This is a great observation, because it works in a lot of situations, and is a useful tool for empathy.

Someone’s level of stress/despair can be very relative. What’s normal life to one person can seem earth-shattering to someone else. And it also explains some of the most ridiculous stuff we see in society.

I’m thinking specifically about privileged people. Much of the MAGA movement, for instance, is fueled by straight, white, Christian men feeling threatened by “wokeness”. All they’ve ever known is privilege, and when people try and balance society to give a greater voice to women, POC, religous, sexual, and gender minorities, etc they start to lose privileges they’ve always known. To them, it doesn’t feel like equity. It feels like things are being taken from them.

They grew up in a world where it wasn’t as hard to find a good-paying job for them. They really could often get by on hard work and dedication, and assumed that was the case for everyone. When they lose the advantage and see women and minorities getting more jobs, they assume that it represents society valuing “wokeness” over qualifications. Pain is relative to each person, and when your life is privileged the loss of that privilege can have the same subjective emotional sting as discrimination.

It reminds me of a small child crying over dropping their ice cream. It’s objectively not a big deal, but to that child it’s absolutely devastating, because that’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to them. As they grow, life will temper them and they’ll get over it eventually. We just have to show a little empathy as we help them move forward.

I tried correcting you by spelling it correctly, but working out the syntax with the asterisks and slashes was huring my brain.

But yes - great show.

Also the only one where I think every cast change was an improvement.

Trapper was just a clone of Hawk, whereas Honeycut was his own character. Henry was fun, but Potter brought real gravitas and represented a good man who was career Army - which was necessary. Burns had no redeeming characteristics at all, whereas Charles served as an antagonist while still hating the war and being a strong character and excellent surgeon.

And the way they transformed Kilnger from a cheap side gag into a fully-fleshed out character was remarkable.

And the decision not to cast a new regular when Radar left was inspired. We felt that hole the remainder of the series.

It’s the most-commonly rejected card. It has high fees without the clout of Amex. Amex customers are typically pretty wealthy and places will accept them because of their high-roller status. But Discover doesn’t have that going for them, so there’s less reason to accept the card.

Where you’ll find it rejected most often is small shops and government agencies.

For instance, my career has been in government, and no organization I’ve worked for has ever accepted Discover. We aren’t allowed to “profit” from our fees, so we have to include credit card processing in the adopted fee schedule. But since we can’t profit, we have to set the fee at whatever Visa and Mastercard charge. That extra 1 or 2 percent Discover charges can be millions for a large government (large city, statewide agency, etc). So, agencies simply don’t take Discover (and frequently AmEx, though they’ll sometimes negotiate).

Large retailers are able to negotiate better deals with Amex and Discover, but for smaller shops it just isn’t gonna happen. And that 1-2% (of the total charge) extra taken by the card processor is huge when your margins are small.

Heck - even the Visa and Mastercard fees are a huge deal. When I worked in retail management, those fees were secretly the big reason we pushed our store-brand credit cards. It wasn’t the 80 dollar commission for the account the store got - it was that if someone used our card in our store, we didn’t pay the processing fee.

We’d give 2% in points back for using the card in the store, which was a great deal for us since we didn’t have to pay the 3-4% fee to the processor.

That’s why nobody takes Discover or Amex. Their fees are higher than Visa and Mastercard.

But the prices won’t go down. Reductions in production costs are only reflected in sale prices when there’s a market force driving the costs down. Right now, people have to own cars, and the barriers to entry into the matlrket are too high for new competitors. There’s no reason for the auto manufacturers to lower prices if their costs go down. They can just pocket the difference.

I legitimately think that’s a relative of mine.

I need to send this to him.

Also, despite being surly in general, he used to carry square-rimmed spectacles he’d put on when children “recognized” him.

The earth is also rotating and orbiting the sun, which is rotating around the galaxy, which is itself moving.

Top of that lorry is gonna be whipping around at relativistic speeds.

Heck, just hitting a potholes will make it move millions of lightyears.

When I was a mid-level retail manager, my philosophy was that my floor worker’s job was to take care of the customers, my store manager’s job was to take care of corporate, and my job was to facilitate both. The best way to do that most of the time was to take care of and protect my floor workers.

Most of the time the customer complaints were baseless. Sometimes they were legitimate. But in all cases my priority was taking care of my workers. I may have had to coach them on something after the complaint (usually on how to better handle asshole customers), but ALWAYS in private, and always calmly.

