sp3ctr4l

Sorry, due to 'gestures vaguely' whatever, they're expired, moldy Feastables, brought to you By Mr Beast Burger

Fortunately, I just recieved a bag of magic beans from the local apothecary to help me with with restful sleep!

... hdroxyzine beans ... funny name, I wonder what realm they are from...

EDIT:

Also, to everyone in this comment thread freaking the hell out... this is a joke meme.

The original top half of this is from a Buzzfeed video from a decade ago, featuring gameplay of ... well, some Grand Theft Auto game, beating up strippers.

It has since been a meme template for a decade.

The original video didn't even mention fantasy games as a genre or anything.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/video-games-appeal-to-the-male-fantasy

In fact you'll now probably find a whole, whole lot of LGBTQ+ people, as well as cis/het people, agreeing that Baldurs Gate 3 is actually pretty awesome.

Oh no I don't find that idiotic, that is very annoying, literally anywhere, between any two countries.

I guess the workaround is to plan ahead and do your currency exchanges before hand, but at least in the US, if you do that in cash, well now you're a drug smuggler or something if you're brown and/or not in the best mood.

I mean, everybody just has the ability to open up bank account debit/credit cards in multiple currencies, right?

Your bank doesn't do currency exchange?

Not my problem, pleb, stay in your geographically confined area with a particular force of monopolized violence.

It doesn't matter beyond the FOMO.

Chances are, no one will remember or care in a decade.

Assuming you are USAmerican?

Unfortunately, chances are also just a bit better than a coin flip you'll be able to find a decent job anyway, so, it also doesn't matter in that sense.

41% of recent grads are underemployed, 6% are unemployed, you thus have a 53% chance of finding a job that utilizes your degree.

... Assuming the economy does not get worse.

... Which it will.

Sorry man, happened to me as well. I graduated right out into the Great Recession... and now we're looking at a 2nd Great Depression.

Good luck.

The fucking clownshow continues.

This is you going in to your Professor's office hours to ostensibly turn in your final paper for a course, it is half your grade in the class, and you actually just sit down and explain you are 'still working on it' and 'can i get it to you maybe by the end of next academic quarter?'

I am honestly so, so relieved by this high level public idiocy.

I really am not kidding.

I've struggled with impostor syndrome much of my life.

All gone. Done. No more.

I am legitimately more competent than almost everyone in this administration at their own jobs, despite the fact that I hardly have any relevant credentials to most of their positions.

Selfish, emotionally immature, fearful idiots believe that everyone else is like them, and is just lying about not being so.

Therefore, all those 'other people' are devious liars who are more crafty then 'us', so 'we' must outscheme 'them!'

... all of this shit is literally scientifically verified.

The more conservative you are, the more likely your brain make up is to respond out of fear of potential loss, to shut out disconfirming informstion... as opposed to the potential gain of trying or exploring something new, that causes you to confront whether or not you may be wrong.

So, I'm from Seattle, basically, and for the longest time I thought no, I do not have an accent.

Then I learned that the reason I thought that was because well, the accent I have is basically the least distinct from the 'General American English' or 'Region Indistinct American' accent, out of all other regional accents....

With that 'General American' accent being what nationwide newscasters, voice actors and movie stars either developed on their own, or were trained into, for being easily intelligible to any other American accent/dialect speaker, or as just sort of a rounded approximation of 'American', with no specified regionality to the character.

Thats not to say the PNW or Cali or just general US West accents are all exactly the same as 'General American'... they are not... its just that they are the least difficult to understand from a general audience perspective out of other regional US accents/dialects... or at least that is the explanation I've heard.

As I am aware, the main difference between PNW/Cali English and other US regions is that we have completed the cot-caught merger. Absolutely no difference in pronunciation, the verb sounds are the same... whereas in much of the rest of the US, these are different, distinct vowel sounds. We just use the 'cot' pronounciation for both.

Bot cot thot slot thought caught fraught not spot dot.

All the same. No rolling or bending of the first vowel into the u to make a more complex vowel sound, all just 'bot' or 'dot'.

That and pop vs soda vs coke.

