I’d rather pay the $5/mo and just not worry about it. I’m on one of the lowest “Google one” plans and I don’t see a reason to upgrade or change what I’m doing. I work in IT, I manage enough already, both for my work, myself and for my family. I don’t want to add to that burden because “big G bad”.

Most of the people around me have long ago given all their data to Google, Meta, Twitter, tiktok, etc (or some combination of those). I don’t think they care about having more data in the “cloud”.

Plus, I can share my Google one benefits like YouTube premium, and YouTube music, with my family, so individually it works out to maybe a bit more than a dollar each per month. It’s truly not a bad deal.

That’s the only pinch as far as I can tell. Some of the people who prefer face-to-face communication, are the bosses. So they force everyone into return to office for their own comfort/convenience/preference…

Those that prefer WFH be damned I guess.

The problem is, you can’t really say no to the boss, you either comply, or find a new job. Not everyone is in a position where they can quickly/easily find a new job that suits them better.

In my experience, the highly skilled long-tenured staff tend to lean towards WFH, but it’s not an absolute. Plenty of skilled people who prefer in-office work… My point is that a disproportionate number of long-tenured workers are finding new jobs when RTO policies are put in place. There’s a lot of highly skilled workers in the market looking for WFH positions. Easy pickings for anyone wanting to hire for remote jobs.

Obviously a lot of the people who prefer in-office aren’t really looking for anything right now, so the job market is kind of crazy. WFH jobs are snapped up and in-office jobs are posted for weeks or months… Simply by allowing people to WFH, a company can pick up some highly skilled talent pretty easily.

As an aside, WFH has saved me upwards of $5k/yr on gas, parking, wasted time on the road, maintenance on my vehicle… It’s quite remarkable.

Fair enough. All the business owners I’ve met have said something to the effect of “my way or the highway” about it. So I personally just aligned myself with a job where the bosses “my way” is the way I prefer.

In my case, work from home.

My current job doesn’t even have a physical office. We’re all work from home. I like it.

Drugs might help with that. Specifically prescription antidepressants.

I got YouTube music and YouTube premium because I needed more Google drive storage.

Loved isn’t the word I would use.

It’s adequate for day to day background noise that isn’t ad-filled garbage and music I hate.

Honestly, I think this is the biggest reason that music subscriptions are popular.

Nobody cares enough to curate their own music collection anymore, even if it’s entirely legal, it’s just too much damn work for most people.

Unless you have a special interest in music, eg, audiophiles, then it doesn’t matter enough to spend any time on it. As long as you can listen to what you want, when you want, who cares?

Important to note that they don’t stay in FLAC after being uploaded.

Also, I’m pretty sure you can’t do this anymore.

Honestly, who cares what Drake uses on his iPhone…

Wait, what?

Ohhhhhh… Nevermind me.

I know some people like this too.

To be fair, a nontrivial number of them are middle/upper management, but it’s not the entirety of the people I know who want this.

The answer isn’t work-from-home, nor is it return-to-office. The answer is: give people a choice.

If you want to work from home, cool, we don’t need to maintain your cubicle, and/or, we can hire more people without needing more office space. If you want to return to office, cool, your space is waiting for you.

A few will retain the ability to switch back and forth, but the majority of people I’ve talked to about it, either want office or home exclusively. Very few want hybrid.

A single neuron… Are you sure? That seems like a lot given what we’ve seen and heard from him.

He only has power because people blindly obey him. If they treated him like they treat anyone else, he’d just be some backwards talking schmuck.

Imagine the intelligence of the people who believe in him. Then realize that’s a large portion of the voting population.

Last step: cry.

Ontario here…

IDK what Trump is trying to say here, but I don’t like it.