Yeah, but I’ve worked with people like that before and it’s not a secret that they can quit at any time

Fair, but you’re probably not working a job that would make it super surprising.

Like, I work at a bakery. If one of my coworkers has a couple mil somewhere, why do they deal with customers?

Yeah, most people have to occasionally hurt others, though I’m not sure how they feel about it.

I believe that some people cannot coexist with others without being hurt (eg. imprisoned), but I don’t relish the thought, especially not in the context of war. If I could choose, I’d institute a gift-based Potlach system (but I have no real enforcement mechanism without violence, so…).

To be clear, I’m not being judgmental about this, I don’t think anyone should be judged for their thoughts, I just don’t have those thoughts.

Hey, this is also not a personal attack. I don’t know if I’m the outlier here or not, but I figured I’d mention it and others can weigh in.

I don’t get the urge to hurt people, not that I don’t hurt people, but it’s unintentional or uncomfortable for me. I get the urge to prove people wrong, but I only feel dread when I need to hurt people (not harm them, but I’m a teacher, so I have to have tough conversations with students sometimes).

If you get the urge to hurt people, vote this comment down, if you don’t, vote it up.

This is ideal bedside manner.

“AI agents can research individuals, generate personalized narratives, and publish them online at scale,” Shambaugh wrote. “Even if the content is inaccurate or exaggerated, it can become part of a persistent public record.”
– Ars Technica, misquoting me in “After a routine code rejection, an AI agent published a hit piece on someone by name“

I’m very body positive and pro nudity for an American who grew up Catholic, but moving to Germany unleashed similar hangups for me.

Fun story: the first time I used the communal shower at the pool naked (like everyone else here), a child pointed at my nipple piercing and loudly asked “mommy, what’s that on her nipple,” so everyone turned to stare at my tits. I was doubly overwhelmed, because it was the first time I’d heard the vernacular term for a nipple in German: “Brustwarze,” which literally translates to “breast wart,” which is fucking horrendous.

If it weren’t for the fact that I remember that every time I encounter the word “Brustwarze,” I think I’d have blocked it out.

Her torrid freshness became an underground legend among the talent set. Producers literally held their breaths, waiting for the remarkable Brooke Shields to reach a reasonable age of fuckability, not yet legal, but oh, so sweet. Welcome to the end of innocence, Brookie.

Multiple people had to okay that. How? HOW???

Counterpoint: my dad sent me a cheezburger meme yesterday and I only need to go back a couple weeks to find rage comics memes in my group chats. I’m honestly surprised at how long memes can stay relevant; when they first started being called memes, it felt like they could only have a lifespan of a few weeks (though that’s basically the definition of survivorship bias).

I think there’s a parallel with other social clubs, too.

My medication kicked in while writing this and it shows. TLDR: in Germany, there are various social clubs including international cultural exchange groups (generally composed of immigrants/children of immigrants and Germans in a roughly 2:1 ratio) and clubs based around specific countries open only or mostly to immigrants from those or neighboring countries (whether openly or simply through convention, selection bias, and social pressure). The former are fun and the latter tend to be toxic unless there’s currently a large wave of immigration/refugees from the country they represent in Germany, in which case they can help coordinate resources and support, as well as help people deal with culture shock and the trauma of needing to flee their home country.

I’m an American immigrant in Germany. I love international groups and being able to bond with people about dealing with German bureaucracy as a non-native. I have zero interest in American emigrant groups.

In international groups, we do make fun of Germany, but it’s not mean spirited. We also commiserate about the actively negative aspects of living in Germany as an immigrant. In American groups, I suspect it would turn into U-S-A chants or something similar.

International groups here welcome Germans as a rule, whereas for groups for specific nationalities, it tends to be limited to people who can speak the language.

There’s a real need served by national groups for brand new immigrants who are overwhelmed by everything being different (often significantly more different than Germany is for an American), and they’re great for creating a sense of community that can be helpful for short term immigrants (though they can hamper long term integration).

I suspect I’ll warm up to American groups as a way to give new immigrants a crash course on German culture if we get a wave of American refugees in the next couple of years, because those are the demographics (large groups of people temporarily displaced from the same country who all come at once) that tend to benefit from these type of groups.

I’ve been told that national groups for Arab countries tend to be full of either bitter, unpleasant people and/or gay people and blatant alcohol drinkers, because everyone else just meets at the mosque. Although given that I have no first hand experience and the person telling me about it only has experience with a handful of cities, it may not be accurate for the rest of the country.

There are better antibiotics, which work with less frequent doses, but they’re only given out when medically necessary. I assume having bill gates’ wealth (and control of a whole bunch of anti malaria initiatives) means you have access to the kind of antibiotic you choose, you can even justify it by saying that you’re bill gates and you have a sixty hour workweek with the foundation, even in retirement, and you simply cannot take more than two days off, but antibiotics make you feel too weird to work, if you want.

The weirdest part for me is that he’s incapable of slipping his wife antibiotics. I get that you’re rich enough to never need to, but do you really never make her a cup of tea or anything?

Also, the choice probably isn’t “be poor or rich,” but rather ”be dead or rich.”

The rubes argument was less fun than I expected.

Maybe it’s just in this specific case, but if you can’t find any enjoyable music from an entire decade, that’s on you. Unless you want to try and make the case that you’re the only one with good taste and the rest of us are just lowly rubes, which is obviously ridiculous (though I’d probably enjoy the attempt).

But you’re allowed to have narrow taste and it’s not an insult. No need to get offended.

No music in the 60s was good? I think you might just have some very narrow taste.

I bet NATO would have defended Greece against Turkey, but that’s different. Somehow.

Move further away from the city center and use good public transportation to get to the places you need to be. There’s a point at which it no longer works, but super fast, regular trains can do a lot.

Everyone says that layers are the answer, but A) I don’t want to carry all of my shed layers around, and B) my least favorite part of winter is how tense my shoulders and neck get from the weight of all of my layers.

That said, 25 degrees Celsius is my limit for enjoying heat, so unless there’s somewhere with 10-20 degree weather year round and it’s not constantly cloudy/rainy, I’m stuck accepting winter.

I’m just naming famous people with mommy issues. Liza Minnelli’s also on the list. It’s… not a good list