PA is only purple on the side that faces the rest of the country.

At state government level, it’s a special breed of the worst aspects of both parties.

Need to squeeze Rogan in there too.

My thought is more along the lines of, “Regardless of his talent level, is this really the kind of person that his country wants representing them on the world stage?”

Like, okay even if he’s the absolute best by an order of magnitude…if he were from my country, I’d rather lose every match than win on the talents of someone like that.

I don’t care about that so much as the hyper specificity of not only “you have to be on the political left here” but “being to the left isn’t enough, you need to be this far left, and hold these specific views on politics, technology, etc.”.

And the community that is here is, amazingly, somehow even worse than Reddit, on average, when it comes to being a hive mind that is wildly intolerant of any disagreement.

It’s as simple as the people making the decisions (executives, directors, etc.) and the people driving their decisions (shareholders) have something that the employees and the customers don’t:

The ability to cash in their chips and move on quickly when the time is right.

Employees can certainly leave and find another job, customers can certainly catch on to lower quality and change buying habits…but both of these tend to be slower processes than the ones that put money in the accounts of the first two groups.

Tool brands were exactly my first thought as well.

Once that look was no longer “in style”, anyone who cared primarily about looking cool (more likely your fake, shallow, self-absorbed ones) went with another look.

Anyone who stuck with it at that point, especially when it became completely uncool, was still doing it because they personally liked it, accepting the judgement/ridicule. That’s pretty genuine commitment to something, which suggests they’re more of a genuine person in other areas of life too.

Almost the same age as you and I’m fairly confident I’m undiagnosed and have been since about 3rd grade as well.

My mom had such a diagnosis suggested to her multiple times but felt the stigma of a diagnosis and a medication to treat it was worse than just doing nothing. In her mind, I’d get diagnosed, given a label that would prevent me from ever getting a job or having a normal life, and drugs I’d take for the rest of my life that would make me act like I’d received a lobotomy.

Over time, agriculture led to ownership culture, and one of the most stable investments and forms of wealth has always been land.

As long as land is a valued commodity, nomadic culture is impossible.

Ignoring, for a moment, the inherent and fundamental differences between an individual and a state…

…in my late 20s and early 30s I bought a new car.

At the time, that car cost more than I had in my accounts plus my other possessions at the time. In fairness, my annual income was more than the total cost of the car, buuuut I also was carrying tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt as well, meaning my overall total debt was significantly higher than my annual income, or my “personal GDP” if you will.

Yet when I applied for my car loan, it came through with easy approval and I even qualified for the best possible interest rate.

Why? Because I’ve always paid on my debts adequately and promptly.

Nobody bats an eye when a couple buys a house that costs more than what they can cover with their combined income in one year. Why? Because that’s an arbitrary and unrealistic yard stick of comparison and nobody expects them to pay off a house in a year. They’re able to buy their house and live in it immediately, and pay for it incrementally, over time, as they earn over the coming years because of debt. And the bank is willing to lend the money because they’ll make money in the long run through interest.

Similarly, it’s unreasonable to imply that the US shouldn’t carry more debt than it’s GDP because the two metrics aren’t directly linked in any way. And since the US has excellent credit worthiness, that debt is far safer than the bank’s loan to the homebuyers. And the US gains access to borrowed funds by setting it’s own interest rates through the Fed, which tells lenders exactly how much they’ll make in interest if they let the US government borrow some of their money.

And since the US is a safer bet than homebuyers, that’s why home interest rates are higher than the rate at the Fed: if they were equal, banks would never lend to homebuyers since they could get the same return by lending to the government. So instead, they set their own, higher rates for homebuyers, to account for the higher risk of lending to a party who has a much higher likelihood of default.

When I worked for the federal government, we had to take yearly training on how not to accept bribes/gifts.

Like…if anyone was serious about bribing my agency to get their way…and they decided that I, of all people, was the one to bribe…well they deserve to lose the value of the bribe just based on utter stupidity alone.

Oh yeah that’s a good one too.

The old “you embarrassed the company, report to the principal’s office”.

I’m only drafting for career not hobby at this point, so it’s all industry standard software.

One of these days, when I have a house, I might get into 3D printing, but not for the foreseeable future.

For 3D stuff, I’m good with Inventor, but it certainly has it’s quirks.

The Autodesk forums are 40% this, 20% “just learn to program, spend a few years getting good at it, then write yourself a custom script to do what you are struggling with”, 20% “you are wrong for wanting that in the first place” or “you are wrong for having this issue”, 15% “this has been brought up once at some point in the past two decades, try searching”, 4% “OMG yes I have this issue too!”…

…and 1% split between actual helpful answers, and confirmation that it’s a known issue.

He’s nasty!

The only cure for “unable to eat diarrhea” is to put the patient into an induced comma.

Explains the irritability.

For both.

I mean…why would you want to?