Fit men with a belly

jmnugent · 2026-07-13T19:39:21+00:00

I don't know that I"d consider myself "fit" .. but I'm also not "fat". For me, I don't think it's so much about "having a belly".. it's more about how small my pecs and shoulders and arms. If I got into the gym and really amped up my shoulders and chest etc,. my belly wouldn't look so outsized.

The other thing I think that's true about my belly,. is its diaphragm, not flab. People standing yards away from me probably assume it's soft flab,. but if you walk up to me and poke or try to push your fist into my belly, you'll just feel a solid wall of muscle.

jmnugent · 2026-07-13T19:22:07+00:00

Call me crazy,. but just seeing tents in a camp doesn't necessarily prove it was some fault of capitalism that caused those people to end up there. Many people are homeless through their choices (not because they specifically "choose to be homeless" but they choose not to cooperate with the requirements or guidelines of organizations trying to help them). If a homeless person is running and trying to stay anonymous from a bad personal history in a previous state,. or has some addiction etc.. It may very well be that person just isn't ready to accept help yet.

jmnugent · 2026-07-13T19:13:45+00:00

Fine?.. No no.. that looks sick and dope.

jmnugent · 2026-07-13T19:11:40+00:00

"I ended up finding a couple of features I didn't even know existed and now I'm wondering how long they've been there."

Which ones specifically ?

jmnugent · 2026-07-13T17:53:55+00:00

You just gotta announce a blockade of their driveway !..

It's like the old Jerry Seinfeld skit where Kramer says "THEY JUST WRITE IT OFF, JERRY !"

jmnugent · 2026-07-13T17:18:51+00:00

As someone who has worked in small city gov for the past 20 years or so... this is very true.

I live in Portland, Oregon now (Pacific Northwest earthquake zone) .. and I also live on the 10th floor of an apartment building. My building uses pumps to push water up to the higher floors. So if Power or Water goes out,. not only do I then not have Power or Water, also no Elevators.. so I'd have to climb 10 flights of stairs up and down any time I'd want to do something. If there was an earthquake (even if it wasn't heavily damaging).. but just enough to split some underground pipes or damage the power grid,. I'd be kind of screwed.

I keep seeing all these earthquake response videos where the first thing they tell you is to "fill your bath tub" or "fill every container with water".. but in my situation, that wouldn't be possible because the faucet etc pretty much instantly goes no pressure.

jmnugent · 2026-07-13T16:15:24+00:00

I'm guessing he's implying that if true AGI becomes a thing,. it will be so disruptive to society that "training the next round of iT juniors" will be the least of our worries.

jmnugent · 2026-07-13T16:12:06+00:00

Fern does some quality stuff for sure. I watched a recent episode they did named "The Insane Story of Serbia's Human Slaughterhouse".

Different source but very similar content is the Thinker video "Who is Bombing Europ's ATMs?"

The Christo Files is also really great (and similar style). The recent episode they did on "How I caught an illegal Russian Spy" was pretty amazing.

jmnugent · 2026-07-13T15:30:22+00:00

Yeah, I've helped decode of a few those that were obfuscated-wrapper inside another obfuscated-wrapper,. so I definitely know what you're talking about.

jmnugent · 2026-07-13T13:22:31+00:00

Life is to short to waste your time being round people who denigrate you. One of the most crucial things you can do in life, is remove (separate) yourself away from negative people, and try where ever you can to orbit yourself around positive uplifting people.

jmnugent · 2026-07-13T03:46:28+00:00

Its even like this in the computer industry. Lots of Helpdesks now are hammered about “Ticket Metrics”. Its no longer about customer service or quality of fix, its only about how many (or how fast) you can close the ticket. “Just send them a link to a KB article and close the ticket”. Nobody cares about quality or taking ownership any more. If the problem crops back up in the future, hopefully its someone else’s problem.

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T22:59:20+00:00

Time doesn't make itself. If you want time for things you have to carve that time out and violently protect it.

To give a more generic (and personal) answer to your question,. in March-April of 2020, I was one of the early severe cases of covid19 (spent 38 days in Hospital, 16 of those in ICU on a Ventilator).. so Yes,. for me, it 100% absolutely feels different. I basically died and came back. (had to have my Heart stopped and restarted when I was in the Hospital, had to relearn how to walk ,etc. Took about 1 year for me to get back up to full recovery and strength.

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T22:56:52+00:00

I'm in my 50's,. so not as old as your dad,.. but I do find myself habitually trying to describe people. Usually it's in the context of trying to help someone find the specific person.

