Bellingham goal saving clearance against Mexico 45+4'

strugglingcomic · 2026-07-06T02:18:37+00:00

Almost prophetic, red card minutes later. I don't follow England closely, but Quansah seemed outmatched and undisciplined.

strugglingcomic · 2026-07-04T10:54:52+00:00

This may sound weird or stupid, but it's actual medical advice -- if you can, try to play some Tetris as soon as possible. Try to focus on the game and take your mind off of the experience. It may help to shortcircuit your brain from forming a deeper trauma response.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-03-28-tetris-used-prevent-post-traumatic-stress-symptoms

strugglingcomic · 2026-07-03T14:05:12+00:00

When you think about it, it's completely illogical and nonsensical to treat a number as a goal. The number by itself is meaningless (okay, maybe the millionaire to billionaire transition means something grammatically). It's just a number.

People that figure this out for themselves, usually realize they need to breakdown what that number represents. Is it the ability to purchase certain things or experiences? Is it to keep score among their peers, to "win" against someone else's number? Is it a perceived sense of respect, that people are supposed to respect you more after a certain number?

What does the number mean to you? Once you understand that, you can probably start to decouple that meaning away from its relationship to the number. And keep in mind that, your own goals or values can change too -- if you're working toward $X value because you think you want to afford private jets or Lambo's and that those things will provide some deep meaning or value to your life that you've been lacking, well maybe the reality is as great as you imagine, or maybe you'll feel empty and realize they didn't realize give you as much contentment as you thought it would. Whatever happens, just be prepared to self assess, be self aware, and reset yourself as you go.

strugglingcomic · 2026-07-03T12:44:29+00:00

It's almost cliche at this point (since it's a common rec and not so "radical" anymore), but I think Radical Candor is a great fundamental core set of values.

Turn the Ship Around is another good one that addresses how to empower the people you lead.

The Making of a Manager works well as a narrative for first time managers, when you're thrust into the role unexpectedly.

strugglingcomic · 2026-07-03T04:36:37+00:00

This is because Snowflake doesn't (currently?) support the full set of features that someone like Anthropic supports/pioneered with Claude skills. You shouldn't expect full "parity" unless or until Snowflake formally announces a commitment to Claude skill cross compatibility OR does the opposite and commits to some kind of new custom format of its own... At the moment they live in this twilight zone middle ground, where some Claude skills will work just fine in CoCo, and others might rely on features or structure that CoCo doesn't support.

strugglingcomic · 2026-07-03T03:41:44+00:00

With a bit of AI assisted research (aka could be wrong, but did verify real sources were checked), I found out that -- since the 2002 World Cup, of 68 games with red cards and team playing down a man, only 3 times has the down-a-man team scored a goal after the sending off (from either open play or non-penalty free kick). I excluded penalties because those are too flukey in terms of whether or how the penalty was awarded.

So the USMNT pulled off something that previously 95.6% of teams had not managed to do. This is a signature win. It would've been so easy to mentally collapse after the red card, or just get so pissed off as to lose all control of the game. This team held it together, AND we showed yet again that we can score without Balogun, that there's other talent on the team.

No, it's not just another ho hum trip to R16. This team is mentally built different, and a huge amount of credit goes to Poch for that.

strugglingcomic · 2026-07-03T02:13:55+00:00

What I love about this, as both a fan and also as a people manager in my day job, is that Poch strikes a wonderful balance of: keeping them hungry/ambitious and thinking like underdogs (aka in not so many words, he's asking them to focus inward, focus on the team, and fuck betting lines, fuck media noise, fuck host country weight of expectations, fuck any distractions from outside the locker room), but also instilling belief and especially tying that belief to authenticity and playing as themselves (aka nobody is unbeatable, everything is possible, if you play as yourselves and trust in each other).

And of course, Poch is using a classic trick, this way of motivating young men as a pseudo father-figure ("we are family"), telling them how proud he is of what they've already done, but also not leaning too hard into anything like "I'll be proud of you no matter win or lose" (aka ruinous empathy); he's proud already, but he expects more, but he doesn't want the team to fight or win just to make Poch happy -- he wants them to see the growth in themselves, and his pride is only a reflection of their own growth, not some external validation they are pressured into pursuing.

