throwawaydad12

My family also suffered in WWII, and I was significantly harmed by it in the second generation. The likening of Trump to Hitler disgusts me.

This is what I do. Whether genetics or what, my ears get stopped to the point of deafness once or twice a year. Tried cleaning them out with just water and ended up with an ear infection. It's excruciating.

Now: Use Debrox (etc) following directions. Several applications of the liquid over a day or two. But most importantly, flush with bulb with very warm water (as hot as you can stand). Repeat, over and over. Once you start, don't stop, because you won't be able to fully dry your ear canal until you get all of the wax out. Water means infection. Make sure everything is very clean throughout the procedure.

Do it over a stopped sink or bowl, so that you can observe what's coming out.

After it's done, dry completely. I use the twisted end of a tissue, etc., to sop up most of the water. Then blow warm air into my ear for several minutes.

No problems since I learned this approach.

You haven't reached the bottom yet. Keep going until you hit Borremans. It's not 4chan, but I'm not listening to these people on the subject of standards and practices.

No abuse that I've heard of. But very offensive. Look further (not at work). It's too gross to describe on HN.

I'm pretty strong on free speech myself. But if you want to repress awful stuff, Musk is not the place to start. And the narrative that he's somehow lowering the level of discourse on Twitter is absurd.

It doesn't matter how many flunkies you have on staff. What matters is whether the stuff is effectively caught and removed (and probably reported to the authorities).

Time will tell on this, but currently Musk looks a lot _more_ credible on this than Twitter 1.0. They seemed to have been a lot more focused on repressing wrong-think than dealing with actual criminal behavior. And this isn't just abstract--they helped ruin countless lives.

It's worth noting that Musk recoiled in horror at the idea of allowing Alex Jones back on Twitter. Given that, there's no reason to think he would tolerate child pornography (unlike the prior owners of Twitter).

Also, anyone following the Balenciaga scandal (or who's old enough to remember Polanski) will realize that Musk is not the person we should be worrying about.

Agree. Ending up in a situation where suicide was not possible is probably one of my greatest fears.

The situation is a bit more complex than that, but in any case, that's a rather weak rationale for not committing suicide.

Here is a better reason: You'll be dead quite soon in any case, so unless you're in agony, you may as well enjoy your final days here. Think of some of your favorite activities and pick one. Rinse and repeat.

Sound shallow? Maybe, but I've spent an awful lot of time contemplating the question.

Within my extended family and larger social orbit, I've watched maybe 20 kids grow up. The girls are uniformly successful and seem to have significant support from family, school, and society. The boys have been struggling and have experienced limited support to a degree that I find shocking. Perhaps half will never achieve regular employment, and sadly several seem destined for addiction and early deaths.

This is just anecdote, but for me, I'm inclined to believe 20 data points I can personally observe.

I'm not sure exactly how new this is. Even decades ago, my experience of growing up male is that to a fair degree it's like being thrown off the dock. "Hope you learn to swim before you drown!" The idea that boys are privileged over girls seems like a cruel joke.

I doubt there's consensus on which "side" has stronger calls for violence. But it's not needed. We can just agree that calls to violence are virtually always wrong and deal with them uniformly without respect to ideology.

These are hard cases, and you have my sympathy. (Same for sibling post.) Quite possibly I'd have done the same.

This sounds very different than the case under discussion, which seems to be that an adult child decided that he didn't like the information that his competent parents were listening to, and that it was making them unhappy, so he secretly sabotaged the parents' router.

In this case, we're talking about secret sabotage of someone else's Internet access. This falls outside of the common concept of intervention. In general, if you have to act secretly, you're almost certainly in the wrong.

Even if true, your first part is irrelevant to the question.

As for the second part, there's a reason why we don't take on these responsibilities ourselves, for competent adults. If you _truly_ believe your parents are mentally incompetent, the right thing to do is to present this before a court, with your parents present and allowed to respond. That's how civil society works.

Thanks for the link. I think you should seriously contemplate this. If my kids did this to me, I'd ban them from my house, at a minimum.

