Well, at least I have a spine and refuse to go with the flow. No Facebook, LinkedIn, Xitter or whatever that sewer is called these days and I’m just fine with that. Just a bit of Lemmy for some discussions and memes, but fuck having to share everything you do.

That’s of course easy said, but not so easily done. Are these welders living anywhere near the manufacturing sites of the defense industries? Can you pay them enough for them to be willing to move across Europe? And why would they even consider it with jobs for the taking everywhere?

You seem to be forgetting that every industry is currently having a raging shortage of experienced welders and similar skill sets. If the defense industry raises pay, you can bet the infrastructure industry, which is also critical will just follow. And the building industry. And the oil industry, etc etc.

Edit: I don’t mean to say I agree with enforcing a 60-hour work week by the way, but I don’t think just paying more will automatically resolve labour shortages.

Try the Dutch climate. Here everything above 28 degrees C is, in my opinion, unbearable.

I don’t know, but for me it was undiagnosed ADHD. 😋 Fortunately IT is one of the areas where lack of a degree isn’t a showstopper.

What? I make that kind of money by dabbling in Ansible, Python and Kubernetes. $5000 sounds pretty lowball for fairly niche knowledge like COBOL.

It’s just: “De man is dood”. We don’t capitalise nouns, only proper nouns like names and places (same as in English). Germans do, but that language is even weirder than ours. 😋

Ah, the good old Negerküsse (German) or Negerzoenen (Dutch), translated: Negro Kisses. In the Netherlands they’ve been renamed to Kisses 2 decades ago, for obvious reasons.

Edit: ffs, I hate not being able to use the N-word for a factual statement.

Zwarte Piet has nothing to do with Christmas, it’s part of Sinterklaas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas). While Santa Claus was based off this character, its an entirely different festivity.

Said the person who just voted for the “Scorpions stinging backs” party.

The BEST and LARGEST BOXES in the world. And I will make MEXICO PAY for the pen I use to tick them!

Watch your genetically inferior tongue, Freebirth!

That would be a Timber Wolf I suspect.

Probably filled with positive ions to offset those negative woke vibes. If you can’t reason with them, blasting them with alpha particles should man 'em up, right?

public transport is just 10x as comfortable as any car could be

Yes, nothing beats walking to a bus stop and waiting there in the cold, rain or burning sun, hoping the bus shows up in time or at all. Then stressing, because it being 15 minutes late probably means your connecting train will be gone. Oh yes, there it goes. Half an hour wait with no place to sit. And then repeat this two more times for more connecting trains and buses.

And I haven’t even talked about not being able to sit during train rides, or having to sit on back wrecking seats. Unfortunately I have back issues and after having enjoyed the ‘comfort’ of our public transport I often end up just not being able to stand or sit anymore at the end of the day because my back hurts so bad.

That is my average commute, and as a bonus there ultimately isn’t a difference in price here between taking the car or public transport. To top it off my average travel time is 60 minutes by car, 1.5 - 2 hours by public transport, often depending whether or not the first bus shows up in time.

It would be able to overlook a lot of this if it was feasible to do some work in the train, but with all the fragmentation on my route I never really get anything done.

I really would like to use public transport, as it is more sustainable than my gas guzzler, but each time I try it the experience just sucks so bad.

Don’t forget about them screwing Origin Systems. RIP Wing Commander and Ultima.

I’ve never heard that one before, in my circle we call it a military shower.

I’d recommend searching for other sources to corroborate that story. A website selling Faraday bags telling you that you really need a Faraday bag is hardly a reliable source.

Reminds me of that scene from Gladiator where The Joker gives Dumbledore a hug that lasts a lifetime.

n=1 of course, but my dad was forced to write right-handed in school (early 60’s and an old-school teacher for those days). The result was more punishment as no matter how he tried, he simply couldn’t (and still cannot) write very readable with his right hand. So no, I don’t think practice is enough to make somebody ambidextrous. Might work for some, but certainly not for everybody.

Ah, good old Santa Claus. Also known as Kabouter Buttplug (Buttplug Gnome) for mysterious reasons.