definitely not just you not getting it… After I googled it, I found it as #1 in a ranking of the most confusing Far Side comics.…

Agree, it definitely rocks!

I can’t say if this specific one is authentic but I would not be surprised, as my company does the same: branded pride flags, t-shirts for their LGBTQ+ employees. And I’m torn on this, because I feel a bit bad about the branding aspect of it, but on the other hand the company putting their name to openly support all sexual and gender identities does seem like a good thing to do…

Yes, the irony of a company that produces more efficient ways of killing people being concerned with social issues does not escape me. But there are employees of the company who apparently support both (and good for them)

You’re in a situation you don’t deserve, but you are trying not to make it worse for your mom. I think you rock! I wish you all the best

I don’t want to get too deep into your business but just to understand better what you’re trying to communicate… Please tell me if I get this right: there’s current (not past) drama in your family and you think that not acknowledging father’s day at all would feed into that drama (maybe your dad’s reaction would be “see, you’re all against me” and he’d play the victim or something like that) . On the other hand you also don’t want to pretend everything is right with your father. So you want something to communicate “I don’t want to be against you, but I certainly am not on your side either; I just want to be left alone and talk to you the strictly necessary amount of times”. Is that it?

If that’s the case, yes, the standard-est, humorless “happy father’s day” card you can find, with nothing but your signature in it should convey that message pretty well. If you can’t find anything, just a white one with a handwritten “happy father’s day, [your name]” would do.

The medical field is ripe for some intrusive ads to boost revenues! Possibilities are endless:

Ad-supported heating aids ("what were you sa… "; “this conversation will resume after a quick message from our sponsors!”)

Pacemakers - want to watch an ad for 100 more free heartbeats?

Surgery - this scar will unfortunately be in a visible spot, but how about we make the cut look like the Amazon logo ?

Implants - click the nipple and watch an ad to re-inflate your left breast for 10 more days

Nah, micro is the superior option! 😜

There were some often-quoted tests in which even professional sommeliers could not tell the difference between super-expensive wines and much cheaper ones. See this article on The Guardian for instance

To be fair it was the NSFW tag that gave me the idea. I went “why would this have an NSFW tag? … Ooooh!”

Genitals. Both male and female. (Generally) awesome when in use but a maintenance nightmare otherwise. Reasons for being the worse (some depending on gender) include: initiating takeoff visibly and without reason, leakages, being very fragile, requiring more packaging than any other body part and others

Ah thanks for the context, I didn’t know! But doesn’t my point essentially stills stand?

As more people work from home and more Flatiron-like buildings struggle to find businesses looking for offices, developers might find “ex prestigious office to luxury apartments” a more appealing conversion than “ex Walmart to affordable housing”.

Also, my understanding of the housing crisis is that people can’t find an affordable place to live close enough to where they work. In my country there are plenty of small towns that used to be very pretty places to live, that have very affordable housing and that are turning into ghost towns because all the jobs are concentrated in a few big cities.

If you take away the offices, less people are going to need to live in New York, San Francisco or London. Plenty of people might still choose to, of course, but there should be less competition to rent the last bed space in a filthy apartment at ludicrous prices. Or to buy a small flat in a converted former office.

I like how this is finally acknowledging WFH as something that is here to stay but I’m not sure I understand the connection with the housing crisis. From the article:

New York’s famous Flatiron Building will soon be converted from empty offices into luxury residences

Luxury apartments in premium locations is the first thing I would think of too if I were a developer, but their target buyers don’t sound like the sort of people who currently suffer from the housing crisis. But maybe I’m wrong and there will also be developers converting less prestigious office space into affordable housing…

The other thing I don’t get is this: I don’t know Manhattan but I did work in some (I assume) similar business hubs in the middle of overpriced cities and I wonder: are many people going to want to live in expensive converted office spaces if they don’t work near there any longer? I mean if they were given the chance to WFH from anywhere would they still choose Manhattan? Honest question and maybe the answer is yes, because of the restaurants, culture, good schools or whatever… I would personally make different life choices if I could work completely remote, though.

But it is exactly because they’re cheap, widely available and work well. Before AirTags, I’m not sure where you could acquire the technology you mention, but probably through some specialized channel requiring at least some tech knowledge. Also purchasing from that channel would presumably look at least a tiny bit suspect, because you were purchasing spying equipment, not something that is marketed as a way not to lose your luggage

And I get it, I have never tried AirTags but they do sound great for not losing your luggage. It’s just that the illicit way to use them is so evident that it’s like those “face massage” vibrators

it’s not just phones or devices that need updates, though. None of my refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers have ever lasted more than 10 years; I think the average is about 5 years before they stop working, get all rusty or a very expensive piece breaks so they are not worth repairing. Meanwhile all of my granma’s old kitchen appliances are still working perfectly after 60+ years of service.

Sure, it might be just that over-optimizing their production so they are more performant while being cheaper to make is also making them less durable, but I don’t see a lot of motivation from companies to go out of their way to build durable things either. And it’s not that I think Corporate = Bad; as you say it’s a cost/benefit thing, it’s just that the “benefit” companies try to maximize is their shareholders’, not our planet’s. It’s on Politics to create a legal framework where some of the cost to our planet is shared with companies (so they have incentives to make things durable/repairable again) and on us consumer to choose wisely what to buy, when and from whom.

This does seem to be the correct reason, at least statistically speaking!

To be fair he did climb the corporate ladder to the top already, so he doesn’t need to go to the office any longer, no? Now let’s hope he falls off that ladder

Thanks for the additional information. I wasn’t in line to buy an iPhone 15 just yet; when I said “if it turns out it’s more repairable” I mean if it stands the test of time I might consider an iPhone 17 or 18…

So far I’ve mostly seen iPhone 15 panned for lack of innovative features, but if it turns out that it’s actually easier to repair (as Apple is saying) it would be a killer feature for me

I would be surprised if Whatsapp tried to implement its own version of Telegram’s, Signal’s and every other messaging app’s protocol to “talk” to all of these other apps. I bet they will provide an API to interoperate with Whatsapp that these other clients may (or may not) choose to implement, in order to send their messages to Whatsapp users.

In that scenario it would up to Signal (if they implement this) to choose how to display to their users that they are sending a message to someone who’s using Whatsapp, or to create options for users who want to disable this completely.

serious answer: it depends on your definition of “worse”. There’s some study linking smelling farts (and specifically the component that makes them rank) to health benefits: https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/jul/14/silent-not-deadly-how-farts-cure-diseases