My dog got attacked by a colony of yellowjackets for having the audacity to go near their nest that was just on the other side of our fence line. He ended up in the ER for anaphylaxis. The neighbor’s dogs got stung too, though they weren’t allergic. Those little cunts can all die in a fire.

Paper wasps I hate less, I just wish they’d stop trying to make nests on the eaves of my house. They’re chill, but I just want them to find somewhere else to call home.

Correct, but it’s been connected for months and never pulled any information FROM Google, only pushed to it. That part is new.

Agreed. Back when FIFA announced that the US was going to get another world cup I was over the moon and thought for sure my husband and I would go to at least one game, and that was before the host cities were announced. (At that point we were season ticket holders for our local MLS club as well.) I live in a host city, so going wouldn’t be even mildly inconvenient, but not only am I not, I don’t even plan to watch the cup. 12 and 16 years ago I was watching every single game, even streaming them on my phone while at work. Not that FIFA was a bastion of morality even then, but I feel like it’s gotten so much worse, and supporting the games in any way just rubs me wrong. I’m also not happy helping this administration get a win of any kind, so I’ll just catch on Lemmy who wins and call it good enough.

See the fun thing is we have passenger rail from my city all over the country…but dogs aren’t allowed on it if they’re over 20lbs. I’ve even written the company pleading for them to review their policy and citing the crazy amount of dog sport participants that could use their service, and even suggesting they require an easily verifiable 3rd party obedience certificate and was effectively told to go pound sand.

Almost half of households in the US have dogs, so it’s frustrating that travel with them is limited to personal cars (there’s only one commercial airline that flies large dogs in the US and it has very limited destinations.) I would LOVE to take a train to a backpacking trip in the mountains, but then we’re back to leaving my pup at home. This country needs a major culture shift on a great many things, not the least of which is public transit.

To some extent I think you’re right, but for outdoor recreation that somewhat depends on where you live and what type of terrain your hobby requires. Switzerland as a country is full of beautiful hiking scenery and opportunities so I imagine the travel to get to it even by public transit isn’t an arduous one. In places where the terrain and landscape are more flat, barren or boring, the travel time to get to good hiking opportunities can be significant. For instance, the closest mountains to me are a 10hr drive by car; I could cross your entire country in about half that time. Unfortunately location plays a large role in the viability of using public transit for certain hobbies.

Yep same. Work from home, have my groceries delivered and most other things I can do online. As it currently stands my car is used to take my dogs to an enrichment program twice a week, and for recreation. Without my car my hobbies would essentially completely end. There may be some places where public transit would work for hiking and backpacking, but where I live options are limited and the closest place I can legally backpack is an hour away by car, and it’s a small 4 mile loop. Anything more significant requires a multi-hour trip. Even IF public transit existed for it, I don’t want to go and leave my dog at home, bored all weekend, because he’s not allowed on a bus or train. Part of my joy in hiking and backpacking is sharing the experience with him. Right now his world is huge and full of adventures. Without a car his world becomes the size of my neighborhood, and that’s just depressing.

For me personally, the loss of a car means potentially the loss of certain hobbies. I like to go camping and backpacking, and that means taking a certain amount of gear out into remote areas. While I might be able to minimize the amount of gear needed, there’s no getting around the remoteness of the hobby, and that necessitates a car for transportation.

The other hobby is dog related. I enjoy doing things, including sports, with my dog. Transporting the dog, at least as it currently stands in America, requires a car. Large dogs are not allowed on public transit pretty much anywhere here. When you also consider that I may be taking jumps or poles or other larger equipment with me to train in new places, losing access to a car makes that a near impossibility.

I’d go so far as to say many outdoor recreation hobbies either require or are made easier by having a car or larger personal transport. Kayaks, boats, skis and snowboards, fishing poles and the list goes on and on. Sure you could setup rental places, but if you do a hobby a lot you ultimately want to own your gear so you can get something that suits your preferences and needs.

I’m not opposed to a less car-centric society, but eliminating personal vehicles would make many hobbies problematic or impossible.

Because people can buy stuff off your wishlist and have it shipped to you. In its current form, it doesn’t expose your address to the buyer, but apparently the change may do that.

And they’re still going to make you work in the office

Cisco sent out a similar email, and I know firsthand Supermicro is doing the same as we’ve already had a huge order get a price increase AFTER placing it, and we fully expect to see another one before the whole thing ships. It’s a shit show right now.

I work in procurement and the last week and a half at work has been hell. Buying anything that contains RAM, Hard drives or GPUs right now is a circus. Pricing changing after orders placed, 6+ month lead times, insanely expensive pricing and any other problem you can imagine. It’s not just a problem for consumers, but businesses that need hardware refreshes, startups that are trying to launch, and replacements for defective units are all just really hard to get right now. I know this will pass eventually, but it’s a tough time to be in procurement for IT hardware.

So cute! My Maine Coon played fetch too. He preferred the shiny little balls of tinsel, but would also play with toy mice. I never taught him, he just brought me a toy one day and stood on my chest so I threw it to get him off me (he was big) and he brought it back. After a few times doing this I realized I was playing fetch with him and we did it his whole life 😊

What a cutie!

Public holidays are not mandatory time off let alone paid in the US. Many employers that give paid time off do include at least some holidays, but which ones and how many is variable between employers. Some will give every federal holiday and others will be only the really big ones like Christmas, thanksgiving, independence day, etc.

One of the most exciting things about the job I currently have is that I get around 15 holiday days a year off, in addition to my normal vacation time. It’s a rarity. My last two jobs only had 7 holiday days - that stretch from New years day to Memorial day (end of May) was always brutal.

The Art of Racing in the Rain (and also the book). No matter how many times I watch it, I’m going to cry every time

I really don’t understand the hate for the magic mouse cursor lol. I freakin love it!

It may depend on the LG TV or maybe it’s a setting. I just bought a new one and have a Google streamer on it and use it’s remote to turn on the streamer, soundbar and TV with a single button. I never see the LG UI itself unless I need to change a setting, and I’ve disabled it’s wifi entirely. I don’t get any kind of popups from the TV, it just works cleanly with the streamer.

That’s not really true. B&H sells digital signage displays to consumers and you can buy some of them from Amazon and Best buy as well

A 32" TV is not what most people are looking for. In fact I don’t know anyone with a main TV that small these days. The problem is that 40"+ dumb TVs are hard to find. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but very few manufacturers are making them, and the few that are have garbage screens in them.

Unfortunately it’s getting hard to find dumb TVs. The only real options are pro-AV or digital signage displays but even a lot of those are now moving to being smart. Our 15 year old bedroom TV finally died last month and we ended up having to replace it, and we ultimately went with an LG. I’ve disabled it’s wifi though. It’s a frustrating situation. I wish one of the manufacturers with good displays would just offer a dumb line of TVs. I imagine they would still have a market even if they were higher cost to make up for the lack of ad revenue, but maybe I’m underestimating that revenue. Either way, avoiding smart TVs is getting extremely difficult these days.