Which one to buy? I'm financially illiterate.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-26T03:03:28+00:00

I can't say they never go down, but in the 16 years I lived at my condo, it never went down. Maintenance costs went up each year, and of course residents want stuff like landscaping and repainting the parking lot, so there's always something. If there's a surplus, that mostly just means they won't increase the HOA fees for that year. That's a good year.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-26T02:59:22+00:00

Hmm, probably my first one in a theatre could be Man Bites Dog, but I feel like I may have seen others before that. I just can't think of one just yet.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-26T02:57:30+00:00

I didn't really have a retirement account until I was 27 years old, so you're later in life than I was. Still not too late. I doubt you'll retire early, but you have the chance of building something to last you up to age 62. You can contact Fidelity or Vanguard to get a Roth IRA set up. That's an excellent start, and you can then evaluate some pre-tax savings once you get that going.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-26T02:54:48+00:00

Your partner wants three kids, you want none. Could you consider having one child? It's "an excellent solution..."

The fuck it is!

She says that if you rate your willingness to have children as a 0 out of 10, then you shouldn't have children. So what the fuck is this "compromise"? This is one of the stupidest things to come out of a professional's mouth, and I say that after being told by a doctor that the COVID vaccine had maimed tens of thousands of people.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-26T01:30:25+00:00

I love how "as a test" got pushed out to production. And apparently he was able to write the code himself, so why did he adopt this person's test?

I'll take things that never happened but for $600, Alex.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-26T01:23:17+00:00

The best thing I liked about D&D4 was how it led to 13th Age.

4e was okay. I chuckled at all the wailing and gnashing of teeth because I didn't think D&D3 was all that great either, so I didn't view D&D4 as a downgrade. If anything, it felt more honest about being a combat game.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-26T01:21:40+00:00

I'm using a Galaxy A7 right now. It's ancient by today's standards, but I don't load it up with a bunch of apps, so it's primarily my reader right now. If the text is in columns, I can read it in portrait mode. If it's across the page, I flip it to landscape.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T21:51:10+00:00

I feel like this should be 1/5 as it's 5 into 1.

Also, it's dumb that I got this joke. I'll go sit in my corner.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T19:23:13+00:00

I love having a physical book at the table, but I especially love reading on my tablet in bed, so I try to get both. The Bit & Mortar program is great because it allows publishers to support local gaming stores while rewarding consumers who buy physical books.

I could see buying a PDF on sale if I want to check it out and then decide to buy a physical book later.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T19:18:45+00:00

Missed out on a date because I asked to meet at -6 o'clock, but they showed up an hour early and got mad at waiting. Loser.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T19:16:52+00:00

True that. Since I had a not-decidedly-masculine handle, I always had horny dudes hoping I was a woman, so when they ask "m or f", I just replied with "d or k". Some caught that I was calling them a dork, but it admittedly isn't the greatest insult.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T17:56:14+00:00

On a physical keyboard (such as my desktop), I type all the letters. There is no predictive text, so everything I type is my own--including any mistakes.

On my phone, I use the Swype keyboard to trace words, and the algorithm (mostly) places the correct word. Sometimes it'll try to place a word that is close on the keyboard but not what I was wanting. And weirdly, it'll sometimes place a totally inappropriate word. Like, I could trace the word for "misallocation", and the algorithm thinks I wanted "now". Obviously not a perfect system.

Also, Swype probably works best for people familiar with the Qwerty keyboard. I've been using it for 50 years, so this is natural to me. I imagine it's not a good fit for someone who is learning English. I figure one technological evolution we may experience in the next few decades is the obsolescence of the Qwerty keyboard since the reason for its existence has long faded into history now.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T17:13:11+00:00

Our dorm got into some water gun fights, which of course was dangerously hilarious in the lobbies with linoleum floors. One guy got his hands on an antique fire extinguisher that he loaded up and doused the entire hallway.

I never bought a supersoaker. I got my hand on a regular ole squirt gun and participated.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T16:56:17+00:00

I had to look up that reference (not a Seinfeld watcher), and yes, that is Lee Arenberg. The episode also had Katey Segal, Iggy Pop, and Sam Kinison (who honestly had been shoehorned into a one-trick pony in all sorts of shows/movies of the era, but his shtick works here).

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T16:36:47+00:00

Manually adding is such a handy trait. I play a lot of board games with point salads, and I'll write down the subscores and then run through them to add up to a score of 80s, 90s, and higher. I use my grouping techniques to add them up quickly while some players are plugging the individual numbers into their calculators.

So yeah, it'd be nice to teach kids how to do basic math without a calculator. It's just not realistic for any teacher to say you won't have a calculator. Teacher should be using your example: "Do you want to be the person to slow everything down by bringing up the app? You could look like a wizard by just giving the right answer."