For whatever reason, I usually say soda, but that did make me an oddball of most people around me near Seattle saying 'pop'... but a lot of other places in the US use soda, but also a lot of other places use 'coke' to refer to any ... soft drink... which confuses and aggrevates my Autistic brain lol.

...

There are a few things that I remember being distinct to Californian accents/dialects as compared to Seattle:

One is the rising tone at the end of the sentence... thing.

I always called this a valley girl accent, and this is because no one I knew as a kid spoke that way... unless their family had recently moved north, from Cali.

Now though, it is more common generally in the PNW, at least in my own experience.... but also that could literally be because a lot of Californians have migrated north.

Another silly, but super easy tell someone isn't from Seattle: Their accent may be essentially indistinguishable from a PNW accent... but they always, always refer to I-5, as 'the 5'... instead of 'eye-five'.

No one born and raised near Seattle does this.

I-5 is the main highway that goes all the way down from Vancouver BC, through Seattle, Portland, San Fran, LA, and runs through all of those cities, so its a major reference point of conversation in all those places.

And yeah, the regional vocab difference for how people refer to it is an example of a difference.

Coming soon:

What do you mean my US dollars aren't accepted at any big intl. tourist locations anymore... I have to actually exchange them?

I am a guy, but I have actually been to a few places, maybe two, in my whole life, that actually did have butler type people in the restrooms.

IIRC, one was some yearly corporate gala thing... utterly insufferable... the other was a fancy pants opera theatre.

Lol, as long as you properly plan in advance and coordinate such a thing, not the way that uh... Dead Matter tried to do it.

Dear god what a fustercluck.

So, I initially wanted to just kneejerk respond yes, it is absurd to suggest this ruling against Apple... would have any kind of generally noticable effect on inflation.

But I wanted to check the actual numbers.

Ok, so, total US consumer spending in 2024 is about $64 Trillion.

... The Apple App Store generated $105 Billion in revenue in 2024.

Ok, napkin math: 30% off of lets just say literally all App Store payments... , ok, we've cut costs by about $32 Billion... shave that off the $64 Trillion...

And voila!

A rough general price reduction of... 0.05%

Call a median US yearly income $60K, and they've saved $30 bucks. Maybe the cost of either one or two DoorDash meals, depending on where you live.... probably much closer to just one.

We're saved from inflation rofl!

This is where the magic of near meaningless corpo-babble comes in.

The layoffs are part of a plan to aspirationally acheive the goal of $10b revenue by EoY 2025.

What they are actually doing is a significant restructuring of the company, refocusing by outside hiring some amount of new people to lead or be a part of departments or positions that haven't existed before, or are being refocused to other priorities...

... But this process also involves laying off 500 of the 'least productive' or 'least mission critical' employees.

So, technically, they can, and are, arguing that their new organizational paradigm will be so succesful that it actually will result in increased revenue, not just lower expenses.

Generally corpos call this something like 'right-sizing' or 'refocusing' or something like that.

...

But of course... anyone with any actual experience with working at a place that does this... will tell you roughly this is what happens:

Turns out all those 'grunts' you let go of, well they actually do a lot more work in a bunch of weird, esoteric, bandaid solutions to keep everything going, than upper management was aware of... because middle management doesn't acknowledge or often even understand that that work was being done, because they are generally self-aggrandizing narcissist petty tyrants who spend more time in meetings fluffing themselves up than actually doing any useful management.

Then, also, you are now bringing on new, outside people who look great on paper, to lead new or modified departments... but they of course also do not have any institutional knowledge, as they are new.

So now, you have a whole bunch of undocumented work that was being done, processes which were being followed... which is no longer being done, which is not documented.... and the new guys, even if they have the best intentions, now have to spend a quarter or two or three figuring out just exactly how much pre-existing middle management has been bullshitting about, figuring out just how much things do not actually function as they ssid it did...

So now your efficiency improving restructuring is actually a chaotic mess.

... Now, this 'right sizing' is not always apocalyptically extremely bad, but it is also essentially never totally free from hiccups... and it increases stress, workload, and tensions between basically everyone at the company, to some extent...and decreased morale, increased stress basically always reduces efficiency, to some extent.

Here's Forbes explanation of this phenomenon, if you prefer an explanation of right sizing in corpospeak:

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/rightsizing/