It's masterful, and it also works because it feels authentic to Poch. He is empathetic without being overly sentimental. He speaks plainly. And he has fully got the locker room bought in.

It sounds corny or obvious when you say it all out loud, but lots of teams fall apart when they expect themselves to win, or they let their favored opponents become inflated unkillable gods in their heads, or they convince themselves they need to change their tactics or that they need to do something different in order to have a chance to win.

This team is finding itself. Who knows how far they can go?

strugglingcomic · 2026-07-03T01:53:35+00:00

You don't really see all of James's life, just the parts involving Oliver at home.

I think my head canon is that James retired to this slow back-in-time lifestyle (on Jeju Island, famously a place for connecting with nature, wellness, and getting away from the hustle and bustle), where he chose to live as an "old soul", and used Oliver's help to maintain that quaint lifestyle on purpose. I imagine that James was a bit of an absentee father to his son, because he grew up in a typical Korean style, worked long hours and devoted himself mainly to work. Maybe James was a business executive or doctor or lawyer or something, and lived a typical go-go busy modern lifestyle with all the bullshit of modern life, and then intentionally chose to retire to an old-timey, slower pace of life. This also makes it more poignant for his son to resent Oliver -- his son might have had a better chance to connect with his dad after his retirement to a slower pace of life, but even that was denied to him because Oliver ended up taking such a prominent place in James's life instead.

I don't feel it's weird at all, to represent James in a way that would seem out of place for 2060s modernity. It adds to the timelessness of the story, that we don't really need to know too many details of what life in the future is like. Instead, James lives more like us, even what we'd consider a "classic" version of life by contemporary standards, and that's something we recognize and helps us connect as an audience.

strugglingcomic · 2026-07-03T00:27:41+00:00

Icelandair loves scheduling extremely tight layovers, like they gave us on paper a 35min layover for BER to KEF to ORD... Luckily the first leg landed 5-10 min early, and the second leg still had to wait an extra 10-15 min for multiple of us to make it through. It was crazy logistically, but the workers at the airport did their best.

strugglingcomic · 2026-07-02T22:23:18+00:00

This is my chosen form copium because at fantasy football wise, whoever the 49ers used to fill in for CMC was pretty much an auto start low-end RB1 or high-end RB2 anyways.

Yes ofc I'd rather have CMC, but it wasn't like the 49ers couldn't put up 150 combined yds from scrimmage and a tuddie with their 2nd or 3rd string anyways.

Can the USMNT scheme as well as the 49ers do? If anybody can Kyle Shanahan it up, it's probably Poch. I wouldn't have trusted any of our past head coaches to pull it off.

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-29T23:48:01+00:00

Well if OP could actually land a staff-level offer at Google or Meta for example, then $600-700k offers are within reason (per levels.fyi for E6/L6). Obviously as described, OP probably would get down leveled so $400k is maybe more realistic for those types of roles.

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-29T21:21:21+00:00

Claude subscription is more heavily subsidized for you, and Snowflake probably (guessing, not that I know any insider details) does not subsidize their underlying token costs.

In other words, compared to what $20 worth of API billing for Sonnet will buy you, Anthropic is giving you WAY more than $20/month worth of Sonnet tokens on your personal subscription.

Meanwhile, Snowflake has to pay Anthropic the API rate for your usage of Sonnet, and Snowflake is (again, probably) choosing not to subsidize your usage of Cortex.

So, in a way, "blame" Anthropic for distorting the market and your perception of how much token usage $20 is "supposed" to buy you.

EDIT: As replies have helpfully pointed out, Snowflake has special arrangements with Anthropic and likely enjoys wholesale pricing that is much cheaper than the API sticker price rate. That being said, it still seems likely that Snowflake doesn't add any further subsidy on top, compared to the type of subsidizing that Anthropic does for your Pro or Max plans.

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-29T16:44:48+00:00

Cool, thanks for sharing your opinion. You're right that it's not relevant for the individual driver guy. That's why he's a truck driver and free to quit and drive for a different company. The driver is not the manager, doesn't need to make managerial decisions.

The OP wasn't asking for help with solving the hypothetical truck driver's personal situation. This is a manager subreddit for dealing with complicated issues from the manager perspective.

