Spasmolytic

Yes, sleep mask for the win. I recommend the kind that is just a wide soft bit of cloth that wraps around your head. Like this. The ones with elastic straps or eye cups, gel, foam, whatever, have not been nearly as comfortable IMHO. I just want a pillowcase for my face.

I've also recently started wearing earplugs since my wife is up before me and the kitchen sounds always cause me to stir well before my alarm.

To each their own. Everyone is a hypocrite about something. 😉

I use Boost too! Good stuff.

I always find myself coming back to Vivaldi. Extremely customizable browser. Yes, it's chromium-based like so many others, but I like it a lot and it's always gaining fun new features. I keep Firefox as a backup, but often have (relatively minor) performance issues with Firefox, particularly on Android.

I'm in the USA, so if they're only considering an ad-free offering in Europe as described then my outrage stands. 😉

They're missing the damned point. I have never used Facebook, but on any service if I'm paying a monthly fee it is to remove myself from the ad-based enshitification.

It's also what drives me crazy with respect to Microsoft products. I pay for MS 365, and I'd even be willing to pay for Windows if they'd leave me the fuck alone. I pay for ProtonMail and they do leave me alone, so I'll always stick with them. Any app that I use for which I can pay to remove ads, I do it... unless it's a subscription and I can't quite justify the perpetual expense, like for my preferred weather app MyRadar.

Hell, I almost bought into the MyRadar investment pitch until I saw that giving them $400 still wouldn't net me a lifetime subscription.

Right, but do the faux revolutionaries in this thread know the difference between a good landlord and a bad one? They seem to enjoy basking in righteous anger and not to care for nuances.

Good landlords hate bad landlords too. There's a lot of common ground to be shared.

That's why this is such a frustrating conversation, and it's similar to many other hot button issues. It gets treated like a black & white problem and folks start slandering whole groups when the issue usually arises from some sub-set of opportunistic assholes, or extreme bigots/mysoginists/what-have-you. (I my mind I'm also thinking about social issues that pit left-leaning people against right-leaning people, where everyone treats the other side as if each person were an example of the most extreme in that camp.)

So in this thread there are folks talking about overthrowing landlords en masse, when it's the large investors from outside the local community (plus some scumbags in the local community) who are adding to the suffering in the world.

Small landlords of the sort that you described are indeed just making long-term investments that are likely to yield a decent return or become a source of stability as an appreciating asset. It's the kind of investment that we should want lots of people to be able to take advantage of.

We need a more efficient way to get to the heart of the matter in these conversations because just scrolling through the comments it seems like a lot of ignorant or misguided anger.

That's why this is such a frustrating conversation, and it's similar to many other hot button issues. It gets treated like a black & white problem and folks start slandering whole groups when the issue usually arises from some sub-set of opportunistic assholes, or extreme bigots/mysoginists/what-have-you. (I my mind I'm also thinking about social issues that pit left-leaning people against right-leaning people, where everyone treats the other side as if each person were an example of the most extreme in that camp.)

So in this thread there are folks talking about overthrowing landlords en masse, when it's the large investors from outside the local community (plus some scumbags in the local community) who are adding to the suffering in the world.

Small landlords of the sort that you described are indeed just making long-term investments that are likely to yield a decent return or become a source of stability as an appreciating asset. It's the kind of investment that we should want lots of people to be able to take advantage of.

We need a more efficient way to get to the heart of the matter in these conversations because just scrolling through the comments it seems like a lot of ignorant or misguided anger.

That's why this is such a frustrating conversation, and it's similar to many other hot button issues. It gets treated like a black & white problem and folks start slandering whole groups when the issue usually arises from some sub-set of opportunistic assholes, or extreme bigots/mysoginists/what-have-you. (I my mind I'm also thinking about social issues that pit left-leaning people against right-leaning people, where everyone treats the other side as if each person were an example of the most extreme in that camp.)

So in this thread there are folks talking about overthrowing landlords en masse, when it's the large investors from outside the local community (plus some scumbags in the local community) who are adding to the suffering in the world.

Small landlords of the sort that you described are indeed just making long-term investments that are likely to yield a decent return or become a source of stability as an appreciating asset. It's the kind of investment that we should want lots of people to be able to take advantage of.

We need a more efficient way to get to the heart of the matter in these conversations because just scrolling through the comments it seems like a lot of ignorant or misguided anger.

Doing the lord's work right there. Hah!

Is that true of grizzlies? Seems to me they're only docile if they're full.

Fucking hell. My wife and I wanted to plan our next hiking trip and go to Banff, then started reading about the grizzly threat. It seemed real, and there are so many beautiful places to go, so we dropped it.

Then, about a week ago, a guy in the gym at work is telling me about his trip to Banff where they took their kids along too. I started thinking maybe we should go for it. Now I read this awful news. Suddenly it once more seems like a bad idea.