Sometimes it's just a passion project by crazy people. My town has a shack on a busy non-walkable intersection without even parking spaces that sells only angel figurines. Let me be clear, this isn't general angel knickknacks, this isn't specific saints, it's angel figurines ONLY. You will find no bless this house signs. No Christmas tree toppers or ornaments. Not a single holiday decoration, religious or otherwise. You won't even find Jesus on the cross.

Angel. Figurines. Only. I always assumed it was a front for something until my mom helped with some taxes for them. No, it's just one crazy couple who are obsessed with the sanctity of the angel figurine. They feel very strongly about it and asking if they do garden angels now that spring's coming up and you'd love to patronage them is apparently offensive enough for them to take their taxes elsewhere lol.

Being that person providing a better method halfway through a process. A cave person standing on top of another to cave art the ceiling? Halfway through I go "...You know you coulda just grabbed the log from outside, leaned it against the wall and climbed it". Someone halfway through whittling a bowl? "Oh, yeah, I saw some coconuts on the beach they'd be perfect".

I have the great hobby of Looking At Random Things, but the bad habit of assuming everyone else saw those things too so they must be doing what they're doing for a reason lol. That all said I'm sure I'd be dead from dysentery within a week or smtg, they wouldn't have to suffer me long.

That's not true for women's clothes... It's sundresses right now and I'm getting all the ones with pockets I can find and so are a bunch of other women, they sell out fast. The issue is the pockets are usually incorrectly positioned and rotated in such a way anything you put in them falls out on top of being tiny so now things are 2x more likely to fall out AND you're constantly patting yourself down to find the damn pocket. I had one I really wanted to buy, but couldn't cause the pocket was angled for me to be covertly groin shooting someone with a gun, not making sure my keys stay on my person lol.

No, I mostly read romance like said. I do read some male isekai, but I'm generally not a fan of the tropes in them. I'll check it out though, thanks. And yep I know about the name swap with cmmd, I've just been reading it for literal years so I remember the first one better.

All are fine, just different cliches. Mostly nowadays I read manhwa since it's easier to read on the phone, a series usually starts with a drop of 20 episodes and then releases weekly and usually at least the guys look kind of adult... (I mainly read trash romance, it's desperate out here to get characters who don't look like middle schoolers or something lol)

I mainly read manga when I want an actual story that isn't just the same 50 plug and play tropes in a blender every time (ie think the mangas I follow right now are Frieren, Heroine Survival and Arte). Manhua I VERY rarely touch. They seem to have the worst machine translations and tbh I really dislike how they implement most of the tropes, just way too petty/childish/violent for me. Only manhua I read are Cheating Men Must Die and Shut Up, Evil Dragon.

One was very laid back and tried to take good care of everyone despite being retail and him being laid back. Got me the highest starting pay he could (corporate seriously fought him over 25¢ and he compromised with them for 10¢ instead of just giving up, was only like $12 extra a month with my hours, but hey that's still money). He understood the metrics were bullshit and didn't crawl up my ass about getting them done even when they kept going up and we got new metrics added. Ofc did my best to just to keep him from getting shit for it (corporate certainly didn't believe in raises or rewards for meeting them), but I appreciated he never trickled down their bullshit and stress to me. When a supervisor kept being inappropriate (I have so many stories about this dude, but I'll just say he was 40 trying to badger a 24yro subordinate into dating him via antagonizing the rest of us to peer pressure her into it and I did have an issue with him telling me he had tick bites/rash/whatever and start pulling up his shirt/literally down his pants even after I said NO I WON'T LOOK FOR HIM as some examples I'm a woman and he was a straight guy if that makes any difference though tbh don't believe that was bros being bros behavior anyway cause he did it with the 20s me and not the 60s female coworker), this manager did speak to him multiple times and then help me get HR involved and I didn't get put on his shifts anymore.

