TechyDad

The last one is Imposter Syndrome. I struggle with it too. Despite having worked in web development for 25+ years, I'm constantly finding myself thinking that I don't know anything and any day now everyone else will realize it. It's a constant battle to remind myself that I'm actually talented and knowledgeable and not just a huge fraud.

Building with LEGO can be fun, but obviously buying tons of sets costs a lot of money and displaying them takes up a lot of space.

A nice alternative is using BrickLink Studio. This software lets you build LEGO creations using a 3D CAD-style software. You can not only build creations, but can generate photorealistic images. Here's a recent virtual build of mine:

You can upload your creations to Rebrickable.com and download other people's creations.

If you really want to build your creation, you can upload the parts list to BrickLink and buy new or used pieces. Obviously, this last part takes real money, but buying used pieces can bring down the cost.

Republicans seem to want to turn back the clock to the 1950's and in one aspect I agree with them. The top tax rate back then was 90%. That should be returned for anyone making over $10 million.

Unlike Republicans, though, I think people should be free to be who they are - whether they're LGBTQ or straight/cisgender, black or white, Christian or Jewish or atheist, or any other group I didn't list. (I didn't list all groups only because I don't want this comment to be novel length.) Basically, as long as your actions affect only yourself and consenting adults, I'm fine with them.

I'm also fine with parents having some control over what their kids do. I'm a parent myself and know that as a parent you need to make judgement calls as to what's best for your child. I wouldn't want someone else questioning my parenting based on their beliefs. However, there are limits. If your child is LGBTQ and you try to force them to be straight/cisgender, you aren't acting in your child's best interests. If your 10 year old child is raped and their life is in danger, but you refuse to allow them to have an abortion because your religion doesn't allow it, then you're harming your child.

Also, a person's "parental rights" shouldn't mean that they get to decide that certain books are banned from everyone reading them. My son actually just finished reading a book because it had been banned and we laughed over how innocuous the "ban triggering passage" was compared to some stuff in the Bible.

Basically, I think I'd call myself a Pragmatic Progressive. I advocate for progressive causes, but I also realize that society can often be slower to adapt than we like. While we would love to be able to pass X and have it be widely adopted immediately, there's often a series of slow moving battles to get X passed and another slow march to get wide acceptance. We can't simply throw in the political towel at the first setback. Neither can we pass up 10% of our goal being within our grasp because we're holding out for 100%. We need to get whatever advancements we can while continually pushing for more.

Does the money go poof if you spend it? For example, say I buy some jewelry with half of the million dollars. Then, the time limit passes. Does just the half a million I still have on hand disappear or does the cash I spent vanish as well?

If the cash I spend vanishes, then I might be opening myself up to fraud charges after the hour is up. Going back to the jewelry situation. I buy half a million in jewelry and hand over the last of the cash just as the time limit ends. If the money in the store clerk's hands suddenly vanishes, they're going to demand their merchandise back. If I'm already walking out the door when it goes poof, they'll call the police on me.

Of course, if the money that I spend doesn't vanish after the time limit expires, then that's a different story.

My worst experience came just before the API disaster started. Someone posted on the ELI5 subreddit asking what autistic people experience when they are nonverbal. Now, I'm autistic and, while I'm verbal most of the time, I do have moments where I can't speak even though I want to. Typically in moments of high emotion or stress. (It feels like the words are in my brain, but the highway to my mouth has a twenty car pileup blocking all traffic.)

My comment was upvoted many times and many people replied positively to my comment. Then, suddenly, my comment was deleted. The mod said that because this was my personal experience, it was too subjective. Meaning, only an "objective" experience from someone who wasn't autistic would be allowed.

Needless to say, I was upset and needed to vent. I vented in the Autism subreddit about the situation and got people replying in support of me. Now, I did make a mistake where people started asking to see my original comment and I posted a screenshot. That was on me - especially because I forgot to blank out the original poster's name. (In my defense, I had nothing against the OP or their question so nothing lept to mind saying "better blank that out.")

The whole thread was suddenly deleted from the Autism subreddit for "doxing." I deleted the person's username and asked for the thread to be restored. Instead, I was given a 30 day ban. Then, I quickly got notified that I was permanently banned from ELI5 for "sh*t-stirring." My goal was never "raise an army of autistic people to attack the ELI5 mods," but just "blow off steam for something I felt wasn't just."

I decided not to contest either and just stop going to either sub. In fact, I was deciding to reevaluate my Reddit use altogether. And then the API debacle started.

If I had been caught with just one of the documents that Trump had at Mar-A-Lago and I had refused to turn it over ASAP, I'd be behind bars waiting for my trial. Trump was given every consideration and chance. He blew them all. He has nobody to blame but himself.

Not that this won't stop him from blaming everyone else. It's what Trump does. "Me being held accountable for this thing I did is everyone else's fault!"

For the "crime" of not being a far right Republican and for the "crime" of Trump having been impeached twice. Those are the only "crimes" that these extremists care about. They also don't care that, even if they convince 50%+1 Representatives to vote to impeach, this will die in the Senate. They'll impeach Biden three times just so Trump isn't the most impeached President and they'll claim that their purely political impeachments somehow prove that the impeachments of Trump were purely political as well

Clumsy Vision. You shoot rays out of your eyes that make the person mildly clumsy for a few minutes. Not like Slapstick Comedy levels of clumsiness, but just like tripping over their shoelaces or looking back and running into a pole clumsy.

You've won a few battles (like that time the purse thief mistook you for an A lister superhero, ran away, tripped over their own feet, and twisted their ankle), but you're mostly useful for anything other than occasionally stopping petty criminal behavior.

McCarthy also claimed that it was fine that documents were stored in a bathroom because "bathrooms have locks." Last time I checked, though, most bathrooms lock from the inside. "I'm going to lock myself in with these classified documents for a while" isn't a very good defense.

My first day off Reddit, I had severe withdrawal. I kept trying to launch Boost (my third party Reddit app of choice) despite not really wanting to. Thankfully, a focus app I installed for just this reason stopped me. I eventually moved the app shortcut and put Jerboa in its place so that muscle memory took me to Lemmy instead.

By the second day, the withdrawal wasn't as bad. I did miss some things, but I was starting to realize how little I really cared about much of it.

By now, Lemmy has replaced about 40% of my Reddit usage. Another 50% I've deemed not important enough to replace. I now have only one subreddit that I really miss. I've found a Lemmy alternative, but of course Reddit has a bigger community.

That one remaining subreddit is still dark. (I tried to see how many subscribers it had and saw it was still dark. I wasn't going to read any posts if it had gone back online.) If it comes back, I might stick around there, but I'll also stay on Lemmy and will push this as a Reddit replacement. (I think Jerboa and Lemmy have some rough edges that need to be improved upon before they can truly be a replacement, but they are surprisingly close.)

It is https://redditmetis/. You put in your username and it will tell you stats about where you post and comment among other things. (Look for Top Subreddits By Number of Comments and Top Subreddits By Number of Submissions.)

Here it is: https://lemmy.world/c/lego

It's only got 19 users now (vs over 1 million in the LEGO subreddit), but I'm sure this will grow.