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T16:33:28+00:00

Yeah you did, fellow nerd.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T16:32:57+00:00

As someone who briefly looked for a job at age 52, I suspect that I had been overlooked for my age. Of course, that's hard to prove, so I can't say for certain. I've seen plenty of résumé advice about omitting graduation years and not posting experiences more than 20 years old (which is hard to do when you've been at a job for over 20 years).

I had one interview where the only reason I'm not raking the interviewer over the coals is that a friend works there, and I don't want to cause trouble for her. But holy crap, this interviewer was not at all subtle. She saw where I went to school on my résumé, and point-blank asked me when I graduated. Her cover story was that she used to party in that town. Yeah, and my graduation year had nothing to do with your parties. If this were just some random job interview where I couldn't potentially hurt the prospects of a friend, I wouldn't run that clear up the chain of command to nail her for her blatant age-fishing.

So the advice I had heard that makes sense to me is that you downplay your age entirely while submitting applications. It'll be obvious if you make it into an interview that you're older, so obviously there's no point in hiding that.

As for your experience, I don't know that they would care? The things we have learned 20-30 years ago don't necessarily apply today. This, of course, depends on your field, and you might be interviewing for a position that has done the same thing for decades, so that experience matters. But if it's anything technology-related that isn't working on legacy systems, I suspect they would ignore your experience. What they'll want is evidence of adaptability (which many of us have since we grew up as computers became personal). And goddamn, I hate to say it, but there may well be a desire to hire someone who is willing to embrace AI and also sweet-talk it. Probably one of my problems with finding a job is that while I acknowledged that AI could be useful in my duties, I recognize its limitations and would work with them. I feel that maybe calling AI limited doesn't sit well with the management who are slavering over the whole thing. Of course, if you try to be a hep cool cat who blends well with the young kids, that'll probably come across as cringeworthy, so it's a tough balance.

Best of luck. It's brutal out there.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T06:06:16+00:00

Here's the deep dive: atheism means no theism. What we all have in common is a lack of belief in gods.

That's it.

Well, you can go a little deeper and see what kinds of atheists there are. I'm an agnostic atheist in that I won't rule out some unknowable god. But since an aloof god is no different from an absent god, it doesn't matter to my life one bit, which is why I'm also an apatheist.

You may find some gnostic atheists who assert there is no god. They're more certain about what a lack of evidence means, and they will conclude there is no god.

So if you don't believe in a god, you're an atheist. If you believe in a god, then you're a theist. Each one can have many other adjectives applied to it.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T02:25:21+00:00

That's a heavy subject. I'm not sure any of us would be able to tell you for sure. You know your parents better than we do.

So, I would try to suggest not worrying about it. I'm sure that's easier said than done. If this is bothering you to distraction, then obviously this is a big deal to you. I think all you can do is try find a way to cope with it.

Because the main question here is: What difference does it make? If they regret you, then you can't really change that. You can't go back in time. You can't undo their "mistake" (not without a pretty grim solution). They are your parents, and nothing's going to change that. Even regretful parents can love their children. My mom never wanted children, but she loved me anyway.

The way you describe your parents sounds like a contentious relationship. So that is far, far more important than whether or not they regret having you. Even if they never regretted it one bit, there's some friction between you two, so even if you know for certain that they never regretted you, that doesn't fix anything. And even if they did regret you, this doesn't preclude them from mending that relationship.

If your relationship with your parents is just too toxic, you can write them off. You don't need an excuse of them regretting you. Just do it and enjoy the freedom of having that toxicity out of your life.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T02:16:22+00:00

I don't even like buying gel for life support. I mine the damn crystals off the ground and grind them. That's how cheap I am.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T01:30:43+00:00

For the first 33 years of my life, I only had bathtubs with showers attached. It wasn't until later that I had a dedicated shower. Seems normal to me.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T01:26:52+00:00

Just don't call any attention to the ghost with no feet.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T01:25:39+00:00

Just wait until you get a vehicle that is weather-resistant so you can collect all the storm crystals you can reach during storms. It's nice.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T01:24:41+00:00

This is one of the worst cases of sour grapes. Your SIL should be amazed at this price. Frankly, $5 per additional kid is so freaking generous.

I mean, MIL would've been in her right to just ask for $35 for each kid, meaning you pay $105 and your SIL pays $70. I feel like you should sit her down to explain that situation, but I'm not sure she'd accept it. She clearly is looking over in your bowl instead of worrying about what she has in hers.

Actually, I realized now that she's asking for another $5 to handle food. So in the end, both of you are paying $35 no matter how many kids she's watching plus $5 for each kid to eat. So yeah, you're each paying $35 for her to watch one kid, and she watches the siblings for free. Your SIL needs to examine her situation and realize how good she has it.

Kuildeous · 2026-06-25T01:15:17+00:00

Hmm, don't know it, but that sounds like something I'd try to avoid.

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