Zink

Ooh, I need to make one of those in my house. Both because it would be fun for friends and family (including the kid's friends and our nieces & nephews) and the regression back to analog would satisfy some little petty yet righteous part of my brain that makes me avoid Facebook.

Why does the real world have to be a YA novel adaptation with paper-thin and one-dimensional villains who are not believable?

I can't wait to hear more. Please just make a phone that I'll want to buy. My phone is 4 years old and there's just nothing I want to replace it with yet.

It has become less and less of an issue over time though. Not only have I gotten used to using my phone FAR less with positive health results, but I have set myself up to have access to my Linux PC during the "chill with the family on the couch" times in the evening when one might zone out on their phone for a bit. That's what I'm using right now!

I just thought of a great way for the current Pope to really make a name for himself as the one to stop so much evil pedo shit. Man, talk about rehabbing the image of the church (in the minds of people who pay little enough attention).

Live global broadcast of Trump doing confession with the pope. Trump info dumps either with a camera in the confession booth, or by making a public statement afterward as penance, even if he just reads a prepared statement in either case.

Then the pope says ok you're going to heaven, and the rest of us try to get the gears of justice turning again.

It's like if you think of all the ways we influence other people and show our worth to others, all of the most immoral and unethical tactics that actually work in the real world seem to come to Trump instinctively. He doesn't even have to think about it. I think that helps him instantly jump to conclusions (linkedin filter: he's decisive and a risk taker!) and have the unearned dunning-kruger arrogance to plow ahead (LF: he radiates confidence and stands up for his beliefs!) and wreck the country just to make some numbers go up for people who otherwise want for nothing.

Or maybe he's just being controlled by malicious forces. (linkedin: he has high-level connections in the international community!)

Nine sneezes means you are in Hell, unfortunately. You have already been dead this whole time, and your torture for this moment of eternity has been temporary amnesia and experiencing the sudden terror of realizing you are sneezing yourself to death. That price of darkness can be a rascal like that.

I hope they write stories about how a mysterious giant asteroid made of strange synthesized polymers must have smashed our planet. It was probably a devastating mass driver attack by a technologically superior enemy capable of alchemy.

It makes a lot of sense to hear you describe it that way. In my limited experience they have this aspect to their culture where you are not the best version of yourself and perhaps not even a real man if you aren't an entrepreneur. If you just have a job you'd better be raking it in.

Yeah, it seems that so many people are that way about so many things. And at some point I honestly thing it is bad for you.

Sometimes learning to do the thing and then doing it yourself is a FAR better experience for your well being even if you get worse results in twice the time and at double the cost versus paying somebody to do it for you.

I am convinced that impostor syndrome is just the other end of the spectrum from the Dunning-Kruger effect.

That doesn't necessarily mean that having impostor syndrome means you're an expert, but that you have the curiosity to look under the surface and get a glimpse of the long path ahead of you. You don't just assume you "got this" because one piece of many clicked into place.

I guess my strong impostor syndrome has mellowed over these past 5 or so years while I have been working on myself (as in mental health, not job skills, lol). Some of it is confidence gained by knowing better who I am and what I want out of life, accompanied by elimination of a lot of "I should be learning this / doing that / building my career XYZ" thoughts. And part of it is leaning into what makes me different from others at work versus the others, using that stuff as strengths rather than seeing them as deficiencies where I don't match up.

I don't like how clearly I can hear this gif.

because I was interested in how coding works, and trying to understand underlying concepts

Ah, yes. The secret to being better than most people at at most things. Curiosity and giving a shit.