As soon as your engineering company starts taking advice from business instead of engineers, you’ve lost. See also - Boeing.

If you vibe coded it, 300/hr

What, you mean like a game you only buy once and just play online for free after that? Why would anyone want that?

HIMYM was a show that gave me comfort as an awkward kid in a tiny rural hateful town. No it wasn’t the best, but you’re spot on about the city. It was the last member of the gang. Now I moved to a city and love it, in no small part to the show

Oh my god, did they have to be in the same building as one?! The horror

Hm, have a few based on how popular they were. Kickstart discussion!

Hot take - the Office is too hated now. I think that it’s fair to hate it now in comparison to many other (honestly better) shows, but forget what TV was like in the 90s and 00s. No committal sitcoms in the 4-camera layout, taking no risks, with lame-ass jokes. The office is not perfect - but it definitely broke the mold and kickstarted the modern mockumentary style of show. Thanks to it we got shows like Parks and Rec and 30 rock, none of which would have been approved without the Office first.

New Girl - Honestly, it’s a fun show. No I wouldn’t expect it to win any Emmys, and like all sitcoms it’s main characters are all psycopath/narcissists, but it’s fun. Zooey Deschanel does a great job, she’s over the top like she is in everything but I never found it too annoying, and she’s mellowed by a great ensemble cast. The stories are light and the humor gets a chuckle out out of me

and what the hell rule of 3s. I’ll say NCIS - hated by our age demographic - but hey what the hell else would we watch when our older family members were visiting?

they say after driving 1 hour round trip every day on government-paid roads with their thin-blue-line sticker

Maybe they should see if that weird Jesus guy had it

Calling Visa today for mine! I don’t play those games, but I hate the precedent. It is not a payment processor’s job to dictate what can and can’t be done. (Now, I have worked FinTech for many years, there is a legit risk they are taking that the feds would blame them however -) it should be on the company selling the product itself, and any decent legal team at a payment processor would be able to handle it like a normal Tuesday.

They always seem to forget that normal people live there, going to work every day and doing normal things. If it was as bad as they claimed it would be on worldwide news daily

Exact same impact as having a church in your neighborhood I assume? I say I assume because I don’t even know if there is one near me - I bet there is now that I think of it, but that’s how little it affects me.

This one bugs me so much. It may feel that way but you know why? Because they’re literally being exposed to new people and ideas - you know - what being in a community does naturally. College isn’t doing anything, it’s because they’re breaking out of their small town/suburban bubble

Spot on, and definitely right about per capital crime rate as well. They always seem to leave that out. Maybe because it’s been proven that the most unsafe cities in the US per capital are in redder areas, by a pretty wide margin.

Good on you, at the very least maybe she learned not everyone has the same lame ass regurgitated opinion as her. It’s how I shut down my family as well, they asked if I was safe and I literally just laughed and asked why I wouldn’t be. They said the riots and I just said don’t believe everything you see on the news. They stopped bringing it up. They still watch, but for one moment I think I broke their brains

We have an amazing bar near me that has an “all gendered restroom” that would make my rural family members cry out in fear. A sink in the middle big enough for 15 people to wash their hands. On one side is urinals, the other stalls, and all are fully enclosed and lockable individually. The horror

Same as every protest. People peacefully organize in a park or something. Police get all weak in the knees and put on riot gear and bring out tanks, and start pushing people around. Finally a single protester throws a rock back and the media swarms in calling it a “warzone”. Closeups of the rock, slowmo of it going overhead, interviews with sergeants. Policeman crying. Every. Damn. Time.

Just last year I was laid off while my job was shipped overseas. But hey, my CSuite got richer, so congrats to them.

Feels like?

This is the crux of it. All the fearmongering, all the campaigns against urbanism, against transit, against everything that’s not single family suburban white America. It feels unsafe. It’s not unsafe, it just feels unsafe.

At some point, if your emotions get the better if you, “feels” becomes “is”.

People don’t take transit because it doesn’t feel safe. In reality it’s because they’ve heard “stories” and watched the news that now being just around people doesn’t feel safe. So they say it isn’t safe. Driving feels safer because you’re separated from other people, even though you’re much more likely to die or be maimed in a car accident than anything while riding transit. But it feels safer.

People like being in their suburban communities because it feels safer. Why does it feel safer? Well, if you can buy into a planned neighborhood chances are other people there are pretty similar socio and economically to you. OP talks of tribalism, that’s the perfect form right there. Stepping out of your small area then feels unsafe because there are people who aren’t like you - and so other areas quickly “become” unsafe in your mind.

It’s the seed for racism, homophobia, anger, hatred. They are the other people, they are different, they are outside my known safe group. It’s our monkey brains taking over. We have the instinct that we are outside of our safe space, so it must not be safe. Except we aren’t going out to hunt wildebeasts tonight. Most people I’ve learned are very similar - they go to work, go home, convince themselves that maybe tonight I should just order a pizza, they put off going for errands over the weekend, and then dread going back to work. But monkey brains don’t see that, they see “others” and tells them “fear”.

There are of course dozens of studies and proofs showing that feeling unsafe and actually being unsafe are two completely different things, but it doesn’t move the fear that these people are in. They’re already convinced. Facts aren’t going to matter. It’s why I know OP isn’t arguing here in good faith - it’s been proven already. But cities feel unsafe - so they must be.

So why is Chicago unsafe? It isn’t. Facts and numbers prove this over and over. So the real question is “Why do I not feel safe in Chicago?” - and that ultimately boils down to “Why do I not feel safe around people?” - and that question forces people to think about their own opinions and thoughts about others. Maybe they aren’t as open and thoughtful as they thought, maybe there are darker feelings in there - and those are the self reflective questions that are really scary.

It was night and day what they showed on the news vs social media. Conservative news might as well had shown half of LA on fire with mothers clutching their babies because of scary rioters. Liberal news showed nothing. Social Media showed a lot of very angry citizens peacefully protesting in LA who wanted their families and friends returned from being disappeared.

continues holding up mirror