Funny, I came here to make the exact same analogy. I totally agree - a mature kid and an immature adult have a lot of overlap.

It’s amazing that so many people will vote for someone who proved to be worse than useless.

Oh, for sure - “career politician” has a stink to it, but those folks get stuff done

Harris doesn’t elicit the strong negative emotions as Hilary. People might not like her, but few viscerally hate her.

I honestly think Clinton would have been a decent president, and that she was consistently smeared, but this is a terrible idea. There are lots of people who have bought into her being the antichrist and who could never vote for a ticket she’s on.

I got around to reading 17776 today. That was fun, thanks for the recommendation!

I never said that being a driller is trivial. Do you think being an astronaut is trivial? That’s a pretty intensely technical job, which is why the bar for entry is so insanely high. I would put my money on those folks leaning how to drill better than drillers leaning how to be an astronaut.

Where I am in SoCal, it’s perfect right now. The lows are in the upper 50s, the highs in the mid 80s. The mornings are cool and a bit overcast, but it burns off to a sunny, warm day. It gets cool enough to open the windows just after sundown, them close them mid morning. Really nice. In a month, highs and lows will increase ten to fifteen degrees, so it will be a bit hot.

That’s super true. What’s worse is that it often turns out to be true of news as well. There have been a few times when I was familiar with events that made the news, and there were always inaccuracies in the articles. It’s made me look at articles on events that I’m not familiar with differently; they probably have the same amount of inaccuracies.

I’m software engineering in aerospace, so a lot of computer and space stuff is ruined, which covers a lot of content.

But everyone should smack their heads about Armageddon.

Seems pretty reasonable to me. It’s not 5 comments, it’s 5 posts. I’m guessing they’re trying to limit spammers and people with an agenda. As I recall, some Lemmy instances either implemented or considered limits on total posts across communities because of spamming.

Ha! I hadn’t heard that - I’m glad someone involved called him out on it. I mean, I get that the real answer - to that and all my complaints - is that the movie doesn’t work otherwise, but it’s so annoying.

I worked on the space shuttle program, and I found Armageddon almost unwatchable. I mean, those things go up with the big solid rockets and an external tank full of hydrogen and oxygen, all of which get jettisoned during launch, then they come down as a glider. But in the movie they’re landing on asteroids and taking off again, smashing into things and still flying, etc. (remember how Columbia blew up because of a crack in the leading edge of one wing?). Plus the whole premise of it being easier to teach oil drillers how to be astronauts than to teach astronauts how to be oil drillers is a joke. Every astronaut I’ve met has been an amazing capable person - many are test pilots with multiple advanced degrees.

A decent sized package of medium quality chocolate.

I should have mentioned what you just did: your passion doesn’t have to be your job.

Tangentially, as I get closer to retirement, one of the things I hear from retirees is that they planned on doing a lot more of their hobby when they retired, but found that the hobby felt more like a job when they tried to do it all day. So sometimes it’s better that you keep something you enjoy as something that you can just do when you want.

I end up having similar conversations with college folks (interns mostly). I usually say something along the lines of:

• If there’s something that you’re so passionate about that you’re going to do it regardless, it’s worth taking a shot at making a living at it. Things like writing, acting, and music are really hard to to make it in, but if it’s really a passion, you might as well give it a go. It’s good to have a Plan B though.
• If you aren’t super passionate about something, or you don’t have the starving artist mentality or whatever, next is to look at things you’re good at that you don’t hate, especially if there’s room to grow in them. If you’re good at math, for instance, you could consider being an accountant.
• If you don’t feel like you have any especially marketable skills, then you’re looking for something that’s more broadly available, like retail or whatever. Of you can find something that teaches a skill, that’s a plus.

Broadly, there’s a passion, there’s a career, and there’s a job. There’s nothing wrong with any of those, but people tend to be happiest in that order. I personally wasn’t super passionate about anything, but liked computers, got a CS degree, ended up as a software engineer at a rocket company, and now manage the software organization there. There were other things I enjoyed, but I figured programming was the most marketable, and that’s worked out for me.

