I always claimed in job interviews to be good at debugging, but there are no certifications for debugging and there's really no way for an interviewer to verify such a claim. So even though it is an incredibly important skill, companies just do not look for it. There is also the hilariously misguided belief that good coders do not produce bugs so there's no need for debugging.

I grew up in a town in Ohio where the famous abolitionist John Brown (hanged in 1859 after his abortive raid on Harpers Ferry) had built a tannery in ~~the 1840s~~ 1835 that was still standing in 1976. To celebrate the bicentennial, the city council had it condemned and torn down, to make way for ... a parking lot. Hilariously, the council claimed it was a danger because it was about to collapse, but it took three days to demolish and they had to bring in special heavy equipment to do it after their wrecking balls failed to make a dent in it. This thing had been built with massive 40-foot long oak beams with 12"x8" cross-sections that showed no signs of rot (my dad salvaged a piece of one of these beams and set it up as a bench in our garden, and it was still in good shape in 2012 despite being outside the whole time), so it could have easily been preserved as a historical site. In fact it had been declared an official historical site by the state just days before its destruction but the town council simply ignored that.

Pic

And the people who say "loud pipes save lives" often don't wear helmets, which statistically are safer. Not all motorcyclists are full of shit, but a hell of a lot of them are.

I wish police would simply enforce noise ordinances

I live next to a catholic church/school and sometimes on the weekend or near sunset a local kid rides his motocross bike all around the church yard. Annoying as fuck and it chews up the yard and everything. I've called the cops three or four times but they've never bothered to send an officer out. I called the church and all they did was install a bunch of super-bright LED lights which are on 24 hours a day. Kid still rides his bike there and now I can't sit outside at night anymore because of the fucking lights.

One thing I always liked about the various flavors of BASIC was that nobody ever pushed that shit as a religion.

I was talking to a guy with an $8K bike the other day and he was proud of the fact that he could calibrate his shifters with his phone.

That is exactly how they're seen in Philadelphia.

A halberd and a bow? You don't know if you're pikemen or archers?

I mean, some people drive to the mailbox at the end of their fucking driveway.

OTOH it's absolutely insane what new bicycles are costing these days - bikes can be money pits too. I bought my road bike 12 years ago for about $1800 and was kicking myself for years for spending that much. A modern road bike (with disc brakes, wi-fi controlled electronic shifters etc.) would be in the neighborhood of ten grand, more than my car cost. Meanwhile my favorite bike is the 25yo hybrid that I bought on Craigslist for $100.

Fun fact: at his mother's deathbed, Stalin reportedly told her that he had "become something like the Tsar". Perfectly accurate FWIW.

I don't know why he can't say Russia. It's the obvious truth, his swallowers - sorry, his followers - would lap it up no matter what, and it's no more or less insane than anything else he says.