S_Bear

One of my all-time favorites. Still reads like a 'modern' book.

The best part of the Singularity is that, once everyone who wants to uploads their consciousness to a computer does so, we mortal humans can simply unplug it and go on about our lives.

I was helping an 80+ year old with a phone problem this week. Dealing with the AI CSA was so frustrating. I don't think this lady was ready to burn down data centers that morning, but I think she was looking for a pitchfork by the afternoon.

Including their ridiculous naming system. Referring to a playstation generation is easy, referring to an xbox generation past the 360 is incredibly difficult.

I used to work in a bookstore, and I've been working in libraries almost my entire career. Most books have no value. I've probably thrown out a million books in my life; most of them have been diet books, cook books, and political biographies.

My current library is around 2000 square feet and I acquire around 1000 books a year, so I have to toss around 1000 books a year, because they're made of matter and take up space.

I've been replaying some of the games of my youth, and they are either super easy or don't take very much time (I remember the original Final Fantasy being this vast epic tale; it took me 9-ish hours to beat as an adult. My Punch-Out reflexes didn't die, and I made it to re-skinned Mike Tyson on my first go.) A third of a game of Civ V takes longer than any of the NES and Genesis games I played as a kid.

Club Happily Bald here. My wife prefers me without hair, and razor blades are significantly cheaper than haircuts. I can't imagine trying to preserve my hair.

III was my favorite. Lyle was so cool to 13 year old me, the multi-generation cyborgs were awesome (in fact, the multiple ending were all kind of neat), I loved the biomes connected by tunnels, and the art direction was kind of gross and funky compared to how clean the PSII enemies were.

Cahokia was one of the coolest places to take people when I lived in St Louis. It's kind of a hidden gem and it altered the way I had been taught that native people had lived.

I read this every couple years or so and enjoy it every time.

I work as a librarian (and have been one for 25+ years), but I kind of hate the things that librarians should care about. I got into this business because I like helping elderly people in my community with their smartphones and tablets, and getting children to read. I don't care about cosplaying as a social worker or lawyer, fighting injustice and challenging assumptions; I just want to help Mildred w her iPad so she can zoom with her grandkids.

Other people's dogs are my favorite dogs.

And wife and I are both old and wrinkly and happily child free. Childfree people aren't just hedonists.

I cut my parents out of my life as soon as I was able. Depending on the 'vibrancy of family life' when you're old is often a bad gamble.

I used to have a 'Rugged Indoorsman' shirt. Loved that one.

My home insurance jumped from $600 a year to $2300 a year from 2019 - 2025. A big boost for consumer spending indexes, but I feel really ripped off. (I shopped around last year and every company was charging the same amount)

My parents are poor boomers, but if they had to live as I do, they'd be rich boomers. They have no financial discipline and burned through cash like crazy. If they would have saved even a little bit in the 80s and 90s, they'd be in a much better situation.

For all the effort we put into science education, cooking is applied science we do every day. We should start in elementary school and keep at it through high school, in my opinion.

That book killed Dilbert for me. I enjoyed every Dilbert book up until that one, then it just faded away for me.

My wife has been on the same minecraft server for 15 years. We meet up with the other members fairly regularly; a few of them even flew out to Hawaii with us for vacation last year. This year we're going to Canada for vacation, and we'll probably have a group of 7-8 of the Canadian members meet up and go do stuff.

My favorite mobile game ad was for Jeep, which was 3 seconds of the word JEEP on a black background. My wife and I laugh about it, but we remember it. It was actually really effective in that regard.

My second favorite was for some pirate game, but the ads were basically the setup for an adult movie, with tons of hammy overacting. I thought they were so funny, I was really sad when they stopped.

I'm not 'in tech', but I am a technology librarian and a large part of my job is teaching senior citizens how to use their devices. I don't make a ton of money, but I get a lot of social capital in my community, as well as a bunch of fresh baked goods this time of year.

I was at a conference in St Cloud, MN a few years ago, and I could see the Panda Express from my hotel. Took around 40 minutes to walk there because I couldn't get the timing right to frogger myself across the 6 lanes. Got stuck in the island in the middle for a good 15 minutes because the slip lane always had cars in it.

When I was starting in retail, I had several notebooks I made of conversational flowcharts. They helped a lot back when I was in my late teens, and, along with some improv training, I can put on a pretty convincing performance now (my customer service skills are top notch). The only problem I have is when people veer too far off of my training.

Yeah, mine was count down from ten. Made it to eight, then I was in a different room and an hour had passed. Closest thing to time travel.

I'm a technology librarian and I spend around 20 hours a week helping seniors with their devices. I really wish that phone and TV engineers could shadow me for a few weeks and see what problems people really have using their devices (yes, people drag their TV to the library for me to look at). The number 1 complaint by far is getting rid of the home button on iphones and ipads. I've had a few patrons switch to android because it has fewer touch controls.

The Internet thing is true. I live in a town of 2,000 in what would be considered the middle of nowhere, and have a local ISP that's better than anything I had available in the large metros I lived in prior.

Yes, but not having a mortgage is huge. And it's a giant leap from the 90k my house is currently valued at to the $299-350k that a comparable home in a metro area would fetch (I live in the middle of nowhere).

I bought my house in 2018 for $40k and it's paid off. I used to move frequently (every 5 years or so), but now I'm kind of trapped because housing has gotten so bonkers since then. Instead I'm throwing all my extra money into retirement so I can be done @ 55.

I treat it just like I did back in the 80s and 90s; I tell myself that each good photo costs a quarter to develop. After vacations, I have around 10-15 quality pictures.