Seems like a situation rife with abuse.

Just like leetcode - where you’re helping train the AI that will replace you while not getting a job.

Long ago (mid-90s) I had a coworker who was one of the last people alive who knew still how to program Cyborg, a 1970s-era programming/database platform that was still a legacy platform for a lot of companies. His job entailed making very small changes to the codebase and then waiting literally hours (sometimes days) for the shit to compile. He ended up being able to work from home for three different companies concurrently, making $300 an hour from each company. $7200 per day for about 15 minutes of actual work - while living in rural Texas.

At my last job I managed a team of coders in Bangalore. They absolutely always wanted instructions vocally because then there would be no written record of what I actually told them to do.

For me the creepiest thing about ancient critters was the first emergence of shelled animals. The shells mean that there were other critters swimming around eating up all the non-shelled animals, but there isn’t any trace remaining of these early predators so we have no idea at all about what they looked like.

I think he was a Salamanca.

He was also the exact opposite of the other stereotype of the “lazy Mexican” - which, for anyone who’s ever worked construction with actual Mexicans, is comically inaccurate.

Breakfast in real life: “why did I toast both poptarts?”

The “hero” is an incompetent jerk who constantly screws up and relentlessly bullies his most loyal friend who is vastly more competent in every way.

It’s hilarious how much this was based on Bob Vila and Norm Abram from This Old House - although the contrast between Vila and Abram was much more severe.

I thought the first panel showed him with moobs until I realized those were his crossed arms.

I have two half-Thai cousins who live in Florida (natch) and they are flagrant white supremacists and anti-immigration, despite having been born to a Thai immigrant who only recently became a US citizen. For bonus points, one of them happens to look generically Central American and the other looks Japanese, so they got lots of shit growing up for being a variety of different races. You would think that might have made them sensitive to people on the receiving end of racism, but nope - I guess it just taught them how to do it.

What am I doing with my life?

Helping to train our replacements.

Nine Inch Nails made Johnny Cash popular again when he covered “Hurt”. Now Trent Reznor is older than Johnny Cash was when he covered “Hurt”.

I’m so old I remember a time when sci-fi fans were offended by the term “sci-fi”, preferring “SF”.

software removing options because it’ll confuse users

They remove (relatively) unused options because it takes time and money to maintain them and they’re always a source of potential bug reports. My least favorite example of this is all my music apps getting rid of list views (text-based rows where you can see 15-20 options on the screen at a time) in favor of thumbnail views where you only see a couple of options at a time.

“Oh, and the attachments have all been sleekified as well, so things like strain reliefs on the plugs have all been removed. Get ready to buy new attachments every ten months for no good reason.”

“Trying is the first step towards failure.”

We have a fondu restaurant where you can get hard cheeses to dip in your cheese goo.

Is it named “The Melting Pot”? I’m hoping someday to encounter a fondue restaurant that isn’t named that. A place named “Fond” just opened near where I live, and I was thinking that must be it, but nope.

I’ve convinced myself that ShopRite cheese ($2 for an 8oz block - which is still fucking $4 a pound) is as good as it gets. If I want something fancy, I soak herbs in vinegar and mix them into a block of neufchatel cheese, which makes a tasty substitute for goat cheese. I also make my own crackers now, which is basically the cost of the flour.

Funded by PayPal.

They’re not in any way associated with Amazon, as far as I know. But apparently they sell their customer data to them - and immediately.