Sometimes I had to do something for the customer if there was a legitimate issue, like give them a $20 gift card or something.

But no matter what the situation was, if a customer was abusive to my staff they were banned from the store on the spot. I’d trespass them, put their picture on a board for our greeters, and if they attempted to return we’d have polkce escort them away.

If they had been trying to buy a firearm (we were a massive destination outdoors store), we’d blacklist them in the corporate system and I had a text message group with all the nearby firearm dealers where we’d share the names of customers we’d blacklisted.

Nobody’s business was worth allowing my people to be abused. I didn’t care that we were losing a $20,000 sale - my staff was worth more than that, both from a basic humanity standpoint, and also because having a good, experienced, loyal employee is more important than having an unreliable asshole customer. And you don’t retain good employees if you don’t protect them.

Scaling goes in both directions.

My old 1985 LTD had to have its idle set at 25mph to keep from dying.

When going through a school zone I had to ride the brake.

Getting 20 interviews is an accomplishment.

I have a 100% sucess record on getting the job offer once I get an interview l, but getting the interview is the hard part for me.

The thing is, I’m also terrible at coaching others for interviews because I don’t know exactly what I’m doing right or wrong since I effectively have no negative feedback.

At this point I think it’s mostly my confidence that carries me because I basically assume I’m getting the offer. I ask a bunch of questions about the company, working environment, etc and essentially make them pitch the job to me instead of me pitching myself as an employee. I’m also generally comfortable enough due to my past success to mostly be myself, and I think any time you can make the interviewer laugh it’s a good sign.

I got lucky in that my publication was through a journal that doesn’t charge money for access or submissions. It’s part of our professional organization and our annual membership fees cover the journal’s expenses.

The accounts are largely based in countries that are suspected by many to be manipulating US public opinion (e.g.Russia/Israel) or from countries with lots of click farms, scam centers, and other “engagement” services.

It showed how much of the American right-wing social media sphere wasn’t legitimately American in origin.

That’s probably accurate that there wasn’t a true bill, but it’s one of those things that I don’t think has actually been tested.

The specific circumstances where the foreman signed off on the second indictment with 2 charges instead of 3 without the rest of the grand jury suing the exact bill is really weird. But if it weren’t for the statue of limitations it would be an easy remedy - just take it back to the grand jury.

And if it were a different technical error, there’s a 6- month period after the SoL in which an indictment that’s thrown out of techical grounds can be corrected.

But the combination of the 2 is unprecedented as far as I know, and there’s a legitimate legal question as to whether it’s a bad indictment that should be thrown on on technical grounds (giving 6 months to re-file) or if it simply wasn’t an indictment at all.

And now with the whole thing being thrown out because Halligan isn’t actually a US Attorney, it’s even more confusing - especially when it comes to prosecutorial misconduct she may not have committed since she wasn’t actually a prosecutor.

It’s a fascinating train-wreck.

IIRC, an indictment that’s thrown out for procedural errors has 6 months from the SoL expiration to fix the indictment, so long as the original indictment was made before the SoL expired.

With the question of whether or not the grand jury actually agreed to indict or just the foreman, the more interesting question is whether or not there even is an original indictment to be fixed.

As with many issues surrounding this administration, I don’t know if we have precedent on something like this. The way they stack up their fuckups on top of each other and make everything legally hazy means they’re either the worst attorneys in America or are really clever. Or, more likely, someone really clever knows how to use one of the worst attorneys in America in an attempt to buy 6 more months to come up with something to justify charging Comey.

Also, they can also now pretend he did something wrong but got off on a technicality. Now that it’s thrown out on procedural grounds, they don’t have to show their lack of evidence.

That’s income tax, not wealth tax. Once you get rich enough, they’re not really related anymore.

I like the idea of having a maximum wealth. Once your assets are worth X amount, you can’t have any more.

The main thing the Endangered Species Act does is limit development in the habitat of endangered species. The President of the United States is a developer. Of course he’s targeting the Endangered Species Act. He hates it with a passion.

Also, his felony convictions are related to the overvaluation of land he owns that can’t actually be developed due to a conservation easement that’s the result of the Endangered Species Act.

Reminds me of this:

If you’re in a cold environment, the water that’s been sitting in the pipes in the house will be warmer than the water coming in from outside the house. If the sink/toilet/whatever increases water usage, that warmer water gets used up more quickly.

Water chills the body about 25 times faster than air of the same temperature, so even a 1-2 degree temperature change can feel like a LOT when it’s sudden.