Unless they’re the sole recipient of a will (doesn’t seem very common), at least here those are almost always liquified and proceeds split according to the will. Doesn’t amount to much usually, though it might be different in countries that have very large and expensive cities.

Well, that really depends on the society. I don’t live in one that makes such assumptions. It feels a little bit entitled to assume something like that, but that could also just be cultural differences between developed and non-developed countries. The former have social security and safety nets, rendering an inheritance less important and much less prominent. Feels like the only inheritance worth even thinking about is if you have millions in excess of what you need for living, and in developed countries that is very much less prominent than in developing countries

Exactly my thoughts too. Life’s meant to be lived. Hoarding assets to save for an uncertain future is counterproductive even in terms of economy at large, if one’s inclined to think that way.

It creates expectations that don’t seem natural, and then leads to disappointments and bitterness when life does not go as planned, as it never will.

But then again, I get wanting to make things better for your children. But at least for me, it seems less prone to pure chance and circumstance if the efforts went into building a more sustainable, inclusive and supportive country to live in. And enjoy the ride while it lasts, since your pain and suffering will reflect on your children, want it or not. If things are tight and you get stressed from that, it’s always going to affect everyone around you, often negatively. If, instead, you could relieve that stress by not saving more than you need as a buffer here and now, or for something like a house (I.e not for some abstract future that might never come, for your children who might not live that far, but are here now, with you), that’s probably going to be much better for everyone. Smiles generate smiles and it’s not a zero-sum game. Life well lived is one with smiles, not one with fragile, ephemeral value of some sort stored away with sweat and blood.

But of course if there’s already too much to use realistically, why not do that then. But that’s an entirely different discussion altogether, if we ever should have something like that.

Edit: there’s a distinction I failed to emphasis enough, between a realistic and very worthwhile buffer of saved value for unexpected situations, which everyone should of course have, and saving for no reason at all, other than just having excess that isn’t needed for anything, to maybe if one’s very lucky pass on down the line.

Saving assets and value isn’t bad. But saving it for no practical reason other than inheritance, takes that value out of circulation and makes everyone in your economy worse off. If that’s important to you. But more importantly, it often means a life less well lived, and often one full of stress, tiredness and one with less time actually spend with your family and close ones in general. Which is enormously more negative in impact than any amount of money in excess, or lack thereof, could ever have when you finally die.

I never really considered an inheritance an option. Seems so off-worldly to me, even though I am by no means from a poor family, just lower middle class.

I think the entire concept of inheritance is something more prominent in developing countries like US or India, where there isn’t a well-established safety nets already in place by the government itself.

Of course we have inheritances too, I know a few who got something, but most of it gets taxed away upon receiving or vanishes covering the deceased’s debts, so I’ve never heard anyone I know get anything other than maybe a weekend vacation in the city next over or maybe a small chunk of student debt away.

Then again I’m not very well-off, and I do know there are the upper class families that have a long standing generational wealth passing over to the new generations. I guess it really depends on the circles one’s in.

But I still think it’s not as common here, at least I’ve never considered it to be normal, and I’ve known well people from upper middle class too.

Yeah, and at least in my country, there are mandatory courses common with all technical (not sure how that should be translated properly to English) engineers, such as extensive physics, maths, electricity and such, that us software engineer students also have to pass along with our specialization to even get to the thesis part of the engineering degree.

After all this, I’ll have no trouble calling myself an engineer. Neither does the university I go to. Nor anyone, really.

Without the degree, sure. I’d be ashamed, even, to claim such a title. But that’s just because the whole engineer degree is well established and has a set meaning. I’d be software developer, as I am now, instead of the software engineer I aspire to be.

Yeah, this is how I feel too. I commend their courage and honestly think this was for the greater good, but I’d also have them prosecuted with some amount of clemency, because otherwise, where do we draw the line? Who’s ok to kill, how do we reason about this? I don’t think it’s ever ok to kill, but I also believe sometimes drastic action such as a kill can lead to good outcomes. This is how we fight against fascism and tyranny too. Nobody expects anyone to remain forever peaceful under tyranny. Of course people fight, and it’s noble to do so. But… context matters. We are not that far yet, so it seems more important to safeguard the general safety of everyday life and have some amount of de facto rule of law that ensures that.

I think this also encourages better, more detailed preparation and planning for those that sacrifice their own safety, health and freedom to help that of others. If they never get caught, we might never need an actual answer to this hard question.

