I’ve discussed work/careers with a lot of people around your age over the years. Here’s what I end up saying - it’s broader than your specific situation, but includes it:

• If there’s something that you’re so passionate about that you’ll do it as an unpaid hobby, you might as well take a shot at making money from it. If it’s something like art or music, where there’s a huge amount of competition and only a tiny percentage are able to sustain themselves from it, you should have a Plan B, and set yourself some guidelines for long you’ll try it, but you might as well give your a go if it’s a passion.

• If there’s nothing you’re super passionate about, but a number of things you enjoy, you should take some time to look into what a career in each of those things is like. What are the hours, what is the typical pay, etc. Pick the one that fits with a lifestyle that clicks with you.

• If you don’t have anything from either of the two above, do you have any skills or aptitudes that are sellable? For instance, if you’re good at math, you might be a good fit for accounting. If you’re good with your hands, you might consider a trade skill like plumbing or mechanic. You funny have to be passionate about those things to have a good job doing them.

• If you have zero from any of the above, look for a job that wouldn’t suck after some years. A business that’s willing to take untrained people, doesn’t chew them up and spit them out, and that has room for advancement so that you have some possibility of increasing pay over your career.

There are lots of big chain retail stores that will take people right out of high school, but for many of them their model is to train you up quickly, load you up with responsibility, promote you if you work out well, and then within a couple years start cutting your hours to drive you away because they can get a new high school kid for cheaper.

There are lots and lots of jobs and businesses that just suck, and you want to position yourself to not be in them. Most people don’t have something they’ve always wanted to do and are super passionate about. It’s fine to have a job vs a career, but you don’t want to find yourself at 40 slaving away at a shitty job for little pay, wishing you’d gotten a degree in one thing or another so you could be working fewer hours for more pay. And I’m not saying it’s all about money, but lack of a living wage is a real problem for a lot of people.

I retired in January, and I’m having this issue to a point it feels insane. The other night I got undressed for bed and was dumbfounded when I saw that the hamper I was tossing my clothes into was otherwise empty. My brain just could not accept that I was at the end of the same day that featured doing laundry earlier. That had to be at least the day before. But I’ve had other things that were the opposite: didn’t I just run the dishwasher? No, that was a week ago.

I have no time cues. Trash day is about the only think that happens on a regular schedule. Some days I’m busy and they go quicker. Some days are mostly reading or whatever, and they go on forever. After 40 years of getting up and going to work, with certain things happening certain days, it feels pretty surreal.

Not only do I not miss it, I’m relieved that it’s not here.

I remember a long time ago noticing, while sorting by new, that posts in some communities had downvotes within seconds of being posted, so yes I think there are bots.

Normally: awfully darned funny. When sleep deprived: hardly funny at all.

By “ravioli bowl,” do you mean it currently has ravioli in it? If so, put it in the microwave for increments of like 30 seconds.

My wife had a procedure under general - one where they had her legs pulled away back after she was out. She woke up during it to the point where she could hear them talking, but she couldn’t say anything. She told the doctor at the follow-up that she heard them talking and he said lots of people think that, but it’s just hallucinations from the drugs. She said, “One of the things you talked about was your kid’s soccer game,” and he got an “Oh shit” expression and moved the conversation to something else.

Why did he do that, you might ask? Because another thing they did was make fun of my wife in the position she was in. Extremely unprofessional, and she could have made a stink about it, but she just indirectly let him know she heard it.

It’s not an absolute rule, but it’s true in the vast majority of cases. The coloring is on the X chromosome, and males usually have only one, but some males with have an extra X chromosome (XXY) and those can be calico. It’s rare.

No expert, but it seems unlikely. My understanding is that big brands generally use custom fonts, so you’re unlikely to find generic lettering that matches. But maybe you can find something close enough?

I’m case you’re wondering:

Chekhov’s gun (or Chekhov’s rifle; Russian: Чеховское ружьё) is a narrative principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary and irrelevant elements should be removed. For example, if a writer features a gun in a story, there must be a reason for it, such as it being fired some time later in the plot. All elements must eventually come into play at some point in the story. Some authors, such as Hemingway, do not agree with this principle.

I knew what that was going to be before I clicked it. Good job.

No, a NASA and DOD contractor. Worked on some neat stuff over the years, including the electrical power system for the space station. I ended up managing the software engineering group, and really liked that - very smart people.

Probably so

Old guy checking in. I was a computer science major, graduating in 1985. My goal at the time was to go into computer animation (note that Toy story, the first full length computer animated movie, wasn’t released until ten years later). But there was a big computer animated project that was canceled or tabled just before my last semester, so the market was flooded with out of work animators and I decided I’d better do something different. I was getting married, and I needed a job.

I had good grades, but I didn’t think there was much that made my resume stand out from my classmates, each of whom was making 100+ copies of theirs and applying to every software job they could find. So instead, I asked everyone I knew if they knew anyone who worked at a place that hired software people, and asked if they could get me a name of a hiring manager. I got seven or eight of those, and I sent each of them a letter with my resume, mentioning who pointed me their direction. Out of that I got three interviews and two job offers. My first job ended up being writing control software for the space shuttle main engines, and I stayed at the company almost 40 years. I just retired in January.

Didn’t they just elect a fairly liberal president?

I’ve thought for many years that the first true cybernetics will be artificial eyes. If they can get self contained optic systems that fit into the eyeball space, it should be trivial to allow them to see a much wider spectrum, plus macro and telephoto. That would be cool. A computer interface for them would be awesome, but I’d have trust issues with that as well.

They wouldn’t do the MRI because they’d be ripped through your body

So dumb. A lot of people like to add just a little water to their whiskey. Does that mean they don’t like whiskey, just water?

Different people add different things to coffee in differing amounts. Some people add just a little salt to take away the bitterness. Some add high amounts of different things so that the coffee flavor is more in the background. It’s a huge spectrum. All of these people are drinking some coffee, so they like it at least somewhat. You’re trying to make it a binary, and even at that you’re saying that if they don’t like pure coffee then they don’t like the flavor of coffee at all, which is ridiculous.

Like many things here, it’s an unpopular opinion because it’s a moronic opinion.

Honestly, broccoli is wonderful microwaved. Put it in a covered dish with just a little water. For a couple servings, I do on high like 2.5 minutes. Easy to adjust the time to get it just the way you want it. You can’t get it crispy that way, but it’s basically like perfectly steamed.

I have to tell a true story about this. A bunch of years ago I got to work and had a voicemail from an employee. She said, “I’m not coming in this morning. My carbon monoxide alarm kept going off all night, and I hardly got any sleep. I’m just so tired.” The way she talked, she sounded really out of it. I was worried that she had a carbon monoxide leak which was making her not think straight, and that it could be fatal.

This was back before it was common for managers to have an employee’s personal number. I called HR to see if I could get it, but they didn’t want to give it to me. I spent quite a while trying to convince them to give it to me, or to call her themselves. I was making some progress when she called back. Said the landlord couldn’t get it to stop going off either. I asked if it could be because it was a real leak and she said she didn’t think so. I told her to at least open a window. Never really heard more about it. It was honestly pretty frightening.