It’s a needle in a haystack, but that’s a really valuable needle. It might actually be worth it.

How? Asynchronous communication is better for a lot of people. And now that we have really good choices for that, it’s hard to ignore.

A phone call demands that you drop everything in that moment and pay close attention to the person on the other end. If they ramble, deviate, breathe heavily, have a lot of background noise, etc, you’re stuck with that experience for the duration. Also, recording without consent is illegal in a lot of places, so you have to be able to write things down in order to refer back to the conversation if it contains any important information.

In contrast, everything else is self-documenting, can be read through multiple times, and can be handled when there is time to focus on that task. As a bonus: most people can read and understand text faster than they can listen. So it’s just more efficient.

What troubles me the most is that sounds like a very deeply abused person. It’s a kind of person that has problems introspecting and managing their emotions. Is that what we’re really up against? Is it all just mental illness?

When I mentioned that all this went down for a mere fraction of what everyone else paid, her immediate reaction was: “Well, isn’t that what China does with just about everything?”

It’s an interesting assertion, which caused me to ask a question here: How are we defining “independent”, exactly?

Because if it’s merely “not a member of a major political party”, it pretty much explains everything.

The Dialer.

• Comes with every phone
• 10+ digit number instantly connects you with millions of people, services, and institutions
• 3 digits connects you with life-saving emergency support
• Very low-latency voice support
• High quality audio (most of the time)
• No ads
• No obnoxious UI

All kidding aside, I’m routinely astounded at how we have yet to top the ease and utility of old-fashioned phone service.

I’m gonna be “that guy” and say they’re pulses.

I still don’t get how they can live with such a retarded measurement system.

We can’t.

Scientists do everything in metric, but that’s where it stops.

Food industry tries to label everything both ways, so we all get some minimal exposure; but this is like expecting to learn French in Canada just by hanging around. Machinists cope by using thousandths (of an inch), but still have to translate to work with standard screw dimensions. Bakers do everything at multiples of cups or pounds, so fractions don’t really come up. Housing framers use, maybe, down to the half or quarter inch and have easier to read tape measures for this; story-boards and tick-sticks are used to avoid measuring entirely.

If it wasn’t for raw materials (across the board) being sold in nominal empirical sizes, I would sooner just use the metric system.

Meanwhile, the home kitchen is at war. Recipe books have everyone else dicking around with all the crazy fractional volume and weight measures. Either you’re a virtuoso with these, or you’re terrible at it and burn every meal - there is no middle ground. This might explain our relationship with restaurant food.

work drug
free place

As a cis male, I’ve found the opposite to be true. I do go to the Dr. for all kinds of stuff. I also tend to tell it like it is when in a consult/visit. That’s where I noticed that things are backwards for me. I’m taken too seriously, as though I’m under-playing my symptoms. Like I’m a guy who decided to actually come in to the doctor’s office, so it must be really bad. It’s actually led to a few cases of being over-prescribed on things.

Good grief - that’s amazing. Either you’re exceptionally tough¹, or that was one incredibly atypical case. Either way, glad you survived all that.

1. I mean, most 18-year-olds are practically invincible by virtue of being at peak durability age-wise. But maybe this was different.

See, this is why I can’t watch shows like The Office. My sense of empathy and justice kick in hard and I just can’t laugh at what’s going on. Instead I’m just cringing and dying of sympathetic embarrassment, non-stop, the entire time.

Oh, are we posting beans now? Again?

Here’s my contribution:

This is the part about harm reduction that I wish more people understood. Either you do it the right way - set up a clinic - or pay for it later in terms of security systems/service, insurance rates, theft, property damage, and the occasional violent encounter (e.g. during theft). This guy did the math and realized that a $20 bill is WAY cheaper than the alternative(s).