That is actually a very good question. I think she simply has faith that things will work out for us, irregardless of how we might view the world in this precise moment. I’m not very knowledgeable about religion, so I had to look that term up, and I don’t honestly know. Somehow this has never come up. I can ask her later, but my initial thinking is she probably simply believes in some plan that god has, and that her god is good. She is Evangelical-Lutheran, if that matters; I simply don’t know enough if the different flavors of Christianity view these things in specific, different ways. She doesn’t force any of this on me, which shows, I now realize…

I think the main thing I might have problems conveying is I don’t see it as a binary. Neither is she. It’s not that they either get a religious upbringing or one without religion. There’s plenty of scale between the two ends and I don’t really feel any reason to try and go either way too deeply. Or restrict it to any one religion or philosophy. There can be many religions and different flavors of void of religions. Kids have a lot of questions and it’s fairly fun to describe the world to them, and that is never going to work just from one point of view. The world is vast and filled with many cultures and ways of perceiving the world and humanity, and it’d be a disservice to them if we tried to do black and white there; on or off. I think we can only so our best to give as honest a view of the world we can, with all it’s colors and shades of gray, and hope that some of it gives heureka moments or some illumination at least. It’s never possible to give an objective account or be detailed with all the different aspects and layers and whatnot, since at least me myself; I’m really not that smart honestly. All I can offer is my very best and hope it gives tools to process and understand this world. It probably won’t, as none of it did for me, probably not for anyone, but it’d be worse if we didn’t even attempt and just went with the current norms and limited, culturally claustrophobic takes that’d only serve to unknowingly shoving them down a singular pipeline that’ll only lead to identity problems later down the line.

Right, so I’m not the biological father and as such have to consider the father’s side as well, but we are not really doing anything highly religious and defer education on different religions (and atheism, agnosticism) to the school system, which is neutral and goes education and variety first as a baseline. When they are older, they can find their own path. I suppose they might want to participate in the main religion’s confirmation stuff because most kids do, even if not in the (or any) church, since it’s something of a tradition, but that’s their decision; they’ll be old enough at that point.

We’ve talked about how we’d get married (or something alternative with similar purpose) and how we’d raise our biological kid if or when we have them, and it’s practically the same as how our school-age kid has been brought up. In regards to marriage, despite them being a priest and a theologian with master’s degree, the current idea is to do a secular gathering for the actual social side of things, no priests, no holy word of any variety, but we’ll get a blessing in private with only the very closest ones, no church. I suppose this is what most do anyway. Personally I am not going to participate in any prayers or do any holy vows, but I’ll of course be present there for her and take the blessing together and whatever they’d want in addition, as long as I don’t have to swear to any books or gods. This is hard to put into words without me sounding arrogant or dismissive of the religion, but it’s a compromise that we’ve ended up with. The blessing is important for her, and for me, I just want to dance in the woods and eat well, share the bounty and happiness with friends. So we do both.

With a kid it’d be the same. There’s already plenty of good education coming from our school system, and we’ve of course agreed not to make any decision for the kid before they are of age and capable of making their mind properly. And even then well not force anything on them. But on the other hand if they want to do some before-bed prayers, we’ll of course deliver. It’s something of a habit for the school-aged kid, and I always respectfully participate without binding my fingers or doing the actual amens or the like, but I find it cute and commendable that they wish so much good on everyone and want to make a point to form them into words, speak them out loud, even though I might question the medium.

But it’s all just compromises and honestly, this never seemed like something that’d bring friction. For us, at least. Maybe it’s different to others, but we just try to stay open and available to them, and each other, and avoid forcing anything on them, or each other. I really don’t know how to put it into words, but it just seems natural and comes itself.

Just to add a view from someone living in a progressive-ish country:

Religion and differences of religion have never played a big part in my relations with anyone, nor am I aware it has affected anyone else towards me. There are very few fundamentalists here, so nobody seems to care all that much what you believe or don’t believe.

It’s strange that someone would worry about this. I’m agnostic rather than atheist, but most of my family are very deeply into religion. And my partner is priest by profession. Never has that played a role in our relations, and we do very openly talk about all this occasionally too. They are not trying to convert me, and I’m not trying to convert them. And if nobody wants to convert anyone, there’s very little friction. All it takes is some understanding and empathy, and probably the humility to accept that any of us might be wrong, even one themselves. So nobody’s preaching to anyone, yet we can talk about these things very smoothly and openly if need be, like in regards to children and upbringing etc.