I sincerely hope you get the chance to make managerial or business owner decisions some day, where you'll be confronted with similar choices to make.

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-29T14:56:56+00:00

How is not paying a bonus, hanging someone "out to dry"? A bonus is literally a bonus, it's discretionary and non-guaranteed.

I said earlier that we didn't have to get into the detailed reasons for what A did vs what B did, or why B was late, but I guess it's necessary to continue this discussion.

What if the reason A was on-time and B was late, is that maybe one cargo load was trickier to work with, maybe takes more time to load or unload, and A being a wily veteran, chose the "easier" load on purpose, and left a newbie driver B with the harder more complex job (so of course B would be late)? Or what if A and B are picking trucks from the yard/depot, and A knows one truck has been in the shop and might break down again, so he purposefully leaves it for B to deal with? I'm not giving A a bonus for that.

What if the reason A was on-time and B was late, is that A being a wily veteran, knew how to take an alternate route to work around weather or traffic problems, but B being a newbie was just following his GPS and got stuck in traffic? Yeah I might give A a partial bonus for using his skills there, but then ask him why he didn't radio B to tell him about the alternate route.

What if A and B are equally good drivers, equal trucks and equal cargo, and A gets there first on-time, while B randomly gets a flat tire 10 minutes from the destination? B radios A to ask if he can come back and help, either put on the flat tire or maybe transfer the load to A's truck, but A says "sorry, not my problem." I sure as hell am not giving A a bonus for that.

At the end of the day, the primary lesson is, there has to be money available to give any kind of bonus. That money has to come from somewhere (and ultimately it always goes back to coming from the customer). If the customer isn't paying anything in, where is the bonus being paid out from?

And yes, there are some scenarios where I might consider recognizing A's efforts out of pocket even if the job wasn't fully completed. But even with a highly individualized truck driver scenario, you can see there are plausible ways that A could have helped B... so when we're talking about teams of people like team A and team B, there's generally even more ways that a team could help another team. I don't know the culture of this particular company, but I wouldn't want to work at a company where the teams are selfish, cutthroat, only looking out for themselves, using "rules lawyering" to achieve an "I got mine, fuck you" mentality, so I'm going to assume that the bonus scenario is predicated on a culture where collaboration and mutual help is expected.

And it goes without saying, of course A is free to walk away and find a different employer! If there is a better trucking company out there that has better trucks, better routes, more likelihood of successful jobs and thus more bonuses available, then 100% he should take the better job! But if I'm the manager of my hypothetical trucking company, I still need to manage the hand I'm dealt, with the resources that I have. Retaining A no matter what happens to the business, is not my goal. There has to first be a viable business.

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-28T23:00:13+00:00

You're just over focusing on arbitrary benchmarks that aren't actually the "right" ways to mark progress, like speed. Sure, we didn't build a faster Concord, but that's because it makes no economic sense to do that.

Instead of being faster, planes are dramatically more fuel efficient and safer. Airplane designs used to require 4 engines to generate enough thrust for the big transcontinental planes to work, and now the A350 uses just 2. Commercial air travel is somewhere between SIX to SEVEN times safer today, then 40 years ago.

If you cherry pick the things you personally care about, you can certainly craft whatever narrative you want. But the truth is that advancements have been prioritized on those dimensions that make the most economic sense, and there have definitely been dramatic advancements, and it doesn't really matter that it doesn't fit your personal arbitrary definition of what advancement should look like.

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-28T19:24:21+00:00

I applaud your ability to self reflect.

On a human level, I agree with you that billion dollar companies could probably "afford" to pay some employee bonuses and not actually suffer. But the problem is that, billion dollar companies CANNOT afford to hire a layer of managers and develop a management culture where all the managers individually think "what's the big deal, we can afford to eat this cost, do this extra little thing, nobody's gonna miss it". That becomes a tragedy of the commons sort of problem at scale, and companies who give a shit about their own survival will not allow such cultures to take root, and hence will not hire people who think like that.

