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Cake day: August 27th, 2023

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  • When a former employer sent me on business trips, the bean counters would complain that my descriptions for the purpose of meals on my expenses were not descriptive enough, as if the purpose of eating was not obvious. I ended up writing something like “nourishment to remain alive while traveling for XYZ project” out of frustration after that. That did the trick and shut them up. I suppose it was hard to argue that description, because if they disputed it, they’d basically be admitting they were sending me away because they wanted me to die.




  • I grew up in a city of 1M, moved to a city of 100K, moved to a town of 7K, and then back to the city of 100K at my wife’s behest. I was happiest in the town, because it was uncrowded and affordable.

    she explains that life in the city isn’t all that great and I ain’t missing out because most people aren’t more social in cities than in our town or small city next to our town.

    Your wife is completely right, in my opinion. Quite frankly, it comes down to what you make of it. If you don’t make the effort to make friends, it doesn’t matter where you are, you are going to be lonely. The bigger the city, there is going to be a better opportunity to meet people of your type, sure, but the odds of getting together regularly, let alone finding them, are slim because everyone is busy working to afford where they are.

    it would be awesome to have a gym in the same block, a grocery store under my flat, a nice bar or coffee around the corner where I could socialize with others. But then my wife comes again with reality: "And it all costs money.

    You are right, it would be awesome. And your wife is right, that setup is expensive AF. The people living that life are trust fund beneficiaries. But you should know the coffee shop is just a whirlwind of all the other people getting in, getting their morning stimulant, and getting out to get to their job to afford it all.

    The time to have the city experience that you are wishing for was more than 30 to 40 years ago, when houses were affordable, and there was more free time, so you could afford to get together, and the odds of other people being available was greater again, because they could afford it too.

    Your fomo is not just for another place, but for a bygone era.

    There are many things I also don’t like about the city, for example sometimes the smell, the homeless, the traffic, and I sometimes think I’d still need a car because of groceries, visiting family in the country side where I live now so I couldn’t sell my car anyways.

    Please believe me that this is the reality of city life today. I’m so glad you notice it. All of it is wearing.

    I visit the city to go shopping for clothes or just eat out I am always glad I can leave again. […] I was always happy leaving the city and I still am happy when I can leave after a whole day in the city

    IMO, you are getting a taste of the wear.

    I feel like I [am not allowed an] opinion on this subject and this makes me crazy.

    This is really where the problem lies I think. You have a dream you can’t shake, but all external signs are pointing to it not being a good one.

    Can I give you some perspective from your wife’s side? My wife is a bit like you, trying to move to a bigger center for dream reasons.

    It drives me crazy when she talks about moving to a bigger center that is unaffordable, and is not what it is cracked up to be. She even knows it, but still insists. Her dreams are not founded in the reality of our times, but that’s just my opinion. And it is wearing to have the same conversation about it over and over.

    From one married guy to another, if your sex life, home life, and job life is otherwise good, for the love of god, try to invest in inventing something social where you are already at, to fill that missing piece. The city is a shitty, expensive, noisy place now. If your relationship with your wife is good, and you trust your wife, just believe her, she has your best intentions at heart. If you have all of that, and live away from it all, man, I envy you deeply.








  • Edit: thank you to people upvoting this comment, but I do regret it. The only good I now see in it is that it spurned further discussion and clarity. If you upvote this post, do read and upvote the parent comment and reply comment from anon6789, there are good insights there, at the very least.

    Then any carbon removed from the atmosphere gets released when the pellet fuel is burned. Add in the carbon from making the pellets and all the shipping and cutting down the trees and replanting, and we’re worse off than when we started. The net pollution they say is greater than coal or natural gas.

    This makes no sense.

    The net pollution they say is greater than coal or natural gas.

    If “they” are oil and gas corporations, I’d say that too, if I were them. Any move against our bottom line, or competition to our subsidies is fair game for attack.

    any carbon removed from the atmosphere gets released when the pellet fuel is burned

    How is that wood’s problem exactly? How did that carbon get into the atmosphere in the first place to be turned into wood? If there had been no coal, gas, or oil, that atmospheric carbon would have been from burning wood in the first place, making it a net cycle of wood. It grows in short order regardless of what we do with it; it’s renewable.

    There’s a competitor to fossil fuels, returning carbon to the atmosphere, it’s been burned literally forever, and oooh suddenly it’s the one to be concerned about, not the other carbon emitters that can only emit, never absorb? Come on.

    carbon from [harvest, manufacturing, packaging, shipping] … we’re worse off than when we started

    As if the extraction, manufacturing, packaging, and shipping for fossil fuels doesn’t emit vast amounts of carbon? If wood was harvested, manufactured, packaged and shipped with renewable energy, what’s the problem? Why couldn’t it be? If fossil fuels were harvested, manufactured, packaged and shipped with renewable energy, I’d say “cut out the middle man” and just use the renewables directly for energy. Is that your beef?

    In that case, let’s harvest that wood anyway, turn it into charcoal, and sink it to the bottom of the ocean to get carbon back out of our atmosphere permanently. If you think that’s a ridiculous undertaking, it’s even crazier to think about the absurd amounts of carbon we are digging up and plain dumping into the atmosphere every day, and that wasn’t complained about first, before complaining about wood of all things. We don’t just need to stop emitting new carbon, we need to get it back out of the atmosphere forever, and that’s not even on the radar? Hmm.

    What do you suggest we do? All I’m seeing is rhetoric is that trees are a grift, while suspiciously overlooking the fossil fuel subsidy grift.