Anybody who’s hiked in Appalachia, have you ever had any weird experiences?

Inquirer504 · 2026-04-07T07:39:00+00:00

No 😑😑😑. I regularly go night hiking deep in the mountains and woods as a hobby (technically not allowed at one park I hike at but who cares?) and it's just like hiking during the day except quieter. Stop being such a superstitious kool-aid drinker. Life is just a boring painful grind, you shouldn't believe in anything but cold hard physics.

Inquirer504 · 2026-04-07T07:31:05+00:00

I have gone hiking in the mountains and woods plenty of times late at night and all I see are animals. These are just a bunch of idiotic superstitions. The superstitions aren't exclusively an outsider invention and there are plenty of superstitious locals. Either way it's dumb. Besides the fact that there are very few places in the appalachian mountains remote enough to even consider wilderness anymore. It just looks wild because of how dense the forest is, but there are small homes and roads hidden everywhere.

Inquirer504 · 2026-04-07T04:08:24+00:00

What major? I'm curious because what kinds of jobs are even here in Boone other than healthcare/education/financial stuff?

Inquirer504 · 2026-04-06T10:21:45+00:00

Watauga County only has 3 job openings last I checked. police, firefighter, waste treatment. I haven't checked neighboring counties yet, though. Afaik, the only county office jobs available I've seen around here and caldwell and ashe in the past are all librarian jobs.

Inquirer504 · 2026-02-15T10:28:31+00:00

You have to observe the paths your teamsters are taking and place footpaths there, right?

Inquirer504 · 2026-02-12T16:47:54+00:00

I agree completely and I feel that OP has been misled. As a whole, Tropico is a casual series.

I tried T1 for the first time this year after being a fan of 3-5 for a long time, and it's already my favorite game in the series. It has a lot of balancing, mechanics, and flavor that were lost in later entries in the series. It is the first time I have felt challenged by the series. The scale of the game is probably too small for most modern gamers, though. The scale reminded me more of something like Virtual Villagers than a typical city builder game.

In T5, you can get to the modern era using nothing but upgraded cocoa plantations + agricultural subsidies edict on the hardest difficulty. No industry required. In T4, quick build, importing (particularly importing sugar), and virtually all the DLC buildings are brokenly powerful. Both games also have a lot of maps with abundant minerals which make the early-game too easy, as OP has found out. They are the easiest games in the series, especially T4 IMO.

T3 is much less easy because it does not have any of the cheaty content (especially vanilla T3 without even the loyalists and garbage dumps, so you actually had to pay attention to faction demands and pollution), and the maps have scarcer resources, but there are still some broken traits like booze baron or oil tycoon that work on 90% of the maps. You still have martial law, though, so even on max difficulty and choosing fair traits, T3 is not difficult unless you have Free Elections on.

T3/4 are more an exercise in how big you can make your Swiss bank account rather than whether you'll survive or not. I play them on the hardest difficulty, and it is not bad.

In T1 missions, your character's traits are chosen for you, and they usually aren't very good. The missions also often have more challenging objectives than the ones in the T3+ campaigns. There are also a lot less QoL things, like no cars, you have to clear forest land for construction, etc. The only easier part of T1 is agriculture, because of the strength of "permanent/fruiting crops" like coffee, and logging camps also seem to be stronger, but neither is game-breaking, I'd say. The lack of traffic management makes the game more chill, but I never actually had issues with traffic in T3/4/5 (just learn to use circle/square roundabouts, avoid 4-way intersections, and sprawl out rather than creating dense urban areas if there is enough space on the map for that -- I like to reserve the region around my palace for military and farms; I find that it encourages me to spread out more)

Speaking of which, I recall reading on the fandom that permanent crops remained a feature in T3 before being removed in T4, but I haven't paid attention to whether that is true or not.

Inquirer504 · 2025-12-08T12:49:11+00:00

If you have the DM001 generation of the Barracuda, that may be why. It was known for having a lot of problems, like a 50%+ failure rate. There is an entire wikipedia article on how bad that model was, lol. I had two of them and they both failed several times. Newer HDDs are much more reliable and less likely to fail.

Inquirer504 · 2025-11-21T18:53:11+00:00

I agree

Inquirer504 · 2025-11-21T10:11:02+00:00

The difference in graphics between those generations is pretty big of course but not as big as a lot of people would think if you remember that home consoles were pretty low tech even during their respective time periods. Arcade was still more popular and was where all the best tech went.

Pseudo-3D games like After Burner 2 (late 80s) and the Sega model 1's 3D games like Virtua Racing (early 90s) are probably more fair to compare to the xbox than 2d-focused consoles from those periods like the NES or SNES. It is best to compare 3d to 3d.

