I work with nurses. The vast majority of them are lovely people, but I've seen the nurse cliques you are talking about. So has my wife, who also works with nurses. I've seen departments of nurses with that "mean girl" vibe that require long-term HR intervention because they are so toxic to one another.

If you see this kind of behavior, run for the hills. However, if you are just talking about normal human interaction to pass the time and socialize, then it is you who are not conforming to normal social expectations. You don't have to conform, of course, but there are consequences to being anti-social.

The question is, are you an introvert or a misanthrope? An introvert needs alone time to recharge and that's fine. A misanthrope doesn't like people, no doubt because of some childhood trauma. If the latter, then therapy might help.

If you truly are an introvert who needs alone time to recharge, I'd suggest "going home to check on the dog" during your break. Even if you don't have a dog. The point is that you need alone time and that's perfectly valid.

If you are generally sociable, but simply find their particular conversation boring or insipid, I'd suggest training for something where the work culture is more professional. Regular hospital floor nursing almost always has a "break room culture" and it is easy to get trapped in it, but there are lots of alternatives. Learn surgical assisting, for example, or become a nurse practitioner. Street nursing, public health nursing, and home care nursing are all examples where there is no real break room culture. Or get into management, where there are no breaks.

Uh-oh, you've triggered one of my favourite topics: cost-conscious cruising. Get ready, because I do enjoy dispelling myths about sailing. :)

People think sailing is expensive, but it is absolutely within reach for the middle class, as long as you are willing to put in the work to do your own maintenance and repair. Look at your average small-city marina and you'll see that most of the sailboats are 30 to 40 year old fiberglass production boats. They basically last forever if you take care of them and at that age their cost depreciation curve has plateaued. So, the cost of entry is reasonable and relatively risk-free.

If you have any interest in sailing, I recommend checking out your local marina to see if they have a weekly keelboat race. Many sailors love to race and they always need crew. This is the best way to learn to sail for free. If you don't like the pressure of racing, you can sign up for a learn-to-sail course for a couple hundred dollars.

If you enjoy that experience and want to cruise, I suggest reading a few practical books about cost-conscious cruising. Don't watch the hot young video bloggers sailing million-dollar catamarans for YouTube and Instagram. Much like Linux vs Windows or open-source vs closed-source, sailing is as much about philosophy as it is about execution. You can spend big bucks on the latest and greatest, or you can buy old hardware and revive it with some learning and elbow grease.

The most common question in cruising is, how much does it cost? And the answer is, strangely, it costs as much or as little as you want to spend. You can spend millions or thousands of dollars, depending on your skills, your willingness to learn, and what you are willing to live with. I know a couple that lived for a year sailing the US East Coast in a 22-foot sailboat that they got for free. That's an extremely small cruising boat, by the way, with just a bucket for a head.

Think of sailboat cruising like living in an RV: you can live in an old 1965 VW camper van or a tent trailer or fancy stainless steel Airstream or a huge diesel Winnebago. It's up to you, but there are trade-offs. You can probably buy a broke-down old camper van on the cheap right now, if you are willing to learn to fix it up and then live in a very small space. Or you can work and scrimp for half a lifetime to afford that huge Winnebago. Most of us would pick something in the middle, making trade-offs between comfort, time, and cost.

A good book to start thinking about the philosophy of cost-conscious sailing is "Get Real, Get Gone" by Rick Page. Their philosophy is that small and simple is better than big and fancy for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is affordability and the ability to get started sooner than later. But be careful. If you read it, you may ditch your life ashore and end up a sea gypsy floating around the Caribbean in a small boat learning to fix diesel engines!

Also, by the way, there are plenty of smart, nerdy, do-it-yourself sailors. There is significant overlap in attitudes and mindset between the do-it-yourself sailor and the self-hosting computer nerd.

But truly, I hope I have convinced you that sailing is not only for the rich. It is for the adventurous. As a matter of fact, I'm heading out today for a week of wilderness sailing on board my very affordable sailboat. Maybe I'll see you out there one day!

There is a certain satisfying symmetry to sailing the high seas while sailing the high seas.

I like the idea of using an industrial pc. Small sailboats experience a lot of vibration and sometimes violent bouncing, slamming, and heeling. Most things on a sailboat have been tossed around and flung onto the floor at some point, so it will have to be bolted down.

I don't know, maybe something like this?

KINGDEL Desktop Computer, Fanless PC, Intel i7 8th Gen CPU, 32GB DDR4 RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD, HD Port, VGA, 2xCOM RS232, W-11 Pro https://a.co/d/0eODy8RH

I live on Lake Superior, but this server planning is for a year-long voyage from Lake Superior to New York to the Bahamas and back. So, I do need to take salt and humidity into account.

