Just a reminder, these corporations and not making razor thin margins. They can afford to pay better wages.

Just count the noodles.

I’m no expert. I can only recommend what I’ve learned from the dog trainer I hired and my personal experience with a slightly “Nervous Nelly”. Find a treat that your dog loves and give it to her when the scary noise happens. Like someone else said, you don’t want to reward the fright response, but you do want to build a more positive association with noise. You don’t have to start outside. You can do this at home. Get something like a gun-noise app on your phone. Turn the volume down to 1%. Trigger the noise, feed her a treat. Slowly build the volume and start randomizing it so she isn’t expecting it.

Try to catch moments at home where she’s inside, but the landscaping equipment is running. Loud noise = treat. You want her to learn that the loud noise isn’t a bad thing. She’s possibly scared of kitchen noises as well because kitchens are loud. Pots and pans banging around, boiling, fans whirring, etc.

My dog isn’t food motivated generally, but string cheese and chicken will get her to do anything I ask. What kinds of treats are you using? Sometimes a scared dog isn’t going to be interested in food. If someone was actively breaking into my house and you offered me a cookie, I’d probably refuse the cookie. I think the key is to try and find ways to train in isolated environments that don’t cause her to go full flight or fight.

My dog used to be very scared of a vent outside in the city I adopted her in. She was afraid of the loud whirring noise. I loved the vent because it blew out hot air, which I loved in the -20F weather. I wanted her to not avoid it because it meant we both lost the heat opportunity lol So I always carried a treat bag on me and I fed her when we passed it. That’s all I did. As we approached/passed it, I gave her a treat and said “good girl”. By the 2nd week (of doing this daily), she was walking past it without even noticing. She even started to sniff it. I did the same thing with poles (she hates certain random poles. In a line? They’re fine. Alone? We groan.). I reward her if she investigates something that seems to make her nervous.

Another couple of pro tips, get a jar and fill it with 1/3 kibble, 1/3 random treats, 1/3 the best treat you can find (that’s shelf stable). Mix it all up. Put it on your coffee table or somewhere where she can’t reach it, but you can easily grab it. When she hears a loud noise in the house, try to immediately go “treat!” or some command. Then you can quickly grab the jar and slowly feed 1-20 pieces depending on your dog’s weight, treat size, etc. The slower the feed, the better. You only want to occasionally hand out many pieces at the same time. The key is being able to respond quickly. They say associations have something like ~10 seconds before they stop being effective. So, if you want to associate a noise with something positive, you have to be quick.

The only negative of this approach is - if you’re super successful - she might start looking at you for treats when a loud noise goes off. But hopefully that means her mind isn’t focused on the fear aspect anymore. And maybe someday you can redirect her to some other behavior like “place” or “crate” when she hears the noise. Somewhere that’s safe and comfortable for her to relax.

Again, this is just what my trainer recommended. Obviously there are tons of caveats. Maybe your dog just isn’t going to acclimate and you shouldn’t try this forever. Try maybe training to her to enjoy those head wraps that reduce noise (I picked a random website to illustrate the concept. this is not an endorsement). Maybe your dog just needs to go somewhere else sometimes to unwind (e.g., doggy daycare can sometimes be a nice reprieve for some dogs. It can help them relax and get some energy out playing with other dogs). But in my experience, my “Nervous Nelly” tends to be capable of confidence if I give her treats at the right time/place when she’s about to be scared by something.

The very fact that sexual abuse of a minor is being conflated with immigration shows how far we’ve fallen. This document from the National Institute of Justice shows that the data indicates illegal immigrants have a much lower crime rate than citizens. The issue isn’t that they are immigrants, it’s that they’re criminals. They were presumably committing similar crimes (or at least capable of doing so in Mexico). I’m not any happier knowing that a pedophile is now in Mexico/El Salvador. I want justice and reform. We should always strive for justice and reform. These illegal immigrants aren’t the only ones committing these crimes. As I said earlier: largely, it’s legal citizens committing these crimes. We need to create a system of justice and reform. We need to be able to handle citizens and illegal immigrants.

Obviously this administration would prefer to take every criminal and push them outside of our borders. Like I said, I don’t care if a crime is committed in or out of my borders. I want justice and reform. I want to live in a world where crimes like this are basically non-existent. And I want to live in a world where people with these issues don’t become repeat offenders.

