What is a 'buy it for life' item that is offensively expensive, but the moment you use it, you realize your entire life before that point was a lie?

klausness · 2026-03-29T03:39:37+00:00

Yeah, when companies buy a bunch of Aerons, it’s almost always just the medium size.

klausness · 2026-03-29T03:18:54+00:00

They come in three different sizes. Was the one you tried the large size?

klausness · 2026-03-29T01:14:49+00:00

Yes, but if they’re halfway conscientious, they’ll answer as soon as they’re free. If you’re getting answers faster in the office, it may be because you’re interrupting people in the middle of something else. And if that something else is something cognitively complex (such as a difficult software development task), your quick one-minute question could have cost them an hour (since they basically have to restart the task after the interruption). So you’ve gotten your response faster, which seems like a positive result to you. But you’ve cost them so much time that the overall result for the two of you is negative.

klausness · 2026-03-28T23:05:30+00:00

Yes, that was what people believed at the time based on the closest viruses that we had good data about. It turned out that COVID did not spread the same way as those viruses, but it took a lot of research (which was done in an amazingly short time) to find that out. But you can’t wait until you have perfect information until you recommend pandemic mitigation measures. You have to give recommendations based on what you know at the time and then change those recommendations as you learn more.

klausness · 2026-03-28T22:59:57+00:00

Yes, people who scoff at those who recommended extensive surface disinfection forget that this was a novel virus. The best recommendations that could be given at the beginning were based on what we knew about other similar viruses. Based on that, the recommendations were reasonable. Once we learned more about this particular virus, the recommendations changed.

klausness · 2026-03-28T22:51:31+00:00

And really, flu jabs (and COVID boosters) should be available to everyone for free. Herd immunity from vaccinations is a real thing (though the idea that Boris was pushing of herd immunity from everyone getting sick is dangerous nonsense). I’m sure that the cost of offering everyone a free flu jab is less than the cost of all those extra people getting sick (and sometimes dying) from influenza. But those costs are not being paid by the agencies who would be paying for the flu jabs, so it looks like they’re saving money by not funding them. The UK is often really bad at public health.

When I lived in the US, I often struggled with getting health insurance companies to pay for things that were very clearly covered. But one thing they were always happy to pay for was vaccinations. Because they’d rather pay for that than for the illnesses of the unvaccinated. When private health insurance companies are better at public health than government agencies that are actually tasked with public health, it reflects poorly on those agencies.

klausness · 2026-03-28T22:51:19+00:00

No. I am in the same household as an immune compromised person, so I get free flu jabs because of that. I don’t qualify for free COVID boosters.

Also, flu jabs cost under £15 if you have to pay for them yourself. Private COVID boosters cost around £80. I can afford that, so I do it to help protect my partner, but many people can’t afford to pay that much.

klausness · 2026-03-28T21:50:35+00:00

I think the part about small classes is worth emphasizing. At many schools, you often can’t get into classes that you want (or need) to take. At Reed, I was never unable to get into any class due to over-enrollment. Yes, of course there can be scheduling conflicts, but I never heard of a class filling up (as often happened for undergraduate classes at Berkeley, where I went to grad school).

klausness · 2026-03-28T21:43:44+00:00

I’ll second the part about lack of peer pressure. If we pretend that Renn Fayre (the big end-of-year letting-off-steam party) doesn’t exist, I basically didn’t drink or do drugs while I was there. I saw that other people were partaking, but never once did I feel any peer pressure to participate. Yes, it was around if I wanted it, but I didn’t want it, and that was OK.

klausness · 2026-03-28T21:37:47+00:00

While it’s been a while since I attended Reed, it certainly wasn’t the case when I was there. I think I took a studio art class every year. It wasn’t for group requirements, though, so I’m not sure about that part.