I think you've hit on the key difference between home and boat use: the variable voltage. My battery varies between about 13.3V and about 11.2V depending on its charge state. I'll look into these.

I was looking at something like this mini-router with OpenWRT:

GL.iNet GL-AXT1800 (Slate AX) Pocket-sized Wi-Fi 6 Gigabit Travel Router, Extender/Repeater for Hotel&Public Network, VPN Client&Server, OpenWrt, Adguard Home, USB 3.0, Network Storage, TF card slot https://a.co/d/0iP7qaKj

For a signal booster: weBoost Drive Reach Overland - Cell Phone Signal Booster for Off Road Vehicles | Boosts 5G & 4G LTE for All U.S. Carriers - Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile & More | Made in The U.S. | FCC Approved https://a.co/d/00PNi0AE

English is most similar to Frisian, apparently.

https://knoji.com/article/frisian-the-language-thats-like-english/

Frisian: Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.

English: Butter, bread, and green cheese is good English and good Fries.

This is a good idea. A modern laptop is already power efficient and has its own battery, which I guess would act like a UPS and protect the motherboard from big swings in voltage from the main battery bank.

Yes, I think you're right that distro doesn't matter. As I've been reading through the responses, I realize that the two main issues are storage (don't want to use HDDs on a bounching boat, but SSDs are expensive per TB) and power (limited battery and variable voltage). As you say, corrosion may also been an issue that I hadn't considered. I'll probably have to check in with the sailing forums to see if people have trouble with their laptops corroding at sea. This server isn't likely to get splashed directly, but it will be exposed to a lot of humidity and variable temperatures.

Hmmm, looking at the cost of large SSDs, I think you're right that I should downgrade my storage requirements. Or perhaps I could use a large HDD that is turned off while underway for "long-term" storage and a smaller SSD for media that I want immediately available. That would avoid the problem of spinning a HDD while bouncing around in high wind and waves.

And, yes, we do have books, lol. But we also enjoy movies. :)

Yeah, good point. Now that you mention it, there is no real reason to run the server 24/7 on the boat. Also, HDDs would not be happy with the amount of bouncing that small sailboats undergo while at sea.

I love the USA, but I'm surprised at how passive the average American has become. Thomas is actively making your lives worse in exchange for bribes. Where are the mass protests? SCOTUS will do nothing about it, and neither will Congress, if you don't protest.

Biden should call their bluff. Letting Abbott and DeSantis make these little shows of defiance using actual troops and law enforcement personnel only emboldens the right. That has to be a red line.

Valve is a private company right now. But Gaben is 61 and it goes without saying that Valve is at the top of every predatory tech capitalist's wishlist. Can you even imagine what Microsoft or Google or Meta would pay for Valve? Steam is great, but that probably won't last forever. GOG is waiting in the wings if Steam ever becomes enshittified, but most of your library cannot be transferred over.

I will never understand why these corporations spend big bucks on this cringe. I've been to one such event and I was shocked. What's worse is that long-serving people said you had to act as if you were enjoying it or else you'd hear from your manager afterwards. Imagine a bunch of middle-aged men at a sales conference shaking their hips and pretending to enjoy a cheesy rap battle. What an utterly soul crushing, suicidal-thought-inducing experience. I can't tell if senior management actually believes that this sort of corporate cringe is inspiring, or if they do it purposely to crush your soul and make you into a servile automaton. Are they out of touch or is it an Orwellian power move?

It's even more amazing than that in the case of Rome. To cite just one example, by the time of Constantine I in the mid-300s CE, Rome could support armies totaling 650,000 men. The logistics and organization required to do that are staggering. After the fall of Rome, it would take until the time of Napoleon's Grand Armee in the early 1800s before numbers like that were fielded again. Even today, there are relatively few countries with an active military force of that size. They weren't just sitting around either. Rome was always fighting someone. It speaks to the ability of ancient peoples to organize and support truly massive endeavors and sustain them over literal centuries. I mentioned Napoleon's Grand Armee earlier. It was large, but it only lasted for about 5 years.

So, yes, a ton of technology was lost for a long time, both physical and social/organizational.

I think you are getting downvoted because you don't know what The Satanic Temple is all about. It definitely is not about worshipping some fictional being. It's motto is: "Empathy. Reason. Advocacy." They enjoy exposing the hypocrisy of religious, but also do advocacy work for good causes.

