Absolutely not a joke! I was eating some granola bar and noticed in the ingredient list. I thought it was some ridiculous labeling thing and had to look it up. The bit you quoted was what I figured it was, but it still sounds absurd on the surface.

When I read the link, I immediately said to myself “Well, I guess it’s just like prune juice.” But that still doesn’t mean it doesn’t seem strange on paper.

Okay, I’m following. So who would you recommend as an email provider?

I mean, that’s going to be a risk you take with any hosted service. I currently self-host my contacts and calendar, but I have no interest in hosting my own email again.

What Zoho plan are you using? I can’t quite tell what the difference between the free and lite tiers is except for IMAP/POP support.

I moved over to Proton earlier this year and have had a good experience so far, but I’m not married to it or anything.

Of course you can, but those are still short term rentals, so I’m not quite sure what your point is. Mine was that short term rentals are good for some people and probably aren’t responsible for housing market problems.

There are places where we can all squeeze into a room, and we do. It all depends on the trip and what we’re looking to get out of it. We don’t mind sharing beds and putting someone on a sofa, but it’s harder as the kids are all getting into teen years.

Weird take, but okay.

I do still look for Airbnbs every time we travel because we’re a family of 5. Not a lot of hotels will accommodate 5 to a room and separate rooms means twice the price. Airbnb offers a lot more options for a family with the added benefits of a full kitchen and having a place that can actually be a short term home rather than a room with a bed.

Here’s the last one we rented: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/794199620391731129

I get that Airbnbs take some homes off the market and in some areas (like mine), that sucks because demand is high and supply is low. But they aren’t going to be the reason for a housing crunch. Here in Portland, Maine, we’re a small city on the ocean, thrive on tourists, have great restaurants, and are an easy drive to Boston or to ski resorts or Acadia. The housing market has been bonkers for YEARS and it isn’t going to change if we ban short term rentals.

Sure, but who HASN’T done that?

I appreciate ongoing conversations about this, but I think they tend to be too broad. Managers aren’t worried about the remote workers who are productive and reliable. The worry is the people who aren’t. On my team, you are fully remote as long as you meet expectations. You don’t, you return to office.

My wife’s company recently went from a hybrid 2 days in office per week to 4 days. One month later, they’re walking it back to 3 days because even managers were choosing to work extra days from home “so they could focus.”

They only mention it once, but I do have issues with mentorship in a remote work environment. I just personally haven’t been able to make it work. I’m sure some do.

I have some faith that eventually we’ll all work it out. Just going through some growing pains.

I mean, if you are paying for two services but don’t use one by choice, sure I can see the value not being there.

Family is one of the biggest reasons. A huge part of it for me was minimizing at least SOME of the ads my kids would be exposed to.

I know not everyone will agree, but I think YouTube premium is the better bang-for-buck service. $3 more per month than Spotify and includes YouTube Music premium and YouTube Premium. So all the music and ad-free YouTube.

If the option is Spotify or pirating, you’re really not hurting indie artists. They don’t make shit from streaming.

Nope, those were the pre-fee prices.

I guess on the general topic of monetizing podcasts… How Did This Get Made was in town last night for a live show. Thought I might bring my son who’s a movie buff.

The cheapest seats (ass-end back of the balcony) were $55. Priciest seats I saw were $125. Before fees. That was a REAL fast nope for me.

I absolutely want people to get paid for what they do. I’ll sub to Patreons, I’ll buy (also overpriced) merch, I’ll deal with ad and sponsor breaks… But I will be fucked if I’m going to spend $70+ per person to see a live recording of a podcast.

Yeah, this sounds like a really GOOD use of AI.

I recently had about $40 of Play Store credit that was inaccessible to me for weeks. Google support just kept telling me “Okay, wait 24 hours and it should be good now.”

FINALLY someone got it straightened out, but during the course of it, I had to explain to support what Stadia was and why I didn’t have a gift card number.