The Distracted Feline

Here's the problem with that, cheap and well-constructed are mutually exclusive. They simply are. As long as you have an economy where people are paid for work, even with a robust safety net or even universal income, all costs eventually boil down to labor.

Yes, there's raw materials and such, but those are then converted into usable materials using, can anyone give me the answer? That's right, labor.

Simply put, money is a physical representation of labor. This isn't a controversial stance, this is extremely basic baby's first Marxism. Like, you say you go here, but you don't seem to understand this.

The reason things like LCD panels and disposable LED lights and hard disks are so cheap is because their production has been opitmized to produce the most of a specific item in the least amount of time. An electron tube for a radio takes a skilled technician an hour or so to make and costs you $30. Transistors can be made by the thousands on a fully automated production line in the same time and cost you less than a buck each.

If you want a laptop computer that you can service, repair, and upgrade, you have to engineer it to be serviceable, repairable, and upgradeable. That means someone has to be paid to do that. You have to use more materials in order to make it large enough that you can access the servicable parts, which means you have to pay for more materials. You have to provide quality control for all the various extra connections that make servicability possible, someone has to be paid for that. You have to be willing to reject products that make it to final assembly and do not check out for quality control, which is incredibly expensive.

I am a potter. A very basic mug takes me perhaps an hour and a half of what I'd call moderately skilled labor. If I charge a fair price for my labor, and pass the cost of other people's labor (mining raw materials, mixing them into clay and glaze, loading and firing the kilns, etc.) on, I should earn enough to buy something that took, say, an hour and fifteen minutes of equally skilled labor?

That's still going to feel like a lot in terms of money, because an hour and fifteen minutes of moderately skilled labor is, like, $35 minimum. And since I'm paying fairly for the labor of everyone in the entire supply chain, that won't go very far!

that's an extremely difficult-to-solve situation, frankly, and it's kind of irritating to see so many people throw answers into the ring without actually, honestly, considering the scope of the problem!

also, it's kind of stunning how blatant it is that people will read a frank and honest account of executive dysfunction and ahedonia and just decide it's "being whingey".

if the desk pedal or walking pad thing doesn't work for you, then my only suggestion would be uhhhhhhh moving into an extremely tall and narrow house so you have to climb stairs and ladders all day, every day, to get anything done.

The only thing I have found works for me is doing activities that are, genuinely, fun. The most conventional one is sports - they're competitive, social play, and your community almost certainly has a league or two for adults, including one that caters to people who are Bad At Sports and just wanna play for fun. This also comes with people who will provide accountability/peer pressure. Check your local community center/sportsball pitch/etc.

We also play a lot of VR games around here. I am partial to "To The Top" (parkour), but the classic is of course Beat Saber. Not a VR headset person? Go old school and get yourself a DDR mat, or a copy of Wii Sports.

As I'm sure you all know, Andy Weir has written some other books; feel free to give them a shot. But there's a lot of lovely "two people inspiring one another to do great things", cross cultural connections with aliens, people working together to save the world with SCIENCE, etc books out there, so here are some to consider:

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

One of the greats. Two people inspiring one another to live (often out of spite), with flashbacks for backstory, on a roadtrip to kill the emperor.

The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord

I hype this book a lot. It's got cooperation, cultural studies, resettlement politics, sociology, and a little bit of magi-science.

Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold

Another one of the greats. Space welding technician gets sent to teach space welding to a zero-g native group of four-armed people and they all work towards liberation and independence together. Engineering! Family! Space! The Evils of Capitalism!

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson

Professional translator for psychic alien ends up investigating a locked-room murder mystery. Aliens! Linguistics!

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

What if there was a disaster on earth and humans had to start planning to go to the stars in the 1950s? There's space, teamwork, pushing back on dumb policies and forward on smart ones and more science!

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Something strange has landed in Lagos' lagoon. Science! Human-alien interaction! Suspense!

My Enemy, My Ally & The Romulan Way by Diane Duane & Peter Morwood (and the other books in their Rhiannsu series)

yes, these are Star Trek novels, but they're really just awesome sci-fi about cross-cultural cooperation and understanding. 100/10.

To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers

SCIENCE! It might be a crisis back on earth, but we're focused on the science and teamwork and what life might look like on other planets.

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (and the rest of the trilogy)

Tbh these are on my tbr pile, but I've heard great things. Science! Space! Politics!

If you're looking for something with even more politics, philosophy, economics, etc, consider:

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

If you're interested in graphic novels, try:

On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

Cosmoknights by Hannah Templer

-Use the password taped to the monitor

How to hack any hospital computer (L337 version for advanced security systems)

But then some mega-genius upstairs realized something: the system was only alerting for critical vital signs, but not for all vital signs that could possibly be bad.  Like, yeah, 200/130 is potentially life-threatening, but 130/90 is above ideal and can have negative effects on health.  Should the doctors be allowed to just ignore something that could negatively affect a patient’s health?  Heavens no!

So now the system generates a pop-up for any vital signs that are even slightly abnormal.  A pressure of 120/80 (once considered textbook normal, now considered slightly high) will create the pop-up.  We have increased our vigilance!