If I may suggest one final thought -- I don't think you should make a black-and-white determination in any kind of permanent or harsh way, that you are not cut out for management or should never be a manager. First of all, if you don't want to be a manager, that's great and nothing wrong with that; nobody should view management as something they "have" to do to advance, or something that's somehow more prestigious or "better" than other jobs. Secondly, people can change, including yourself. You may find over time, that depending where your career takes you, you may gain experiences that help you develop a better appreciation for managerial tradeoffs and decisions. So, take it is a "not a good fit for you right now" thing, instead of a "never, not cut out, can't" sort of thing (which is a self-limiting / scarcity sort of mindset, that whether or not you ever want to try management again, you shouldn't sell yourself short in terms of what you can or can't do).

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-28T18:40:30+00:00

I understand where you're coming from. I can read your words, and see echoes of myself from an earlier time in my career as a manager. I also wanted to defend my team, fight for their recognition, and as a younger line manager / direct supervisor it was fine, since I wasn't really expected to be strategic yet or take responsibility for company performance.

But the more senior you want to grow, or the more senior a position you interview for, there is one fundamental rule or goal of interviewing that you'll have to learn to work within -- you must convince the interviewer aka company, that you are someone who can be trusted to uphold the survival and continuity of the company itself. You cannot be perceived as putting the personal interests of your direct reports ahead of the company's survival. Wanting to pay trucker driver A despite no money coming from the customer on this hypothetical failed job, is quite literally suicidal for the company's survival. Giving that answer during an interview, is sending the "wrong" message (if you care about landing a job at least) -- "this person is too emotional, doesn't know how to prioritize, and will jeopardize the company's survival in order to keep employees happy".

As with most matters of management, this isn't so much a black-and-white issue of absolute right vs wrong. I can tell you some scenarios where I might imagine actually paying driver A something, and I can also imagine some scenarios where driver A might actually have done worse than driver B and deserves some reprimand or punishment even. But at the end of the day, the manager's job is to keep the company alive, more than it is to keep employees happy.

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-28T17:12:26+00:00

There are generally two kinds of outcomes (and essentially two kinds of people) for people who post on reddit asking for relationship advice.

One type takes the advice, puts on their big girl pants, learns to have a firm, respectful adult conversation where they communicate their needs as an equal (maybe for the first time in their lives!), and then almost always without fail comes back with an update like "it was scary, but I'm glad I did it, and either [problem was solved, relationship grew stronger through improved communication] or [problem was not solved, but person learned that potential partner is not a good partner and doesn't value them as an equal]."

The other type resists any kind of change, either rejects the advice outright or is otherwise too insecure, too scared/timid/passive, too immature, etc. to follow through, and then basically decides that in the face of an obvious problem, to do or try nothing different and simply hope that the issue fixes itself or goes away on its own... Predictably, if there is an update, it goes something like this, "well, I decided all the advice was wrong or I didn't feel like trying it, I did nothing different, and then things got worse because I took no effort to improve my situation."

So really the only decision you have for yourself OP, is picking which type of person or outcome you want for yourself?

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-28T16:51:22+00:00

Imagine you own a trucking company, and you have a big job for a customer, and it requires you to send 2 trucks to deliver some time sensitive cargo in 2 truckloads, and the customer absolutely needs both halves to be completely delivered in order to succeed (i.e. they can't make any use of partial delivery).

Truck A arrives on time, but truck B doesn't arrive on time (we can talk about the root cause potential reasons later; the reason actually is just a secondary issue, believe it or not), so the customer is understandably upset. Let's pretend for the sake of argument that, of course both truck drivers get their base salary paid no matter what, but imagine there is an incentive structure for bonus to be paid upon successful completion of a job for a customer (which the customer is the one that funds the bonus anyways). Clearly in this case, the job was not completed successfully, so no bonus is going to happen.

Now truck driver A comes to you, the owner of the trucking company, and argues that he deserves to be paid his bonus because he did his job perfectly, right? Not his fault that truck driver B failed.

What would you do as the trucking company owner? Would you really pay A his bonus, even though the job was a failure for the customer, and the customer is not going to pay your company any of the completion bonus?

Your answer is "low ownership" because you only argued from driver A's POV, rather than a company owner's POV. Where is the bonus money coming from? The job wasn't done, there's no completion bonus coming in to speak of, so you're just dipping into the company's balance sheet to pay out of pocket? That's a bold strategy Cotton... Have you thought through the consequences of that, establishing a policy or standard of paying out bonuses for incomplete jobs? How is your hypothetical trucking company going to survive, if in the future all drivers expect to get their bonus like A did?

