I’ve just started having these conversations with my mom, because her mom just passed away at 99.

My mom isn’t as temperamental as you’re describing, but she doesn’t like talking about death. However cleaning out her mom’s old condo has forced her to think about it, and that’s the lens of the conversations.

It’s not going to be one conversation, btw. I think that’s the key thing to understand: you’re not trying to figure out how to talk to them about end of life planning one time, you’re trying to figure out how to talk to them about full-life planning maturely from now on.

I would focus on specific issues rather then a broad concept; relate it to things that others are going through as a reference point; discuss it through the lens of ensuring a long, dignified life instead of about the end part; and try to offer appealing solutions rather than problems that they need to solve.

For instance, ‘I was just talking to a friend who was visiting their dad, and he had a bad slip moving trash to the curb and is now thinking of moving into an retirement village. I’ve always imagined you guys living here forever, and I wanted to check if that’s what you guys want to do too, and if there are any renovations you’d be interested in to make it more comfortable.’

Yeah, it’s weird. It’s good, but it’s very weird.

I think that’s a good theory, since it’s very unexpected to see him saying these things.

For what it’s worth, I can imagine that he’d turn on Netanyahu to maintain favor with Trump, but ultimately I think his hunger to see a war that ushers in the biblican end-times supercedes all other motivations for him.

Asking the real questions frfr

That’s very cool.

‘Wait, comedian-musician-director Bo Burnham did WHAT??’

…

‘oh good it’s someone else’

I read the article expecting the same thing, but it said that Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palantir recently released a big statement warning the US not to restrict open models.

Which is weird. I don’t believe for a minute that you and I are on the same side as those jackals, but I guess they are not as dumb as I expected on this particular day (be sure to check again tomorrow, though).

This whole thing is stupid and I want this bubble to burst. I don’t look forward to the economic consequences for people like my parents who live on retirement savings, but lord, this whole economic system is just totally cooked and it can’t go on like this.

I can speak from experience here, because this actually happened to me!

My partner (born female) and I married in our late 20s. He was already casually gender non-confirming before we married, and I described myself as hetero-flexible. His transition was rather gradual, with no strict coming-out event, but it was something we discussed openly. After he began presenting as male on work settings, I began identifying myself as bisexual.

It worked out very well. As the person above noted, you can really call yourself whatever. If you wanted to, you could identify as straight with an exception made for a single person. Although I would advise against it, as your partner might take some offense, and it confuses people if you identify in a way that conflicts with your long term partnership. Most co-workers assume I’m gay because I’m married to a man, and I don’t bother to correct them.

Sometimes it comes up, because my husband and I have a biological son together, which isn’t a secret. Sometimes when taking about him and genetics, it leads me to explaining all of this. But as you can see, it’s unusual, but not that hard to explain.

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You’re just repeating the points in the article. Yeah: I know.

To repeat my point, I don’t need to like or trust the Chinese government to want to see the US tech sector forced to compete.

I don’t care if the whole industry collapses. I don’t like either country’s AI sector. But if the technology is going to exist, I want it to be light weight and open source, and I want heavy, closed models to be an impossible business model. Bad people can still be useful to me.

This is so stupid.

‘Guys, I gotta warn you: those sneaky Chinese are not trying to help you! They’re cut-throat businessmen intent on breaking the US’ wildly unpopular AI tech sector for personal gain! And their duplicitous plan is to do it by sneakily offering better products at a lower price! DO NOT fall for it!’

First, acting like you ‘caught’ the Chinese tech sector by revealing that they’re acting in their personal and national self-interest is braindead. Yes. That’s how business and geopolitics works. No one was confused about that.

Second, describing how their strategy to provide products with obviously superior value in order to drive marketshare does nothing to make me root against their success. Why would knowing that make me want to change my buying habits or the laws to stop that? What reason would I have to support the US tech companies in this fight?

You know who probably should change their practices? US tech companies. It sounds like competition in the marketplace should really drive them to offer a more favorable deal to consumers.

This article is hilariously out of touch.

Ditto.

Power to the people.

Yikes

Fwiw, this was front page under the fold in today’s Sunday edition of the East Bay Times. I was pretty happy with the coverage.

Also, the above-the-fold story was about a 14 year old Gazan who was recovering well from 9 months of burn treatments in the US.

Where do you work? How hard is it to find a new job? How likely are they to fire you if you stand up to them?

The best case scenario would be that you and the entire staff stand up to HR and say that you were all led to believe this was permitted policy, and that if they’re going to declare retroactively that it isn’t, you all want a compensation raise because you considered this a job benefit.

Obviously you shouldn’t do this, though, unless you feel like you’ve got a strong position and you’re not afraid to find a new job.

If you’re looking for the safest option, I’d go with lie and deny: deny having eaten what you ate. Deny having confessed. Deny that you even work there if you have to.

Don’t bother throwing your coworkers under the bus. This is very unlikely to change HR’s reaction. They will punish you the same either way, they just might punish others too. There’s no benefit to you, so either stand up and fight or deny deny deny and promise you’ll be good.

They’re also different enough that people will disagree on taste.

The worldbuilding of the expanse is head and shoulders better than Firefly. But Firefly’s strength was characters: the writing and acting made the crew so loveable. I like the crew of the Roc, but I never felt the same level of connection to them.

I wouldn’t bother pitting then against each other. They’re very different, but if you like Firefly, you should check out The Expanse.

Personally, though, I recommend the books. I watched the first few episodes of the show first and was underwhelmed, but then checked out the books and was hooked right away.

First: It’s not like ice are going to walk up to white girls with blue hair and be like, ‘No voting for you, liberal.’ They don’t need to assess anyone to guess how they’re going to vote: the plan is to just reduce overall turnout at voting sites in places with a lot of Democratic voters.

The way I expect this to go is for Maga folks to drive into big cities and station themselves outside voting sites in poor, non-white neighborhoods and pretend they’re ‘looking out for non citizens who might try to vote’. The goal is to create hassles and long lines so that people who have limited time decide to leave instead of wait.

If you are able to arrive early and don’t mind waiting you’ll be fine. But a better response is to contact your county and volunteer as an election worker. If you do, you can help enforce distance requirements for observers, make sure there are no bottlenecks, make sure there is seating available, keep the line moving in good spirits, etc.

If you just make voting smooth and efficient as a volunteer, they lose.

I find this whole thing pretty fucking hilarious, because it’s great to see fascists stab each other in the back.

Trump isn’t totally wrong here: the filibuster should be converted into a talking filibuster. Obviously, he wants that for reasons opposite to my own, but we’re still in agreement on this narrow point.

What makes it extra funny is that the filibuster is already on a deathwatch. The writing is on the wall that voters in both parties are sick of this pro wrestling performative senate theater where they pretend not to be able to pass laws. It’s very possibly going to be retired by Democrats in 2028. So trying to preserve it is hilariously foolish for a Republican.

I hope that it’s retired by Democrats, and I’m grateful that Thune is betraying Trump in this fashion.

I don’t think he expected or planned it, but this massive security failure does demonstrate my point.

After the attacks, it was uniformly agreed that he was now politically dead. There was no coming back from a fuck up that massive.

Yet here he stands. He turned Oct. 7 from the biggest political liability imaginable into a tremendous opportunity.

Never assume he’s finished.