Check out their mission and tenets:

https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/about-us

Agreed. Musk was a good hype man back in the day, but now he is a liability. It seems like Tesla would be better off without him at this point.

For those that don't know, even though that passage sounds very Old Testamenty, it is in fact the supposedly more enlightened New Testament, and it was written by Paul, THE major New Testament authority (after Jesus, of course). And that section in its full context gets even worse:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%202&version=NIV

"Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety."

This is Handmaid's Tale stuff.

I've been in management for about 15 years and have hired many people. My take-away is that standard HR interview practices ("Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a coworker...") are basically a popularity contest that strongly favors extroverts and people with good story-telling and language skills. I suppose these techniques are good if that's primarily what you are looking for. However, if you are hiring for actual technical skills, these interview techniques are worse than useless, they are discriminatory.

Also, HR people, in my experience, are quite under-educated when it comes to interview techniques. I've worked with about dozen different HR people over the years and none of them had any kind of imagination or technical expertise when it came to interviewing. In my organization and in other similar organizations where I have peers, any deviation from the standard HR interview is entirely driven by managers who are sick of the usual HR crap.

Another example of how the Russians fucked themselves with this war. They know it, too. Russia's strategy now is to power through until they can propagandize populist right-wingers across the West to withdraw support for Ukraine. Putin has their number and plays them like a fiddle, much to the chagrin of Cold War era conservatives.

This blackmailing of Biden by threatening to facilitate another Trump presidency is such bullshit. As Biden has rightly said, democracy in America is on the ballot, and that is a far, far, FAR more important issue than a temporary flare-up in a decades-long conflict in the Middle East. Biden has to appease moderates if he is to prevent Trump from winning. He, therefore, doesn't want to engage in a MAJOR foreign policy shift that would scare moderates and distract from Trump's legal woes. You don't have to love Biden or the Democratoc Party, but Biden has been doing politics practically forever, which, if nothing else, means that he knows better than anyone on Lemmy how to beat Trump. Don't make perfect the enemy of good.

Sick fucks.

Churchill's point is that stupid things can still happen in democracies, but no one has come up with a better alternative. What would you suggest as the better alternative? If you don't have one, then you just helped prove Churchill's point!

Bang on. The Earth's population in 1950 was about 2.5 billion. We have more than tripled that number now, largely enabled by agricultural, medical, and transportation technology powered by stored energy in the form of fossil fuels. Global ecological footprint analysis shows that we "overshot" Earth's sustainable capacity limit in around 1970.

It is impractical (and probably impossible) with current technology to sustain >8 billion people on Earth without fossil fuels. And, it is impossible to keep burning fossil fuels without inducing devastating climate change. So, unless we can replace almost all fossil fuel burning with another incredibly powerful and non-harmful energy source (like fusion, I guess?), we are screwed. I agree with you that the ecological debt we have incurred will likely be paid in lives lost to starvation and conflict over food.

Good comment. I like the fact that Mozilla is branching out into Relay and VPN as subscription services. I've got to pay someone for VPN, after all, and email masking looks interesting. If the revenue from those kinds of useful subscriptions helps to sustain Firefox and it's derivatives, so much the better.

Nailed it, except that older Gen X and boomers who weren't part of the intolerant majority ALSO had to put up with all that bullshit.

It is apparent that the asylum system is broken. Europe and North America need immigrants, but we need them to arrive in an organized, thoughtful manner that helps migrants integrate, get jobs, find affordable housing, and learn the local language. It takes lots of infrastructure to accommodate millions of extra people, which is why unrestrained migration just doesn't work, for anyone. The problems of mass migration then become a flashpoint for the far right to take advantage of the population's discontent.

Yeah, king. Motherfucking North America was like Africa, except less hot.

Woolly mammoths, giant armadillos and three species of camels were among more than 30 mammals that were hunted to extinction by North American humans 13,000 to 12,000 years ago, according to the most realistic, sophisticated computer model to date. The news is reported in the June 8 issue of the journal Science. ...

