I don’t know what normal people do but people like me don’t see ads because they use the appropriate protections from the invasiveness of the internet.

Pihole. Firefox. ublock origin, privacy badger, decentraleyes…

It also helps if you don’t participate in systems that attempt to intrusively shove ads down your throat, but you do you.

I’m with you. I make mid-100s myself and as a single homeowner with no children I still can’t afford to go on funky vacations.

My take home after 401k and taxes is like $7,600 a month and my mortgage, heloc, car and student loans eat about $5,000 of that.

But, car will be paid off in the next few months, student loans should be done about 2 years after that, he lock will be done about 2 years after that so 5 years from now it’s only going to cost me like $2,500 a month to keep my home.

I have been told that I fit into the Henry class, “high earning, not rich yet”.

I just wonder if I can keep going for 5 years to accomplish that or if I should just finish up the house and sell it and pocket the 200k in value it’s accrued, pay off any other outstanding debt, and then go find an apartment or something or go travel.

Originally it was used as a hex to dispel demons.

Using it on a person is telling that person that you believe they are a demon that needs to be cast back into hell.

So how offensive it is honestly depends on who’s doing it.

The tatted out meth head with four teeth? Not offensive at all.

Kindly old church lady with a heart of gold and an apple pie in every pocket? 100,000 out of 5 offensive

I’m not 100% certain they would melt. And I’m not going to spend my own time and money to try to fix everything that’s wrong with them.

If you have an idea on a way to make them better, how about you implement them and then make millions of dollars selling them to ignorant rubes like myself?

I see where you’re coming from but look at semiconductors. Right now Nvidia has dethroned Intel, and nvidia’s own insiders have stated that they are designing chips based on AI which they are then using to power the AI which design the next round of chips.

Maybe the stuff that you and I have access to will never cross the border into AGI territory to some sort of AGI scenario, but that doesn’t mean that there are not systems and processes in play that can.

As we approach the singularity, more and more things will be done by fewer people.

No one has a plan for the singularity, they are hoping that AI will figure it out.

May God have mercy on us all.

OF is a lottery for pretty girls or for people in very niche communities.

Like if your thing is wearing girly socks and mushing Jello between your toes, you could probably make some money on onlyfans but just being a generic 6.5 out of 10 or better looking? No chance in hell.

I moved to Washington State and got caught in a blizzard in an old beat-up pickup truck.

Part of my route to get home required that I go down a Long Hill, so I slowed to 5 miles an hour and dropped my vehicle in to low gear and made it about 20 ft down the hill before I lost traction.

As I’m slowly uncontrollably skiing down the hill on a bed of snow, to my left and to my right I am passing by row after row after row of vehicles that had been abandoned by their drivers unable to traverse this road.

It was a good day to wear brown pants

However, by steering against the skid and not white knuckling and not riding my brakes and keeping the vehicle in its low drive I was able to safely ski down the road that I had found myself on and make it to the other side.

I was able to drive home that day by following my own advice.

If something like that happens to you, I hope you do the same.

No matter how comfortable you get driving in the snow, always drive slow.

I don’t care if you got four wheel drive chains and snow tires, drive like 5 10 15 miles an hour.

Also, if you start to skid, don’t slam on the brakes.

If it is a long skid and you have time to react, drop your vehicle down into low gear (which should not be very difficult because you’ve been driving slow right?) and let off the accelerator and allow the resistance of the drivetrain to slow you down.

If you feel yourself decelerating you can try tapping the brakes but if you do not immediately regain traction and slow back down, let off the brake.

When you are in a skidding situation, do not White knuckle your steering wheel. Especially when you are turning against the skid, suddenly regaining traction with your tires at an extreme angle can put you into an entirely new skid. You need to be prepared to let go of the steering wheel as soon as you have traction if need be.

Finally, practice.

When there is a gentle snow, which there often is prior to large snows, take your car out and drive it around. Find out how your car reacts in the snow and get a little bit of practice with the small skids that you might encounter on the roads that you travel.

If you live up or down a large Hill, find out if there are alternative routes that you can take to get to your destination. If there is no way to get to your house without either going up or coming down a large hill, identify places where you can safely park your car away from the hill and walk to your home.

Finding that information out beforehand will save you a lot of hassle in the event of a winter storm.

I’ll finish that up with saying, if you expect yourself to be in severe winter weather, it is a good idea to get some chains and some traction devices and some blankets and some water and store them in the trunk of your car during the winter season.

That way, if you are caught unaware’s, you will be prepared.

All of my advice are for severe places like Wisconsin. If you live in a place where the snow is well managed that might be Overkill.

They taste like candied styrofoam to me

That’s strange. Most niacin doses that I have seen are in the 500 mg range and the suggestion I was told was to take one gram and I don’t notice any weird issues from it at all.

the niacin is supposed to help reduce free fats in your bloodstream and prevent or reverse atherosclerosis and to help get your blood flowing.

Same. The instant it touches my tongue I’m transported back to being a kid and my grandmother thinking these were amazing treats and giving them out to us and then getting really upset if we didn’t finish them.

And then I remember I have to actually eat the rest of it. So I finish off the first one and then I see the tiny little 59 cent bag that’s only got four more of them in it and I feel like it would be a waste of my money and my effort in acquiring the circus peanuts and so I force myself to eat the rest of the bag and then vow to never eat them again.

