I’m not sure I would. If I could have avoided the bullshit or done the things that would have optimized my income and wealth, I don’t think I would have ended up where I am now. The risk doesn’t seem worth it, I would be a completely different person with a completely different life.

“Everything is good, thanks. Staying busy with work…” and then either get back to work or stare at them until it gets awkward. Its possible they have trouble with social cues and you seem friendly or nice or whatever, people are weird and being a new employee is stressful so trying to latch onto someone who comes across well can be a thing that happens. I try to redirect people like this to the topic of work and answer any personal question with something boring. What did you do this weekend? Laundry. If they have any self awareness they will eventually only talk to you about work. Stay professional and don’t be rude while making it clear you are at work to do work and have no interest in their personal life or sharing any details of yours.

It may be unlawful but I have over $100 in useless gift cards because the companies went out of business before I could use them. Cash is inherently superior. Although both cash and gift cards have the problem of being potentially tacky or offensive to give as a gift, depending on the context.

Impossible to say but Harris is winning the popular vote for sure. I think however it goes there’s going to be some chaos and violence, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s blatant attempts by MAGA cultists to sabotage what they can and drag out the vote counting and electoral processes. Its probably going to be a shitshow, and possibly a horrorshow. I don’t expect it to be called on election night unless its a significant and obvious win, which currently seems very unlikely. I would be less surprised if there was a terrorist attack on election night than a clear and obvious conclusion to the election.

Congress I think Dems are likely to outperform, the RNC is no longer what it was and doesn’t have the ground game they used to. All their money and resources have been sucked into the black hole of Trumps campaign.

Listening to an audiobook helps me in those situations. Ideally something a little boring but still engaging enough to keep me distracted.

I think yes, but not to a significant degree. Likely more or less would be absorbed depending on the fluid.

Stick a finger up its butt and the leash will get spit back out? I think I read that somewhere, not sure if it works.

Are you sure it wasn’t set in Scotland? Charlie Stross wrote a novel a bit like you describe, its in the second person, which is very unusual and definitely rubs some people the wrong way. I think it was Halting State.

Does it give her bad directions on one device or everywhere she is signed into Google?

The search results are inconsistent and they started including advertising on the map but I haven’t noticed a decline in route finding. Perhaps there were accidents or traffic jams being routed around?

Poirot. It’s charming, full of mostly subtle humor, and generally just well written, acted, and produced. I appreciate that it has a deeply humane perspective where justice matters, and that effort has been put into historical accuracy. It’s also sufficiently detached from contemporary reality that its not a downer to watch even though it still has a very honest view of human nature.

You should take a look at how simple civics tests have already been used in the US election system. It did not go well.

That’s a dangerous path, and also very likely unconstitutional in the US.

If you work at a company with a competent HR department they will be very interested in hearing about how your supervisor is forcing you to eat lunch with her while she interrogates you about your sex life. That is 100% not appropriate in HR world. Just don’t ever believe anyone in HR is actually your friend, stick to the truth always, and document everything. Literally, keep a log of everything. If you end up in lawyer world they will be very happy that you have documentation of dates and who was there and what happened.

I’ve never gone house shopping in Belgium but in the US at least, you would be fine just staying vague if they ask you any personal questions as long as you keep it friendly and aren’t rude about it. If you wanted to say you have an uncle or someone like that who is thinking of investing in apartments and he wanted you to check it out for him since you live in the area, that is a totally plausible story and will provide plenty of cover for you to be yourself. In my experience in the US at least, real estate agents want to show you the properties they are selling. They don’t want you to waste their time, but if they are selling a house they generally want as many people to check it out as possible. Ideally those are people who actually want to buy it, but anyone checking out a property they have for sale is always better than no one.

You need a dash cam.

No, they effectively do the same thing so you can just set your router to use NextDNS and you’re good.

Tana French novels often live up to the hype, at least for me.

Did you ever get the money they owed you? I had a much less exciting version of that where a job I had was taking money out of paychecks for insurance that was never actually provided. Many years later the courts sorted things out and a few thousand showed up in the mail.

“Futility is freedom”