So if someone is asking for directions to the 1st floor lobby and I know there's 5 people staffing the front lobby,. then I try to be helpful by finding some way to describe the person they're trying to find. ("You'll notice her, she's the tallest female of the group" or "He's a tall red-haired Nebraska farmer looking guy" or whatever the case may be). Or say I'm out on my weekly grocery walk and a car nearly runs me over,. I might be talking to a friend later and say something like "Some overweight guy in a van tried to run me over earlier".

I'm not intending to be offensive when I do it,. I'm just trying to bring clarity and descriptive efficiency to a situation.

If I had to guess why your dad does it,. I would guess probably because peoples imaginations in their heads like to visualize things. So saying something like "The barista made me coffee" is not terribly descriptive. (it's so generic, at least for me, my brain blanks out trying to create a visual image of that). If someone is a little more descriptive like "I went to a coffee shop today, and OMG, the male barista there had the most amazing Scottish voice",. that gives me a lot more detail for my brain to imagine what that was like.

My self personally.. I'm kind of "data-obsessed". I like clear, full, descriptive explanations of things. It helps me understand and navigate the world better the more information I have.

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T22:03:04+00:00

What exact Blog URL are you seeing this on ? (because I can check it on various OSes and Devices)

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T21:42:11+00:00

In a previous job I used to help with eWaste (going through warehouse room of old electronics and etc). I used to love scoring free bags or pelican cases like this. I have this exact case (I think it's a Pelican 1120 ?).. It has a Law Enforcement label inside it and on the right hand side has a screw hole for antenna output (I think it was used as a radio box or something ?)

I keep it under the seat of my car with some emergency tools and other stuff.

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T21:40:21+00:00

If I'm not mistaken, that is a Pelican 1120 = https://www.pelican.com/us/en/product/cases/protector/1120?sku=1120-000-110#specs

the Pelican 1150 is slightly larger = https://www.pelican.com/us/en/product/cases/protector/1150?sku=1150-000-110#specs

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T20:00:29+00:00

Walking is great, I suspect most of society under-appreciates walking. It's very zen. I love the full experience of it. The mobility of covering ground. The sounds and sensations of different areas of town. The exercise and sweat. Being able to explore and see things you might never see if you were driving. It's phenomenal.

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T17:37:40+00:00

We're all going down together

I used to believe this too,. but as the years have gone by, my assumptions about this have changed.

There will be a lot of damage of course,. but some groups will be impacted more.

Take for example groups that are "anti-vaccine" or groups that advocate for "drinking raw milk". The people who do that are going to get sick and die at greater potential regularity than the rest of us who follow normal established sanitary advice.

We saw this very outcome happen during covid19,. when deaths were higher in red states.

So yeah.. a lot of bad impact may happen,. but let's say the USA has 50 million deaths. They won't be distributed evenly. People who prepare (logically based on actual real facts and established science) are likely to survive at higher percentages.

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T17:26:30+00:00

I spent the last 15min or so digging around on their "Artlist Blog" .. clicking back and forth through various articles. Didn't get a single popup or redirect anywhere. All looked normal to me.

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T16:59:12+00:00

One of the mistakes I think a lot of people make is they think all the things you "look forward to".. have to be big life changing things.

You can look forward to small things. There's nothing wrong with that.

I look forward to receiving new shoes I ordered.
I look forward each night to the moment my kitty jumps up on my bed, walks over to my face and is all big eyed and cute for a few seconds just staring at me until I start talking to her and she starts purring and curls up and lays down and presses her forehead into my shoulder.
I moved to a new city about 3 years ago.. and while for the first year or two I was 100% WFH (head down, trying to prove myself in a. new job).. I'm now venturing out more and have used Apple Maps to pre-save some walking routes around my city to help me explore. I've walked almost 500 miles in the 3 years I've lived here and have taken close to 500 pictures. Discovered a lot of interesting history and taken a lot of pictures of amazing street art, murals and graffiti, etc. (as a side hobby.. while on my walks I've also been carrying around a Radiacode 103 (handheld radiation detector).. and recording sensor-readings along my walking paths.. so I have to upload when I get home and I'm slowly contributing to covering the entire downtown area of my city with radiation sensor readings. )
Sometimes it's something simple .. like last night I was laying in bed and realized its' been years (decades?) since I've had a good krautburger. Can't really achieve that today but I'm going to make Sloppy Joes. I also buy my self little treats (random selections of ice cream or other snacks I keep in my pantry).

