I’m starting to think maybe the username isn’t just a username, and the account is literally for a wall panel to express its views.

Remember when Obama wearing a tan suit was enough to keep the right frothing at the mouth for weeks?

It wasn’t until I saw this pic that I realized that a platypus and a tardigrade look alike.

Same picks for the same reasons.

… although I’m less proud to admit that I read it as “Known Father” the first time, didn’t catch it until I came to the comments, and he still didn’t make the top 2.

I just kinda figured that “Known Father” meant he was always talking about his kids and experiences with parenthood, and that was enough to eliminate him.

It shouldn’t be concerning, it should be enlightening.

But it won’t be. Not for the party leadership.

Over the past 40 years they’ve gone from being the champion of blue collar and union workers nationwide, and being able to take those votes for granted…to having the rust belt become the biggest swing region in the country (which their opponent swept this month). Did they take this as a wake up call and do more for the blue collar voters to win their loyalty back?

Nah, they just blame them and talk down to them, and tell them they’re too stupid to know what’s best for them.

In that same time frame, they were seen as abandoning the blue collar worker to court the minority vote, talking their efforts at helping factory workers and turning them toward helping minorities in race and gender. While they were actually doing this they did indeed appear to gain that loyalty at the ballot box. Of course once they had it, they felt no need to keep up the good work for these people and have slowly become a party who does nothing for anyone, and runs on a platform of essentially admitting they do nothing, but that their inaction is better than the other side, so they should still be owed votes.

Once again, this isn’t working out for them, and once again, rather than take it as a rejection of what they’re doing, no…it’s the voters who are wrong.

I despise the GOP as much as any reasonable person, and I firmly believe that many of their voters won’t like what they voted for once they start to get it…but there’s no denying that the GOP has a message, goals, and demonstrable progress toward them. And to counter that…the Democrats have…“I think things are good and I wouldn’t change anything. You should vote for me because I’m not MAGA aligned, and if you don’t, it’s your fault not mine.”

Arrogance is off-putting, and it appears it’s going to take at least a half century for the Democrats to figure that out.

I feel like this is very situation dependent.

That may be the case in your company or industry, but not everywhere.

In my experience there’s been a big difference between a general resume I’m uploading to a place like a LinkedIn or Indeed (and letting the recruiters come to me), using that uploaded resume to apply to job postings on that site, and sending resume/application to specific companies on their site.

For the first one, hell no, no cover letter. How would that even work? No cover letter is better than a generic one.

For applying for specific postings on these sites? For me it depends on just how good the opportunity is. If I feel like there’s some sort of special connection that makes me tailor made for the role, the money is great, it’s doing really interesting work, or a company I really want to work for? Absolutely I’ll include a cover letter. I’m just looking to get out of a shit job, or the role doesn’t really move the needle, but I think it might be a good fit? Nah, just hit that quick apply button and move on.

But if I’m reaching out to a company directly?

Cover letter every time (unless they specifically say not to). If they don’t want it, they won’t read it, but I’ve never felt like it hurt my chances, and in a few interviews, they’ve specifically mentioned something about it.

I mean, it’s all very subjective, so “too much” for you seems to be what is a good amount for everyone else…but realistically, I don’t think this is a legitimate complaint since you still need to be able to make all these adjustments anyway… it’s just a matter of the way the adjustments are being made.

All a touch screen changes is that it can play host to multiple functions depending on context…but it loses much of the visual recognition and almost all the tactile feedback of a physical control.

And while vehicles keep getting more and more complex for sure, I feel like when I’m riding in a more touchscreen heavy vehicle, that screen is displaying the same static set of controls 99% of the time…and at that point, the flexibility it offers is largely irrelevant, and the tradeoffs mean giving up a lot to get very little in exchange.

They get really spicy!

Disagree.

Personally, I feel the problem is absolutely touchscreens.

I’ve only got five senses, and taste and smell aren’t helpful in a driving situation.

Of the 3 left, sight is the most important for the most important task: driving.

For other tasks, sound is best used to alert or remind about something, and is frequently diminished as a driving aid by music.

That leaves touch and sight for all remaining tasks.

Touchscreens are, despite the name, effectively 100% reliant on sight, since there’s no real tactile feedback to enable the user to make eyes-free adjustments. To use a touchscreen, you have to take your eyes off the road to see what the screen says and make your selections.

