Tinks

What a cutie!

Public holidays are not mandatory time off let alone paid in the US. Many employers that give paid time off do include at least some holidays, but which ones and how many is variable between employers. Some will give every federal holiday and others will be only the really big ones like Christmas, thanksgiving, independence day, etc.

One of the most exciting things about the job I currently have is that I get around 15 holiday days a year off, in addition to my normal vacation time. It’s a rarity. My last two jobs only had 7 holiday days - that stretch from New years day to Memorial day (end of May) was always brutal.

The Art of Racing in the Rain (and also the book). No matter how many times I watch it, I’m going to cry every time

Public transit absolutely could work in America, but we would need to change how we design our cities as well as how we live. Many Americans live in sprawling suburbs where public transit is just not realistic. In places that are densely populated public transit does exist and functions well. The issue is that we build sprawling cities with massive suburbs filled with single family dwellings each with their own yard and space. We do the same thing with stores by having hugely sprawling shopping areas (most of which is separated by massive parking lots). It’s a chicken and egg problem. You won’t convince people to give up cars until they can realistically walk or use public transit to get where they need to go efficiently, but you also can’t make things efficient and compact while there is a huge demand for car storage. And beyond that, I think culturally most Americans don’t want to live in densely populated areas. Americans culturally put a high value on personal space and that extends to dwellings. Sure there are definitely people who want to live in an urban center, but the “American dream” is a house with a white picket fence and a dog, and until culturally the desire for that changes, America will be a car-centric society as a whole.

After thinking about this a bit and reading through this thread, I realized I might have a problem about always wanting spare things. I have more than one of a lot of things - lip balm, battery banks, phone & watch charging docks, dogs, headphones and earbuds (even two of the same kind), computers, pillows (I have spares of my main and body pillows), and the list goes on. I apparently need to re-evaluate my habits.

Everywhere I sit for long periods I have a lip balm. I hate feeling like my lips are dry, makes me nutty

I have a few different wireless earbuds for different uses and devices, and like 5 sets of headphones because they all have different sounds/uses as well. I definitely understand this ridiculous!

A hobby is just something someone does in their free time for pleasure, so yeah, watching TV would certainly qualify. I suppose masturbating could too but I would argue that falls closer to a physiological desire rather than a hobby. Hobbies can be just about anything - bird watching, walking, caring for a pet, reading, playing sudoku, etc. Playing video games has been shown to be good for mental acuity and hand eye coordination, so I would argue it’s even good for you! Hobbies don’t need to be an investment of time at all, they just need to bring you pleasure. We as humans need relaxation and decompression time, and that’s exactly what a hobby is. Sure some hobbies produce things or results of some kind, but they don’t have to.

I really don’t understand the hate for the magic mouse cursor lol. I freakin love it!

It may depend on the LG TV or maybe it’s a setting. I just bought a new one and have a Google streamer on it and use it’s remote to turn on the streamer, soundbar and TV with a single button. I never see the LG UI itself unless I need to change a setting, and I’ve disabled it’s wifi entirely. I don’t get any kind of popups from the TV, it just works cleanly with the streamer.

That’s not really true. B&H sells digital signage displays to consumers and you can buy some of them from Amazon and Best buy as well

A 32" TV is not what most people are looking for. In fact I don’t know anyone with a main TV that small these days. The problem is that 40"+ dumb TVs are hard to find. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but very few manufacturers are making them, and the few that are have garbage screens in them.

Unfortunately it’s getting hard to find dumb TVs. The only real options are pro-AV or digital signage displays but even a lot of those are now moving to being smart. Our 15 year old bedroom TV finally died last month and we ended up having to replace it, and we ultimately went with an LG. I’ve disabled it’s wifi though. It’s a frustrating situation. I wish one of the manufacturers with good displays would just offer a dumb line of TVs. I imagine they would still have a market even if they were higher cost to make up for the lack of ad revenue, but maybe I’m underestimating that revenue. Either way, avoiding smart TVs is getting extremely difficult these days.

My major hobby is like this mostly. Backpacking. Upfront cost for gear, but once you have it the only real recurring cost is food and gas to get to a spot. Sure sometimes you have to replace gear, but if you take care of it you can go for years with no gear costs except maybe shoes.

I will never understand letting your pets dictate wakeup hours, except in the special circumstance that it’s a puppy because they can’t hold their bladder. My cats have never woken me up for food. In fact my cats and dogs have always known that if they annoy me, I will stay in bed longer out of spite. I will wake up and lay in bed until I am ready to get up, and no pet is going to annoy me into feeding them. The closest I’ve ever had to a pet waking me up is my current golden who doesn’t wake me up for food, he wakes me up to cuddle, but is fine if I go back to sleep.

It’s not about what you feed them or when, it’s about setting boundaries. We feed canned food morning and night. Our pets sleep on the bed, and know they will get their food when I’m ready to be awake.

And the award for most depressing comment of the day goes to Jhex. Ugh. I hate how accurate that statement is.

Just tossing this out here as a PSA, dogs can still get kennel cough even after being vaccinated. It’s like the flu vaccine in humans - sometimes the strain that goes around isn’t the one vaccinated for. I had two dogs end up with it and both were fully current on all vaccines. They got it from daycare where an outbreak occurred and our older dog brought it home to the puppy. All dogs there are required to show proof of current vaccines to go so it was just an unfortunate year for the vaccine. Fortunately my dogs got over it with meds and rest for a couple of weeks. Sorry about your sisters dog, that’s heartbreaking.

My giant beanbag chair. It’s ridiculous and takes up an excess amount of space in my office, but it’s so comfy. I’ve wanted one for more than a decade and husband kept telling me no because he doesn’t like how they look and didn’t want one in the common spaces. But then I started working from home and converted our spare bedroom into my office and that was my chance. I took it! My dog mostly sleeps in it while I work, but I love flopping into it during long boring work calls too. It’s completely impractical, but it brings me joy.

Lifelong Kansan and same. No idea wtf a Frito chili pie is but nobody I know eats it and you’d probably be scorned for bringing it instead of Apple or Pumpkin.

My personal answer is because my audio/sound setup is obnoxiously complicated and I’ve tried to get a variation of it working on my steam deck but never managed it. I’m sure there are ways to do it, but on windows I know how it works and how to fix it if some update breaks it. If I switched it would require a lot more fussing around and special software that may or may not continue being supported and I just don’t want to deal with it.