Disagreeing is healthy. Talking is healthy. Getting offended is not. Neither is trying to force anyone into anything, or even worse, unwarrantedly expecting something from someone.

So religion has played exactly zero part in this or anything else at least in my personal relations, or those who I know. I don’t think religion has anything to do with children either. Upbringing can be colorful and include everyone’s opinions and views, and the unique stuff just requires some open conversation and compromises from all parties, which is true for everything in life anyway.

Happy to elaborate, if I was unclear somewhere

My BMI is well on the obesity side, though I’m reasonably fit and more importantly, have built some muscle. I think last we checked it was around 35 or so, yet I do frequent 25km day off-road marches with ~25kg backpack just keep my body comfortable with the much less frequent, though much more enjoyable, longer hikes I try to fit in each year. Last I ran the (admittedly not all that useful) Cooper’s test, I got just past the 3km threshold.

All this, while technically being… *checks notes*… obese.

I’m 92kg and around 170cm, which I think gets close to 200lb and 5’7 in the land of the free units. Never felt better about my body and shape, although back in the day when I was doing my NCO school, I was in a much better shape. But about the same weight. Now I have some fluff on my dad belly. But I really find it sad that so many are scared of weight, when it’s the composition that matters.

I think speech like this is scaring people off of gaining a healthy amount of muscle, especially if they are longer in height than average. I’m short and I had to work a lot to get this weight and muscle. Someone tall wouldn’t have to work as much, and would not even be in as good a shape, but feel doubly worse because a lot of people just talk about all this in terms of weight.

All I’m saying is we should be critical of both using BMI in anything else than statistics where it’s at least helpful, and weight alone, which is even less helpful in any general sense. The kids will be too thin and frail in general, if they are scared of getting a healthy amount of strength, since that easily throws the scales off.

Yeah, if only the cheap stuff does this, and there are teens in the household, I would bet that the stuff in its bottle is already plenty cut with water.

I remember, as a teen, I’d avoid the expensive stuff just because that’d get me into more trouble probably. The cheap stuff? By the time anyone noticed, it was probably 80% water in the bottle 😁

This is my exact experience too. The deck sort of forces the tumbsticks on me, though I’d much prefer the touchpads from original controller. The square ones just aren’t placed well for my hands, and don’t feel natural to me. But then again I’ve had the controller from launch, gotten used to it.

Just wanted to recommend Luanti (formerly Minetest). Got the whole family playing at the same time eventually, and so I spun a server we can always join individually or together. It’s been really fun, didn’t think I’d like the genre, but it’s pretty zen when it needs to be, yet can have action and exploration too. Especially when trying to watch over and guard the little ones that get a little panicky at times and don’t have the best eye-hand coordination with a keyboard and a touchpad.

I’m out of touch here, what happened? No longer use it, but have some previously stored data there, should I do a purge? Is it dead or did they transition to something profit-driven and questionable?

Now that the election is out of the way, maybe I can continue talking about this. I held my tongue during the past months, but I think now is a good time to think about this result.

While the result is unfortunate and disappointing, there are sides to it that aren’t all that bad. They pushed towards the right, pandering, and now the voters told them that this isn’t a winning strategy. I think it helps setting them straight for the future.

I think you put it very aptly. Of course it would’ve been best if Harris had won, but at least now we can think about it from a neutral perspective: Had she won despite all the right-pandering and genocide-enabling stances, it would either send the message that pandering to the right works, and the progressives are, indeed, either too small a group to listen to in the future too, or too much of pussies to listen to in the future, too — they’ll toe the line no matter what kind of shitty positions you take.

At least now they know that a change is needed. It’s almost unthinkable to lose to such a weird fascist populist that barely behaves cohesively. They did, by ignoring the progressives. That means something. At least it ought to.

Things don’t often change unless things hurt. If doing shitty things keeps working, nothing changes. But when things hurt, it opens some eyes at least. Forces re-evaluation on everyone’s part.

But that being said, this fucking sucks. Despite all the reasoning we can do to make it feel a bit better, this really should not have happened.

Anecdotal, and not a woman personally, but I’ve had a similar experience from days long gone; ultimately we ended up trying out different toys and the sucking sort of vibrator with lower settings was what got her past the “block”, but it was via masturbation. We’d only move it to our together time after she got comfortable with the sensation and desensitized, as she described it. In our part of the world the main brand name for this kind of toy was “satisfyer”, not sure if that is global though.

