ajford

Also depends on your insurance provider (at least in the US). Previous insurance I had wouldn't cover urgent care clinics, but would cover ERs. Stupid beyond belief, but it was a small company so I guess there were compromises on the plan. Luckily I no longer have that plan and have a much more sensible and comprehensive plan.

Taking a child to the hospital, in particular a toddler/infant, is extremely stressful. If one is already tired from caring for that child all night, I'd completely understand asking the other parent to take the child. In fact, I have done so personally, though having two children meant it also made more sense for one of us to stay home with the other child instead of towing a second (healthy) child through the hospital as well.

Also, this is an opinion/editorial piece, so whether the author watched their spouse the entire time or if the author pieced the evening together after the fact while writing this article is up for speculation.

Wow, this is a very entitled author...

It reads to me like the author theirself is the one who's more afraid of germs, what with a good 1/3 - 1/2 of the article seeming to focus on germs. I've known a good number of people who prefer shoes taken off at the door, and none of them have ever been focused on "shoe germs".

They're also making a huge deal over the request to leave shoes at the door when they'd be a guest at someone's house. If you're making that big of a deal over a simple courtesy, then I wouldn't want you in my house in the first place.

I'll give them lack of sitting furniture for doffing shoes, but that seems like an unlikely scenario for a household that routinely takes off shoes at the door. Aside from cultural reasons, as I have noticed door-side seating being less common in those households, presumably due to them being far more experienced in removing and donning shoes unassisted.

> Once shoeless, feet are utterly vulnerable to myriad household threats: chair legs, bed posts, door jambs, dropped knives, random Lego pieces, and God forbid anyone has been playing jacks.

Does this author wear safety boots at all times? The world must be a scary place to them.

And the overall statement that removing shoes at the door doesn't reduce dirt seems to be purely another individual "raging against science", with their laser focus on that Univ. of Arizona study.

If you don't want to have people remove their shoes at your home, cool then. Good for you. But don't be a whiny asshole about it when you're at someone else's home. That's just common courtesy.

This reminds me of something out of one of Neal Stephenson's latest fiction novels, Fall; or Dodge in Hell [0].

The concept of the "web" devolving into a deluge of information ranging from completely false to purely factual that's almost unusable without a moderator. In-universe, moderated streams are available by subscription/hire, with inexpensive "AI" or shared streams with little personalization, all the way up to dedicated moderators that act more like a personal assistant constantly monitoring and updating your personal feed.

It sadly seems like a highly prescient view of what our modern-day internet is becoming. It's taking longer and longer to review multiple takes on a subject to get a full picture and failing to put in that due-diligence makes it hard to shake that feeling that you're just falling into a party-line decision on a subject as more "news" outlets become highly polarized.

Some days I just have to "run dark" on news to get a breather, but then everything seems all the more overwhelming when I get back online and see what new mess has erupted in the news cycle.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;_or,_Dodge_in_Hell

Especially if your employer is hiring for a similar role or for someone who will be working closely with the team/department you're in. It makes sense to ensure a good interpersonal/intrateam fit.

A "domain expert" is far more useful in a hiring team than another HR rep or someone from an entirely different scope.

You mean like every pay-at-the-pump gas stall has for something like a decade? I hate this app payment system for chargers.

I spent something like 30 minutes once trying to get the ChargePoint app to play nice with my phone (didn't want to install on my Motorola phone) then once I finally got it loaded it took another 15 minutes to get my card added and turn on the charger. Then it finally told me the charger wasn't working after it tried to activate the charge cycle.

I eventually gave up and found a hotel 10 minutes away that happened to have a free charge stall. Took the front desk a box of fresh donuts and asked them if I could spend 30 minutes in their lobby so I could get enough charge to make it home in my Nissan Leaf. Luckily they were nice enough to let me use it and I eventually made it home.

I think Chevy got feedback on that or something, as that's something they changed on the Gen 2 Volt. The hazard switch is now right by the driver's seat, "down-left" from the shifter.

Only if the phone automatically returns to English on a reboot. Equipment like this from that era had very little non-volatile storage, so it basically boots clean and fresh every time.

> Perhaps I'm too young, but I've literally never know any such a salesperson.

This was about 30-40 years ago, so it's far more in the time frame where you'd have technically competent sales folk, as you'd be pitching this gear to other engineers at this trade show.

When you're at a trade show for the very field that equipment is designed for and someone is trying to pitch you a piece of equipment that's nearly double the annual salary of an entry level engineer, I think you'd be far more likely to see a salesperson knowledgeable about their gear.

Man, the people in this thread have some tree-sized sticks in places where the sun don't shine.

Also seems like many of these people haven't been to an engineering conference with demo gear out. And seem to be overlooking that this was 30-40 years ago, talking about equipment that'd cost $150k in today's money. That was an engineer or two worth of annual salary for the time period.