Until I forget and get another bag.

Take 1 g of niacin and 1 mg of melatonin right before bed.

Gave out a few full size snickers to adults today. Glad to have them come by!

How about circus peanuts?

The first bite of circus peanuts tastes to me like an alien artificial intelligence had to create a sugary treat and only had petroleum by-products to make it with.

The second bite tastes like accepting your fate.

Honestly it kind of sucks.

I always wanted a kid but it requires a partner who is able to be a parent and I have never had such a partner.

I had a pretty fucked up childhood and I wanted someone who could be a good mother to a child and everyone I’ve dated who had the ability to be a good mother was not capable of giving birth for one reason or another and everyone I’ve dated who’s capable of giving birth was not capable of being a good mother for one reason or another.

I know it’s not too late for me but it’s getting pretty damn close.

I probably go back to when I was a kid and my mom kidnapped me and since I look so much like my dad kick in the door and raise myself as my own father.

Use my knowledge of the future too make myself incredibly rich and give my younger self all of the advantages and opportunities of life.

I have a lot of vivid dreams, ranging from mad-dash musical romps through New York with a choir of choreographed nuns singing a song I’ve never heard before to epic space battles on a ship where in a laser sword battle I kill a knock off Vader that turns out to be my cousin.

My most memorable dreams are these:

1: First repeating dream:

In this dream I am standing naked on a platform hanging in infinite darkness. Leading away from that platform is a single silvery wire. I know I am supposed to tightrope walk across this to get away.

In the background, beyond vision, dozens of shadowy judges watch my every move.

I take my first step onto the wire. I take my second, and miss, and thanks to my failure I fall into the infinite darkness.

I hit the ground and in real life my body convulses, waking me from the dream.

2: 9/11 dream

This was a one-shot. On 9/11 my brother had his alarm clock set to the news. That morning I dreamed that cat aliens had crashed their flying saucer into the twin towers. I was there for some reason and the aliens asked me to help them get back before the various three-letter agencies catches them, which I agree.

To help us get there faster, I am given rocket skates and we zip through the streets of New York, (Always uphill for some reason, but the sparks and flames from the skates made it look really cool) as we attempt to get them back to the ship.

I woke up before the dream ended.

3: My most repeating dream:

I have a dream town. It’s a rural town, with acres between each of the buildings. It’s always morning in the late-spring here, beautiful countryside town with white buildings and smiling people, green, rolling hills and wooden fences.

I am in an old style 1950’s Chevy (with all the curves and wooden slats on the bed) light blue pickup truck driving sedately through the town, waving at my friends and associates who always smile and wave back.

Sometimes I see new buildings I’ve never seen before, or meet someone I’ve never met before, sometimes I am asked to fix things or to deliver vegetables for one of the farms, but everything is calm and beautiful and joyous in a way that doesn’t seem to exist in the real world. I’m always both happy and sad when I wake from these dreams.

4: Scary repeating dream:

This dream takes place in an area that seems like my dream town above, but it’s always trapped within the lawn of this scary house, which is my house, and it has many rooms and floors. It looks like a church from the outside, but not well maintained with chipping white paint and enough slightly rotted wood that anyone who lived there would say, “It’s time for me to replace these boards and re-paint this place”.

The house seems to be about two or three stories but it has a steeple, almost as if there is a full church build on top of a 1940s military town “four walls and a roof” style home.

I go into the house and the first and second floors are normal, but when you are on the stairs, there is a floor that can’t be reached up a long empty vertical chute, and that floor gives off bad vibes. Halfway up is a door with no stairs attached to it.

This door is always closed, and even if you shine a flashlight on it it stays dark.

Every time this house is in my dream, I am curious to explore what is behind the door, so I crawl up or get a ladder and somehow reach the door.

Approaching the door fills me with dread, as if something evil lurks there, and my heart beats harder and harder and I feel more terrified the closer I get to the door, as though something purely evil is watching my every breath with delicious anticipation.

Eventually the terror and pressure is too much for me and I wake up in a cold sweat.

Every time I have that dream it fucks with me for a few days. I don’t get scared at scary movies or startle easily, but that dream gets to me every time.

So yeah, sorry for the dump, I just have a lot of strong dreams that I remember.

I mean, if you were mindless and hungry you would eat the first food that came your way.

But you are not mindless and so you choose whether to eat a sandwich or a burger or a pizza and what kind of sandwich or burger or pizza it is.

You can choose to abstain from eating to lose weight or for religious purposes.

There is a part of you that has choice and control.

And even if that is a bioelectric chemical process, it’s not always in charge, there is no one standing piece of you that is always entirely completely in control.

But there is always an observer. A sense of self.

And depending on the chemicals in your brain that observer will make different choices either positively or negatively for you as an entity.

You can look at it and say it is just chemical reactions but who is to say that Free Will is not a chemical reaction?

What if there are literal chemicals in your brain that can undergo their chemical processes in different ways based on the choices you make?

Would not that overall function be free will?

I seen a lot of people have this particular question and the question that I have for them is what isn’t free will?

On the religious side you’ve got the people who are saying God knows everything so he already knows what you’re going to do. On the science side you’ve got all humans are just chemicals in a hot dog casing.

My opinion is, either which way you look at it you are free to choose what you want to do.

Just because somebody can make you question the freedom of your choices does not mean that your choices are not born of free will.