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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)AC
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Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Recently retired from a place that makes rocket engines, and there's just so much. Start with a rocket engine itself - the combustion gasses are like 3300 C (6000 F) with more than 400,000 lb of thrust. But there's a lot associated. We dealt with lots of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. We have a giant braze oven that we can put a whole rocket nozzle into. It's quite an arsenal.

  • Peaches are great to have because they're so different from what you get at the grocery store. A peach ripened on the tree is much more flavorful than once picked unripe, but a ripe peach is so soft that they pick them unripe for shipping. Pulling a ripe peach off the tree and eating it is a religious experience.

  • Well sure, of course. I'm more likely to hire a painter to paint my house if he says he's been in business 20 years, but I'm going to be pissed off it turns out in his first job and he's bad at it.

  • I was a hiring manager in aerospace for decades. We for sure checked transcripts before a start date.

    I also just don't get people who lie on their resumes. That would cause me so much anxiety. Even for things I have training or experience with, I always worry people are going to expect me to be more proficient than I am. I had I guy put that he was fluent in a computer language that I'm not sure he'd ever seen, so everyone was always frustrated with him and he eventually got laid off.

  • I retired in January, and I'm having this issue to a point it feels insane. The other night I got undressed for bed and was dumbfounded when I saw that the hamper I was tossing my clothes into was otherwise empty. My brain just could not accept that I was at the end of the same day that featured doing laundry earlier. That had to be at least the day before. But I've had other things that were the opposite: didn't I just run the dishwasher? No, that was a week ago.

    I have no time cues. Trash day is about the only think that happens on a regular schedule. Some days I'm busy and they go quicker. Some days are mostly reading or whatever, and they go on forever. After 40 years of getting up and going to work, with certain things happening certain days, it feels pretty surreal.

  • Remember back in 2022 when Russia disconnected from the global Internet? Reddit was great that day. The amount of trolls and devisive posts plummeted and discussions were much more civil. That was when I first started thinking about looking for a different place to hang out (I had been a pretty prolific reddit commenter). Then the stuff in spring 2023 happened and I found my way here, leaving Reddit for good. No regrets for sure.

  • Permanently Deleted

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  • And our constitution explicitly says the government can't favor one religion over another. There are Christians in our country who are trying to undo that - who think we're a Christian nation - but the US was settled by diverse groups wanting the freedom to practice their own religions, and the ability to do that was built into our constitution. So a religious text isn't justification for something being legal here.

  • People say that, but it's much easier said than done. You can't just decide to move to a country and go. Like the US, you have to apply. Many want proof that you have a useful skill. In some cases the application is expensive.

    Also, we have kids and family. If I had to give up seeing them easily to live, I guess I would, but that thought is stressful too.

  • Right, this is a facet that a lot of people don't get. I'm also more worried about smacking my toe on a table leg than I am of death, because I'm just not at all worried about death. When the game is over, it's over.

    Not having enough money to live sounds horrible though.

  • Yes, this is it. I worked at the same aerospace company for 40 years and retired this past January. As an engineer, I had done lots of spreadsheets and analysis to make sure I had some confidence that my wife and I could live the rest of our lives without being a burden on anyone. Now, just a few months later, my 401k and IRA are in the toilet, below the worst case of my worst case analysis, the administration is working to dismantle the social security and medicaid that I haven't yet applied for, and my anxiety is through the roof.

    I've never really been anxious about death. I mean, I'm not looking forward to it and I try to live in a way that puts it off, but every life ends eventually and I'm at peace with the fact that mine isn't an exception. But what happens if I run out of money before then? How do I live? I've never been rich, but I've been super lucky to have a good enough income to feed myself and my family for 40 years. We had a couple times when unforseen issues made me worried about being able to pay our bills, but we were able to get through those times with some belt tightening. But now? I've never been so anxious in my life.

  • What bullshit. I'm over 60 and no one I know thinks this way. Remember, we're folks why grew up before the internet, saw it come about, (saw the enshitification of it), and saw AI content surge. We know that the AI content is relatively recent. This makes no sense

  • Oh, for sure. It's not an area that I'm an expert in, but your conversation got me curious because I had heard both things, so I read a few articles. One of the interesting things is that the bit about Hitler's envoy wasn't broadly known until 2020 when the Vatican released a whole mess of documents that had been kept hidden previously. So there's maybe more reason for some people to have one impression based on what they grew up hearing, and others to have a different one based on more recent info, but even with the new info it seems nuanced.

    It's easy to fault anyone who didn't take a clear stand against Hitler from this vantage point, but it must have been hard to be a world leader facing the possibility that Hitler would be successful and you'd have to deal with his empire. Pius XII supported the allies and it's obvious he was against Hitler, but he was reluctant to be overtly vocal about it, and he even entertained the envoy, which maybe he saw as hedging his bets (we can't know exactly what he was thinking). It's for sure stained his legacy.

  • It's less black and white than either of you guys are implying. You're taking about Pope Pius XII, who was Pope from 1939 to 1958. He's credited with saving hundreds of thousands of Jews through various means, including support to the resistance, but also by showing some had been converted/baptized, which in itself was controversial. But he also feared the Nazis were going to win the war and that the church would have to exist in a Nazi world. He never clearly spoke out against the holocaust, and though a lot of the things he said, including his sermons, can be taken as condemnation of Jewish persecution, the language was pretty subtle. Also, Hitler had an envoy secretly meeting with Pius from pretty early on, which many say was bad in itself. Still, he also helped the allies with intelligence, to the point where Hitler accused him of espionage and had plans to kidnap him.