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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: April 3rd, 2024

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  • Oh, I am aware that this dynamic doesn’t quite work. Both sides of the equation get it almost, but not entirely, right. Because getting it right is challenging.

    The older generations do get lazy as soon as their own needs are met, especially those of them who wield power. And that doesn’t just mean politicians but also CEOs, large investors, etc. Working for the common good is difficult and most people follow the path of least resistance, leading to the dynamics young people complain about.

    But young people fall prey to the very same dynamic. It’s easier to get disillusioned and complain on the internet than to consistently go out and exert pressure. Sure, maybe they go on a protest march or two but few have the energy to consistently go on marches, be active in politics, stay on top of which companies are toxic, openly defy the law, and do a myriad other things that don’t directly benefit them in order to fight for a better world. You can do that if you’re rich and isolated from consequence but in that case your life is cushy already so you’d be fighting for abstract principles.

    There are few people of the caliber of Bernie Sanders or Greta Thunberg because it’s really hard and carries a real risk of ruining their own life. Most people who do try end up like the people who glue themselves to highways: They get ridiculed and fined and effect no change whatsoever.

    So for most people all that remains is resignation. Gen X said “whatever” when they weren’t listened to because they weren’t willing to sacrifice their personal future to escalate things until change is inevitable. Millennials say “OK Boomer” as they find themselves in the same situation for the same reason.

    (I’ll gloss over the “young people are lazy” part but it boils down to young people actually being lazy in terms of failing to apply themselves in ways the older people did, with the caveat that some of those ways no longer apply and young people are applying themselves in new ways the older people don’t realize are necessary now. This perception dynamic is at least as old as recorded history.)


  • It’s exact opposite of a trend. The younger generations criticizing the older ones for not living up to their responsibilities has been just as much a constant throughout human history as the older generations criticizing the younger ones for being lazy by their parents’ definition.

    The world sucks, as usual, and by now Gen X are old enough to be in charge. It’s sensible to call them out, just like in a decade or two it’ll be sensible to call out the Millennials for the same thing.





  • And don’t feel bad for getting an e-bike. Riding that is still a good workout if you get into the habit of going fast. E-bikes usually have a hard speed cutoff (25 km/h by law where I live); if you want to go faster it’s all you and the motor is just there to give you better acceleration and take the pain out of things like hills or opposing wind.

    If you don’t want to go fast, the bike still expects you to put in a certain amount of work. Low-intensity training is still training. Most crucially, getting that bit of assistance might get you to use the bike when you otherwise wouldn’t, turning no exercise into some exercise.

    People underestimate the benefits of light exercise. Even brisk walks or relatively leisurely motor-assisted bike rides can absolutely be beneficial if done regularly.



  • The logic board has the CPU built in, that’s true. However, the Framework 16 has a swappable GPU and all models make the ports independent of the logic board through a USB-C-based expansion module system. So that’s even a few parts other manufacturer might consider unreasonable.

    (Also, to be fair, I forgot one other thing most laptops let you swap: The WiFi/BT card, if only because it’s cheaper to have that on a swappable module.)


  • I mean, asterisk. Most laptops let you swap the storage and RAM and many let you swap the battery. Beyond that it usually gets difficult.

    Framework let you swap everything, which is a major difference. But of course you pay for that privilege; modular design has its costs.

    Still, good on you for getting a cheap upgrade. No need to throw away a perfectly good laptop if you can make it work fast again with a new SSD.




  • Well, that heavily depends upon factors like what kind of lifestyle you’re living. For example, I save a shitload of money by not needing a car.

    In general I’d say that someone who lives in my town and makes roughly what I do could save 1k to 2k per month depending on how much discretionary spending they want to be able to do. Possibly more if they’re very frugal.

    In case we’re comparing to the USA here, Germany has lower wages and higher taxes but a lot of stuff is way cheaper, especially education and healthcare. My health insurance premium can’t exceed 14.6% of my income, deductibles don’t exist, and most procedures are fully covered – for instance, when I went to a hospital for surgery and stayed for four days, my total bill was 40 €.


  • No, I misread (“do” instead of “make”).

    I went from something like 25k to something like 50k, which still wasn’t impressive but okay for a junior-level dev. And vastly better than what I made before.

    These days I’m somewhere north of 80k but monthly bonuses tied to company performance make it hard to give an accurate number off the top of my head. Depending on who you ask that’s either above or below average for someone of my experience level.


  • Germany.

    The minimum notice time scales with employment duration (if the company terminates the contact) or is four weeks (if the employee quits). However, the contact can state a longer period; this is often done to make the notice time symmetrical. The notice period for the employee can never exceed that for the company. Usually, contacts can only be terminated effective at the end of a month so that can extend things a bit further.

    At-will employment is not a thing in Germany except for informal arrangement like paying the neighbor’s kid to mow the lawn. Even during the trial period (a period of typically six months at the start of an employment where firing the employee is much easier) two weeks are the absolute minimum.



  • I used to work as a cheapo part-time-on-paper software developer to pay for university. All devs in the company were student workers and the quality of the work reflected that. That clown show of a job actually took so much of my energy and attention that it delayed my thesis by two years. Yikes.

    My boss was straight up delusional. Among his many bizarre ideas was the assumption that I’d stay on for about nine months after my graduation, obviously for the absurdly low pay I was making as a student. That arrangement would’ve worked out very well for him so he assumed I’d be all for it.

    Unfortunately for him, I was already working out the terms of my employment with another company. On the other side of the country. Who actually employed real full-time devs for real market-rate pay. There was no chance I’d stay on for longer than necessary.

    So I hand-delivered my written resignation, effective in two months – that being the legal minimum notice period based on my employment duration at the time. Boy, was he upset. He thought we had an agreement (that I never agreed to) and that I’d take as much time as needed to finish up that major project we’d recently started (because clearly that’s a reason to work for pennies).

    Hell no. I did tell him I’d reconsider… if he beat the other company’s offer. That would’ve meant a 200% pay rise. Suddenly he was much more amenable to my leaving.



  • How about some weird ancient ones?

    They’re as much not to everyone’s taste as the shows themselves but I love all of the HaréGuu openings. The original’s a bop, Deluxe continues this while adding a spoken-word section the singer can barely keep up with, and Final is the best of the bunch. HaréGuu Deluxe also has a neat showtune-y ending.

    I also think that Nerima Daikon Brothers has a great opening; it very much fits with the main characters being dollar store Blues Brothers.

    If you want something that oozes cool, I can recommend the original Hellsing. A World Without Logos is an extremely stylish song as long as you don’t mind completely incomprehensible lyrics. (The song sounds as if it’s in English but is really just onomatopoeia. Basically Prisencolinensinainciusol in menacing.)