Oh no, I wasn’t trying to disprove your point at all! Just showing how extreme the situation needs to be to justify a suit. From what I remember most of the guests didn’t wear a suit either, but I can totally see it being a thing on the east coast.

Also Colorado. Granted, covid didn’t give me much opportunity here but I wore a suit this summer for the first time in about 5 years. It was a wedding and I was the officiant 🙃

Assuming not-Montana US, you can be fired for any reason other than membership in a protected class (race, religion, etc). Attending an ice cream social, even a company one, is not a protected class.

Hmmm. Do pineapple and anchovies go together?

I absolutely do think RCV should be used! Or at least runoff voting or SOMETHING other than FPTP. But the other commenter was suggesting that because I’m in favor of it, and because I pointed out the potential consequence of voting third party under FPTP, I must prove my allegiance (or something) by starting a movement. As if I can’t simply have an opinion without dedicating my life to it.

Cool. Am I supposed to do that for every cause I believe in or just the ones you say I should?

I see lots of problems in the world. Our voting system is flawed, income inequality is bananas, people still think Donald Trump won the election 4 years ago, our cities are very car-dependent, and plenty more. If I built a grassroots program for every issue I point out to every yahoo on the Internet, I wouldn’t have time to change my toddler’s diaper. If my posting online tells people to keep the cart behind the horse or reconsider their points of view (glad you seem to agree with me what the problem is!) I’ll call that a win on a smaller scale.

Cripes. My point was our current system means your vote for the perfect candidate can put the candidate you disagree with most into office when one with much closer views to yours could have been elected instead. It has happened, and in a place where it really shouldn’t have.

That system should be changed for that reason, and until it is you should be very aware of unintended consequences of that vote.

Regardless of outcome, you’re playing with fire in our current voting system. Even if a few states did actually elect a third party, you could see no candidate reach 270 electoral votes and then it goes to the even more arcane vote done in the house of representatives (which each state gets a vote)

A very blue district in Hawaii sent a Republican (Charles Djou) to Washington in a special election with less than half the vote, because the two Democrats in the race refused to back down. If there were a ranked choice or other voting system than “plurality takes all”, he wouldn’t have won

Machine learning has some pretty cool potential in certain areas, especially in the medical field. Unfortunately the predominant use of it now is slop produced by copyright laundering shoved down our throats by every techbro hoping they’ll be the next big thing.

That’s cool, and I’d love to see it. “wage” means hourly payment for time worked. Anything else is a benefit or whatever - but not wage. Wage theft is not getting paid wages due.

Vacation time is not the same as hourly wage.

I don’t think we really disagree here. You’re focusing on what people are. I’m focusing on how they see themselves. They’re not necessarily the same things.

Doesn’t mean you don’t call yourself middle class, because at least you’re not homeless. At the very least, “lower-middle class”

20-something years ago PBS had an excellent documentary called “People Like Us: Social Class in America” to show, well, social class in America. If you can find it, or at least clips of it, I’d recommend it. There was one cutscene with a bunch of people being asked which class they see themselves as, and pretty much everyone felt they were “middle class” - but you could tell by the way they presented themselves (clothes, jewelry, etc) that they were all over the place.

Pretty much everyone calls themselves middle class. Outside of the extremes one would expect, there will always be richer and poorer people among you, meaning you’re in the “middle” - whether you’re struggling to make rent or debating whether or not to go to the vacation home this weekend.

Use it or lose it is very common, even in (US) government employment.

If everything is running on renewables, cool. Until then, there’s still the opportunity cost.

And here we are, not on TikTok or Instagram, and still seeing it

Yeah, that Franch dipping sauce in Breaking Bad was crazy!

I’m not an avid reader, but I’m a huge fan of a book called Over the Edge of the World by Lawrence Bergreen. That detailed Magellan’s voyage around the world. A few takeaways:

• Spices really were the thing everyone in Europe wanted. If a sailor managed to smuggle a backpack full of cloves, it would be enough to buy a modest house. Only one of 5 ships made it back, but it was filled with top quality cloves and that was enough that the trip was STILL a financial gain.

• Nobody really knew where the spices came from. India was a nebulous semi-mythical place, and some believed there were a few "India"s

• Magellan, while Portuguese by birth, basically moved to Spain when Portugal wouldn’t pay for him to try to find the spice Islands

• The treaty of Tordesillas roughly divided the new world between Spain and Portugal. The land east of whatever meridian was Portugal’s, and west was Spain’s. But there were still issues, like longitude not really being measurable at the time and no clear idea who had claim 180° past that meridian. But it would have been to Spain’s benefit to find the spice islands past that meridian

Bonus fact: the first human to sail around the world was Magellan’s slave, Enrique (last name escapes me). He was brought from Indonesia(?) to Europe, then set sail on this round-the world journey, eventually going near his native homeland. Magellan had it in his will that Enrique be freed upon his death, but when he was killed on that voyage (basically by his own who) nobody was aware of that.