The “average” American, much like the average human, is driven by “feels” rather than facts.

They will rail against “socialized medicine” because they live paycheck to paycheck, don’t manage their finances in any meaningful way, and have no idea how much their healthcare is actually costing them. Spoiler: it’s A LOT.

They will demonize immigrants because it’s easier to blame random brown people for “stealing our jobs” than it is to hold giant corporations accountable for closing the plant and moving jobs somewhere cheaper.

They will gladly feed women’s rights into a wood chipper over the idea of “saving babies”, until that baby starts to make demands (on day one of it’s life). Then it’s an “entitled taker.”

They will brag about America being the “greatest country in the world” and in the same breath, complain that we need to “make America great again”, while completely missing the irony.

They will happily drink up as much propaganda as possible because it gives them someone to blame for their problems and allows them to believe that constant manufactured outrage is a solution, even though it’s really just a distraction.

They spent so much of their time believing and repeating the lie that the United States is comprised of “rugged individuals” and that if things have gone poorly for you, that is somehow entirely and unquestionably your own fault. Upon finding that things have gone poorly for them, they can’t reconcile this incorrect belief with the fact thar they didn’t necessarily do anything wrong. This is incredibly and understandably demoralizing.

I’m painting with a broad brush here. Not every American thinks this way but a lot of them do. I don’t really know what it’s going to take to get us back on the right path but I think a good place to start is by taking notes from John Donne, the English preacher and poet who wrote, “No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent. A part of the main.”

I don’t and will never sympathize with Nazis and fascists. I do understand some of the things they’re frustrated about. The only way forward is for them to accept that in order for things to get better, it has to get better for all of us. Shooting holes in the someone else’s corner of the ship only makes their corner sink a little faster than yours. I just hope they figure that out before we’re all completely under water.

Interesting. I guess I must not talk to people on the phone a lot because I hadn’t really experienced that much before.

One of the strangest things, to me anyway, that came out of the pandemic is this habit of texting/messaging people to ask if you can call them. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. It’s just an interesting change in communication dynamics.

It sort of makes sense for Teams, Slack, etc. where even if the person is available, they may not be prepared to receive a call for technical reasons. But a lot of people do the same thing for phone calls.

Something that would actually help you? Lol. No. We can’t afford that.

Some of the features you’re looking for led me to switch to Quicken a few years ago. It’s a legacy desktop app (Quicken Online sucks) and it’s not very fast but it is still the gold standard for personal accounting software. I’ve honestly been happier with it than I was with anything else I’ve tried.

Thankfully Intuit sold it off so they can’t enshitify it anymore.

To me it seems like the DNC has kept with the strategy of pushing the candidate that they feel has the most cross-party broad appeal. Both parties used to do that to a point. Republican’s really began to pivot hard in the late 80’s-90’s.

Now we’re at the point where there the GOP has embraced a cult of personality and anyone with half a brain or any moral fiber has either abandoned or effectively been exiled from the party. If Democrats were going to secure any more of those votes, they would have already done it. The third way Democrats are DOA whether they want to accept it or not.

No. Junior Devs usually can’t code. Anyone who lacks experience in a given field usually is not proficient in that field. That’s not specific to software engineering.

The fix for this is pretty simple. It’s just one that not every senior dev is going to want to hear. You have to do the one thing that a lot of us don’t want to do: talk to people. You’ll find that if you make an effort to build rapport with the juniors and be at least as quick to point out their successes as you are to point out their failures, more often than not they will learn to trust you and come to you for guidance.

Day 7300:

“Foiled yet another one of Van Pelt’s attempts to kill me yesterday. As much as he sucks at hunting, he’s incredibly dedicated. It’s kind of sad, really. Like watching Wile E. Coyote try to catch the road runner over and over. Each attempt a little more pathetic than the last. Sometimes I think I should just let him do it. End it all. He gets a win. I get to escape this God awful nightmare; theoretically. But on the other hand, maybe he needs this. Maybe the chase is what keeps him going. Maybe deep inside that cold, sociopathic murderer there’s a dude just looking for a purpose. I mean, it’s not like he’s ever going to get out of here.”

“It’s so great! It automatically writes the [wrong] answers to everything for you!”