What people tend to like or hate the most about where they work are the people and/or the boss, and that can be good or bad pretty much anywhere. Good to watch out for red and green flags when you’re looking.

Ugh, my poor wife; I’ve had a number of bad experiences because I’m so fundamentally stubborn. In the dream, I won’t be able to do something, and I’ll work and work at it, and sometimes succeed in real life. It’s been as simple and benign as not being able to see in a dream and struggling to open my eyes until I finally do, and I wake up. But I’ve managed to yell with a mouth that didn’t completely work, so my wife woke up to what sounds like a yelling, mournful ghost. I’ve managed to fight and punched my wife. I’ve managed to run, and kicked her. In all these cases, in the dream, I’ve had to really struggle to do the thing before I succeed and wake myself up.

Sleep paralysis turns out to be a good thing.

Well that’s… really interesting. I love it when people experiment with new ways of telling a story. That might move this up much higher on my list. Thanks for the link.

I’ve added the Butler books to my list.

Some of these are on the list of books I’ve read in the last year that I posted recently, in case those notes are helpful at all (some I’ve read earlier, and don’t have notes like this). Here’s what I’ve read since that post, which includes some overlap with this list, along with my notes, just for what it’s worth:

Rule 34, Stross Somewhat of a sequel to Halting State, taking place a few years later. Spammers are being killed around the world, many at the same time. Story mostly follows a detective on the case, a psychopath involved, and a flunky who is unwittingly part of things. Interesting, though as with Halting State, the use of second person seems weird.

Consider Phlebas, Banks Both sides in a war raging across the galaxy are trying to get to an advanced artificial intelligence. Mostly told from the POV of a human variant who can change appearance. Banks’s first SF novel - pretty good though I didn’t find the main character especially likable.

The Fifth Season, Jemison Fantasy - first book in the Broken Earth trilogy. Set in an earth where all the land is one big continent that goes through periods of big seismic/volcanic activity such that there’s well-followed lore about how to get through them. There are “orogenes" who have a power to control the seismic activity to varying extents. The story alternates from the perspective of three female orogenes struggling with their respective situations. Very well crafted and structured. Good.

Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro This is an odd book. It’s very slow paced, and not much actually happens. I think it’s best to read it without knowing anything at all, so I’m going to avoid spoilers. It’s a story told first person by a woman who attended a special boarding school. For a quarter of the book, there are barely even hints that there’s anything unusual going on. We don’t get an understanding of it until halfway, and even then not fully. I feel like this might have been better as a novella. That said, it was highly regarded and even made into a movie (that I never saw). The premise is really interesting, and the story moving, but for half the book we’re just reading a woman reminiscing on her school days.

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory, Wells A short story in the Murderbot series, taking place between Exit Strategy and Fugitive Telemetry (but published well after). This one from the point of view of Dr. Mensah and the after effects of the ordeal in Exit Strategy. Would be good to read in between those books.

The Saint of Bright Doors, CHANDRASEKERA A boy is raised by his mother to kill his father (and others). He has no shadow, and has to work to keep from floating off the ground. He grows up and moves to a big, strange city to escape his mother’s vision for him, but he has a strange destiny. An odd fantasy story, with odd bits of magic, odd characters, and an odd arc. Enjoyable.

The Player of Games, Banks Second in the Culture Wars series, set in the same universe as Consider Phlebas, but otherwise unrelated. A better book than the first. A man who is somewhat famous for his prowess at playing all sorts of games is recruited to go to a recently discovered empire that has a complicated game that’s central to its culture and structure. Banks does well at creating multidimensional characters, and the story is compelling. The main characters in this book and in Phlebas seem to lack truly close relationships, which is odd.

Which sounds most interesting to you?

I’ve read ten of the twenty one. The fact that it was so different than these types of lists tend to be, without being a bunch of fan fiction or whatever, is why I posted it. Just seemed like an interesting list. Of the ones I’ve read, I didn’t dislike any of them, though there are some I certainly wouldn’t have put on an all-time greats list myself.