I've generally preferred to pay people a salary, when reasonable to do so.

I hire(d) people (I still employ some people directly) to do a job. So long as the job was done properly, I'm not a big stickler when it comes to spending time at work. If the job can be done in 4 days, so be it. My concern is that the work is done on time and properly. It's also not important to me how they did the work, so long as it was done right.

I'm all for a 4 hour work week, so long as their wages match what they'd make for a 40 hour work week. Yes, minimum wage is too low. Then again, I'd never consider paying someone the least amount I could pay them by law. That's just a kick in the proverbial nuts and pretty damned degrading. "I'd pay you less, but the law won't allow it."

My house was built before CAT6 came out. It should be easy to upgrade as everything runs through in-wall conduit. I figured I'd do that for future-proofing.

I've not really seen a need to upgrade. It works well enough and there are jacks in most rooms. I also don't have the bandwidth to make it matter much, though fiber will be here before too long. Upgrading then may matter. (Fiber wasn't going to come up my road, but I contacted the company and a couple of neighbors and I will pay for the fiber to be run.)

Cat5e should still be fine. I'm not going to bother paying for full GB service, as I don't need that much bandwidth. I'll be fine with half of that and CAT5e should be viable.

This is about the 'inadequate' comment you made.

I could see it being inadequate for some people. As for me, it's still holding up and still fit for purpose. I've lived in a bandwidth-impoverished area for going on two decades. So, my needs, perhaps better said expectations, are different. I don't even see a reason to go full boar on the GB speeds. As I am technically a business, they say I can request even higher speeds. I'm simply not interested in that.

Then again... We'll see how I feel after a few months. I may end up wanting to splurge and increase my speeds. It could happen.

You'd think so, but you won't feel a thing. You won't have to adjust your diet because you'll naturally lose weight. Then, well, you won't even suffer a headache, a toothache, a stubbed toe, or any of those other painful things.

Hmm... This needs a pithy statement that can be summed up enough to fit on a bumper sticker.

I dunno... I'm a doctor and if you're dead then you're in perfect health. You no longer have any ailments of any kind. You're not going to catch any diseases.

Just to be clear, I'm not a medical doctor. I don't even play a medical doctor on TV. But, I am a doctor - though I don't tend to use the honorary, for a variety of reasons.

As mentioned elsewhere, per 100,000 cars, ICE powered vehicles catch fire more often than EVs.

This may be of interest, so I'll share it...

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcore.verisk.com%2FInsigh...

This doesn't mean that EV fires aren't important, it's just that they seem to happen less often (per 100,000 cars) than ICE-powered vehicles. There are other citations, some newer, but I just grabbed the first one from Google.

EV fires still suck to get under control, especially for small volunteer fire departments without a lot of money to upgrade what they have. EV fires still release some pretty awful stuff - but so don't ICE-powered vehicles.

For better or worse, Nissan's are often sold (here in the US) to people with poor credit. No, I do not know all the details. I suspect Google knows, but that's the perception. The end result of this is that they're often in horrible condition and driven by drivers who did not care.

And no, it's not a 'classist' thing. I'm sure there's some confirmation bias but they're frequently in horrible condition, to the point of being unsafe. Then, of course, there are the drivers who have less care about their driving habits. Again, that could be some confirmation bias going on, but that's generally why there's a negative view here in the US.

One of my favorite vehicles was a pickup truck that I owned a long time ago. It was just called 'Nissan'. The side helpfully said, 'Pickup'. It was just 2WD but went anywhere I asked of it. The inline 6 cyl engine was amazingly reliable. The body was less reliable and rust was the eventual killer of the truck - but it was already in poor condition when I bought it.

I'm reminded of Archaeology grad students. I'm convinced they get the worst treatment.

They are quite literally started off by shoveling dirt. Well, that's if they don't start by sifting dirt, but that's usually a volunteer task on a popular dig site.

Over their scholastic career, they'll shovel literal tons of dirt. They'll do more of that after they graduate but at least they have grad students to work down to the good stuff.

Couple this with the goal of bringing manufacturing back to the US.

Yeah... Outsourcing the pollution is a good thing for us. I mean, it sucks for them but it's good for us.

You saw how they voted in real life.

They're gonna vote the same way online.

Sadly, from my observations, not everyone is in a position to save any significant amounts of money.

Even with 40 hours a week, it'd be difficult to survive on minimum wage while still having anything that qualifies as a satisfactory life.

Working multiple jobs and needing to split resources with roommates is not a very good life and is outside the bounds where I'd consider it a reasonable solution.

That was similar, though school-provided jobs were paying less than I could otherwise earn. I did some TA work but not as much as some folk did. I'd also taken a bit of a break and was then married, meaning I had to work pretty hard to cover those living expenses. Fortunately, I had other skills (willingness to work) and could work around my schedule. The then-wife worked when she was able/willing. It was expensive to live in the Greater-Boston area.

I wouldn't laugh at them. It's 2025. We're no longer allowed to laugh at the mentally handicapped.

I kid. I kid!

There's no reason for me to really trust AI. In fact, I did a vanity search of my username and was surprised how accurate it was. I guess that's on me for reusing my username across many sites over the years. Then again, I'm not the only one who uses this combination of letters as their username. So, I guess the AI vanity check would be wrong for the rest of the people who use my username.

But, it got a ton of information correct as I dug deeper. That was enough for me to distrust it further. I already assumed they'd be storing everything else, including any prompts I fed to the AI. This is the internet, and that's valuable data. So, I'm sure they're going to store that and try to find ways to monetize it.

I may be out of touch, but the general idea (back when I was working on my Ph.D.) was that if you were paying for grad school you were doing it wrong.

The thinking was that if you had the skills and grades, you'd be able to find funding for your graduate education. (You may still need to pay for living expenses, and that sort of stuff.) I had the grades/background to get scholarships, and much of my research was sponsored.

I suppose that's no longer true.

But, yeah, the idea was that if you had to pay for grad school, then you were better off seeking gainful employment.

That said, I have some pretty strong opinions with the idea that everybody needs to go to college. While I paid for my kid's education, one of them is a pediatrician and the other dropped out entirely. I think they both made good decisions.

I suspect that artistic welders could get jobs. They'd not be as artistic as they'd like, but they'd be welding.

Also, I wonder how many of these degrees are all that valid. I don't want to point fingers, but some parts of the globe have a reputation for less than ideal academic scruples.