I used to work for a company that wrote the software used by Clerks of Court in Louisiana. It was niche software because Louisiana is the only US state whose legal system is derived from the French, so the companies that write software that can handle all the other states don’t bother accommodating Louisiana. Clerks of Court in most of the LA parishes made $60K to $70K per year (which was actually a pretty astronomical salary there) but they controlled budgets that could afford the $100K per month cost of the software. The owner of the company would wine and dine the Clerks and pay for their house renovations and driveway pavings etc. and vacations and whatnot, and meanwhile he raked in fucking enormous profits (64 parishes X $100K per month, with a team of about 5 programmers). Nobody batted an eye at this shit.

On the other hand: Kimbra.

OK boomer

(/s)

My mom and dad got Long Term Care Insurance a long time ago. My dad passed away before he could collect on it, but my mom is currently getting around $13,000 a month from it and this goes up by 5% per year, so she can afford to live pretty much wherever she wants for the rest of her life. Naturally enough, insurance companies do not offer this kind of policy any more.

My mother owns a house and I’d be fucked if I inherited it. Just the property taxes, insurance and utility bills for it come to over $30K a year which is more than I even make (before income tax) as a school bus driver. Selling it would require a lot of repairs first which I couldn’t afford. In theory you can sell the house for its book value less the cost of these repairs, but in my township you’re legally required to fix some things before a sale can even be approved (e.g. replacement of the entire sewer line out to the street). I could maybe rent it, but typical rents here would barely cover the expenses even assuming the tenant doesn’t trash the place.

“THE JACKPOT IS UP TO 30-MILLION NOW! YOU BETTER GET A TICKET! YA CAN’T WIN IF YA DON’T PLAY!”

I join in the lottery pools at work, not because I think we’ll win, but because I can’t bear to imagine the horror of having everybody at work win the fucking lottery but me.

I’ve had exactly one gambling experience in my life. I went with some friends to a casino in Louisiana and I tried a slot machine. I stuck my credit card in the slot, was debited $5, pushed the “lever” button, and won exactly bupkis. I don’t know what the appeal is but I imagine it involves winning occasionally. I’m going to stick with my 0.000 batting average and be happy.

I’m waiting for Melon to ruin “Butlerian jihad”.

I live in a Philly suburb (in Delco) and driving here is crazy enough, but whenever I drive into the city the transition to the Mad Max state of mind is just insane.

I’ll give it a try, but … jeez.

I make bread and pizza dough with honey or molasses instead of sugar and it’s fantastic. Honey is always better than sugar – except in coffee.

Don’t forget Al “I invented the Internet” Gore. What actually happened was: Al Gore as a young senator was shown ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. He then wrote the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 which led to the creation of the Internet as we know it today. During the 2000 presidential election cycle, he gave an interview in which he stated that he “took the initiative in creating the Internet” – a perfectly reasonable claim that went unremarked upon at the time. Months later, Bush advisor Karl Rove dug up the interview and orchestrated a smear campaign through which Gore was supposed to have claimed to have “invented the Internet” and the rest is history.

Democrats do not sabotage their careers by yelling weirdly or being photographed with their tiny heads sticking out of tanks. They are assassinated (just politically, usually) by a savage and ruthless enemy.

One of the plots in Dune was the idea that Baron Harkonnen initially put the Beast Raban in charge of Arrakis so that he could be a huge dick and make everybody hate him, then he would be replaced by Feyd-Rautha whom everybody would love because he was slightly less of a huge dick. Trump and Vance.

My favorite quote from A Bug’s Life is “first rule of leadership, princess: everything is your fault!”

Ride my bicycle. I’m a retired software engineer.

Angine de Poitrine it is!

Our buses have an aux input jack. I just don’t ever feel like messing around with an aux cable and USB-C adapter just for 15 minutes of music. Although i would really enjoy making my elementary school kids listen to Shpongle.

I’m a school bus driver and in the mornings the kids beg me to play music on the radio. So I turn it on, set it to “SCAN” and then I don’t hear one fucking actual song the entire rest of the ride. Even the local classical station is somehow just people babbling.

And yet for all of eternity we have had different numbers of hot dogs and hot dog buns.

My 401k would only ever be a supplement to Social Security. Fortunately the ruling party would never even dream of abolishing that.

/s of course. They used to say Social Security was the third rail of American politics – soon it will be the third leg.