there are 2 men that seem to be completely stoic (I don’t know what word would describe them better): they ignore drama and jabs, even if directed at them

It may be that they are just oblivious.

Years ago my wife and I noticed a difference between the men who worked for her and the women who worked for her.

She had to take a woman aside and tell her that her shoes weren’t appropriate for the office. The woman heard, “she thinks I’m a slut.”

The men would hear, “she thinks my shoes aren’t appropriate for the office.”

Science indicates that women generally have more brain space devoted to communication than men. That is typically accepted to indicate that women communicate better than men, but it really just means more of their brain is involved.

Like a person with macular degeneration seeing hallucinations because their brain is trying to fill in the missing information, some women will hallucinate information that isn’t in the communication.

They will also think they are communicating in ways that aren’t conveyed with words. Many men will miss subtle, “read-between-the-lines” subtext because they just don’t have the neural real-estate to deal with it.

Women are also more likely to care about what other people think, simply because they are more likely to be at risk if they piss off the wrong person. Men can usually be a bit more chill because less of the population can threaten them. So it’s entirely possible that those two men don’t care because they know no one is going to kick their ass, so there’s nothing to get upset about.

Men will care a lot about actual aggressiveness. When you’ve had to be stitched back together after being jumped, passive-aggressiveness doesn’t seem like that much of a big deal.

I think how “burning bridges” is generally used refers to not leaving yourself a way out. However in this case we’re talking about not leaving others a way in.

I’ve read fucking history books, thank you very much, and I’m not the idiot you think I am.

The US has always been a fascist country at it’s core. You can’t get Americans upset about fascism. Not enough care to make a difference.

Child rape may be a crack in their armor. The true fascists I know are pissed about that.

Hammer at what works.

It’s not pointless. The point is to get people to forget that the president is a pedophile.

And it seems that the books worked lol

Well, I’d defer to her judgement, but it seemed to.

I guess my question for those older than me is: before computers, how did you learn to do something?

Books, radio, and TV. Also, learning from others.

Before the Internet (because computers didn’t really replace any other information mechanisms before the Internet), if you wanted to learn something you might start by talking to someone more knowledgeable than yourself.

If there wasn’t someone who knew more than you, or you needed to learn more than the people around you knew, then you’d go to the library or the bookstore. Where other teenage guys would fumble around in sex unable to find the clitoris, I’m enough of a nerd that I went to the library and found a book that gave me the info I needed.

There were also TV shows that would actually impart knowledge. Before the rise of cable channels in the U.S., Public Broadcasting would have shows that shared knowledge. News and history, of course. Science too. Back then, broadcasters took their responsibility to educate the public much more seriously.

I probably learned more about math and grammar from School House Rock during Saturday morning cartoons in the 70’s than I was learning from school (Interjections [hey!] show excitement [yow!] or emotion [ouch!]. They are generally set aside from a sentence by an exclamation point or by a comma if the feeling’s not as strong… Conjunction Junction… Number Nine… Three Is a Magic Number…)

On TV you had shows like Nova which would report on science topics. There were, of course, cooking shows where the host would make recipes, not to win a contest, but to show the audience how to cook them.

I learned an enormous amount of what I know about home repairs from obsessively watching shows like This Old House and Home Time, and I picked up a lot about woodworking from a show called The Woodwright’s Shop. I also watched [Nahm!] The New Yankee workshop.

I watched a lot of the original version of This Old House where they would spend a season renovating and rehabilitating one house. It’s probably a big reason why my wife and I bought an old Victorian house.

I asked my retired, optometrist wife.

She didn’t have time to respond fully because she’s dealing with a plumbing hardware supplier to get a defective toilet tank replaced*, but she sent this:

Those are for adults with presbyopia and near vision. The PD is standard for average adults. If we assume people will get the right distance prescription via over-the-counter means, then who is responsible if they buy the wrong thing and get into a car accident because they couldn’t see at a distance?

I had to look it up, but “presbyopia and near vision” means you used to be able to see up close, but now you’re old and you can’t focus up close anymore. As opposed to: you’re young, but your eyes are the wrong shape.

PD would be pupillary distance, ie the gap between your two pupils. One of the things they measure when they’re ordering lenses for your glasses. As has been explained to me previously, if the PD is wrong, it’s adding prism to the lenses, and headaches to your experience.