Other one was insurance and also went to bat for us about bullshit metrics and was very accommodating, like above and beyond accommodating (during covid new person got hired for wfh and then came out with she didn't have home Internet and manager did get the company to agree to help her out with that, yeah it was ridiculous, but this manager just went beyond like that for everyone). She'd talk to me about problems like I was a person too. I like processes and a lot of times in healthcare at entry/you're the lowest worker on the team it's just a disorganized mess (this place our "processes" were photocopies of past employees notes of "idk it just worked" or "someone told me to do it this way and I don't know why and there's no updates to the department about changes that affect anyone not managers so I'm assuming it works even if this item keeps reappearing as rejected in my queue"). Any questions I had she'd answer or go find the answers for me, if I discovered anything wrong about our processes or to streamline them she'd listen to me and help me refine if needed before implementing. She let me write guides for the department on this stuff which I super appreciated (meant I didn't have to keep fixing other employees work, the amount of stuff that would go through on our end as solved and then come back rejected I had to figure out my first couple months was insane). To explain this a previous job we were using a program no one understood, we just had a binder with steps. Anytime anything changed in the program or someone did something wrong no one knew what to do we'd have to get a manager in there who was NOT good with computers so no one could do work with that program half the shift until he either found some convoluted work around to make the numbers add up that looked like fraud and then send a manager email to his managers about it or he'd admit defeat and all our other managers would have a five minute go at it and then just write an email about it and we never talked about it again lol (we'd have months where we just had to add or subtract numbers to arrive at the right inventory until I assume IT somehow fixed it). I actually sat down and figured out that program (with the power of googling the manual and reading it cause we didn't even have that!!!), wrote a more current comprehensive guide with both how the program works for our needs (in case anything changed again so people knew WHAT each function specifically did) and step-by-steps for our daily use AND appropriate correction steps for mistakes, he read it over, greenlit it, I started typing it up for the employee drive— nah nvm he doesn't like change, scrap it. He did this to me CONSTANTLY and fought me on stuff as basic as "it's 20XX, why are we managing our inventory and machines with a system of 8 clipboards", he just did NOT believe processes could have evolved since 1970 or that anyone not a manager was enough of a person to contribute (he did this to everyone below manager, not just me). So I really, really appreciated the hell out of this other manager when I said hey handing out photocopies of notes from employees who knows how long ago is inefficient and I got to the bottom of some of this stuff, can we make a process to give everyone, she was on board, an active participant, actually followed through and didn't backtrack on it because the world peaked in 1970 and non-managers can't have functioning brains, they show up and do as told.

Last one I'll list tbf wasn't the greatest, like he was a great guy, but not so great with non-performing employees (which tbf we had such high turnover company wide we were always struggling for a fill with at least 1/3rd our positions for various reasons, so I could kind of understand, you need a body to show up for shit pay at a job you have to touch poop, there is very little asking for more than that is going to get you beyond people refusing to show up to your site again as a floater). But this job was also very disorganized and he answered all my questions, when I brought up stuff he'd bring it up at the mandatory monthly meeting (this wasn't crazy stuff, it was like if you get poop on something please make sure to clean it, we will no longer be putting feeding bibs in the same drawer we keep the toilet cleaning rags, etc). He also didn't demand I use my car for pt transport (I was not hired to do this, it was a "fun" thing I found out after I was hired I was expected to get people with walkers into my jeep and not get gas payment to take them around). Like that job was super shitty (figuratively and literally), but he'd hear me out and see what he could do within reason (not cause he didn't want to do more, but like said low pay super shitty job we couldn't even retain employees at). Unfortunately, but understandable, he left and we got in a new manager who did the usual "I have worked at better jobs, everything the past manager did is wrong cause I need to show I was a good hire, instead of getting permanent hires and upping patient care we need to focus on how artistically the towels are folded and make an office area I can exclude you all from by stealing employee equipment so when MY managers come in I look like I run an upscale hotel and not a hospice home". (Fr one of my coworkers just enjoyed folding laundry artistically from tiktok tutorials and this manager decided first we need to be folding them like the gdamn country flag off that and then when she moved to artistic hotel folds with a fan ruffle we needed to store all our towels that you know were regularly used for cleaning piss and shit and stored in an employee closet to that).

More of a rant about my bad managers, but the bar has honestly been in hell for me so all these managers stuck out. They treated me as a person and they wanted me to succeed, they supported me wanting our department to succeed which is honestly the rarest fucking shit I ever see. We have such bad training in my field at my level (idk might also be bad at higher levels, I'm just not there) and I've had a lot of managers not want anyone to do the job right for various reasons I really appreciate when they let the team all help each other up. Maybe a person doesn't take that in, but the insurance one I had another coworker like me and holy fuck it was amazing with my manager facilitating. By the time I left between us we'd figured out most stuff and written guides so onboarding was SO MUCH EASIER. We saw 0 compensation for this and tbh it frustratingly tanked our numbers for metrics cause we'd solve stuff first try instead of needing three goes at it (which counted as three metrics), but gdamn it felt rewarding to know we'd solved an issue and trained the department on it so a patient didn't have to get their care delayed or downgraded (when I started if you couldn't get something passed through you'd do 2-3 days of meds until you hoped someone figured it out, absolutely insane) until something changed again. Like both of us spent literal HOURS on the phone working these things out which isn't how it should be, but getting them down to 20min processes was amazing and I take pride in that.

Thank you! I'm apparently just blind AF lol. Really appreciate though swapped two days ago and still finding my sea legs :')

Honestly feels like their only mistake was not making it roomba sized with an outer mini railing that would keep the roomba from falling off AND they could hang decorations from it. Really didn't think about how they could multipurpose this.