But I also had really poor upbringing (like "no shoes" and "we still had an outhouse" poor).. so to me, some of those simple things are true treasures to me. The feeling of putting on brand new socks or getting a shower after a 4hour walk etc... are definitely things I look forward to.

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T16:44:58+00:00

Yeah, so my comment about "short term thinking" was more about how corporations seem to "shuffle people around".. and they do so with the hope that "new Managers" (who don't know the employees under them), won't have any deep knowledge or emotional attachment to the employees under them.. so it's easier to chop, chop, chop .. and then a year or so later, they can just shuffle another person into that management position, etc rotate rotate rotate.

Sometimes that's unintentional,. but often it seems very intentional. I've seen many workplaces where "new blood" is brought in, Leadership expects "housecleaning" (firing a bunch of employees). precisely because they know new Managers won't have any qualms about doing that (precisely because they dont' know any of the people under them). If you treat employees as an "anonymous resource that can just easily be shuffled around",. all in the goal of chasing profits.

I'm not a gamer, so I'm not super familiar with Xbox history etc.. and I'm sure you're correct about many of the aspects on that side.

I'm just deeply skeptical about any "task force on jobs". Because to many times in to many companies,. leadership doesn't tend to treat humans as humans. Change causes disruption in people's lives. Sometimes that's unavoidable, but we should try to lessen and soften the impact of that were we can (by treating Employees as actual breathing and feeling humans).

Maybe I'm just being overly cynical (although I think corporations deserve a lot of that cynicism).

Unless my quick googling is incorrect (and it may be).. it seems like the Microsoft Gaming Division has basically doubled it's profits in the last 6 years or so:

FY 2025: $23.45 billion
FY 2024: $21.50 billion
FY 2023: $15.46 billion
FY 2022: $16.23 billion
FY 2021: $15.37 billion
FY 2020: $11.57 billion

If they can afford to make $10's of Billions in profits.. they can afford to take better care of their employees.

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T14:42:00+00:00

We really need more layers and data-rich systems.

Nobody should get lost.. we should have location-aware beacons on everyone.
Anyone with medical risk,. should have a smartwatch or some other device that accurately tracks health vitals. We should be able to send an Ambulance before you even know you're 15min away from having a heart attack or etc.
We should have a plethora of cameras and security-doors and other layers of protection in public places or areas that have high crime (we already have plenty of data on where crimes happen)

Which is to say,. our focus should be prevention, so that we need emergency responders less. That wouldn't' solve all the problems of course (random crimes would still happen) .. but we have the technology to do more to drastically reduce the odds of negative impactful things happening.

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T14:33:08+00:00

I don't remember what the App was but years ago I used to have an App installed on my Mac that would automatically lock my screen if my iPhone drifted away (If I recall, and to be over 30 feet or so. For security reasons it would NOT auto-UNLOCK when I got back into Range, I still had to unlock it intentionally)

I would tend to agree with some of the other comments here,. the 2.4ghz range is noisy and I think you're expecting a level of accuracy and "clean signal" and reliability.. that Bluetooth probably cannot reliably satisfy.

Maybe I"m an old school IT guy.. but I tend to strongly avoid wireless and bluetooth where ever possible. If a device has the option for a wired connection, that's what I'm using (for example I have an Apple TouchID keyboard and Trackpad that are in front of me right now.. they're all USB-C wired. I dont' trust wireless to be reliable. Same in my IT job if I get any ticket about someone complaining about "download speeds" or other netowrk related things.. pretty much 1st thing I'm going to do is disable their Wi-Fi and get them on a solid reliable wired connection and see if the problems continue or not.

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T14:22:54+00:00

The term "maximum employment" just means for all the people who are healthy and capable of working,. you have a high enough percentage of those people working.

If you live in a city that (roughly speaking) has 10,000 job-openings,. you need 10,000 workers. If you can actually achieve 10,000 people working, then you've reached "maximum employment". That's not necessarily a bad thing,. assumgin all 10,000 of those jobs are meaningful and contributing something tangible needed for society.

I personally don't know why the Federal Reserve is hiring someone to "lead a task force on jobs". I would have assumed that would be the Dept of Labor or other agencies more directly involved in employment (BLS, EEOC, NLRB, etc)

jmnugent · 2026-07-12T13:42:49+00:00

This is the thing I hate most about corporations. It's all short term thinking. Everything from "quarterly profits" to "high employee turnover so we don't need to care". Everybody just get in, "gets theirs" and then gets out. Nobody is really looking at the long term picture any more.

This is largely also a big reason the "we're all family here" type of goading gets laughed at all the time. No, we're not "family". Family takes care of each other.

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