LOL almost. They basically take out all your teeth and replace them with synthetics, I guess?

I’m sure there’s plenty of good dentists in Turkey, but what’s with this trend of people getting MAJOR medical work or body modification done ANYWHERE by whoever’s got a flashy Instagram or TikTok reel? Nuts.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/health/turkey-teeth-leaving-brits-toothless-35327173

What’s funny in a sad-not-haha way, is that labor for caretaking of small human beings is the enormous untenable driving cost here.

Parents can’t afford the rates, daycares can’t afford living wages for the caretakers. This is an endeavor, like many, that the Hand of the Market™ is OBVIOUSLY unsuitable for solving.

The “funny” part: Parents would gladly do this job for free as they have for centuries and millennia. This problem was already solved, and wouldn’t be an issue if every member of the household wasn’t forced into full-time 40+ hour work plus hunting for side-hustles, and being taken away from their loved ones for most of their waking friggin lives, just to survive.

How many generations deep are we now? Where so many kids spend so long in daycare from infancy that they never even get to form a decent bond with their own parents? How healthy is that, for anybody, much less larger society?

“Parenting as a Service” is peak capitalistic hellscape…

Edit: spelling

Thinking of going abroad for dental implants.

Just don’t go to Turkey to hit up an Instagram dentist. That stuff is terrifying. <_<

A perfectly apt analysis. Thank you for the link. Anarchist Library has some good gems in there!

When I.T and nurses are complaining that they keep getting ghosted and can’t find work? That feels like a major economic failure signal to me. It’s freaking mad.

I appreciate your realistic assessment here.

When we consider all that reasonably goes into running such a service, we can rationally figure out how much is being diverted to the wrong pockets and make it better.

“War is not about who is right, but who is left.”

… But for all intents and purposes, it’d be better for all if Ukraine remains standing.

Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦

“TeLL hIm To StOp, AnD iF hE dOeSn’T, gO gEt An AdUlt.”

I’m not usually one to knock someone’s appearance but you’re right with this guy’s weird friggin grin. Like it’s not genuine or even appearing to be, in the slightest.

It’s so cynical, cold, creepy and soulless. How did the A-B testing that drives his every single decision settle on that expression?

Damn! Broke…broke my knife…!

Olioliolioliolioooo!!! 😮

I mean maybe? But even if it’s frustrating it sounded like you tried and that’s the key point I’m trying to make about intelligence.

I’ve been there too, and I think finding shortcuts to communicate is part of the process, right? Also I notice people tend to LOVE helping new people learn their language here and there. People love it when others are trying their best even if they’re awful at it. I wouldn’t call that dumb, for sure. :)

My experience with these folks felt more like those stereotypical cringey tourists or expats, who would move somewhere foreign to them and just get louder and more indignant at everybody: “WHY ISN’T EVERYTHING IN ENGLISH?! CAN’T YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?! I WANT TO TALK ONLY IN ENGLISH ABOUT HOW ANNOYING YOUR LANGUAGE IS AND HOW FRUSTRATED THAT MAKES ME. ABSORB MY NEGATIVE EMOTIONS!!”

It struck me as demoralizing and sad how often the first words someone would utter in my presence were “I hate computers.”

I guess I just realized something about computers makes stupid people very mean. 🤔

So I’m happy to help people learn computers, who actually want to learn something new.

Computers are for anyone! But it was a mistake to push them on everyone. Especially if the school systems weren’t going to bother with teaching them.

Yeah, the library is definitely a wonderful institution for everyone! I did get a chance to support some wonderful people who wouldn’t have had any support otherwise.

I don’t wanna sound like I lacked any compassion or understanding. I wouldn’t have survived many years doing that job otherwise. I was just focusing on the prompt. But the “carer’s fatigue” was REAL.

It wasn’t all bad though! For example: While I couldn’t/wouldn’t personally touch anybody’s computers, I did help two people with really old laptops switch to Linux Mint, and they LOVED IT. So that was really cool! (I kept wanting to run a clinic for this and admin just kinda ignored me to shut me down)

But at the same time, it’s clear in the U.S at least, the library is often positioned as an ill-equipped bandaid to cover a gaping wound in a decayed and eviscerated social system. Libraries would be more pleasant for all with a working social safety net and more “third places” that were free to all to enioy.

Clearly in this case, libraries are expected to make up where underfunded schools utterly failed their students.

Employees trained to help with information are also called upon to be social workers, teachers, employment specialists, and even crisis management personnel in the most extreme cases, and are paid to be none of these things.

Of course private interests and their pet politicians are keen on destroying libraries like they did everything else, because free access to knowledge is dangerous to them. :)

So yeah, support your local library: The last place you can be without paying admission. ❤️

We live in car-mandatory cityscape, and I was paying out the nose just commuting with a used CR-V we were making payments on. I also really hate having to either spend a ton of time in the heat on YouTube fixing the things, or pay an extortionate fee for replacing constant part failures. The car gives me a ton of anxiety when it wants to make a surprise $2000 noise every so often.