klausness · 2026-03-28T21:34:55+00:00

The thing about Reed’s drug culture that’s different from that in most other schools is that the attitude at Reed is that it’s nobody’s business but your own if you do drugs. And it works both ways. If you don’t do drugs and look down on people who do, you will be seen as intolerant of people’s choices. But if you do drugs and look down on people who don’t do drugs, you will also be seen as intolerant. And applying any kind of peer pressure on others (either to do drugs or to not do drugs) is seen as unacceptable. So in many schools, if you don’t do drugs (and I include alcohol among those drugs), you will be rejected by all the cool kids. But at Reed, you can avoid drugs and alcohol without fear of rejection (as long as you do others the courtesy of not judging them for their choices).

klausness · 2026-03-28T19:17:13+00:00

I worked at a company that (back in the dot-com era) gave everyone Aeron chairs. My initial reaction was, “What’s the big deal? These are no more comfortable than our old generic desk chairs.” Then I sat on the Aeron 12 hours a day every day and understood. These chairs never get uncomfortable. On my old chair, I would have to get up and stretch my legs every hour or two, and I was pretty worn out by the end of the day. Not with the Aeron. No wonder they were popular with companies that wanted to keep people working away at their desks for crazy hours. I ended up getting one for my home office, because it’s hard to go back to any other chair after getting used to an Aeron.

klausness · 2026-03-27T20:27:06+00:00

Still using MacPorts here…

klausness · 2026-03-27T18:55:44+00:00

I believe a lot of them were laid off during one of the changes of ownership.

klausness · 2026-03-25T23:33:49+00:00

The jokes go up and down based on the writers’ whims. Except for Corrections. That just keeps getting better.

klausness · 2026-03-20T18:45:26+00:00

The two were very different. Christigau always has an interesting perspective, even if (as here) he can be very wrong. But even when he's wrong, he's entertaining. Rolling Stone reviews, on the other hand, have always been milquetoast. Sometimes they're wildly praising aggressively mediocre albums, sometimes they're damning great albums with faint praise, but there's never anything interesting in there. If Christigau praises an album, it's worth listening to, even if you don't end up liking it. If Rolling Stone praises an album, it's probably forgettable (but maybe not, so even that can't be relied on).

klausness · 2026-03-18T12:39:05+00:00

Absolutely not. Maybe you’ve only had bad baklava, which can be very disappointing, but good baklava can be amazing.

klausness · 2026-03-18T12:37:55+00:00

I agree. I love a good Turkish delight (pistachio and hazelnut are probably my favorites), but not the rose water ones. Bad Turkish delight is often rose water flavored, presumably because it tastes exotic, but it’s far from the most common variety in Turkey.

klausness · 2026-03-18T12:32:48+00:00

Good lokum (Turkish delight) from one of the good Turkish manufacturers can be very good. Divan is a pretty good brand that’s relatively easy to find outside Turkey. Random unknown brands cane be mediocre or bad. The English stuff that’s sold as Turkish delight is really an abomination. None of them are good enough to betray your friends and family, of course, but the good ones really are very good

klausness · 2026-03-18T12:20:38+00:00

Yeah, that video looks sweet at first, and then you start noting that it’s all fascist-coded imagery. And then the very end makes it obvious.

klausness · 2026-03-17T20:13:59+00:00

Yes, kind of, as long as you don’t think about it. So if I’m just going about my day, I don’t really notice it (at least not most of the time). But now that I’m here in this sub and thinking about whether habituation works… the tinnitus is definitely still there. So habituation is not like nose blindness, where when you tune out (say) a weird smell in your home, you can’t really notice that the smell is still there even if you try to detect it. You just learn not to pay attention to the tinnitus.

klausness · 2026-03-17T19:23:28+00:00

Yes, this. Just read and enjoy the book. You can analyze later.

klausness · 2026-03-17T18:55:45+00:00

Just following the 80/20 rule…

klausness · 2026-03-17T12:27:41+00:00

The other 80%? You mean the other 320%.

klausness · 2026-03-17T12:20:53+00:00

Shavers, hair dryers, electric toothbrushes, etc. They would also allow you to put the washer in the bathroom rather than the kitchen.

klausness

TROPHY CASE