This one stings. I grew up with PBS and feel like it kept me open-minded, curious, and empathetic. Kids need more of these positive voices in the world and they are dwindling fast. Now they’re going to become the targets of a ramped-up wave of right-wing propaganda.

There’s also the massive tax breaks rich folks receive for donations.

Get a rice cooker with a timer.

This! My wife and I got a fancy Japanese rice cooker that will keep rice warm for hours. Comes out perfect every time and it’s a vehicle for all kinds of delicious things. Eggs, tofu, chicken, all sorts of veggies and sauces.

Playing the Oblivion remaster and hanging out with a friend. He comes over and him, my wife and myself play Mario Party and chill. I’ve been sick for the past couple days and feel like I’m coming out of it, so I’ll be recovering too.

Stremio + Real Debrid = bliss

I got lucky as a kid. I’ve struggled with executive dysfunction my entire life and was diagnosed in the 90s, but I had teachers that helped me catch up on my work and devise ways to track progress. They had me keep a journal and I would write down a checklist of school work I had to finish. I remember one day when I was finally caught up on all my work, one of my teachers had me announce it to my peers in class, and they cheered me on. It was nice to experience the feeling of getting a win and not constantly being behind. I had a couple teachers that were patient and kind, and would help me work through stuff I was slow at or just generally struggled with.

When I got to high school, it was a different story. If I struggled and fell behind, no one was there to help, or they simply didn’t have the time due to how full my classes were. I remember in anatomy and physiology, we all got partnered up so we could dissect things with another set of hands. My partner transferred out of class almost immediately and that’s when I knew I was cooked. When I couldn’t keep up, we met with my teacher and he refused to acknowledge that I was struggling, nor offer any help. I remember saying to him “dude… I have an F in your class…” and got nothing back. I ended up transferring out of the school entirely.

My upbringing was a mixed bag. I don’t remember being called lazy outright, but it was definitely conveyed. When I finally got a diagnosis and tried meds, they put me to sleep in class because they weren’t intended for non-hyperactive adhd like what I had. I quit taking them immediately because of how much worse they made things. It was all still such uncharted territory back then that a diagnosis was essentially a dice roll.

I’ve definitely felt the sting multiple times of feeling looked down on, like I was less intelligent. That’s the worst of it all. I didn’t care as much about the lazy labels as I did the intelligence labels. I had a college reading level in 6th grade, I was great in biology and science, but I was “slow” in everything else.

I couldn’t believe it. I talked to other people at the company and it had become like a running joke. Some people could cash paychecks, others couldn’t. So it was a race to the bank.

The company has since downsized considerably, but I don’t know how they’re still around. Shit floats to the top I guess.

It was a wild ride. Any time I tell folks about this place, it blows them away what kind of things the company got away with. There’s probably tons of stuff I don’t even know about…

But I did just recall another gem:

The company often times didn’t have enough money in their business account to cover all paychecks. On a couple occasions when I went to the bank to cash it, they told me I had to wait because there weren’t enough funds. When it happened one time, I got super pissed, drove to the office on a Saturday and demanded they put cash in my hand. I embarrassed one of the owners in the lobby when I held up my paycheck and said “I can’t cash this.” They were only able to front me $100 and I made accounting give me a receipt as proof. They would regularly tell us to wait until Monday. So they were writing checks that were worthless.

They’re primarily for companies to advertise using their fleet vehicles, but folks get them for appearances too (you can get textures and colors of all sorts). It’s a vinyl material often made by 3M that is super resilient and is installed using a heat gun, squeegees, utility knife, and patience. It’s not primarily used as a protective layer but conveniently doubles as one.

I’ve probably told this story a million times now.

Had a boss that was clearly an entitled, arrogant, hand-fed asshole his entire life. He used to pull all kinds of illegal shit at his company. I’ll bullet this to save time:

• Asked me one time if I wanted to do some web dev work for the company website. He wouldn’t tell me what he was willing to pay or anything and said I had to accept first. I refused because he wouldn’t tell me. The kicker: his web dev team was waiting in the lobby to meet with him. He was trying to undercut them by underpaying me to do their work.
• He was paying a woman under the table illegally as a favor to a friend. Pretty sure she was in the country without a visa. I didn’t give a shit about that (fuck ICE) and never said anything. What pissed me off was that he was clearly exploiting her and not paying her well.
• He regularly tried to force people into signing pieces of paper that would outline an error made, and would try to garner the wages of employees to cover it. This is highly illegal but some people signed and in one instance, a woman had $800 taken from her pay over a few weeks. They tried to pull this on a colleague and I for a job we had never even heard of. It was obvious he thought we could be scared into signing. Get fucked, pal.
• He tried to make me do work off the clock once and I was essentially fired until it was done. For context we installed and designed vehicle wraps. I was a designer that ran a 54” printer. We had a ton of client jobs come in so I was pretty busy. He calls over to the office I’m in (we had 2 locations) and tells me he needs some stickers for his own vehicle pretty quickly. I tell him we’re pretty busy but I’ll fit them in. Fast forward a few days or so. His stickers aren’t done because I’m swamped and customer work comes first. He tells me (through my manager) that I have to print, drive to the other office (1 hour round trip with a paid toll), and install the decals off the clock because I’m essentially fired until it’s done or I’m fired fired. This was the last straw for me. I tell my manager verbatim “I’m not fucking doing that,” clock out and go home—never to return.
• Fast forward a few weeks. I get a notice that the company has reported me for getting unemployment benefits without being fired. So a phone mediation session gets scheduled between myself, the dickhead, and an unemployment office person. The owner lies the entire time saying that they called me multiple times and I refused to answer. I call bullshit and ask if they’d like me to obtain phone records. Silence. Of course because employees have zero fucking power in the US, I’m told I have to pay back the unemployment and they rule in the company’s favor. I tell them “I’m not paying back a single penny of this” and hang up on everyone. Every time the mail came stating what I had to pay, I tore it up and threw it away. No one ever came after me.
• It gets worse. I hear from a woman that works there that she won a court case against him. Apparently he called her late at night, super drunk, and verbally harassed her with sexual comments. He had a wife and kid at the time (I say that because I’m pretty sure his wife divorced him over this). He also had to take a massive hit to pay out the settlement. Fucking piece of shit human finally getting what they deserve.

The US thrives on negativity 24/7. Its tiresome.

At least we got some wild videos out of that I guess? Peak internet days.

I have a Rove camera I got a few years ago. I want to get a second one for the back (I guess they sell a dual kit now).

All I can say is invest in 4k vehicle cameras. Get one facing one and one facing the rear. CYA for when these self-driving Teslas start crashing into everything.

The fuck are you on about?

Nothing will ever make me like ad tech. America keeps acting like this massive tech innovator, but they just keeps rehashing ads, or pushing AI that can’t exist without stealing from everyone.

“You are required to let me fuck you over! You are not allowed to resist it or find alternative means!” 🖕

OpenAI is like a zombie stumbling around trying to infect everything. We shove it away because it’s fuckin’ gross and we want nothing to do with it, while the bosses that reanimated it are like “well fuck, we made this thing, we have to use it for something.”

It made me mad too which is why I quit and moved on.

I used to work for a company that made most of its money from shitty ad pages you get if you type a url wrong and you’d be shocked to see their monthly Google revenue. It’s in the millions.