Don’t forget that he was elected as a convicted felon, and those felonies were largely committed in the process of cheating in the 2016 election.

This is yet another page, or maybe a new chapter at most, in the same old story.

I’m a medicated ADHDer and I treat coffee like just yet another medication.

I was never a coffee drinker (or medicated in general) until my 40s. But now I literally prepare myself a cup of coffee in the morning and at lunch time, the same times I take my adderall. The combination is working great, even if it doesn’t fix everything.

I agree with you, and I think weed really helped me even though I’m not using any right now.

Sometimes it’s extremely beneficial to be chemically pushed into a good mood and satisfied with just existing, when otherwise existence just seems to be misery and pain.

But it is not a permanent fix. It’s a band-aid while you find more permanent ways to improve your life. But band-aids can hurt to take off when you’re done with them.

That’s basically the average the country is left with between the decent people and the tens of millions who voted for idiotic racist rapist fascism three times in a row.

It’s like a third don’t care, a third do care, and a third are enthusiastically in favor.

And because of that, unfortnately, a lot of regular people also think the entire point of technology and wealth is to never have to do anything substantive.

Iirc it was indeed designed to be terrible back in the day to protect bits on machines by camming out.

Hospital Corp. of America

That is the most on-the-nose American-ass name I’ve ever seen for one of our companies, not just a healthcare one.

It’s right up there with the places of worship named “church of god.”

I have impact-driven thousands of screws into wood in my back yard in the past 18 months. Over 1,000 of them were 6" (15cm) big guys, along with tons of 2.5" (~6cm) and 3.5" (9cm).

Every last one was Torx / hexalobular / 6-point. When I bought hardware that came with free phillips head screws, I threw that shit away and used my own.

The “feature” that philips head brings to the table makes it worse for just about every use case other than “I own exactly one screwdriver and never want to get another one.”

Torx doesn’t HAVE to be the alternative. There are many good screw designs out there. It’s just that where I live, that’s the non-philips choice that dominates the market. Every store has a variety of choices for torx-driven construction screws.

Yeah. It would be sweet to live in a world that doesn’t keep proving the cynics and doomsayers correct.

AuDHD here. Before my 40s I was never a coffee drinker and I couldn’t get medicated when I tried.

Now, on days when I am good about taking both my doses of Adderall and making myself both cups of coffee (morning & lunch time for both) I feel amazingly normal and can just choose to be productive at work and crazy shit like that.

THC is amazing in its own way. It CAN help me happily do certain things I normally don’t want to do, but over time it seems like a net loss for executive function, energy levels, and generally taking care of the shit I care about. So right now I’m on a break, but have not necessarily sworn it off.

That’s kind of an accurate way to describe a lot of society these days though, from doomscrolling to phone addiction to social media disinformation to surveillance and tracking and advertising.

One of the beautiful things about being able to run Linux at work and use Teams in a browser is that my status is decoupled from what I’m doing on my machine. Obviously if I’m in a meeting or chatting with somebody through Teams my status will reflect that.

I bet my most productive days have me away/idle for hours on end, lol.

I’m right there with you, but the OP mentions social media, and that’s all that shit is.

Our society has allowed the way many people keep in touch with one another to be via psychologically manipulative, attention harvesting, advertising machines.

From inside, “Made in the USA” feels like it’s going to be us chained to paying 2x the cost for wildly inferior products. See for example, cars.

I did already get myself some Surface Shield which is exactly that kind of lanolin based protectant, after also reading about some of the more hardcore stuff like POR-15 that I’d worry could trap water or hide damage.

I’ve used it a bit on my car near where I have some wheels removed to work on the brakes, and tried it on some garden tools.

Impressions are very good and I totally plan to cover the underside of my car with this stuff when finishing up work on it. Just not the exhaust I imagine.

DONE, lol.

I kinda want to get something with a manual transmission again, so it will very likely be a japanese brand.

I’m in the US where this is coming soon enough. My car is a 2012 which seems like kind of a sweet spot, but it’s not going to last forever especially with our winters and road salt and pot holes.

I didn’t plan to buy a new car any time soon but have been thinking about my eventual next choice. All this BS has me wondering whether it’s better to get something soon without the next level of surveillance, or wait a few years and see how bad it is in practice and how it can be disabled.

That 2012 I mentioned is fun to drive, has low mileage for its age, and is fuel efficient, plus I have renewed my love of working on my own vehicles after not doing so for a decade or two. I’m currently doing work on the brakes. Maybe I’ll just have to try to make it live forever, and not give any more money to the whole damn industry as long as possible. That’s the most economically and environmentally friendly option, after all.

It also makes references to “the before time, in the long long ago” ala South Park / Star Trek a whole lot more relatable.

Going back a little further than “the inauguration,” it just so happened that my kid was born in 2017 very close to the first inauguration that slowly built up the BS until Covid.

2016 and earlier feels like it could legitimately have been a previous life that I can still remember – and my wife and I are living in the same house and drive the same two cars as the few years before that!

I grew up in the 80s and 90s and I remember hearing a lot of references to “The Bicentennial.”

Oh for sure. One nice part about my current job is feeling like being part of a functioning team.

Constant isolation isn’t necessary or good. But for certain personal projects that I am designing and building from scratch, solo can be so nice.