ETA I retract somewhat, they could be total mavericks and get a long extension for their vacuum and then tape it to an RC car. Is it a lot of extra work? Yes. Would it be amazingly fun? Also yes. Especially if you hook up catnip spreader basket on the back (though maybe that's unsafe, probably don't encourage your cat to weed and balance beam).

Asking into the void is there a way to do this on Voyager? Swapped from sync cause (far as I could tell) there's still no mod features and the amount of "glide couldn't grab this image" was frustrating, but haven't found a way yet to hide posts you've seen. Like I know some links are going to be reposted multiple times, but much as I love tenforward I've been scrolling past the same gowron eyes memes the last few days on my feed (they're great memes, but I can only see them so many times lol).

Gonna be honest and maybe not a popular take, but reading the article I feel like the author is taking the wrong vent here. (Idk Boston Globe so could just be like another commenter said they're trying to piss on teachers, but I'm going to take good faith here as dumb as that probably is). This reads like someone who doesn't understand the first thing about teaching and is an avid reader doing the Principle Skinner no it's the children who are wrong meme.

Going to cover a couple thoughts, I apologize if I don't have them ordered well. First off there's always been "tell me what the text is saying so I don't have to read it". Sparknotes was the go-to when I was in school for example. You can decry AI, but all that shit was there with sparknotes too. I did try using it once or twice for books I hated cause all my classmates were and holy fuck did it miss the mark, I didn't even find it useful for the tests cause they'd be about the writing itself and sparknotes was just about what happened and some prominent metaphors. To give an example one class we read The Scarlet Letter in highschool, I hated the fuck out of this book. I only read a few chapters and then synopsed the rest on wikipedia, majority of my classmates did sparknotes entirely. I scored higher than them on tests cause I read enough to understand the writing style and all they could say was what happened and not the whys or hows of it or why specific descriptions were given and what those descriptions meant besides "innocence" or "guilt", they really could not discuss the book at all. So this isn't an AI thing. Like we'd go over a chapter we'd supposed to have read and I didn't even read it cause I only read the first few and we'd get asked why the priest guy was whipping himself and my sparknotes classmates would say guilt. Me who only heard for the first time he whipped himself in this chapter was able to say religious guilt and sin, that he is failing in the eyes of society and his god and can never make up for what he's done and has to whip these bad thoughts in the eyes of both out of himself, oppress himself to conform, etc etc like they actually read more about the chapter than me, but only got a "what happened and here's the theme" with no critical thinking. So AI is just the latest version with just about as much vetting (I feel really confident it's just cannibalizing sparknotes too lol). (Please don't debate my The Scarlet Letter accuracy with me if I don't have this entirely right it's been 20 years and damn did I hate this book lol it's just an example)

Secondly I don't feel this covers how outdated the curriculum can be. I did Shakespeare in highschool and holy fuck it was horrible. I had read a lot of 1700/1800s originally published books at that point (not personal interest, just class divide in my town where I got placed in the "poor" school and that was the library lol) so it was not a struggle for me. But we spent a whole semester on a book with word and syntax notes for Romeo and Juliet cause it's obviously not modern English and the rest of the class was just translating. We basically spent every class translating 1-2 pages at best. To me this is a holdover from Shakespeare's own time where it ACTUALLY had a point. Like Elizabeth II translating Cicero from Latin was a) to teach her Latin and b) his discourse (as I understand, not his actual politics, but his lawyer technique, kind of like a light debate class). This was not what we were doing. It was just reading a "classic" for tradition and the teacher had to spend a shitload of time translating the class through it. The reason given was to learn his poetry structures, but while I'm not a poetry person I have to believe there are more modern language poets who use/d it that don't require a whole semester spent on straight translation just so the class can understand the words, how they're pronounced to fit into the structure and the general syntax for the time. Shakespeare absolutely deserves to be taught, but when you're that far removed from modern language K-12 is not the place because you can't engage in the point of learning what he has to teach in a timely manner, you're basically teaching half a language. My English class in high school had way more discussions about Cyrano de Bergerac and its themes because everyone could follow the language (and honestly this was great cause a lot of people had dating experiences to compare being teenagers whereas Romeo and Juliet we spent so much time to translate we didn't get that discussion). The amount of people who have English as a second language aside, it's not helping anyone to have to learn a new form of English in a semester when your purpose is something else entirely.