I'd damn well expect a sales person selling me a piece of gear like that at a field-specific conference to know how to use it and be able to reset the thing to factory spec in a pinch. Which seems to be exactly what the sales person ended up doing.

I used to do that with emails to vendors or the occasional end-user. Also learned a key tip that you either remove the "to" line or write those emails in a text editor first. They you can't accidentally send the nasty first email!

Up front here, I'm in no way attempting to demean your loss.

As a counter-counterpoint; Buddy of mine by way of a local community group lost his elderly mother in a care home because someone decided to come in to visit last year while unknowingly covid-positive. It swept through the wing and at least three other residents died from Covid complications. My friend himself ended up catching it from his mother and was in ICU when she passed herself.

Lack of social connections can be overcome with virtual communications. It's not the same as true face to face interaction, but it beats killing someone with your mere presence.

My large city in Texas is now down to 35 ICU beds across the entire city. That's how.

A friend's father-in-law had to drive 4hrs away to find a hospital with capacity for his cardiac surgery. That's how.

In the middle of a global pandemic, is the chance that it could prevent a death or life-long complication for someone not a "net positive"?

If wearing red shirts on Tuesdays gave me a 0.001% improvement in my kid not being infected, sure as shit I'd be wearing red shirts on Tuesdays and convincing everyone I could to do the same.

It's the incredible selfishness of some Americans (speaking as an American). Plenty of people who take their own personal comfort and opinions as higher priority over others.

Even from day one we've had people refusing to mask/sanitize/social distance, claiming it "violates their freedom".

Totally get that. A friend of mine from Finland said compliance with mandates and safety advisories was a lot better back home than those in the US.

There's a lot of people in the US arguing that mask mandates and other medical precautions are "violating their freedom".

Kids are less at risk. That doesn't mean they aren't at risk. They can, and do, still catch Covid, even if they are less likely to suffer severe hospitalization.

On top of that, if they end up with long-covid or some other long-term complication from the Covid infection, they're quality of life is impacted for a far longer time. Some known long-covid complications include things like (potentially) permanent loss of smell or taste, reduced mental faculties, and organ damage. Would you sentence a child to a lifetime of being unable to taste their food for the rest of their lives just so they don't have to wear a mask for a tiny portion of their lives?

Also, adults seem to hate masks, but plenty of kids don't feel the same way. My oldest loves to accent his outfits with his cloth masks, and wears them over surgical or N95 masks now.

Who are they protecting? They're protecting each other and everyone around them. That could be a teacher who could catch a breakthrough case, a sibling or family member, and anyone they might come into close contact with. That also cascades. That vaccinated teacher who may have caught a break through case might infect their family causing a small outbreak in their home.

By wearing a mask, they're reducing risk, even if it might be a small amount. Those few percentage points could mean the difference between life and death for someone in their contact circle.

Yeah, just because it was mandatory doesn't mean people followed through. I live in a very progressive city and we still had many people refusing to follow mask mandates at the height of pre-vaccine pandemic.

People ripping down mask signs, spitting on people, arguing at the doors to a store, etc.

To me, this ignores the fact that a death of a loved/cared for individual is the most "minimum quality of life" you can get.

Sure, being able to go watch a family movie together used to be a big family thing, but we can't do that anymore. Our QOL has dropped in that regard, but it's far less impactful than saying to heck with it and going to the theater and having my kid or an in-law catch Covid and die. Long Covid even indicates there's a chance that surviving Covid leaves you with a long-term impact to QOL. Why take that risk over minor irritation in the near term?

Sure, masks are tedious and annoying. But to my youngest, so are shirts and shoes. If he had his choice, he'd run around all damn day in underwear or shorts. But society as a whole benefits from a general adherence to everyone wearing shirts and shoes in public. He's got the same feelings towards seatbelts. Just like masks, seatbelts are only a half-measure. They don't prevent you from dying in a car crash, but they give some modicum of benefit overall. There's a higher chance of surviving a crash with a seatbelt on, even if it's not guaranteed.

All of these "I'm done with masks/precautions" statements are made in a void while ignoring the ripple effect that stems from that.

There's a turning point where life will have to resume one way or another, but the longer we can go as a civilization with a reduced QOL the better the chances of resolving the pandemic with fewer deaths all around.

We used to joke at astronomy conferences that if we stopped by the nearest air force base and snagged a fighter jet we could fund all NSF Astronomy money for the next decade, and the math was probably within 10% tbh.

Someone that was sitting around complaining with us was more familiar with military gear and had some numbers on the cost of training the average fighter pilot. They calculated exactly how many pilot trainings it would take to fund all of NSF Astro for a year. That was nearly a decade ago now, so take it with a grain of salt, but it was in single digits iirc.

Not good either. The city isn't putting enough effort into supporting these individuals, and their choice of shelter locations is mindbogglingly in a lot of cases, but perhaps that's more of a "which came first" thing.

