Personally, I’m in favour of “mamsir”, which is the obvious compounding of “ma’am” and “sir”. The Internet tells me it’s used in the Philippines, but I could have sworn I first heard of it being used in India 🤷‍♀️

Hey, thanks. I wrote that response to be jokey, and I didn’t expect an actual, useful reply in return. I will check that out, thank you.

Oh, I can recognize good code from code that works… I’m just not skilled enough to produce the former. (Does that put me ahead of most people by default?)

If I know someone is a terrible person, I can’t enjoy their work. Besides not wanting to financially support them, I like to put myself in an author’s, actor’s, writer’s shoes when I watch/read stuff.

That said, I don’t purposefully look into people’s lives; I’m not into celebrity gossip. But sometimes a person is such an outlier or just so vocal about it that it’s unavoidable.

It seems a probable case is she misunderstood or misheard what was being said to her as “she needs to finish the drink” and complied with the request she thought was being given to her.

Heck, even as a hearing person, if someone told me I can’t have an open beverage in a space (alcoholic or not), finishing it seems like a reasonable way to be rid of it.

Good God, of all the ways one could gamble, this sounds like playing Russian roulette with five bullets loaded in the revolver.

Thanks for articulating it this way for me. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me, at least in my situation. I reported my boss to the directors. He was (still is) planning to cut a guy from our team, claiming he costs too much. But when I did the math, I found that my boss’ personal expenses on food, gas, phone, vehicle, etc. (with increasingly unaccounted-for amounts) are more than that guy’s pay.

My boss isn’t worried about the financial health of the organization, he’s worried he won’t be able to keep spending it on himself if he has to pay the workers.

Get rid of time change. Have a referemdum for Standard or Daylight, then stick to it.

These people would be surprised how many people have preserved multiple portraits of Hitler and hidden away in their homes and shops. I’m talking about stamp collectors. There were very many stamps issued with Hitler’s gave on them, and very many casual to dedicated collectors own at least one.

Having a shrine to Hitler is not fine. Owning historical items in context is totally fine. Authentication and appraisal is a normal part of insuring any kind of collection.

The real issue is not that a politician has one Hitler-related item amidst a wider collection of rare, historical items, but that someone who is independently wealthy and can spend millions of disposable dollars on a hobby is representing “the people” in a time of rising unemployment, affordability crisis, housing crisis, cuts to essential services, etc.

I know you didn’t say they are (can be) racist, I am. I’m disagreeing that they are uninformed; a lot of Asians actively side with Trump and Musk. I know this because I am Asian myself and hear it from my parents and their friends who are Pro-Trump, anti-immigration, and racist against Black people, Hispanic people, Brown people, Muslims, LGBT people…

My dad defends every accusation against Trump. He thinks every bad thing said about him is a lie made up by his enemies. My mom’s best friend loves him and says he’s so smart, and everyone who disagrees with him is too stupid to understand.

A lot of Asians people are racist against non-white people and Asians of other countries. There are Pro-Trump Asians just as there are Pro-Trump Latinos who think they’re “one of the good ones” and all about pulling up the ladder behind them. The people buying cybertrucks at best don’t care and at worst are positively for it.

Truly, I don’t understand why, but there are fully grown adults who believe that anything an LLM says is true. Maybe they think computers are unbiased (which is only as true as programmers and data are unbiased); maybe its the confidence with which LLMs deliver information; maybe they believe the program actually searches and verified information; maybe it’s all of the above and more.

I know a guy who routinely says, “I asked ChatGPT…”, and even after having explained how LLMs are complex word predictors and are not programmed for factual truth, he still goes to ChatGPT for everything. It’s a total refusal to believe otherwise, but I can’t fathom why.

Did you apply for your passport from outside Canada? The current price of that is $260.

AI detectors are completely unreliable and useless. They are AI themselves, and rife with all the problems that other LLMs have.

Yes, even cheap clip on ones from a hardware store will do it. They also provide eye strain relief from watching tv and screen time, too

If in doubt, you can check your immunity along your normal bloodwork. I asked my doc to check, it was just an extra requisition/vial.

I had to get the full dose (two shots, not just a booster of one) because I had no immunity, even though I had both shots as a child. Immunity can wane over decades.

As a childless adult, it’s my duty to be part of other people’s lives and support families by being a trusted adult (trusted by parents and kids) and be a good role model for others’ kids.

Why? Because we live in a society. Today’s kids are tomorrow’s adults. There are, unfortunately, a lot of terrible social influences out there, and parents can’t battle society alone. Young boys and girls need to learn and develop healthy relationships with men and women alike, beyond just their parents, in order to have something to model themselves after and to learn how to treat others with love and respect.

And this is especially so for singletons. A lot of the bad and warped ideas about “relationships” and even self-esteem comes from unhealthy views of romantic relationships. Ideas like if you’re not good enough if you don’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend. Or ideas that men and women cannot “only” be friends (objectification of other sex). Ideas that men are owed relationships and sex by women (incels). Ideas that it’s better to be with a bad partner than to be single (abuse).

Parents can’t fight all of that on their own.

I, for one, am a fan of bringing back the ascot. (but perhaps not during the height of the summer months.)

ICE is even killing white American citizens in broad daylight while being recorded. You’re right that they should be recognizing treaties, but we should also be recognizing the reality that that’s something beyond America’s grasp right now, and that no one, but especially “exception” cases who are visibly non-white, should be going to the US for their own safety.

I understand what you mean, but life is not binary and it doesn’t have to always be all-in. “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” We can still enjoy good things and incremental improvements even if they’re not perfect or ideal. A tool doesn’t have to be perfect for 100% of situations for it to still be useful.

Obviously, you don’t care for the device, and I’m not trying to convince you to get something you don’t want—and I note you haven’t tried. But I am saying we should (in life, in general) consider options for improvements even if they’re not perfect.