Well… Duh?

Even if I look at my own family… My sister has loads of health issues and is financially unstable, so she has decided to be a dog mom instead. My brother is in a situation where he will likely never own a home and will have to rent his whole life, so that’s a no for him as well even though I know he’d like kids. I’m the lucky sibling that has stable enough work that I could buy a house. But it’s a real fixer upper that I’ve spent 3 years remodeling and even when it’s done, I’ll be in my mid 30s by the time I have kids because I didn’t want to have kids in an unstable environment. Most of my friends will not have kids for similar reasons with a few exceptions and those usually involve situations where they had financial help from parents or married someone 10 years older than themself who was in a more stable position. So uh… Yeah that seems to be the state of things at the moment.

The only real effects that I know of are light related. If you’re trying to sleep, making it as dark as possible is best. So using an eye cover or blackout curtains can help. But when you want to wake up, sunlight helps us wake up easier. This can be tricky in the winter when the sun rises later and doesn’t peek into your window until after you’ve already had to wake up. I think there are some phone alarms that will slowly add a warm light to the room to help with this, but I couldn’t say if they actually work or not. Hope this helps.

Bruh I hate to break it to you, but they already have to do that. I took this photo on the 66th floor of the Sears tower this last summer. Note that the spider is on the outside of the window.

I’ve seen those and I usually try to report them. Not that it matters. By the time I see it, it says 832836268228847 applicants :/

I’m not your mate, bro!

I’m not your friend, guy!

I’m not your buddy, pal!

There was a time when I was a kid that my parents were struggling with money. It was an ongoing struggle that lasted more than a decade and they still haven’t fully recovered from to this day. Anyway, I was aware of their struggles and as soon as I was old enough at 16, I went and got a job. I made less than minimum wage and my hours were severely limited due to state laws about employment under the age of 18. So I was still going to school and making barely anything, but whatever I didn’t use, I put away in the bank. Skip ahead to when I’m 18 and I’ve saved a few thousand dollars. My parents had a few particularly rough months and didn’t know how they would pay the mortgage that month, so my mom asked me if they could borrow some. I still remember how embarrassed my mom looked while asking me and I remember thinking that I didn’t know if I would ever get that money back. But I agreed. It was a bit of an emotional ordeal, but they did pay me back eventually and my parents still have their house. So all in all it worked out for the best.

Too expensive and unhealthy. I have 1 cereal that I like to enjoy every now and then, but it’s now reached $9 for a small box. It’s just not worth it anymore. These days at the grocery store I buy what I actually need and then check the stuff I don’t need to see if there’s a sale. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay $8 for a single bag of chips/cookies/cereal etc.

This is precisely why I don’t actively seek promotions. Not only are there very few paths for someone to move up with my skill set, but if I do, I won’t be doing what I enjoy doing anymore. I just want to find the medium where I can make enough to live off of and also just do my work most of the time.

For me it was the inspiration I felt from technological improvements. I grew up in a house where my father was a network engineer and would constantly have computers opened up he was tinkering with. And all through the 90s I saw more and more improvements that made me feel like the future would be even more amazing! This persisted well into the 2000s with the coming of social media and small commercial devices like MP3 players, cell phones, etc. It just seemed like everything was improving and that if a company stopped improving, another company would come along and give the people what they want! But now I live in a world where all of the things that used to excite me have betrayed me and anything new I am extremely skeptical of. I see all kinds of new and interesting technological improvements come along and while they seem like excellent ideas that would improve my life, I also see the many ways in which they would exploit me, my privacy, and my money. I would love to have a camera doorbell in which I can see who is at the door and talk to them while I’m not at home, but those devices are horribly insecure and you have to subscribe to their services. I just can’t do it and I wish we could go back to the days in which you could just buy a product that might improve in a few years and you didn’t need to worry about it watching you or costing money every month. Instead you could just be excited about your little gadget and dream about what the next version would be like.

Temba, his arms swol.

Ah yes, I love my coffee flavor coffee with a shot of espresso.