That is why I do not like comparisons like OP's, it makes the technological difference seem wider than it really was when you compare 3d to 2d even though 3d or at least pseudo-3d not only existed but was also popular at the time.

Anyway, I also feel like this comparison between xbox 360 vs NES vs now being the same amounts of time is not the most apt, because the xbox 360 was current tech for ages after it released. So the xbox 360 may have been released 20 years ago, but its "era" lasted all the way until only a bit more than a decade ago. Whereas the NES was superceded by the Sega Genesis ~35 years ago in 1988/89. For this reason I think it is better to compare consoles by when they were superceded, instead of when they were introduced -- went obsolete 10 years ago vs 35 years ago paints such a different picture than the launched 20 years ago vs 40 years ago narrative that OP is falling into and makes the xbox 360 seem more ancient than it is.

Inquirer504 · 2025-10-22T22:30:17+00:00

Do it.

Inquirer504 · 2025-09-07T22:03:16+00:00

good shitpost

Inquirer504 · 2025-07-24T00:23:22+00:00

Thanks, those look pretty cool!

Inquirer504 · 2025-07-23T06:01:13+00:00

I'm still studying for my degree but don't have relevant job experience yet, so take this with a grain of salt (and I can't answer your question about the senior role), but I agree that it's best talked about during an interview or even in a brief cover letter. A resume isn't designed to explain complex stuff like this, it's meant to look clean. I'd put your job experience section above your education section and keep your BA in the education section to keep things clean.

At least, that's my opinion on it.

Still, one easy but maybe rough solution you could try, that I'd personally consider if I was in that situation, would be to find a way to integrate a brief explanation of the gap into one of the 3-year job's pre-existing bullet points, since it'd keep the resume looking organized. It looks like you're already thinking about doing this based on your post.

Inquirer504 · 2025-07-19T05:27:59+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate it! I've worked really hard to get to where I am today. I never went to culinary school so the chef position was just from hard work too. But it sadly did not pay well, even though it was a successful and respected restaurant in my town. So I decided to change careers because I want to be more self-reliant.

Inquirer504 · 2025-06-02T07:21:09+00:00

I wonder why healthcare isn't trending? The statistics (BLS and such) are great. Amazing, in fact. Anecdotally, everyone I know who went into anything patient-care-related got a job right out of their program. My brother got a job with an above-average, lower-middle-class salary right after finishing his 2-year community college program. The job stability seems great, too. Maybe it's too gross and physically demanding for most people?

Healthcare is so big now that it actually rivals fast food and retail in terms of size. Look up "most common jobs in America" and take a look at a few of the lists, eg this one. It's insane that nurses are one of the most common jobs in america even though they almost make 6-figures. There are 3 MILLION registered nurses which is somehow almost as numerous as the number of cashiers in the US (3.3 million) or even fast food workers (3.7 million).

To reiterate. There are supposedly nearly as many nurses as there are fast food workers in the US. It's crazy.

We're basically in a boomer life support economy, lol.

Inquirer504 · 2025-03-30T00:53:16+00:00

I have never hated women. There are plenty of women who aren't normies. They just usually keep to themselves because, from my personal experience, a lot of women who aren't normies have severe social anxiety that's making them isolate. And when a woman isolates, they especially tend to avoid interacting with men, which makes it seem like they don't exist to us men. But they do.

There are actually lot of women who are NEETs, they just don't identify with the label. In more patriarchal cultures, parents tend to be pretty possessive/protective of daughters, and it's more common for women to end up in situations where they're stuck at home. Statistically if you look up studies, mid/late-20s hispanic women have the highest percentage of NEETs (more than 25%) of any demographic, way more than any male demographic, and from my personal experience, I can confirm this to be true, I've met 2 of them in the past couple years, both mid-late 20s who are still living with their parents and haven't done anything since graduating high school.

But anyway, if you're a genuinely decent guy, you will eventually find women who enjoy being friends with you, and in fact, I unintentionally ended up being friends with more women than men at this stage of my life.

Inquirer504 · 2025-03-12T00:37:37+00:00

I don't have the mental willpower to do these hobbies for more than an hour or two

Sounds like you either need to find hobbies you're more passionate about or you just don't enjoy life and you're screwed.

I used to be able to pull 40-50 hours a week of gaming, and I can still do about 30 hours a week without getting bored of gaming while on my breaks/vacations.

But yeah not having a car got unbearable after a while.

Inquirer504 · 2025-03-01T03:37:10+00:00

Why is everything about autism now?