There are a few great programs that I think have a lot of potential (Community First Village, The Other Ones Foundation, House the Homeless), but there's a lot of NIMBY for it.

On top of that, there's a lot of trash and messy camps in places that don't help the fight. The underpasses around here got real bad for a year or two which caused a recent vote on a camping ban that effectively made their encampments illegal. It doesn't solve the problem and only serves to keep these people in danger and without a solid place to rebuild their lives, but when using the underpasses becomes dangerous due to the trash lying around and ending up in the turn-arounds it's a hard thing to live with.

Community First Village and Other Ones Foundation does a lot to help by providing places for these individuals to rebuild their lives, but the shitty wages and rising housing costs make it hard too.

As a resident, you're spot on.

The existing rail infra was fucked over by NIMBYs before it even got started, and all future efforts related to public transit get screwed over as well.

A ton of money was dumped into Mopac/Loop 1 and so much of it ended up in walls to cut the sound down in high-value residential areas instead of improving congestion areas.

A large portion of real estate/housing is being purchased by investors tossing money way over asking prices, driving up the local cost. Housing in the area has now raised by ~2X in most parts of the city and it's outskirts. I was on my way towards being able to purchase a house in 2020 before the pandemic struck, then with the economic downturn a massive influx of outside investors took the market by storm. Between mid-2020 and now the target area I've been keeping an eye on went from a median home value of $275k to $485k. Many are now being relisted for rent and the rental market is rising fast as well.

I think we're already seeing the same gentrification/cost of living rise, and it's only the beginning.

We have a 7-seater for extended family. My nephews come over a lot, so that allows us to transport all four children, two to three adults, and a small amount of shopping bags or picnic supplies.

The fuel efficiency isn't great, but that's why our primary vehicle is a sedan that seats four (plug-in hybrid). Generally we use the sedan, except for large shopping trips or when needing the larger seating capacity.

Yay for you, but the public transit in my area is useless for getting to the stores or destinations. It's better for commuting into the dense urban area for work hours, but not gonna fly for taking my kids shoe-shopping.

That said, glad you have the option for public transit. I'd be happy if my city decided to beef up public transit, but the NIMBYs keep shooting down the public transit overhaul bills.

Yup. I mean I've worked with a couple good recruiters that were genuinely helpful, but many are exactly as you said, just in the way.

One recruiter just couldn't understand that the commute for me was major. I had just left a job which had a 1-1.5hr commute each way for me, and I was looking exclusively for something with no more than a 30 minute commute. They kept trying to toss my resume at jobs that had equivalent or longer commutes because "the perks are really nice" or the "pay was really good". Which I took to mean their commission would be really good.

Same. I entirely avoid Downtown Austin for this reason. I used to go when I could park for free at the state parking garages after-hours (was a state employee at the time), but now it's just expensive and/or tedious to park there.

I even passed on a job offer for a downtown office when I was informed they didn't have a parking lot/garage but would instead provide a monthly parking allowance. Wasn't interested at all in hunting for parking on-street or around various garages every morning.

Not the OP, but I had the same issue living in North Austin, TX. I was nearly outside ATX, and would have loved to take the rail downtown for a night of bar-hopping and then not have to drive back. But the last northbound train was at like 10 or 11pm.

That meant while I could take the train to downtown, it wasn't practical (at least for a night of bar hopping) unless I wanted to spend a hefty sum on a return Uber at the end of the night.

I luckily got into anime right on the verge where it became more socially acceptable (late 90s early 2000s). Also, I grew up in an area where the dominant local culture was more accepting of anime since Dragon Ball Z, Gundam (of some flavor), and Saint Seya were all localized into Spanish and popular with my age group.

The more off the beaten path animes like NGE, Hellsing, etc. didn't become as popular until a few years later when I hit high-school.

As a long-time fan of NGE, I'd say yes.

It's got a fair bit of the classic "teens in mechs" tropes to it, but there's definitely more to it under the hood, and it's universe is rather well put together in my opinion.

I'd try to walk into it without focusing on it being animated though. It's cinematography like anything else, it's just a different medium and a different style that makes use of the flexibility it's medium provides.

Open-plan offices are the damn worst for this.

Last place I was at had everyone complaining that it was too cold, but everyone in the front of the office (5 of the 17 people in the office, me being one of them) would absolutely bake in the sun if they turned the AC off since they refused to let us close the blinds because "they face the street and that's our only view".

So we in the front had to put up with the constant complaints about it being cold while we baked as the hot Texas sun beat down on us.

Also, I had no skin in the game to start with, until the micro-managing CEO decided our office layout wasn't ideal and put together a new seating chart with the HR person, assigning seats like it was a damn kindergarten class. I went from being just fine in our little developer row in the back of the office to being put up in the front. Additionally, the four or five most vocal about the cold now were previously right up by the window and rarely complained about the temp before they were moved.