Libb

Thx once again. Great video, well worth listening to.

thx, a lot! I will watch it asap :)

trackballs, the arguably superior input method.

As a mouse user, I vehemently contest that unfounded affirmation!

That being said, you have already managed to make me pull out of its drawer my old trackball and put a fresh battery in it. So, who knows? Maybe trackballs are not all worthless plastic gimmicks? Joined! :p

As a student, I would not have offered 100$ + chocolate + flowers to anyone. I was too broke :)

First, I would check with her brother if it's expected you should make her a gift? I mean, in today's society, getting too close to a teenager, even for her birthday or as a way to be polite, may be very ill-understood.

Then, probably I would have written them a nice personalized note, with a little silly sketch or something, along with some flowers. Say an encouraging note for a young girl/woman. Or maybe I would have offered her a book. To write the note or pick the book, I would have needed to know the girl a little more (worst case, ask her brother). By default, without any specific info, I would pick a nice poetry anthology, the nicest edition I can afford so the person would see it's no just some random shit I have picked up on my way to her party (and would not discard it without even looking at it).

Poetry can be an amazing gift... provided you can get the person to open the book and start reading the poems with interest (appetite), which is not a given with those younger generations. It may help if you already noticed a poem you think she might enjoy more in that book and decided to put a (nice) bookmark at the corresponding page?

Yeah, I'm that old that I like to offer books (including poetry) to people... as well as to myself ;)

Sorry I don't click YT, unless it's really worth it. What is the video about?

All those ungrateful tourists that can't stand the idea of getting mistakenly deported into a High Security Salvadoran prison and then being left to rot there because 'yeah, it's kinda annoying but we can't get him back, you know'.

If I were the all-mighty orange dude, I would put a 146% tax on every single tourist that is refusing to come spend their money in the USA! They're nothing but traitors! They should pay! And maybe I would invade their country, to show the world who's the boss.

If I was to summarize it (which I would normally not do) I would say empathy is the ability to smile when witnessing some random person being happy, and to cry when seeing some random person crying.

It's being able to feel emotions without any, personal or physical, bounds between those two persons that may not even know each other. It's recognizing oneself in that other, a stranger, despite all the differences. Something along that line.

Glad to know. Like I said, it's a complex question but a very interesting one. Do not hesitate, if you want to discuss it further. I don't know about you, but I've always considered it a huge boost, I was about to write 'a blessing' but that would certainly not have been a smart choice of words ;), the ability to have articulated discussions about even the most... delicate questions.

I appreciate the thoughtful response. My main takeaway, and what i wanted to make clear: the opinions your parents inbued to you were just that, opinions.

I would not have considered it like that back then, and maybe I would not even today but I completely understand your point of view. And that's true. There is certainly a huge difference between the way I was raised by my parents, no matter the other issues, and the way I would have been raised in believing in... something so out of of reach and unquestionable I should fear and bow to.

Still, they were highly destructive in their own way and, my live getting closer to its end than to its beginning I still have not managed to overcome a few of the damages... without any god involved in the process of damaging those things in me. That's what I think is key: it's too easy to think that by not preaching some religion/faith or another one is a better person. That's not as simple.

I hope that clears up some of my first comment.

It does. Thx a lot for taking the time.

This is the thing I was praising. I wanted to point out how much of a benefit that is to you, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

Agreed and make no mistake: I fully realize that (it's part of the education I mentioned I received) and for that I'm deeply grateful to them. But my gratitude will end there. For all the rest, I'd rather express no feelings of any kind at all as they would uselessly and mostly be negative. That would serve no purpose.

I hope you’re having a great weekend, and I’d be happy to chat in dms if you wanted to discuss more.

The same to you. It sure feels great to have a quality exchange. It's not my habit to reach out (mostly because I'm shy), but don't hesitate to reach out if you ever want to discuss anything further.

Jacob's Ladder (1990)

Doesn't look like it but no single other film shattered me as much as this one when I first saw it, well, in the 90s.

It seems like a subtle thing on the surface, but it’s not.

Indeed, it's not. So many large US corps have been instantly shifting their so-called support like good little soldiers...

The kicker? I need this job.

Unless one is Musk or one of his close friends, don't we all need money?

It's up to you to decide what to do. I mean, I know what I would do but I also know I'm not in your shoes and that would not be fair for me to push you one way or the other.

What I can say is that you have all my sympathy. That new US president has created some real mess. I imagine most US citizens won't be aware of that but that US president also reached out to those foreign non-US owned private corps (like, here in France) that are doing business with the US gov telling them they should stop their local, non-US inclusive policy if they wanted to keep doing business with the US gov. That's the new version of the 'Land of the free as long as you agree with the boss', I suppose?

I saw that article about illiterate college kids too. Worrying.

Indeed. We have the same issues here in France, btw. It's an absolute failure of our educational system (and of too many parents persisting in wanting that failure to be used) that will cost dear to all those kids, and then will cost to the society as a whole: that's our future 'elite' that's being uneducated.