Moving isn’t really an option, as we basically survive on pooled familial support.

I think a new car was the next best thing in this instance: We traded that in for a new Chevy Bolt EV because I couldn’t find decent used ones, the payment only went up a little (on a larger total yes), and it’s the cheapest EV in the county.

I hope it wasn’t a bad move. My logic is it gets 99% of the jobs done way cheaper, hardly any maintenance, no fluids and oils, and we’ve got solar at home in a VERY sunny part of the country.

I wanna keep this thing as long as possible, and we figured our income to pay it off would probably go up with the time and cash won back from fussing with the damn car all the time.

…Plus it feels like flipping off Donny FumbDuck and his oil buddies every time I start it up. So that’s nice…

But I really hope this wasn’t a bad move. In the meantime I’d love a more walkable city but that’s like moving mountains here…

I got some for you.

I used to work in the computer lab of a public library. I’ve met so many people carrying such a profound lack of basic understanding or reasoning skills, that the most terrifying thought was realizing “They drove here.”

I put up with that job way too long… It was… So deeply soul sucking I’m still recovering years later. I wish I were joking.

A lot of people who simply didn’t read anything presented to them on a screen, couldn’t handle the concept of email, and had no idea how to open Microsoft Word, much less type a resume. That was kinda the bread and butter there, unfortunately, but we did our best.

It was a whole lot of “That sounds hard. Do it for me?” And they found all sorts of weasle ways to need constant babysitting without crossing the line of my job description.

Few wanted to actually learn anything. (If they did, I went above and beyond.) They mostly wanted a free butler to do their homework assigned by the government or a lawyer or their job or whatever.

These people are dumb by choice, because they are intellectually lazy.

“Monke, stop being mean to the 85 year olds!” You might be thinking. No. These were like 40 and 50 year olds who would tell me “I’m old school, I don’t do computers.” Computers were around since way before me! Where the heck were you!?!? (I’m now convinced whenever people say “old school” they mean “no school.”)

Some examples:

We used to put big obvious “Out of Order” signs over the screens if a machine wasn’t working correctly. I watched a young lady in like her 20s, sit down at that machine, make eye contact with me, see the sign, flip it over, attempt to sign in, then walk up to me to say (yes, in fluent English) it wasn’t working.

I had a regular patron always looking for pastry chef jobs. We had to keep her resume, email address, and password on our work machine because she’d show up every week having forgotten all of it. She ended up with one pastry job only to get fired for eating one from a tray on shift.

So she applied to a grocery chain I think (with significant hand holding by a number of staff), and they had one of those basic competency tests like giving correct change and “Click the picture that shows how many apples are left if we had 5 and take 2 away.”

I explained the nature of the question but that I couldn’t do the thinking for her, and I shit you not this woman in like her early 50’s broke down upset that it was all too much to handle. Like, first grade math. She was one who drove there, by the way. In a car.

I had a dude get grouchy with me because I told him he couldn’t edit videos with PowerPoint (there was no video editing software on those machines.)

I had people more than once try to get me to help them use Paint or GIMP to alter a scan of a pay stub. (FAT CHANCE!)

They would often try to call customer service reps and hand us the phone. Another huge no.

And these people all showed up to blame their struggles…On me.

…Yeah, I’ve met people that have made me weep for the species. They have zero curiosity, zero intrinsic understanding or critical thinking or pattern recognition, and they are seemingly content only knowing how to just complain and buy things.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. And I have seen quite a few wasted minds. It really does break my heart.

Edit: Still work for the library, but in a MUCH better position now. I’m still sad the the weirdest most unhinged people I meet usually want the computer lab though, and I hurt for my colleagues over there…

Blender’s workflow of “One hand never leaves the mouse” is brilliantly underrated. They’ve made the UI more newbie accessible but I always encourage new folks to learn the hotkeys from the start, because you can get SO FAST!!

Thumb on the spacebar and left pinky pulling double duty between CTRL and Shift! :p

Smart cookie, you assumed correctly! :)

It was a hard habit to form if you were taught that way, but it does wonders once you learn it.

Yeah, I feel like Discord (ugh) got that way quick, too, in more populated rooms. IIRC, IRC didn’t have that “quote for context” either, so if you were hunt-and-pecking the conversation already moved on lol.

There we go!

I spent more time socializing on World of Warcraft than actually leveling. Had lots of friends, and since been happily married to my best one!

Touch typing skills were essential, especially mid-combat.

…Or being the undiagnosed ADHD socialite I was, keeping like 8 running whisper and guild chats going in the game’s single chat window at once… 😂