While some are better than others, I also feel like touchscreens are still embarrassingly and frustratingly prone to errors, missed touches, and generally not doing the things the user intended, requiring even more eyes off the road to undo whatever actually happened, get the interface back to the place you want it, and try again, hoping that this time it’ll work.

My mid-teens vehicle has a mix of a medium sized touch screen for the entertainment unit but physical controls for climate, driving, and a few of the entertainment adjustments, and while I was all about the advanced new touchscreen when I bought it, I find it’s my least favorite part of the controls this far along in ownership.

Agreed 100%.

If they did this, they would easily carry states with high populations of blue collar and union laborers. Stop paying lip service and actually do it.

States that have had major manufacturing centers in the late 20th century like the Rust Belt.

Like…Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

The Democratic party is just paying the price for ignoring blue collar middle class voters since the late 80s. They took those votes for granted, and they lost them over time. Just like after blue collar folks they then took the votes of minorities for granted…and now they’re losing those.

All they need to do is ask what they’ve done for these people lately…like in the past few decades. And when they came really answer that in any terms other than what they prevented the other guys from doing, they shouldn’t have to wonder why enthusiasm for their party’s candidates is at an all time low.

Literally ZERO people I know personally have actually liked and actively, enthusiastically supported any democratic presidential nominee since Obama. That’s twelve fucking years and zero candidates that got people excited and inspired. Most of my friends voted for these candidates, but nobody liked them.

Honestly, if it weren’t for the opposition being so unbearably awful, I’d almost be happy to see the Democratic party handed loss after loss until and unless they learn their lesson and stop taking their base for granted.

Fair point

A lot has shifted over time, but the default state of American politics has always been two dominant parties.

That said, I could absolutely see a scenario where an American centrist party forms, still solidly to the right of most Western democracy, but centrist by current local standards, which not only pulls in the non-MAGA Republicans but also moderate Democrats, blue collar Dems from purple states, and once it gains traction and wins a few races, massive support from corporations and lobbies.

They’d win landslide victories over both older parties, especially as progressives and leftists gained greater control of the Democratic party through the flight of the moderates to the new centrist party, which would in turn drive even more establishment Dems to the new party.

They could run on nothing more than “common sense compromise, unity, and moving beyond the partisan squabbling that has plagued the country for decades”, and be successful for at least 3 cycles before they even had to really take up any issues in earnest.

The deep South would stay red, the West cost, new York, and Illinois would stay blue, but I could see all of the mid Atlantic, Midwest, plains states, new England, and Southwest going for a viable centrist party.

For a long few years, national level politics would be absolute fucking chaos.

Exactly.

My thought when opening the post was basically, “Can you imagine the depths that American corporations would sink to in a market where they can totally conceal the flavor, size, quality, etc. of their products until after the sale, and not have anyone from the company present, making them totally immune to any negative feedback?”

Presumably the companies behind these things in Japan are at least delivering a somewhat acceptable food item. I wouldn’t be surprised in any way to find an American version of this thing dispensing literal dead rats.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Marjorie Taylor Greene looks like the second or third pic from an Animorphs cover.

There’s no justification from a pure convenience standpoint, but I could respect the pettiness if the electric company ran their shit like one local government office in my hometown, where there was this small annual fee they charged like $9 for…but then to pay it, you could either mail in a check, hand deliver cash or check or card…or pay online…where they added a $5 “convenience fee” to a sub-$10 payment.

You bet your ass that I paid that shit in person every year, in loose change, and requested a receipt (which they had to write up manually because they didn’t have a system to process and print one).

Would the victim be officially dead?

Oh my god, there’s always a relevant xkcd.

Great job!

I gotta say, Google Maps has been getting squirrelly on me lately tho.

Most recently, I was out fishing and wanted to get directions to the other side of the lake and a parking area over there.

The road directions had me driving a little ways up the shore, then down a fucking footpath to the water, then swimming across the fucking lake, then getting on another road and driving to the parking area.

It’s so sad but this is completely true.

Anywhere that I’ve learned a new skill in hopes of getting a promotion, the response has either been “why did you waste time learning that? That’s not your job.” or more commonly “great initiative! Now we can add that work to your workload without having to pay you a cent more! This is great management because we can have one employee do the job of 1.5, and we didn’t even have to pay to train them! Thanks for that and here’s your extra work! Deadlines and expectations remain the same on your old work of course.”

In a few cases, once that inevitably led to job change, they had the gall to try and shame me with a line like, “You know, that’s a skill you learned under this roof, to do work for this company. While we are professionals here, if we weren’t, this might feel like a betrayal…”