Well, no, what we’ve actually done is train doctors to click through a constant bombardment of pop-ups without looking.  We’ve destroyed their vigilance and made it much easier for them to accidentally skim past life-threatening vital signs.

But you can’t tell that to management, because you’d have to confess that you are a flawed human with limited attention resources.  They’d tell you “well, all the other doctors take every abnormal vital sign seriously, it sounds like you’re being negligent.”  And if you’re smart, you back down before you start telling the big boss all about your habit of ignoring critical safety alerts.

The monitors in our ED are at the charge desk and the admin desk. They have a ‘beep’ for ‘out of whack'and a higher-pitched ‘beep-beep’ for ‘the monitor says theyre dead’.

The PROBLEM

Is that the beep-beep sounds if no breaths are detected for 10 seconds (common in sleep apnea, not an emergency), if a cardiac lead comes off (machine interprets this as “heart rate 0”, common in anybody who moves in the bed), if the pulse ox reads below 85 (bending your finger will do that), or if your blood pressure is above or below a certain threshold (common if you move your arm).

As a result, when we hear the beep-beep, someone will glance at the monitor, say “that isn’t real”, and silence the alarm. If it looks like it might be real, we’ll holler for someone to poke their head in the room.

But it beeps constantly. Literally every ten seconds a new alarm is going off.

And the fire alarm - it goes off at least every other week. One time it went off for six hours straight, then was off for two hours, then back on for three. Thats another alarm we’ve learned to tune out, because it’s never a real alarm. We’ll close the doors like we’re supposed to, but if we ever have an actual fire, we’re going to die, because we’ve been trained to ignore it.

Better places to keep the password include a password manager (obviously), or anything the user keeps secure/private. A wallet, for example, should be just fine.

I'm an early childhood educator. I work to keep ten two-year olds safe, healthy and psycho-emotionally enriched. I don't think only giving 70% of my effort to do that would be good for anyone.

My mom is recovering from a stroke at a rehabilitation center. I would really like the staff there to give their 100% caring for residents.

If you're in a cubicle, yeah sure. But if you're primary job responsibility is to keep vulnerable people alive and comfortable, then I don't think discount effort is a good idea.

If they were all giving 100% all of the time, they wouldn't be able to adapt to a situation that needs more from them. And that is why they strike - because they care. They understand that, if they're all pushed to their limits all the time, they may eventually reach them, very possibly in a moment when their charges need them most.

You know that thing where a story is written in tight third person limited — we’re meant to be inside someone’s head, seeing the world through their thoughts — and then suddenly the narration says “the blond frowned” or “the shorter woman sighed” about a person the POV character knows really well?

That’s called antonomasia — using a descriptive label instead of a name. And it’s fine when we’re talking about strangers: “the cashier handed her the receipt,” “the tall guy blocked the door.” The POV character doesn’t know their names, and we just need a quick way to tell people apart.

But the moment it’s used for someone the POV character already knows, it breaks immersion. Because that’s not how our minds work. We don’t think “the older man smiled at me.” We think “Mark smiled.” Or maybe “my boss” if that relationship matters in the moment.

Third person limited means the narration sits inside someone’s perception. Their inner monologue is the story’s voice. So when you switch from “Mark smiled” to “the blond smiled,” you’ve pulled the camera away from their mind and turned it into an outside shot.

If you want to create distance or irritation, you can do it on purpose —

“The idiot from accounting emailed again.”

That’s character voice. That’s judgment. That works.

But otherwise?

As soon as your POV character knows someone’s name, use it. While we do tend to worry about repetitions, names rarely register as such to the readers.

If you need variety for rhythm, use relational or emotional identifiers that make sense in their head: her friend, his partner, their teacher, the person they loved.

Because inside someone’s thoughts, there are no “blonds” or “brunettes.”

I tend to go social group + physical characteristics + behavioral characteristics, in that order, when talking about someone whose name I can't recall. But that's probably not universal, and would also get unwieldy.

a lot of people are giving examples in the notes of things they just find annoying like not using headphones in public, but OP is talking about actual literal scripts of things to say in awkward situations

if you have a date or two with someone and you don't see a relationship developing? most millennials / gen Zers just end up ghosting. but a social script that might have been taught and rehearsed in the past could be:

"I really appreciated getting dinner with you the other night and I enjoyed your company, but I'm afraid I didn't feel a spark. I wish you the best, and hope you find that special someone!"

Remember things about your friends! Ask people about their weekends, hobbies, holidays, studies, and jobs! Listen for the concerns people have and what they are working on! Draw connections between one person and another to get the ball rolling. "Oh, Maura, you just got your first cat! You should talk to Felix, he used to work at a rescue. Felix, please tell Maura all the new-cat-guardian pointers."

"Bill, Sheila, Xan, this is my friend Kale. Kale is really into Star Trek, Bill you and them should talk about it!"

If you're looking for a manual on these sorts of things; social etiquette, social scripts, how to handle difficult and/or awkward social situations, etc. then I highly recommend picking up any book by Miss Manners. Her books really are the gold standard for learning the types of skills this post is talking about. I should also mention that Miss Manners is witty and hilarious so her books are also fun to read.

