Let’s keep things in perspective

Post #443,676 by rcareaga 11/24/23 9:26:48 PM 11/24/23 9:26:48 PM Reply	Let’s keep things in perspective (Late to the party; sorry) You, CRC, are likely and blessedly unaware that the Washington Post maintains on its payroll a creature called Megan McArdle, approximately your contemporary, who used to write for the venerable American journal The Atlantic. Anyway, I’ve always treasured this tweet of hers from two years ago, when she contrasted the American System with the horrors of the way things are ordered on the Scandinavian Peninsula and environs: You live in Denmark, you don't worry about healthcare expenses or schooling, also your home is small and poorly heated by US standards and you use your family friendly work schedule to do the household chores that a US UMC family would pay to outsource. That's the deal. Imagine that: affordable healthcare, but you have to vacuum your own house! O, the humanity! cordially grateful to live in this bastion of liberty and not in your socialistic Northern hellhole,
Post #443,677 by CRConrad 11/25/23 11:41:42 AM 11/25/23 11:41:42 AM Reply	Yeah, I'm trapped between the Scylla and Charybdis of rage and despair at the bill I received... ...in the mail the other day, from the City of Helsinki: Ambulance transport, 25 €. How dare they bill me that much! How am I going to survive? I mean, sure, I wouldn't be surprised if I get one from HUCS too. Considering I spent, les'see, five nights there and had about a gazillion meals (four a day), it could even be several hundred bucks. Like, not just two but three hundred or something, Idunno. But, heh, compared to you guys... Well, good to know that at least nobody Over There has to vacuum their own house or anything. Yeah, I think I've read a column or three by that McArdle creature; can't recall when and where. Just goes to show that everything turns to shit sooner or later, even the WaPo. -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
Post #443,683 by rcareaga 11/25/23 9:18:53 PM 11/25/23 9:18:53 PM Reply	The spousette and I… have thus far not been ruined by her medical expenses, but we are outliers in the Land of the Free (to perish) here in God’s Own Country, where the sick and dying are lawful prey of the rentier class. I grieve to learn that you are so oppressed by the tyranny of the Scandinavian welfare state culture. My hopes and prayers that your land can someday embrace America’s for-profit scheme, so that you can give over to the shareholders appropriate fractions of your income. After all, the plutocrats’ private helicopter pads don’t pay for themselves! cordially,
Post #443,693 by CRConrad 11/28/23 7:09:48 AM 11/28/23 7:09:48 AM Reply	Well, I have had my struggles with the oppressive bureaucracy... ...though not that of the tyrannical librul-pinko-commie-bastard state, but HR. Of my transatlantic employer. No, you don't report sick leave like this on the "Report Sick Leave" page of the HR sub-intranet; if it's this long you open a separate ticket (or "Case") for it. And no, the screenshot of the doctor's official certificate of "Unable to work due to illness" that I took from the Social Security Authority's (a previous employer's) web site is no good; they want it "on paper". Though in this electronic day and age a phone snapshot of the printout of the exact same information that I was given on discharge from the hospital is just as good, of course. Biiig diff from a screenshot of a Web page... (Well yeah, actually: The screenshot was much more legible.) Just for spite, I copied the same thing as text -- again, from the SSA Web page -- into that second e-mail. And I must have misremembered the length of my sick leave back five years ago: Your employer apparently only pays the first four weeks, then it's the tyrannical librul-pinko-commie-bastard state, i.e. the SSA again. Can't recall applying for that back then. But maybe I did, and just forgot. Or missed it completely, so I'm out a grand or so, who knows. Anyway, I foresee it being less of a struggle than what I've had so far. -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
Post #443,681 by drook 11/25/23 1:19:06 PM 11/25/23 1:19:06 PM Reply	I'm not saying she's out of touch, but she clearly has a better view of the siding than the drywall -- Drew
Post #443,705 by pwhysall 12/1/23 3:01:57 AM 12/1/23 3:01:57 AM Reply	Denmark be like: Yeah, we might do our own hoovering, but we live longer happier healthier lives than you, so… to-mar-to, to-may-to.
Post #443,709 by CRConrad 12/1/23 7:03:51 PM 12/1/23 7:03:51 PM Reply	Point being, Denmark has an ever better argument than that. Sure, most people in Denmark do their own dust sucking[]... But so, I'm fairly sure, do most Americans -- they don't all live like McArdle. (Like, for instance, does she think the people who do hers have someone else to do theirs* for them?!?) And, heck, there are even some people in Denmarkistan who do have others vacuum for them. Just like in the People's Republic of Britain, and even the Swedish and Finnish SSRs. So even the point where she presumes America to be superior is just plain bullshit. --- []: Though sadly perhaps not all with an Electrolux, or even a Nilfisk, any more. -- Christian R. Conrad* The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
Post #443,713 by Andrew Grygus 12/2/23 1:44:18 AM 12/2/23 1:44:18 AM Reply	"Nothing sucks like Electrolux" Legendary failed advertising by Electrolux in USA - I have no idea whatever whether this actually happened or if it's just a legend - but it's one of those things that should have happened even if it didn't.
Post #443,715 by scoenye 12/2/23 2:46:48 PM 12/2/23 2:46:48 PM Reply	Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZrQqnRhmZ0 If nothing else, it does seem they used the tag line in the UK market.
Post #443,717 by drook 12/2/23 8:44:55 PM 12/2/23 8:44:55 PM Reply	Remember when Microsoft tried to make a mouse? Review at the time: Microsoft won't make anything that doesn't suck until they make a vacuum cleaner. -- Drew
Post #443,723 by pwhysall 12/4/23 1:03:18 PM 12/4/23 1:03:18 PM Reply	They made the Intellimouse Explorer, which at the time was the GOAT mouse.
Post #443,725 by drook 12/4/23 3:24:52 PM 12/4/23 3:24:52 PM Reply	"I got bettah" -- Drew
Post #443,726 by pwhysall 12/4/23 3:40:19 PM 12/4/23 3:40:19 PM Reply	TBH they’ve never made a bad mouse They’ve made a lot of very boring business mice, but their mice have always been at least usable. Apple, OTOH... ...yeah. That.
Post #443,728 by crazy 12/4/23 3:52:56 PM 12/4/23 3:52:56 PM Reply	While I agree that was actually good hardware The best possible mouse wasn't a mouse. It was the Kensington expert mouse trackball. That thing is incredible. It's like the old centipede trackball. Rock solid. I could twitch my thumb to have a slight press and make it fly across the screen and then catch it with my pinky while simultaneously clicking with my thumb as it traveled over the icon I wanted. Then I'd flick my pinky back and drop it exactly where it needed to be. Years of mouse usage destroyed my ulnar tunnel. It's kind of like carpal tunnel but a different pathway. I could not use a mouse and found out that many people who use mouse hardware end up like me. But after 2 weeks of using the trackball, my arm stopped hurting and my productivity multiplied immensely. I strongly suggest that all people try the Kensington expert mouse if they currently use a mouse.
Post #443,733 by drook 12/4/23 11:33:14 PM 12/4/23 11:33:14 PM Reply	If I were a hardware guy ... I've always wanted to find a control panel for a scrapped Missile Command arcade game and turn it into a computer trackball. -- Drew
Post #443,735 by pwhysall 12/5/23 2:00:23 AM 12/5/23 2:00:23 AM Reply	At the risk of derailing CRC’s thread... ...actually I’ll make a fresh one.

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