please yell at me in the replies, i thrive on confrontation

This is like when people insist they’re alpha. That is to say, if you have to say it, it’s probably not true.

Well to be fair it probably is pessimism. That doesn’t make you a pessimist in the same way that me expecting to wake up every morning doesn’t make me an optimist.

I think that flu thing is an old wives tale. You usually get flu because you breathed it in. The association with cold is because during cold weather people spend more time in poorly ventilated areas.

Same. Often finish the can with a feeling of disappointment and thirst.

Thanks, that’s very kind!

Whatever you say kiddo

20yrs ago I had to help my comp sci housemate build a website for his module. I was not a CS student.

Some things never change.

Alt: a single pane comic in which a person says to another person: "silicate chemistry is second nature to us geochemists, so it’s easy to forget that the average person probably only knows the formulas for olivine and one or two feldspars.

The other person says: “and quartz, of course”

The first person replies: “of course.”

The caption to the comic reads “even when they’re trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person’s familiarity with their field”

They’re essential, but they’re also numerous. The barrier to entry for a lot of these jobs is “went to school for some time” - which means pretty much everyone is qualified.

Supply and demand.

Notice how when service staff were allowed back to work, a lot of them didn’t, and that drove up zone wages.

And to be clear - I am not advocating for below living wages, nor saying that people doing these jobs are unskilled. You can tell the good from the bad, and I think everyone should be paid at least a living wage.

Sixthed