wildncrazyguy138

Not going to go into details due to confidentiality, but I recently was involved in an initiative to utilize AI to scan education databases and identify students who may be at risk of dropping out, with the goal of having an early safety net for these folks. And also raising the schools retention rates, thus better outcomes overall.

So yes, AI can absolutely be used for good.

I disagree with your having kids sentiment. I didn’t find the right woman until I was 33 and didn’t have kids til 39. I worked hard, got promoted and accumulated wealth before then. I started from nearly nothing. Now, my kid (hopefully) won’t have to struggle as much as I did.

And I chase that kid for 30 minutes until she gets worn out.

…

My advice, in your 20s: travel, make friends, make mistakes.

Get a job that has growth potential or become a rockstar in a small pond.

Find some hobbies, work out. Even better, find a hobby that also is a workout. Sock away 5% of your income towards retirement if you can handle it. Volunteer. Habits are formative in your 20s, you’ll find them easier to maintain (or avoid) in your 40s.

Don’t spend all of your time chasing tail or trying to find a mate. That’s a trap. instead, open yourself up to experiences, events and places where those things can naturally happen. And make memories along the way so you have fun things to share with that person when you do find them.

Get out of your comfort zone, get off of your comfort phone. Read a bit, learn to weld or sculpt or play an instrument. Take a dancing class, even if you go alone, there are usually people around to partner up.

Learn 5 or 10 jokes. Don’t be embarrassed to tell them often. Anyone from politicians to public speakers to hey, even comedians, will tell the same jokes over and over and over.

Get an Education, even if it’s a community college or a few professional certifications. It will demonstrate that you can learn. Absorb as much as you can while you’re young, because it’s true, learning does get harder as you age.

Take a course or two in psychology. Avoid people who bring you down, find people who build you up but are honest enough to keep you grounded when you need it.

Don’t live for anyone else, live for you. That isn’t to say be selfish, you’ll need people in your corner. But know that, no one else can experience how can experience. No one else lives through your eyes; no one else loves through your heart; no one else dreams how you dream. We have so few precious years on this tiny rock, so make them tell the story of you.

I visited Panama for an agricultural trip about a decade ago where we focused on coffee agriculture and production. Coincidentally, there are some coffees that blend in beans or peanuts to mellow the flavor. This is usually done for cheaper coffees that use robusto beans instead of arabica. It’s also to relieve some of the acrid taste that can develop during the drying out process if the beans are dried around animal droppings.

If you’re interested in what a mellowed coffee would taste like, I think chock full of nuts is a brand you can try in the states.

Edit: ok so I did some more research and it appears that chock full o nuts likely no longer does this, they just have typical coffee nowadays. I’ll leave it to you other internet sleuths to find a brand that does.

I’d donate a few dollars a month. Newgrounds is a great content creation space. I still play games there from time to time. The Mario 63 game is off the wall. Dead Estate is also a fantastic retro style shooter like the ones I remember from my childhood. I think places like this need to survive.

Looks like a country that could use some Freedom™.

Starting a daily productivity log. It started as a google form but has morphed into a larger spreadsheet. It contains:

• Something I completed today
• something I worked on today
• one thing I couldn’t do and why
• a new idea I had today
• something I did for physical activity
• something I learned today

Each row is a day. It also includes a section for bucket list and yearly goals and whether I achieved them.

I don’t fill it out every day and I don’t fill out every field each day either, but I do try to not get more than 10 days behind.

It gives me a sense of purpose. It helps me remember what I’ve done, so days don’t just slip through my fingers. It also, I think, shows how I’ve grown a bit as a person.

It became really special when I was able to bring it out during my wedding vows. I wrote down on paper many of the things my SO and I did on our adventures and got to share them with our friends and family.

I have a tab for each of the last 15 years.

Yep, trimming down the alcohol certainly helps as well. Also helps keep the beetus at bay.

There are some alternatives to cheese that are pretty good. I’m an omnivore but my wife has convinced me that there are some good vegetarian options out there. Might be worth exploring if the low-fat cheese isn’t palatable.

• Cashew cream on enchiladas is fantastic
• the fake shredded cheese made out of almond isn’t so bad. We use it on salads, chili, etc. It’s expensive though.
• TVP gives things that umami flavor, good in chili, but it more so acts like ground beef. Don’t put too much in.
• Blended tofu with nutritional yeast acts as a very good ricotta substitute (coincidentally tofu also makes for a very good chocolate pie)

With this, and trimming down my meat consumption to just a few times a week, as well as a little exercise, I’ve kept my LDL numbers below my late 20s highs, which were borderline - I’m nearing two decades older now.

