My husband has had a metal USB stick that is shaped like a key and is very thin specifically for this purpose. I don’t know the brand as it’s not printed on it, but it’s lasted him a long time and I would assume it to win this contest by a landslide. Excellent analysis, very interesting!
For reference, it looks like this (not the same brand): 
I don’t know if these things are sent en masse by a bot or by a person, but it’s like they don’t even skim your profile before hitting send. Like I specifically said “Work from home only”, what makes you think I want your “hybrid” opportunity in bumfuck Illinois that barely pays what it should for my experience?
I always put my ballot in a place that’s better watched. It’s not fool proof, but I feel like it’s easier for people to mess with drop boxes and mail boxes that are out in the open vs dropping it off inside the post office or inside the polling place if there’s a drop box there and election judges can watch them.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Before LinkedIn there were motivational posters that were hung around offices. It didn’t take long for the demotivational poster to make its way into the culture just like these posts are now.
I’m disabled!!
Agreed. Rollerblading is very 90s.
One story my husband shared with me was when he and my dad stopped into a local bar after working hard on home renovations all day. They planned to get some dinner and have some beer after a hard day’s work but needed to wash their very dirty hands first. So they went back into the bathroom and washed their hands. Well apparently that was too “gay” for the owner of the bar and they went over to the bathroom and started saying things like “I don’t know what you think you’re doing in there” and “I just need to make sure you’re not doing anything funny”. So they ended up just leaving while the guy yelled at them saying they had to buy something.
A slightly different version of this concept also happened to my husband. At one point, 2 of our lady friends were talking about fashion and my husband, who is MUCH more fashionable than I am, chimed in. They proceeded to tell him that he’s “not allowed to have an opinion because he’s a man” which is the most double standard bullshit I’ve ever heard come out of any of my friends mouths. It’s stuck with me for a long time now because I think it keeps me honest with myself about standards and reminds me to think about how opinions change when you flip genders.
I haven’t heard any other comments chime in from one of my use cases, so I’ll give it a stab. My first use case, I mentioned in another comment which is just adding a specific tone onto emails which I’m bad at doing myself. But my second use case is more controversial and I still don’t know how to feel about it. I’m a graphic designer and with most enhancements in design/art technology, if you don’t learn what’s new, you will fall behind and your usefulness will wane. I’ve always been very tech savvy and positive about most new tech so I like to stay up to speed both for my job and self interest. So how do I use AI for graphic design? The things I think have the best use case and are least controversial are the AI tools that help you edit photos. In the past, I have spent loads of time editing frizzy curly hair so I can cut out a person. As of a couple years ago, Adobe I touched some tools to make that process easier, and it worked ok but it wasn’t a massive time saver. Then they launched the AI assisted version and holy shit it works perfectly every time. Like give me the frizziest hair on a similar color background with texture and it will give you the perfect cutout in a minute tops. That’s the kind of shit I want for AI. More tools eliminate tedious processes!! However there is another more controversial use case which is generative AI. I’ve played with it a lot and the tools work fantastic and get you started with images you can splice together to make what you really envisioned or you can use it to do simple things like seamlessly remove objects or add in a background that didn’t exist. I once made a design with an illustrative style by inputting loads of images that fit the part, then vectorizing all the generated options and using pieces from those options to make what I really wanted. I was really proud of it especially since I’m not an illustrator and don’t have the skills to illustrate what I envisioned by hand. But that’s where things get controversial. I had to input the work of other people to achieve this. At the moment, I can’t use anything generative commercially even though Adobe is very nonchalant about it. My company has taken a firm stance on it which is nice, but it means I can really only use that aspect for fun even though it would be very useful in some situations.
TLDR: I use AI to give my writing style the right tone, to save loads of time editing photos, and to create images I don’t have the skills to create by hand (only for funzies).
This is my one of 2 use cases for AI. I only recently found out after a life of being told I’m terrible at writing, that I’m actually really good at technical writing. Things like guides, manuals, etc that are quite literal and don’t have any soul or personality. This means I’m awful at writing things directed at people like emails and such. So AI gives me a platform where I can enter in exactly what I want to say and tell it to rewrite it in a specific tone or level of professionalism and it works pretty great. I usually have to edit what it gave me so it flows better or remove inaccurate language, but my emails sound so much better now! It’s also helped me put more personality into my resume and portfolio. So who knows, maybe it’ll help me get a better job?
We had a dog once that was super smart and would learn what different words meant very rapidly. I’d say with most dogs I’ve had, you can go most of their life and they’ll maybe learn 2-3 different words for “dinner” and you can use other words if you’re trying not to excite them too much. But this dog I swear near the end of her life we would have to say ridiculous things around her like “Did you put the K9 cereal in the receptacle?” because she had learned just about every other basic way to say “did you feed the dog?”.
I’ve been taking a video game break to play more board games. Zoo Vadis has been a top pick lately and I highly recommend.
In Illinois, we had RFK and no Jilly-bean.
I have to give my email in order to get a mail-in ballot. And of course, they put that email on all the political lists so they can bombard you. I typically just keep blocking them and they have reduced over time. Still frustrated tho…
Do you also hate the wishes of the artist who sold it to the news agency to earn a living and keep the image under editorial use as opposed to being commercialized and sold to benefit the Trump campaign? Whether you agree with how it’s being used or not, that’s what the photographer decided was best for their work.
Don’t forget we wear them also…
In the Art History courses I’ve taken, they usually talk about nudity in the realm of “it represents fertility” or something like that. Yeah sure… Venus of Urbino is totally about “fertility” and she’s definitely not touching herself for any other reason.
And then there’s you did everything you possibly could yourself and you did your best and saved tons of money, but now you actually do need to pay someone to do the thing you don’t trust yourself to do so you saved money just for the thing, but no contractor will agree to come do the thing because demand is high and they would rather do commercial projects. So yeah… You can’t even pay a pro and you’re just fucked 🤷
The whole chart is rather fascinating and eye opening: Vehicle visibility
When I was a kid, my mom either bought or was gifted a little plush snowman that would say “Happy holidays! Happy holidays!” When you squeezed it. It would maybe get squeezed a few times in December and then put in a bin until the following year. No one ever changed the batteries and it still worked each year for many years. Then it started to run out of juice. And slowly over each year it would sound more and more demonic, but it always played at least once before running out of power. It’s now been more than 25 years and we still check it each year to see if the demonic snowman is still alive. I’m not sure it will ever die if it was never alive in the first place…
Since nobody actually answered the question: Menards is a massive hardware store chain in the Midwest. When I say it’s massive, it has everything you could ever need in a hardware store and more. Like there are usually multiple floors, a lumber yard, highly specialized sections, and even a small grocery section with food, pet supplies, clothing, etc. it’s definitely the greatest hardware store ever conceived, but unfortunately the man who owns them is batshit crazy in classic Wisconsin fashion.