Conflating immigration with these types of crimes is just making it harder for us to address the real issues with our justice and reformation system (lack thereof). Not to mention, we are basically just wasting money and time focusing on illegal immigrant crime when the bigger issue is crime being committed by citizens. It’s like we cut off our arm, but as the arm fell to the ground one of the fingernails broke. So, this administration is spending all of its efforts on fixing the broken fingernail - and failing to patch the profuse loss of blood coming from its shoulder.

Need I say more?

Ex cheated on me. She tried to get me back. I said no. She ended up engaged to the guy she cheated on me with. Then she went full on bridezilla and he broke it off with her.

Print what? I skimmed the article and I’m confused. Can you print an 3D Eiffel tower on a piece of paper? Or is it more like you’re printing things with a small emboss/raised edge? I didn’t even realize that was something people wanted to do. Maybe for custom tiling?

Personally, it’s not worth it. Giving up your DNA can be used against you. People can perform “social proof” phishing attacks on you by claiming sibling relationships. In the USA, law enforcement can use ancestry.com data to aid them in an investigation. So, if you leave some DNA at a crime scene (guilty or not) you might get caught up in the investigation.

You can also get caught up in the information breaches that seem inevitable with these things.

Plus: Ancestry.com is not necessarily as accurate as it is purportedly advertised. DNA doesn’t have magic labels that tell us what it represents or where it came from. The only way to associate certain aspects of DNA with a particular gene, region, etc. is by comparing it to large sample sizes of people that exhibit the features you’re seeking out. So, basically lets say you want to know if you come from Scotland. The way they would accomplish that is they would collect DNA from tons of people who - at least anecdotally - claim they are from Scotland. They then use that as a baseline for “Scottish DNA”. When you submit your DNA sample, they look for markers that are unique to those people who claimed they were from Scotland. The less DNA they have from a particular race/region, the less accurate they can be. I’m not saying Ancestry.com is lying. Their methodology makes sense and across broad strokes will give you a reasonably accurate genealogy. They are also capable of validating siblings/cousins thanks to DNA matching. But it’s only as good as the data they have. The more data they have, the more accurate it will be. But that’s probably not public information and would be impossible to tell without access to their PII data. They might have 0% of data from people in Kazakhstan or Laos or Papua New Guinea. So, it’s possible you have ancestry in places they currently can’t know about.

It’s just not worth it because it opens you up to a lot of risk and the reward is dubious information about your family history. They might know where you’re from, but they can’t give you a 100% ancestral lineage. You might discover lost siblings, cousins, etc. but it’s not really that uncommon (so who cares?)

Lastly, the cost is just silly. They make you pay so they can have access to your most personal data? That’s wild to me. They should pay you.

Just my 2 cents though.

My wife has slowly absorbed all of my cords. But it’s because I turned her into a gamer so it’s overall a win for me.

Here comes the sun…

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

I hate how much effort is put into property damage but when my house was broken into or when my friends truck was stolen, the police did nothing.

It’s also disturbing how hard it is to be anonymous. Crime or not, it gives me the creeps that anyone could probably track me down if they wanted.

I’m disturbed by how accurate this is.

The front fell off

What does VISA sponsorship require? Maybe you could setup a farm/agrarian business and offer VISA sponsorship for migrants. As an American, I’d consider becoming a farmer with the opportunity to become an EU citizen lol probably not easy to do for a reason though.

I feel like solar farming was a good suggestion from someone else. Maybe plant some trees if you’re not keen on making it a farm. If you can get it zoned, you might be able to get investment for residential? Though public transportation is lacking, maybe you could be the start of a small apartment complex or something like that. Idk much about this kind of thing.

I’m afraid the world will end and I’ll be a dick without my SSRIs or coffee

The only thing I want AI (on my phone) to do is limit my notifications and make calendar events for me. I don’t want to ask questions. I don’t want to start conversations.

I want to open my phone and have 1 summary notification of things I received and things to do. I want the spammy ones to just be auto filtered because I never click on them.

I’d also love if I could choose when to manage all of these notifications with my AI assistant. The only back and forth I’d like is around scheduling if I need to make changes.