* She didn’t retire to become a plumber. We’re getting a powder room renovated, and the tank for the new toilet arrived damaged.

When Disney bought Fox, they acquired MASH, which means Klinger is a Disney Princess.

Fla-Vor-Ice tubes.

I suspect that what you want to check out is the tangle newsletter.

They report on one major story each day, share several viewpoints from each side, and then the personal take of Isaac Saul, the creator of the newsletter.

https://www.readtangle.com/

My wife made me stop at two viewings. I’ll tell her we have to push through.

I too was traumatized by watching SatansMaggotyCumFart’s parent’s sex tape.

I have no idea why I bought it, and even less idea why SatansMaggotyCumFart would release it.

I’d argue it’s too young, purely from a neurological development point of view.

Your prefrontal cortex doesn’t fully develop until your mid to late 20’s. That’s what gives you the ability to evaluate future consequences of your actions.

You can still sue if you find a lawyer who is willing to do it.

Pennsylvania is an “At Will” state, so in theory my wife could have fired any employee just because she felt like it. However, the steps laid out by our lawyer for firing someone were quite extensive.

We needed to have extensive documentation of failures and performance issues on file before we could consider it.

That’s also why my employer has such an extensive coaching and documentation process for poorly performing employees. The policy documents describe it as a way to ensure all employees have the opportunity and support they need to improve, but the real reason is definitely to protect against lawsuits.

Of course, if anyone in the US is thinking of moving to another state, this might be useful:

https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/issues/economic-justice/workers-rights/best-states-to-work/

I was going to suggest that you’d want to cross-reference other details as well, such as if the state allows doctors to refuse to treat you because they think their magic sky-daddy doesn’t want them to.

At the beginning of COVID, when our CEO decided all non-essential staff should immediately begin working from home wherever possible, our CIO declared all of IT to be essential on-site. Shortly after the meeting when the CIO made that announcement, people at my level (bottom-level manager) essentially all announced to our supervisors that we were going to refuse to abide by that directive.

My direct supervisor told us to relax and essentially said that the entire management team was going to sit the CIO down and have a come to Jesus meeting. Shortly after that the directive was reversed, and it was left up to managers to decide if their team could be WFH, hybrid, or fully on-site. It’s hard to stay CIO if the entire IT group is in revolt.

For many months after that, in the regular management meetings, the CIO would talk about how difficult it was and how everyone was suffering due to the requirement to work from home. He would talk about how many people told him they were longing for the day when we could all be on-site again. I have no idea who those people were, because everyone I spoke to thought WFH was fantastic.

I have heard that when productivity didn’t drop, the CEO asked, “Why are we paying all these high rents for office space if everyone is just as productive and happier working from home?” It was around that time that the CIO started to talk about WFH like it was a good thing.

At this point, there’s no sign it will ever end. We are allowed to hire people from out-of-state and most people are WFH full time. They’ve reduced office space to the point where we all couldn’t work on-site even if we wanted to.

I think it still depends on the intent and the setting.

If the intent is to end the conversation, then it’s very rude. If it is just being used as an exclamation, then it wouldn’t bother me in a casual setting.

In a chat during an online game as an exclamation: no big deal.

In a response to a personal story shared during a church service: not a good look.

I think we’d need to know the complete context to judge.

I could say someone like, “my doctor says I’ve got stage 4 cancer”, and a friend’s reaction might be STFU, and that could be totally reasonable.

The only way it’s unreasonable is if the intent is to tell you to actually stop talking.

This is probably not the kind of response you want, and it’s going to be a serious downer for everyone, but the first person I thought of was Kathy Change:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Change

Thankfully, I was not a witness to it, but I was working for Penn at the time, and I remember passing her dancing at 34th and Walnut many times.

Like almost everyone else, I paid no attention to what the dances were protesting. When I found out about her concerns after her death, it seemed like such a tragically doomed effort even back in 1996.

Of course, now we’re all hopelessly burning the entire world down, and I still don’t really expect anything to change.

I know someone who stopped buying weed from the dispensary because it was too expensive. They bought from “a guy” one of their friends knew.

When they ended up in the hospital, blood tests showed no THC in their system. It wasn’t weed. Synthetic cannabinoids. Very nasty. Best to stay away from them.

https://share.google/iT2DobsKYQ1Lb796m

If you need the weed, pay the price at the dispensary.