I don’t drink instant as my daily coffee, but I do use it for baking and cocktails. When you want coffee flavor in something without the grainy texture of coffee grinds, instant coffee is the best solution because it dissolves entirely. It’s great for ice cream, frosting, coffee cake, coffee syrup, or anything else of the sort. I’ve also found that the quality of instant coffee has improved significantly over the years, so it does actually make a pretty decent cup of coffee in a pinch.

I don’t understand people that tie up their dogs like this. They’re just asking for the dog to be taken. And I don’t know about you, but I assume people who steal dogs don’t steal them to re-home them. So why do people do this? Don’t you love your dog? Wouldn’t you want to prevent this entirely preventable situation if you love them? Of course, this particular photo has a whole other element of absent mindedness, so I guess they’re just plain stupid ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’ll tell you why we’ve made it here. For as long as I’ve been a designer, the website has served as the face of companies and therefore subject to direct criticism from the higher ups. Too many times would my team create something wonderful that would meet all our needs and test well only to have the President chime in and say he wants ticker tape in the hero… for no particular reason. And also can we add this and add that and blah blah blah ok now it’s a pile of garbage that’s crammed full of stuff you don’t need and is confusing to use. Skip ahead to today where graphic designers have taken over the world and made everyone forcefully subject to extreme minimalism. Who’s laughing now!?! Maniacally laughs

I second this. There are lots of elements on a website that seem redundant or self explanatory today now that we’ve had 30 years of websites. But you simply can’t assume this because everyone has a different amount of website navigation experience. Older people need everything to be labeled clearly and plainly and younger people are more familiar with app environments and might be inclined to look in unusual places for what they need. God forbid you take away the “home” link in the navigation “because everyone knows the logo links to the homepage anyway”. No they do not. One of the best books on the subject is “Don’t make me think” by Steve Krug and they have loads of excellent examples of why you can’t just assume things like this.

I agree. I’ve never been in management but I also have absolutely no desire to be a manager. Any place you work, they emphasize opportunities to move up in the company and they like to talk about a career path for you. Well what if I’d rather just develop more skills in the field I have and become even better at it for reasonable pay? But unfortunately it’s bad to say you don’t want to move up in a company. I’m not sure why though, maybe it says I’m lazy or stagnant or something? I would just rather focus my development on what I’m good at and become even better at that thing. But fuck me, right?

Tricks? I just enjoy them. But I think the most important part of making sure you’re eating enough of anything in a healthy and varied diet is to meal plan. I grocery shop to accommodate most everything I need for the week with some gaps here and there for leftovers and eating out. I usually eat Greek yogurt with fresh berries, walnuts, granola, and chia seeds for lunch. So I’ll stock a big tub of yogurt and a couple packs of whatever berries look good that week. Sometimes I’ll get tired of yogurt, so I’ll eat some eggs or leftovers. Dinner is where most of the planning lies. I stock a few regular items that I always know I can make different meals from in a pinch and then I plan maybe 1 or 2 meals that require more planning and non-regular grocery items. So for regular items, I like to keep chicken pre-processed and prepared in the freezer, potatoes, rice, onions, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, zucchini, and lettuce. Those items plus whatever I have in the way of canned goods can make a lot of different meals such as cream of mushroom chicken, chicken sandwiches, chicken stir-fry, etc. For the in-depth meals I either plan to pick up what I need to make something that week, or I make a workhorse meal that makes a ton of food that I can process or freeze for use later to make quick easy meals. Some examples of this include pot pie filling, pesto, or raw falafel. All of these take at least an hour usually more to prepare a massive batch. But now that it’s done, I have many many meals that I can eat just from thawing out a portion from the freezer. So there you have it. My only tricks are that I enjoy fruits and veggies and that I’m very well versed in meal planning. To be fair, meal planning is not easy and it is definitely a skill that I think everyone should learn to develop. But once you do, you won’t need to worry about if you’re getting enough of the foods you need because it’s all part of the (meal) plan.