After a while it all just clicked and it became something more familiar to me too, with fingers and tongue (though she did still prefer sucking over licking, which for me as a young man back then was new, but very much a priceless enlightenment and a much appreciated skill I later had time to hone more) ultimately joining in and it all becoming something more familiar to my less experienced younger self.

What I’ve learnt since though, is that everyone is so wildly different, that just simply masturbating together, or learning to, if the other party/parties aren’t experienced there, has been key to lasting mutual satisfaction. And people and their needs/wants change over time, that’s also important to keep in mind. And masturbation is the thing that naturally reflects that. Just talk, talk, talk, and then experiment. Try and keep an open mind, and try to be accommodating. Change and new things take time. Try your best not to get frustrated or load too much expectations into the process. And try and understand the other party/parties are the ones having a harder time coming to terms with the fact that they could not meet your initial expectations. They have a lot of pressure due to this, though it’ll ultimately be mutually beneficial.

Also I’ve noted that it’s so easy to fall prey to thinking that you’re the one giving or somehow “improving” their life here, but this is, in fact, your need that needs to get satisfied. You want her to feel things she does not currently. It’s not a bad thing, this is how life is when you share it with someone, but do not think you are being the giving party here. This is your need, which she either chooses to accommodate and figure out together, or not. And you might best start accepting that this experiment might not lead anywhere, and that you might have to change your expectations accordingly.

Chill, friend. People die naturally and fade from memory, this is how we move on and progress. There are way too many issues at the same level of importance as the nipples in social media, and way too many ought to be terminated if we placed the line there.

In place of termination, I’d love to see education, practical activism and just good old time.

We’ll get there. The weirdos opposing mundane shit like nipples will die and fade naturally, and our efforts spent in education and activism will shift the larger tides such that new ones like them will get fewer and fewer each generation.

And since we are humans, new issues will arise, and we’ll fight them the same. They are, and always have been, doomed to die out with the rest of the ass-backwards ideas, this is what progress is.

And you can’t speed up progress with blood. That is how you slow it down. The ideas will root in the blood and refuse to fade like they should and as they eventually unavoidably will, with the temporal resistance brought up by the rushed show of force.

Let the fuckers fade out and be forgotten, as much as possible, as fast as possible, and help the process by being active. Be loud, be persistent, but be not violent.

Any and all violence has always been, and always will be, resisted eventually by a larger force. If the nipple-opposers (I.e conservatives) choose violence, that’ll only serve to speed up the progress for us, by the way of rising more forceful resistance, and after overcoming the oppression, having the majority to instantly implement changes with popular support.

Oppressors will never be popular in the long run, and the oppressor’s ideas are bound to die with them. Not for good, as we’ve seen with the rise of neo-nazism, but they’ll never again be as popular so as to rise into power without blood, and with blood, they’ll repeat the cycle of ultimately weakening themselves and their ideas out of existence for good. But in the short-term, the polar opposites of the oppressor’s ideas will gain flash popularity and those ideas will get rapidly implemented, thus speeding up the progress.

It’s complex and unintuitive, perhaps, but the history has shown that any and all attempts to speed up any ideological progresses by way of violence or oppression, has ultimately ended in those very ideas being in ruin, and the opposing ideas getting stronger, more persistent in their standing.

Though for a short while, those ideas will be in power, and a lot of bad stuff will happen. Even if the ideas should be good from our point of view. But that is just a temporary state, which will always end in resistance winning, and opposing ideas gaining standing and popularity.

This became a very tangential and random outburst, of which I’m not very proud, but I think it best to leave it up if not for anything else but to show everyone my unfounded idea of self-importance and a rambling, cringeworthy brain. Yikes. I’m fucking ashamed. But this is how I think, I suppose, maybe someone will set me straight.

In addition, there have been these studies released (not so sure how well established, so take this with a grain of salt) lately, indicating a correlation with increased perceived efficiency/productivity, but also a strongly linked decrease in actual efficiency/productivity, when using LLMs for dev work.

After some initial excitement, I’ve dialed back using them to zero, and my contributions have been on the increase. I think it just feels good to spitball, which translates to heightened sense of excitement while working. But it’s really just much faster and convenient to do the boring stuff with snippets and templates etc, if not as exciting. We’ve been doing pair programming lately with humans, and while that’s slower and less efficient too, seems to contribute towards rise in quality and less problems in code review later, while also providing the spitballing side. In a much better format, I think, too, though I guess that’s subjective.