AITA: Suprised husband at airport with kids after being away for almost 4 days.

As a person who also does not like surprises, I would not have appreciated this either. Everyone says he is cheating and whatever, but I truly doubt that. Traveling sucks and he just wanted some time to decompress.

SOME PEOPLE JUST DO NOT LIKE SURPRISES

I know that’s hard for the extroverts to understand but it’s very common. I also do not like surprises because most of the surprises from my childhood and young adulthood were of this type:

1) Surprise! You’re punched in the face.

2) Surprise! It’s an attempted stabbing.

3) Surprise! Your parents stole all your money you’d been saving for years.

4) Surprise! Your bullies are all gathered in the bathroom to kick your ass.

5) Surprise! Your friend died on the drop zone.

6) Surprise! Your parents’ car is getting repossessed and they might also lose their house.

So no, I do not like surprises. At all.

Where does the claim that “Single family zoning” caused the housing crisis come from?

It’s amazing at how catastrophically wrong NIMBY types can be. Motivated reasoning is very destructive to cogntive capability. This is another example, similar to one I found the other day about weight loss, where nearly every contention is 100% wrong.

And that takes real lack of concern with being correct, where just about every single statement is false. I almost admire the commitment to being a dumbass. But that’s Americans for you — completely committed to being hilariously and staunchly, unwaveringly wrong.

My boss is making my life hell because I don’t wanna sleep with her — what do I do?

I was told that women never do this…but it’s probably more common than we think because it’s almost never reported by men (even less often than women do) because no one believes them or men are told they do/should want it.

That men are naught but unthinking sex beasts is a really pernicious, dangerous myth.

I highly approve of more women getting their creep passes revoked.

A catfisher stole all my mom’s money and framed her for federal fraud. This morning he emailed me.

How the ever-living fuck do people fall for this shit? If I had one brain cell left I wouldn’t be hoodwinked by this sort of absurd racket. Yeah, sure, Margot Robbie has gone broke and she needs all my money pronto. Also, she loves me forever.

SOUNDS LIKELY

I’m not good with locations, so when my partner and I went to Target the other day this approximate dialog occurred:

Me: Is this the party Target?

Her: Just because a bunch of police cars were here last time doesn’t mean it was a party. I think the way you grew up is showing.

Me: Where I’m from it’s not a party until the police show up.

Whoever thought closing the last tab of a browser window should close the entire browser should be beaten about the head and neck with a rutabaga.

When you realize how literate and for lack of a better word, cultured, most scientists were in the recent past compared to how STEM people “should” be and are now, it’s pretty damn striking.

As hinted at in the movie Oppenheimer, Robert Oppenheimer was very much into art, and “lent work to a Van Gogh Exhibition in 1949, and collected European furniture, French Post-impressionist and Fauvist paintings.” And of course, Einstein was into philosophy and engaged in some philosophy himself.

STEM has gone down a moronic path with its disdain of philosophy, art, and most of the humanities. Not only is this senseless from a human perspective, studies show that scientists with a wider range of interests actually do better science.

Einstein said, “The theory of relativity occurred to me by intuition, and music is the driving force behind this intuition.”

That is apostasy to current STEM clowns.

Long COVID: What the latest research says about symptoms after two years.

I’ve been trying to make sense of the actual risk of Long Covid vs. the propaganda promulgated by those who are still panicked about Covid. I’ve read a lot studies, including those cited breathlessly by the still Covid-terrified. And from what I can tell, the above gets it about right. Your risk of Long Covid is incredibly small if you are not already sick in some way, or very old — especially if you have been vaccinated.

But these numbers do still give some context as to the rates of these issues in people infected with COVID-19. At a population level, long COVID represents an elevated risk that could be meaningful: An extra two cases of diabetes per 10,000 people over 60 would be quite a few people nationally. At an individual level, however, they are much less alarming. The chance that you will be one of—maybe—five people out of many thousands who have long-term fatigue two years after COVID-19 is quite low. It certainly isn’t as worrying as the health issues posed by heart disease or cancer.

I’m not worried about Covid at all and Long Covid even less than that (heh). It just is not a thing anymore.

The Battle Between Diners and Restaurants.

I am not on the side of restaurants here, mostly. Often these days you get atrocious service, food that is bad, and extremely high prices. Almost nothing at a restaurant anymore is better than I can make at home. Then again, I am a pretty good cook. Before the pandemic, though, I could often get meals superior to what I could do in my own kitchen. Now that almost never occurs.

And defending fucking QR codes? Totally lost me there. I hate those with a burning passion and have turned around and walked out of restaurants that use those. (When I’m dining with someone I usually do not do this as it embarrasses people. But I am incapable of being embarrassed so when I am alone, hell yeah I will and tell the hostess why as I do it.)

Going to a restaurant used to be a pleasant experience. Now you can pay $100 for crap food, bogus service charges, poor service and an incorrect order to boot. No thanks to all that.

Fed chair warns US inflation battle not over and hints at further rate rises.

Meanwhile, the “transitory” dipshits are declaring victory even though inflation has been persistently high for 52+ months and is still 50% above normal trend line for the past decade. And that’s using the official numbers, which are bullshit.

If you’re alive and buy anything, it’s obvious the inflation numbers are complete lies. Yes, I 100% understand how they are calculated. I’ve read at least two books substantially about how various CPIs and PCEs are computed.

That in fact has convinced me even more that how we calculate inflation bears little resemblance to how most people experience it. For the average person, cumulatively, inflation from 2020 to now has been about 75% I’d guess. Of course, inflation hits every person differently due to being in varying life stages and consuming a dissimilar bundle of goods. That’s why Kevin Drum’s “we should be able to have one canonical number for inflation” was so idiotic. It just does not and cannot work that way.

But the inflation numbers are clearly bogus, juiced, and anyone who believes they are legit is delusional.

as a kid, what did you think you’d definitely get as an adult that you never did?

Stabbed.

A few people tried, but I’m fast. I know the best way to win a knife fight is not to play.

You are given the power to criminalize one legal thing/activity- what are you making illegal?

I’d make it illegal for any C-level exec (or similar position) to make 10x or more than the lowest-paid employee tier in the company, with very strict and frequent enforcement. This would include any form of compensation, including stock and deferred comp. It’d also include busting the way they’d inevitably attempt to get around this edict.

This wouldn’t eliminate inequality but it’d be a good first step. And it’s much easier to enforce than a lot of clown-level thinkers want you to realize.

How the Internet obeys you.

I was a fool in that I should’ve realized Ian Welsh was a uselss clown when he spent so much time writing that the internet and smartphones were really of no import, and had no material effects. In reality, both together were enormously society-altering and consciousness-shifting in multifarious ways that would take shelves of analysis to unpack.

Thinking so poorly about so much…I should’ve noticed this sooner.