Thirdly SAT (and ACT? Dunno didn't take that one and been a while since I was in k-12, but think that's the other one) has a reading comprehension test, not a "did you understand the art of writing here" test. Which I do think is kind of fair cause work wise the amount of times I've been asked to identify a metaphor or simile is 0 lol (I know there's jobs where that's important, but my experience is they're the minority). But everything is informed by those tests so if the course focus is going to be on comprehension over writing style I don't agree with this article's take. We are in a system to teach to the test (I may be wrong, but I feel like this would be generally everywhere cause the test is what matters, like in school for healthcare even though I had patient care techniques from work for how to discuss with the patient in an understandable and accessible manner, I couldn't use them because the test required I use confusing technical terms I would never ACTUALLY use with a patient to show my knowledge like I'm not going to say ambulate to a patient when they would understand walk better). So you may say here yeah comprehension and the test is what matters or you may say the point is to teach the art of writing in which case the test should be reworked (idk I might be forgetting and SAT did have a poetry section, but fill in the blank Y is like X is is a whole world different from read this and what is the theme, what was the motifs, etc; if I'm totally misremembering or it's changed and there is some in-depth writing style testing I apologize lol would still stand by k-12 stick to modern language cause teachers only have so much time with students).

I am not an educational professional so idk might be way off the mark here, but as a reader who did have to walk my classmates through a lot of shit (absolutely no fault of theirs, they read too, they just had money for Harry Potter and I didn't lol) this article just rankles me.

If I read something my brain stores keywords/phrases to it anywhere from 30min to years. Sounds super normal (I think, least for 30min), but this has served me really well in two areas.

1. Tests. As long as it's a knowledge test and not a skill test I can skim read right before (even if it's like 100 pages and I didn't learn any of it before) and pass (for multiple choice grade is usually in the 90s, write-in is more 80s). Only professional place I use this outside of school is the bullshit PowerPoint "training" at work that makes you take a test at the end... (I don't work an office job, idk might be more useful there)
2. Online message chats. Great for looking stuff up like birthdays or preferences or someone told me something specific a year ago and now wants to talk about it in-depth and I have to go refresh on the exact health conditions of their dog while they're grieving to me (I mean I could ask for a refresher, but when a friend is needing a comforting ear I'd rather just search it up quick while they type instead of making them back track their narrative which when you feel upset feels really alone someone can't be right there in the moment with you off the bat, just a small way to care for my friends). Mainly though I do text DND and it's amazing there lol. Had an unintentional tpk and offered a restart with memories (deus exmachina literally time rewind) which my group was into. I'm like shit we've been running this campaign for years, how am I going to remember the exact fight setups, initial NPC reactions, etc. I had a very specific search phrase for every event memory logged and made the whole thing a breeze to re-do literal years of content. And tbh I think I enjoyed it even more than my players cause I'd go back and reread their early murderhobo days and then get to freshly compare it to their evolved anarchist present (...I mean they were still murderhobos, but brought a tear to my eye to compare they'd learned some principles and loyalty lol).

LOL bad potion to roll the unidentified potions roulette :')

I allowed smashing cause player was doing an anarchist punk (mohawk, leather vest, enough piercings I think I would have had to tell them heat metal cast on them was an instant KO lol) and was adamant that was how they'd administer first aid... The compromise was they'd stop calling every NPC who wasn't poor a capitalist pig while the party was trying to negotiate. Think no one in the party had above 9 charisma and they all insisted on playing like a mafia, they didn't need the help to tank their negotiations lmao.

This is why I don't give my party in DND unidentified potions anymore after one decided to make a Molotov cocktail out of a potion of superior healing lmao (I tried to dissuade, they insisted, we had a standing rule potions could work by smashing, also at this player's insistence lol).

My cat is in this picture and the only thing missing is the top of a flight of stairs lmao

Was the most weirdly aggressively Pepsi only area I've ever been in haha now I try to make sure we grab him a six pack when we go anywhere new juuuust in case. Haven't run into the situation a second time fortunately lol

Lol my brother is a coke guy. Took him out for his birthday and he's in the bathroom when server came over for drink orders. My brother usually interrogates them if it's real coke which seems kind of over the top so I just said "do you have actual coke?" and got a yes so ordered it for him. He sits down and I'm like I made sure it was coke for you! He takes a sip— it's Pepsi lmao.

Still not as funny as the time we were on vacation in a Pepsi area. Couldn't even find coke in the gas stations. We visit a ye olde touristy shopping center done up like the 1950s. Coke paraphernalia everywhere. I'm like great we can finally get you a coke! Go in a store, all the coolers are coke aesthetic, he's excited. —It's all Pepsi.

It's hard up out there lmao. (I understand the frustration though, did once have a meltdown after a lot of driving because I couldn't get tea anywhere that wasn't a cheap grocery store teabag at best lol just want good tea before doing another 8hrs straight driving. Ended up angrily making my own in the parking lot like a madwoman lmfao)

I see you've seen my Stardew Valley games lmao thanks for the laughs this was great!

Honestly never occurred to me lol I was 17 and that was Work's Potato, it needed to go home to Work.

I have definitely wondered the same myself lol I am also pretty shit with time management...