Some of the mammals that became extinct are:

• woolly mammoths

• Columbian mammoths

• American mastodons

• three types of ground sloths

• glyptodonts

• giant armadillos

• several species of horses

• four species of pronghorn antelopes

• three species of camels

• giant deer

• several species of oxen

• giant bison

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/06/010608081621.htm

I don't care about HP, but it's just a standard fairy tale. I read the books to my kids. Stories about knights, kings, princesses, super heroes...pretty much any story in which a normal person can fantasize about being someone who has much more power than they do, have been the stock-in-trade for story-tellers forever. Harry Potter lives a terrible life with his abusive relatives until he gets whisked off to a fancy private school where, it turns out, he is pretty special. Does it glorify the British class system? Sure, in some ways. But, it also undermines it insofar as Harry's friends are mostly from the lower classes, and the villains are mostly "old money" and those who are obsessed with genetic purity. Also, the entrenched authorities like the Ministry of Magic are shown in a rather poor light, with their dementors, cruel bureaucrats, and insanity-inducing prisons. Hermione is meant to symbolize someone who got to Hogwart's based on ability, not birth or connections. So, the story is at least partially about the transformation of the old structures of power from being based on money and birth to being based on ability. It shows British power structures in transition, I would say. What do you think?

We pay for three video streaming services plus Spotify plus Kobo's monthly plan for audiobooks plus a monthly Microsoft tax for apps and cloud storage plus regular Steam purchases.

Anyway, I just got back into piracy after a 15-year hiatus due to the enshittification of video streaming. It reminds me of how cable TV got ridiculous back in the 90s and so people figured out how to hack the satellite feeds and make pirated VHS tapes to pass around. As Gaben has said, piracy is always a service problem.

I'm still happy with Spotify and Steam. I'm mostly okay with audiobooks, too. However, Amazon is fucking with that service too by making some books Audible-only. For example, you can get Books 2 and 3 of Tchaikovsky's Children of Time books on various platforms, but not Book 1 because Book 1 is Audible-only! Am I going to reward Audible for that kind of malicious licensing? Haha, no, of course not.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports is a membership-based non-profit that has been around since 1936. They are funded by membership dues, donations, and some corporate partnerships (mostly for research projects, I think). Their mission is to create unbiased reviews.

They do well reviewing large purchases like appliances. They also review consumer electronics and some software, though not in the highly technical way of a site like Tom's Hardware.

Anyway, Consumer Reports isn't perfect or entirely comprehensive, but the $40 per year membership pays for itself if you are a homeowner. Just in the last couple of months, they saved me $500 by directing me to a less expensive dishwasher than I otherwise would have bought.

For their part, police say they were obligated to investigate a complaint

Police have wide discretion about how much effort to put into any particular investigation. This is how it should have been handled:

"Hello Mr. Principal. This is the police. We have a complaint about a book called Gender Queer, which allegedly contains obscenity. Do you have that book in your library? You do? Okay, in your expert opinion, as a teacher and principal, do you believe that this book is obscene? No? Okay then, have a nice day."

Notes made in the database. Investigation fllagged as complete. Complaint unfounded. The school takes responsibility for the content. The parent who complained can take it up with the school board.

Instead the police took it upon themselves to get into the business of determining whether a school library book is obscene. What a stupid quagmire to wander into. Clearly, someone in the police department lacks good judgment.

During the pandemic, Dr. Oz's private cardiac clinic in the US was handing out vaccine exemption notes to anyone who paid the fee. There was no physical examination, just a questionnaire, and you didn't need to be one of his actual patients. No referral from your family doctor was necessary either and no need to provide your medical records. It was a complete and utter scam. How do I know? Because I literally called his clinic to follow up on a bullshit exemption claim and they told me their process.

What a bunch of cunts. FFS, it is never enough. Their return policy sucks now, too. It used to be that if Amazon fucked up your order, they'd refund you and you could keep the product. It made ordering online a relatively risk-free proposition. Now, they won't refund you until you ship it back, even if it is their fuck up, which really kills the convenience factor. Plus, you get to over-pay for most things. What's not to love?

Exactly. And if your ISP or cellular provider wants, or is forced, to gather information about your internet activities, they can almost certainly find a way. The cheap consumer-grade VPN services most of us use just prevent casual or automated observers from easily detecting your device's IP address. For most people that just want to torrent casually or use public wifi, it's enough.

We humans have these things called "boats" that have enabled the British Isles to receive regular inputs of new genetic material. Pretty useful things, these boats, and somewhat pivotal in the history of the UK.

Here is the video. It is actually pretty funny. I hate Trump as much as the next lemming, but this really is an obvious parody once you watch the whole video. I think NBC is complaining not because of the parody, but because the fake voice-over is too good and sets a bad precedent. It shows how good the tech is and how it could be used more subtly to create fake news (not that there aren't already many ways to do that).

https://x.com/lacivitac/status/1722390782387089643?s=46&t=a3ohj6oncFjZ8uOAQMEdJg

I, too, am old, bald, and grumpy. However, even I can see that your opinion and assumption is based on some questionable premises.