The “release them all at once so they binge” strategy is also a big part nobody’s talking about.

Yeah - I’ll binge a show if I’m able because I have no self control, but it’s not how they should be watched if you want to keep people engaged. You lose the water cooler talk about last night’s episode.

My boss and I have similar tastes in TV, and we rarely discuss Netflix shows because they’re flashes we burn through over a weekend. But when episodes of Star Trek or The Pitt are drip-fed to us, we end up talking about them every week.

You run 5 amps through a USB?

There was also a time when you also didn’t need Steam. You would buy a game, install it, and play it without having to connect to the internet at all. Growing up, a lot of friends had gaming PCs in their bedrooms with no internet connection at all.

And if you did do stuff online, it was secondary and the publisher didn’t want a cut. StarCraft actually let you play online without owning the game - it specifically included an installer (The Spawn) that was for installing the multiplayer for free on friends’ systems. You only needed the disc to play singleplayer.

Yeah. We built a new building and actually have a pregnant employee, so we’re all annoyed that we can’t use the breast-feeding room for storage anymore.

TXDoT is responsible for a LOT of roads within cities - especially those with heavier traffic.

The (much smaller) city I work for only has like 2 intersections with enough traffic to require a signal that don’t involve a TXDoT road.

It’s essentially someone to man the front desk, route phone calls, process simple single-trade building permits, and manage the contractor registry for the building department. It requires either a degree (of any kind just to show minimum qualifications) or experience in administrative duties or in an office or municipal setting.

Our one applicant has never held a job more than 4 months and it’s mostly been retail or restaurant work.

The catch with the job is the commute sucks. It’s a very wealthy area. Literally every homeowner in the city is at least a multi-millionaire, with multiple billionaires, so exactly 0 staff members live in town. We actually pay a pretty large monthly gas stipend on top of every employee’s salary.

And while it shouldn’t impact a permit tech, the legal fights we have with residents are wild. The average person we end up in disputes with has more financial resources than the city itself, which is weird. Every city has residents constantly threatening to sue over everything, and 99.99% of the time it’s hot air, but with us they actually follow through. Which, oddly enough, makes us less likely to respond to legal threats since we’re used to going to court at this point.

It was only domestic shipping.

The US also had a history of shipping people as cargo across the ocean for profit.

I know it’s a metaphor, but I do find it weird that I never lived in an apartment complex with a pool where people actually used the pool.

For us it’s an issue with marketing the position in a manner thay doesn’t result in 5,000 automated applications from an Indian headhunter firm that blindly clicks everything.

I’ve had a job opening at my city for weeks that pays higher than any other city in the state does for the same position, and we’ve had a grand total of one applicant who wasn’t qualified.

90+% of people used to attend church weekly. What percentage of non-churchgoers (religious or not) have replaced that time with weekly attendance at other community gatherings?

Yes - many things can theoretically fill that void, but they don’t. For the most part, people aren’t replacing religious community involvement with non-religious community involvement. As church attendance has declined, people have largely stopped being involved in the community on a regular basis.

I don’t know if it’s the case here, but with Colbert’s identical issue (it was even about Talarico, but during the primaries), Colbert not only had offered, but had actually held 2 interviews with Crockett (Talarico’s primary opponent).

I’ve tried it several times through the years wanting to like it because it sounds like something I’d enjoy, but it just never sinks its teeth in.

And that’s okay. Not every game has to be made for me. I love that people love it and that the developers have worked so hard to deliver on everything they promised and more. I don’t enjoy the game but I’m so glad it exists for those who do.

That forced social obligation angle is an important if weird part of how churches benefit society in non-religious ways. People who only ever do what they want when they want end up in isolation bubbles.

As attendance at churches has plummeted while the remaining churches have politicized, people have replaced those communities on social media, which have algorithmically placed them in echo chambers.

And occasionally hanging out with friends is not participating in a third place like a church. They no longer regularly socialize with hundreds of community members they otherwise would never speak with. And that is a loss. It’s one reason people are increasingly lonely.

Inknow people who are stuck in dead-end careers and hate their lives whonreally should just move somewhere else, but they’re afraid to because they have like 5 people in the world they’re close to, and literally don’t knkw how they’d find a new socialmgroup if they moved across the country. The answer to that used to be to move to a new area, start attending church, and meet people.

Most fertilizer contains animal waste, so are you allowed to use it to grow plants? Bees are also pollinators, so many plabts also depend on labor from bees. We live in a biosphere and interact with each other, so everyone needs to decide where their line is.

How is that easy?

But the thing is they dont.

As religion has declined, the vast majority of people who used to go to church weekly haven’t replaced that by attending other community groups. And the “interest” part also fundamentally changes the nature of it. People going to church were often going there out of a sense of obligation. Parents don’t drag their kids to the comic shop and make them hang out with people.

Church is by far the biggest third place. It’s Christian Club where people hang out with other community members a couple hours a week, and in a healthy Church it can result in very powerful, positive, and effective community building. You can have millionaires and grocery bangers treating each other as equals prepping for a BBQ or singing in the choir.

The religion itself often ends up being quietly secondary to the community building, and I still don’t know what replaces the Church for the non-religious. I’ve been to gatherings of like-minded people that weren’t Church, but the regularity and diversity of people in a healthy Church (regardless of the specific faith) is something I haven’t seen elsewhere, and I do think it’s something that can be good for society.

I knew the CEO of a pretty big corporation who was in Sunday School classes with ex-cons and burger flippers, and that experience made them all see each other in a different light that was good for everyone. It taught the poor and the powerful that they were all just people. It made the powerless more willing to stand up to their “betters” and the powerful more empathetic to people who weren’t as fortunate.

Hey now - you’re great no matter where you are!

I think the HIPAA stuff specifically could fuck them HARD. That can be more easily pursued civily. Criminal Courts don’t mean much to companies because they have to pay a minor fine and it goes away, because criminal courts don’t seek relief or compensation. Civil courts are where corporations can get gigafucked.

They’ve absolutely been on the wrong side before, but they’ve also acknowledged past mistakes. Climate change is a big example.

We’re all wrong about stuff - and that’s okay. It’s what we do after we learn we’re wrong that matters.

I grew up in a time and place that had me believing homosexuality was immoral and that white men were being discriminated against by affirmative action. What I believed was wrong, and is not representative of who I am now. But I didn’t have social media or a television network keeping a record of every time I said something awful.