Signtist

I’m glad I learned that excessive convenience is a bad thing before this became the norm.

I work in construction, and that’s just not the way things work in America. Any government project is required to have a bidding phase with multiple options for nearly every required item so that every company has a fair chance to compete.

I do doors, and even when a government project is calling for some hyper-specific Blast+RF+STC door that only one company can even make, my manager still makes me reach out to a bunch of other companies to get a second number just to have something, even if I then have to qualify that what they’re able to make doesn’t actually fit the specifications.

It’s not uncommon for a large, complex project to spend 4+ years in the bidding phase alone, getting rebid over and over with dozens of addendums and RFI’s working out all the kinks, without even mentioning the time spent in the planning phase beforehand and the lengthy construction phase afterward.

They shouldn’t be able to have dinner

New AI company on the rise: UK ProfoundBrain

Sounds like you’ve already started using your phone in a less convenient way, sacrificing the ease of streaming, and instead having to collect and manage your own music, but improving your experience in the process. That’s definitely another alternative, if having a completely separate form of listening isn’t your style. Nice!

It’s not something I’d be able to do - if I’m thinking about music on my phone, I can’t help but click the spotify button and leave it at that. I need to get my phone out of the equation, and I assume the author of the article is the same way, but if you’re able to do it all on one machine, good on you!

My point was never about the exact traits of the media itself, it was about the relationship between convenience and experience. With your phone you can get any music you want at any time - essentially 100% convenience. My example was with the inconvenience of vinyl and its subsequent increase in experience because that’s what I’m familiar with, but an ipod is also significantly less convenient than a phone, requiring you to pick only what music it can store, and having to manually and deliberately put it onto the machine. It serves as a sort of middle ground between the two examples I’m familiar with, which is why I said I could understand why it would give a better experience when compared to a phone.

I recently got into vinyl, and what I found was that convenience is antithetical to my music listening experience. The less I have to think about the process of turning on music, the less I think about the music at all, leaving me without any real memories about it. The more deliberate I have to be about my music, the better.

Like, yeah, I can listen to a full album on a streaming site, but I don’t. It just doesn’t happen, and I can’t get myself to change, so I change the medium instead. Might not be the solution for everyone, but I can understand how having a dedicated box for music on the go would be preferable, not just in spite of the inconvenience, but because of it.

I was looking for a turntable recently and checked Craigslist religiously for several weeks trying to find a deal. All I saw was the same few overpriced antique stores using posts as advertisements, refreshing over and over to stay on top. What real posts I could find were priced at the same point as the antique stores, probably thinking that was the going rate.

I was barely aware of Facebook Marketplace, but a friend recommended I check there too, and it had a bunch of actual fair deals. While Craigslist rarely had a vintage turntable for less than $300, I was immediately able to find 2 for less than $50 each on Facebook. I felt unclean while re-installing the Facebook app after nearly a decade, but I can’t deny that it’s better, at least for what I was looking for.

It’s a lot of prose for saying they’re not writing poems. By their own admission they’re just plugging random shit into a computer that clips together similar-sounding pieces of other people’s poems into something that an idiot would think is profound.

I’m farsighted, so I can only conclude that I spent too much time outdoors as a kid. See Mom!?

I’ve always had multiple copies of my birth certificate. If I’d only had one, I’d have gotten a copy before sending it in with my passport application.

Exactly. All these arguments about how “the money would be more useful elsewhere” only serve to confuse people into thinking the government is just making uninformed financial decisions. This isn’t a mistake, they’re doing everything on purpose to make as much money for themselves as they can, and they love how we’re giving them the free out of being able to claim they were just dumb. Everyone who would be convinced that this regime needs to be toppled already believes it; there’s nobody left to be swayed, only confused about the true danger of their enemy.

It said they lobbied for it, which means that the politicians don’t care, so they give them something they do care about so that they support it anyway, namely money.

It’s the whole reason 99% of politicians choose that career in the first place. All they have to do is look like they don’t support something that the wealthy want them to support, and they’ll be given buckets of money to sway their vote.

It’s certainly the place that needs the message the most, though the chances anyone would listen is virtually zero.

People really underutilize their toes. I’m anything but flexible, but I use my toes to grab small or squishy stuff like this all the time. I can even open a door with my foot if I’m carrying stuff with both hands while barefoot, though it took a lot of practice and still comes with a chance to fall.

I’ve recently gotten into vinyl, and what I’ve learned is that convenience is often antithetical to experience. When just about every song ever made is immediately available to me at a moment’s notice, I stop caring; I’ll listen to a song I like for a little while then move onto the next one without thinking about it, and I won’t form any lasting memories along the way. When music is something that takes time and effort to enjoy, I have a chance to form a memory about my enjoyment, and when I have to physically find a song in order to listen to it, it gives that song much more meaning than if I spent less than 5 seconds typing the name in on Spotify.

This is what people don’t understand. Those in power, whether they’re part of the government, a wealthy CEO, or a religious leader, will do what benefits themselves if they think they can get away with it. We keep talking about powerful organizations and what they could do to benefit everyone, but fail to realize that powerful people don’t want to benefit everyone.

They only do what benefits everyone if they feel like they can’t get away with just doing what benefits themselves. It’s our responsibility to make sure they don’t think they can get away with it, and clearly strongly-worded letters and quippy signs held outside their offices for an afternoon or two isn’t enough to do that.

I wholeheartedly believe that anyone who’s amassed more than 10 million dollars in this country is doing something unsavory to get it - we shouldn’t blindly trust anything they say about anything. Mark has orders of magnitude more than that; everything he says should be considered a lie until proven true from multiple sources.

Good to know, thanks! I’ve seen a lot of good things about Hyundai as well, though I do get concerned given how many issues I’ve had with my 2 Kias over the last several years. I was considering waiting to get an EV Corolla when they apparently come out in a year or two, but I also don’t know if I want to wait that long.

I’ve been considering getting an electric car, and have been researching good models, and I can’t believe how many places are still recommending Tesla. I know the fediverse is far lefter than most other places, but I thought at the very least the general population had stopped trusting Musk and his scams.