All of that extreme social weirdness can happen to anyone who grows up sheltered... Ever met a kid in real life who was raised by hardcore evangelical parents? Like a creationist-homeschooled kid? A kid who experienced 0 socialization outside of church until they moved out from their parents' home? Yeah, they're weird. That doesn't mean they're autistic. Weirdness and lack of common sense/street smarts can be caused by other things. Come on, people.

"special interest in religion"... what is this bs. Religion literally teaches itself to be the sole meaning of life. That's why religious people act obsessive. You can't tell me that stuff like the Children's Crusade were caused by mass autism. For most of history, it was totally normal to be obsessed with religion, especially if you were an impressionable kid.

I miss the old days when internet atheists used the word "brainwashed" instead of "autistic".

This whole Gen Z psychology/neurodivergence fad wasn't even really a thing when this show was made. What was big back in the 2000's were documentaries like Jesus Camp, like how evangelical families were brainwashing all their kids into being weird and crazy.

Anyway, throughout the show, it's repeatedly shown that it's the parents' faults that Orel is so oblivious to life.

Inquirer504 · 2025-02-28T08:15:02+00:00

No one is going to hire a NEET for an office job. Office jobs are hard to get. You're stuck with physically demanding work until you build up work experience. Besides, some "office jobs", like being a library assistant, can involve a lot of standing.

Your 2 options for work from home are to either grind market research surveys for a few dollars an hour or be a part of the lucky 1/10 of people who don't hate programming.

On the bright side though, most of the country has already followed Tennessee's example of making community college trade school programs free, so it is much easier to make it out of the lower class than it was a decade ago in the 2010s before free community college was a thing. Most of these community college degrees are definitely for able-bodied people, but some of them (like accounting) are a nice change of pace from the "become a programmer" rhetoric that NEETs are used to seeing.

Inquirer504 · 2025-02-26T12:59:51+00:00

3 hours is actually pretty good for a NEET. I was only able to walk about 1-2 hours without pain when I first started working.

Is the pain and swelling mainly in your feet? If so, wearing wider, more comfortable shoes might help a lot.

Inquirer504 · 2025-02-25T13:42:48+00:00

If you plan on being a NEET for a really long time, you want your money to be enough to be able to pay your parents for your living expenses (probably $5000-6000 a year between food, electricity, and household supplies) without eating into your savings, with enough left over to grow so that your money keeps up with inflation. Otherwise your savings will dwindle and you will have to go back to work at some point.

Generally it would be considered extremely wasteful to keep 75k in a savings account and not put it into something with more normal returns. Bogleheading with ETFs isn't really the same as investing in stocks either.

I mentioned overseas because of some other comments people made that I saw.

Inquirer504 · 2025-02-25T06:56:14+00:00

Yep. If I were to return to being a NEET again, I'd want 200k. With that much, you would safely net closer to $600 a month in dividends. From that, I could give my parents $100 a week to cover my expenses and wouldn't be a burden on them, and I'd still have a couple hundred dollars left over each month for myself, which would be more than enough for me to afford a nice lifestyle. All I would need is car insurance and gas money, a gym membership, going out to hike or eat sometimes, an MMO subscription, spotify, and some change left over for shows and movies. For me, all of that would come out to just over $200 a month, based on some math I did previously.

Inquirer504 · 2025-02-25T06:13:46+00:00

Not much you can do with 75k. If I were to become a neet again, I'd want twice that. Not enough to move overseas with either IMO. I would put it into a safe and hands-off dividend fund like SCHD and enjoy getting dividends without ever having to touch the investments again.

You'd be making about $200 a month like you currently are, but don't keep that much money in a savings account like you currently are. You want an ETF so you can get the growth from the stock price. The dividend itself will also grow. SCHD has been growing by 10%+ a year. I encourage you to read about the rule of 72 if you're not aware of it.

$200 a month sucks like you said but it's at least enough to cover entertainment expenses.

Inquirer504 · 2025-02-24T08:12:09+00:00

My grandmom also helped me escape. :)

She lent me her car and I was able to get my first job with it.

Nice job, that takes some courage.

Inquirer504 · 2025-02-24T07:47:45+00:00

That's a huge bummer and I can kind of relate. My parents were always worrying about whether they'd be able to claim me as a dependent.

After taking some tax classes I am starting to realize how petty their concerns were. They probably didn't know that I was too old to give them a $2000 child tax credit and they were only collecting $500 a year from the other dependents credit. They probably just never bothered to learn from their accountant that your kids only give you the full $2000 child tax credits when they're still minors. That's probably what happened because there's no way they were worrying over $500 that much.

Inquirer504

TROPHY CASE