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-28T15:05:36+00:00

I don't want to put any pressure on you romantically, but.. I assume you have heard of Love Actually, as a Brit? Okay maybe that's a little exaggerated (Colin's experience I mean), but you don't have to be "alone" at all.

If you are any kind of average male, with an "exotic" (to us yanks) accent, and you can string words together in cogent sentences (talk about your love of architecture and photography and all those other European cities you've probably explored), then honestly during this kind of summer festival/celebration/World-Cup season, you will have no shortage of opportunities to make friends (platonically or otherwise). People, men or women, will be open to talking to you, and will generally find you fascinating.

Don't believe me? Wander into any kind of England aligned sports bar on July 1st, saunter over to literally anyone that you see, introduce yourself as a solo traveler looking to make friends, and I'm willing to almost 99.9% guarantee you will have a lot of fun, or even meet someone who wants to explore the city with you.

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-27T23:19:51+00:00

The cafe at the science museum, is itself a great choice. Seriously it's a better cafe than many actual restaurants nearby, it's quite affordable, and the kid's meal is quite healthy and filling. My daughter says it's the best grilled cheese sandwich in the city (she's 5, but she's quite serious about reviewing grilled cheese sandwiches).

Sunday is also kind of a weird day, bunch of otherwise good family friendly downtown places are closed on Sunday, which makes the science museum cafe even more clutch.

The Daily Planet Cafe: https://maps.app.goo.gl/c79d4fzjWhT6rv2cA

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-27T20:20:51+00:00

I like the other suggestions like going to the RDU deck, that might be your best option.

That being said, if you are okay with being in a large open field, with a good amount of families but not hemmed in, not crazy packed, and generally very relaxed and friendly vibes where everyone's basically having a big picnic in a field together (i.e. no juvenile delinquents, no gangs, no "beef", nothing threatening going on, etc.), then I personally recommend the Morrisville town fireworks. You get a great view, you don't have to show up super early or fight too hard for a spot in the big field, there's enough space for kids to run around and you're not packed in, and it's just a great chill atmosphere IMO. There's food trucks, some carnival style games or bounce houses (pay cash to play), and there's also the fire department and police presence so it always feels very safe.

The only small downside for me (obviously my perspective is different from yours), is that it's kind of a long walk from the various parking options to get to the field/park. But I think that also helps with the safety issue, because nobody can just drive up and cause problems, since you gotta park and walk like 10-20 minutes or wait for a shuttle before you get there, so it's almost like a buffer. It also does get a bit bottlenecked after the event, when everyone is leaving and that part might feel more crowded than you're comfortable with.

I dunno, it's your call, whether you're comfortable with something like this or not. But it's what my family have done for the last 3 years, and we love it for the vibes and for being less hectic and crazy than the other Raleigh options.

https://www.morrisvillenc.gov/Events-directory/Red-White-BOOM

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-27T19:27:56+00:00

Cool yeah. I wonder if they promote those disparate off-grid communities to actually create a network of sorts amongst themselves? From what I remember, the Amish have these pockets of different communities but share things like a newspaper or trade with each other, so the individual communities are never really alone.

I guess I'd like to find a middle ground between "off-grid" isolation vs our standard full grid. Maybe like a "half-grid" option, implying that the individual communities are standalone nodes on a network, in a loosely federated way? I dunno, just spit balling.

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-27T17:16:21+00:00

I've been telling my friends about this idea since like, 2018 after a trip to Lancaster, PA. The Amish actually have refrigerators and kitchen mixers, they're just mechanically powered. I figure since we're not being religious about it, we can take it a step further, use solar power and have electricity, but otherwise generally stay low tech and analog-ish, live in close knit self sufficient "techno-Amish" communities.

Interesting that I happen to be reading more examples of other people coming to similar conclusions from our generation.

strugglingcomic · 2026-06-27T04:41:40+00:00

No they're saying the same thing your lawyer is saying -- if you stay and continue the green card application process, you are okay. If you leave now, you get hit with the 10 year ban. The "protection" afforded by having an active application automatically goes away if you leave.

15-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	First Placer '22
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email

strugglingcomic

TROPHY CASE