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Cake day: July 19th, 2023

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  • For some context, I am in the military and will be retiring in five years at the age of 47. So I won’t need to work, but I want to find fun work that I want to do after. I think I’m the type that will wither and die within a year of retiring from any work. I’m not self-motivated enough to create work for myself, and I need to be doing something or I’ll sleep 18 hours a day and feel useless the rest of the time. I need a schedule, and I need someone else to make it.



  • Honestly, that sounds like some refreshing fun. Have the cook with a big grill out front, and putting in the order is just chatting with them.

    “Hey, bud, you want a burger, hot dog, steak, or some of this brisket I been smoking since this morning? Want something to drink? There’s beer and soda in the cooler, or we got tap water. The little cooler has juice for the little’uns.”

    And then have a cashier keep track of what they had, conveyor-belt sushi style. The cook chats with whoever is standing around drinking a beer with them (and is drinking beers or soda or whatever all shift), and everything gets served on paper plates. And the tables are all those wooden picnic tables with cheap plastic tablecloths.

    And those who are eating there are encouraged to stand around and chat with other people as well (if they want). Just make the whole thing like a backyard barbecue with your neighbor Hank.

    And hire nothing but retired men and women working part time as the cooks. Nothing but grill daddies and mommies, working just for some extra cash and the fun of barbecuing. I would take that job when I retired in an instant.

    Edit: better yet, make it habachi-style, where there’s a grill daddy/mommy for every group or two, set up like a park barbecue. I love this and want to go to one or work at one now.










  • And honestly, that present two days a year is a drop in the bucket of debt if you’re already dealing with debt.

    I’m not saying putting yourself in $3k of credit card debt to take your kids to Disneyland is totally worth it, but if you’re several thousand in debt and scraping, that ~$100 present twice a year won’t be the thing that breaks you, and is worth cutting costs elsewhere on a regular basis.



  • The reality is because of the lived experiences of people based on the color of their skin, people are different based on skin color. You’re right that it’s a stupid reason to think differently of people, but if people had been mistreated for many generations based on the color of their hair, and there was still a good chunk of people that something so arbitrary was somehow important, then you would want to approach a person with that hair color with understanding of that history and current struggle.

    So why does it matter? Because 100 years ago, their great-great-grandparents had any wealth they managed to build up taken from them, 70 years ago their great-grandparents were kept boxed into separate, substandard areas, and 50 years ago their grandparents were kept from being able to buy homes outside low-income, substandard housing areas, and 30 years ago their parents were told it was their fault for growing up in crime-filled, poor areas with under-funded schools. And the whole time police have continuously treated them as that same substandard, poor, likely-criminal, so they have disproportionately been put in jail or grown up with one parent in jail. This obviously doesn’t apply to everyone, but it’s enough to lead people to treat them differently, either because they presume (until otherwise established) that they are poor, poorly educated, and likely criminal (by basically racist assholes) or with a certain amount of respect for their presumed struggles.

    Taking it to an extreme, if a person comes across a very old person with a number tattooed in block letters on their forearm, they will respond one of two ways: with respect and concern for their presumed struggles and trauma, or with irrational hatred (by neo-nazis). Judging or “separating” a person for a barely noticeable tattoo that they didn’t even put on themselves may seem arbitrary, but only if you ignore the entire history that makes them different.



  • I’ll add that this is practically impossible to replicate in adult life until you get into a “retirement community”.

    Small disagreement (that shows how possible it is if effort was made to make it happen): I’m in the military, live in military housing (sizes of which are largely based on family size, up to a certain point… 3 bedroom for my wife, 2 kids and me, but 4 bedroom for the families with 6 goddamn kids omigod I can’t imagine), walk to work and the galley (cafeteria-type place for meals, including for dependents), am surrounded by families with similar lifestyles and kids, have two workout spaces on base (as well as access to off-base gyms and pool through my work), and am a short walk to downtown with plenty of entertainment (and most decent sized military bases have similar situations on base itself).

    So it’s possible, you just have to sign your body and will away. Or, like, convince a developer to make a civilian equivalent you can just buy into, like an uber-HOA.



  • TheDoozer@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzPterosaurs
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    12 days ago

    How is it that we discover bones of a large flying creature, and first thought is “it looks mammalian, like a flying possum!” And then “nah, that’s ridiculous. It was a flying reptile! Like a DRAGON!”

    Large flying creature, and nobody thinks giant bird? Really?