The best book by Miss Manners to get started with would be Miss Manner's Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior. This one is probably the best starting point because it gives the best overview of all the basics.

Sorry @darlingdear but I couldn't let this stay in the tags.

I say this as someone who is neurodivergent had grew up very socially awkward, but recently I find the "screw small talk, I wanna get to know the REAL you" attitude to be pretentious as well as a demonstration of a lack of boundaries.

But also, I think a lot of people who have this attitude don't actually really know what does qualify as small talk. The definition of small talk is any topic that's of no real consequence and includes topics like food, pets, sports, music, whatever show you're currently streaming, whatever book you're currently reading, and yes, the weather. A lot of people who have this "I hate small talk / I don't do small talk" attitude probably think it's only reciting a bunch of secret scripts about the weather, and don't realize how much they engage in small talk whenever they talk about their pets or their favorite foods or the really cool show they're watching right now.

Small talk is a way of sounding out a person’s attitudes. It’s about finding out if they’re a rabid asshole or someone you want to spend more time with.

I had a professor who got angry at a group of (mostly women), from five countries, all of whom met yesterday, for talking about daytime TV. He basically insulted us and called us shallow.

It's not just the fact that this book is perfect for those of us who are neurodivergent, who can really benefit from having a book which kindly and patiently bothers to explain social rules and norms that people just expect you to know without ever telling you themselves.

It's also the fact that, despite this book being nearly 45 years old, Miss Manners makes it clear in the preface and opening chapters that she is explicitly against classism, sexism, and homophobia. She also makes it explicitly clear in the preface that her personal belief in the importance of good manners and etiquette has nothing to do with a desire to return to "the good old days", because those days were not actually good for women, LGBTQ+ people, poor people, and people of color.

What really made me re-fall in love with Miss Manners though was right in the opening chapter she addresses using sexualized threats and insults to debase and degrade others (you know, like "get fcked", or "suck my genitals", or "yeah well that's not what your mom / sister / other female family member had to say last night") because if sex is something that's supposed to be good and pleasurable, why are we using it as a threat to debase and degrade others? Honestly I love her so much for calling out the inherent sex-negativity of using sexualized threats and insults like that, and nearly 45 years ago at that!

What I learned is that there is an inflexible rule about how people interact with systems. If your system would work perfectly if people Just Would, and yet they Don't, then your system is bad and you should feel bad. Systems must be built with an eye toward "will people actually do this"?

Recycling was a thing when I was a child. (The 70's.) In my home in New York State, you could carry recyclables to a recycling center. Nobody did. Now in 2024 Baltimore there is a trash truck that comes every week to pick up my recyclables, and I and my neighbors fill our cans with objects that can be recycled, because a system was developed that was easy for busy people to do, and there's a lot of social pressure to do it -- but the social pressure wouldn't exist if it wasn't easy to do. Only the most crunchy granola people bitched at you if you didn't recycle in 1979, when it required a lot of effort. Now it is considered kind of on par with spitting in the street or leaving a dirty diaper on the diaper changing table in the bathroom instead of throwing it out, if you don't recycle.

@alarajrogers what did you mean by this?

A small thing. If you want to support trans and nonbinary people, then on government forms, if they require gender and you can't get around it, allow "other"; better still, don't require gender. If you're building a medical system, and the patient's gender is M, do not gray out all the "female" problems he might be presenting with on the grounds that a man can't possibly have menstrual problems, be pregnant, or have issues with his uterus; likewise if the patient presents as F, don't make it impossible to enter a diagnosis of prostate cancer for her.

Don't set up validation rules that prevent someone with gender M from having a husband. Better yet, let "husband" and "wife" both be covered by the term "spouse", because that is inclusive of non-binary spouses as well.

Because I'm in IT, I think in terms of IT systems. But there are government systems and insurance systems and financial systems and all sorts of systems out there, that should be set up so that a gay person will be able to navigate it as easily as a straight person, and a straight person will see that the available options don't privilege them at the expense of everyone else... a subtle reminder that no, you're not the center of the universe and gay people exist. Why do you think the right wing fights so hard against there being Spanish on forms that are also in English? You'd think, it doesn't harm anyone using the form for there to be both Spanish and English. But they know, the presence of Spanish reminds English speakers that the world doesn't center around what works for them; other options exist. That's what they want to get rid of, the subtle reminder that someone besides them is important too.

This is a discussion about how to make systems work in some way other than If People Would Just, making them easier to promote the result you want, so I'm not sure how you even got "the onus is on gay people to be more palatable", and I get the feeling you don't understand the context of the discussion. I am not even sure how you could devise a system that incorporates "gay people should make themselves more palatable" because that sounds exactly like a thing that People Should Just... meaning, you're relying on humans to behave in the exact specific way you need them to for your system to work, and the whole point of this conversation is that doing that dooms your system to fail. Gay people will never Just Make Themselves More Palatable To Straights, as a cohort, so if your system for getting gay people to be better accepted relies on If Gay People Would Just, your system will fail.