A lot of us migrated months ago when the writing was on the wall.

Kbin became my home when I decided to move to a smaller foreign county, and I’m glad it was, because the land of Mastodon was a bit too distant for me. When the Kbin house was burning down, fortunately the next door neighbor, Fedia, was there to take me in and make things feel familiar.

I suppose that’s the whole advantage of the Fediverse. One head of the hydra may get chopped down, but many others can spring out from it.

Don’t forget to support your admins y’all.

I think it’s that PayPal was one of the firsts to provide a method for collecting credit card transactions electronically.

Before PayPal, you’d often have to visit a website, then call the phone number for the seller to collect payment.

eBay needed paypal because their sellers were often not businesses, just people yardsaling stuff online.

Coincidentally, I interned at a PayPal competitor in 1998 that went under during the bust. We had an electronic interface through MS access, but it was a still a human entering in the CC number into one of those dial pads on our side and then confirming the transaction. I’m sure with all of the concerns around security nowadays that you can understand why that was a terrible long term business model.

An offline friend and I have this hypothesis that usually, the further left or the further right one becomes, the more closed minded and reactionary they become when presented with an opposing idea.

It’s difficult to live in the grey and to keep an open mind. I think this has become so much harder in the era of social media.

That said, there are absolutely some core beliefs of mine that I would be highly resistant to ever budge on, so maybe you’re encountering some of those folks on theirs.

Shrug it off. Keep going. Be you.

I mean, I think there’s a time and a place for crying and it’s not usually in public, but if you are among a support network, then by all means.

That said, after a devastating breakup for me, I have cried in public, at a party, among strangers, and it sucked.

What I would like to see is just more camaraderie in general. Not bro culture per se, just more, social events. Kinda like the beer halls of yesteryear in Germany or the Shriners clubs. I feel like a lot of these rotaries, lions, etc, just have kind of fallen away in most towns, particularly for young people, and I really think we are losing a piece of our community because of it.

Meetups used to fill some of that gap for me, but it’s been way too long (and two moves) since I’ve been to one. And I’m not the type to go to church (believe me, I tried - the whole women lesser than men thing around here really turned me off).

I’m one of those weirdos, 50/50 introvert extrovert. And now with a family, it’s tougher than ever.

Buddy lightly backed into my Suzuki a month or two prior, slightly bent it. I was warned by my bike guy that one day it’d likely just give, it’s apparently a thing.

Now you’re warned too.

That seriously sucks, I know no amount of money will get you back to whole, but I hope you were able to at least get some kind of compensation from that human wrecking ball.

Usual one first: back in 2010 a friend and I rented a car from NC to NJ last minute to catch another buddy’s wedding. Rental agency gave me an odd look when I declined the insurance and I got one of those chilling epiphanies where something seemed wrong. Anyway, we’re coming back from NJ going 80 on the freeway in middle of nowhere Virginia and my friend was driving, me in the passenger seat. Guardrails on both sides of the road in a forest. 5 pointer comes casually walking into our lane from the one on the right. My friend saw it too late. Honestly a good thing, he only had enough reaction time to jostle the steering wheel slightly to the left, not even brake. We dodged that bucker by inches. Car insurance be damned, it would have probably ended me.

More bizarre ones:

• The handlebar on my motorcycle broke off, and I went down quick on a freshly plowed road, 18 wheeler behind me was barely able to stop in time. He helped me up and then chucked my bike into a snowbank like it was nothing.
• Saw a semi get blown over by a gust of wind on 81 in western VA
• about 2 months ago I saw an entire desk fly off of the back of a junkers trailer on I-40 just west of Asheville. I thought for sure it was gonna hit the car in front of me but the desk did this brilliant upright spin off into the shoulder. The lady driving the junker was none the wiser. Secure your loads y’all.
• not a freeway, but I was turning left from this mountain backroad as a semi turned right onto the road I was on. The shoulder on that side had a drop off and the guy misjudged the turn. I got to see the whole cab lift into the air right beside me in my peripheral, freaked me the fuck out and I barreled to the right shoulder quick. When all was done and it seemed safe enough, I got out and checked on the guys then called highway patrol. The driver and his buddy were a bit in shock from the whole situation but otherwise OK.

Tell me they were at least still going 15 miles over the speed limit.

True that, I just took a look at the FAQ and it still references kbin.

Question, how do we donate to this project?

I literally thought it was for militant, because that’s how they come off over there if you’re not 100% in lockstep with them.

Like they were fighting the man or something.

Beer And now that some good varieties are available…NA beers Hop water is super refreshing, we’re living in a renaissance y’all.

My job.