More abstractly, suppose your thinking is correct, and now they're "de-programmed". If you were right, you could now tell your parents what you did, and they'd thank you. Does that sound like how it would play out?

This is perhaps scientifically interesting, but doing this to someone without their knowledge and consent is wildly unethical.

I think reasonable people will give allowance to the hiring loop taking a day or two to synchronize on their earnest opinion of a candidate. I'm not bothered by that at all.

More disturbing are the cases where the hiring organization knows in advance that they _will not_ hire a candidate. IMO, it's unethical to waste someone's time on that.

In my personal experience, I had a FAANG drag me along for six months, passing screen after screen, only to be put off at the end for a "flaw" that was obvious from day one on my resume. I'll accept your judgement, but don't waste 50 hours of my time discovering something you could have learned in 60s by reading my resume.

Hirers complain about not being able to find candidates. This is one huge reason why.

I've been thinking about charging $1000, up front, for a day's interview. Sounds like an arrogant, asshole move. But still, what would be better?

I've been at this for almost 40 years, and it's shocking to me how little urgency there is to hiring over the last 5-10 years. I have a sinecure but still interview from time to time. Compared to (say) 1990, it's intensely time-consuming and unproductive.

In principle, I'm likely someone that hiring managers are looking for, and really a pretty good deal. In practice, I'll probably just retire rather than throw my hat into the ring again. Or--since I have a vindictive sense of humor--maybe I'll spend my retirement doing "fake" interviews with prospective employers.

This is pretty relatable. Not sure I'd say "unworthy", as that's hard to measure. Instead, I'd just say that consciousness seems to lead directly and inevitably to misery. And following Qohelet from thousands of years ago, those who are no longer conscious, or never were, are the best off.

We'll all be dead quite soon. In the meantime, I enjoy going out into nature a bit (waterfalls are great), and more reliably, having a pet. I think this is the best that this world has to offer. Godspeed.

Can you imagine if the resources allocated to "social justice" were allocated towards the poor and others in dire need?

Aside, perhaps amusing: A while ago, I used Tumblr as a modest blog of my tech adventures. Put a link to that on my LinkedIn page.

A year or two passed, and while applying for jobs, it occurred to me to check that link. Without telling me, Tumblr had given my URL away to someone who enjoyed posting naked pictures of herself. Lesson learned.

(In truth, given the quality of most tech resumes, I'd be quite happy to click on one and be shown that.)

> there’s a video of him doing just that

I believed that for years. It just sounds like the sort of oafish, lame humor I'd expect from him.

But finally, I looked more deeply into it. My impression from that dive is that he was not specifically mocking this reporter's disability. Rather, it's more of a theatrical way of saying "Duh!", which he has used on many prior occasions, and even occasionally when referring to himself. (And of course, "duh" comes from a meaning of mocking people with low IQs or other similar disabilities. You could argue that it's wrong, but it's not particularly unusual in American discourse.)

It's somewhat open to interpretation, but I think a reasonable person could come down either way.

The strategic value to the US is that it completely removes the possibility that Germany will negotiate with Russia to turn the pipelines back on.

Or, alternatively, it's a strategic benefit to Russia to plant the idea of US treachery in the minds of the Germans.

I have no opinion and doubt we'll ever know what actually happened. Definitely sabotage, though.

The bad: This is what it means to be a man, a father. You are Atlas, and you will hold up your kid's world. No one will be on your side. Some will curse you. Even your kid will probably curse you when they're in their teens.

The good: You will have the power to make your kid's life a good one. You'll make a difference that no one else can make. Probably the decisive difference. Even if no one ever acknowledges it, you'll know it.

What to do: Think about what you have to do to keep reasonable income coming in. But also, think about what you can do to cut unnecessary expenses to the bone. No new cars. No getting hair done. No eating out. No vacations. Etc.

Within that framework, consider changing jobs. If you're living in an expensive city, leave. This is the golden era of remote work. If your current job makes you want to step in front of a train, find a new one. You can program, and there will always be someone willing to pay for that.

Your kid is everything. Start with that principle and work the problem. Godspeed.