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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Where I live, the places that do blood donations, also do plasma donations. The process is longer, but is otherwise a similar experience. And since plasma is extracted from blood, it is not entirely wrong to argue that people can get paid for blood donations in the US. It is not accurate, but I would argue the statement is probably based on a truth.





  • I also used to save up every potion and usuable that I came across. I wanted to feel in control by being prepared for everything. That sounds like a fine quality to have, but it stems from a fear of not being able to handle whatever is thrown at you. It is a symptom of a lack of self confidence.

    Nowadays the things that I’m most proud of in life, are things I only achieved because I jumped head first into the unknown, yet still came out on top of whatever challenge I had taken on.


  • A similar success story:

    My dad is in the early stages of dementia. This has been quite draining on my mom. As a result, she had been pushing him to go to a kind of day care for dementia patients. She tried over and over to convince him by telling him he would like it there, with absolutely zero success. My dad is way to stubborn to admit such a thing.

    Eventually she told me about this, and I advised a change of strategies: tell him how he can help you. Focus on your needs, not his happyness. Because, although he is stubborn, he is also the kindest and most willing-to-help person I know.

    She ended up telling him telling him, how she needed some time for herself, where she didn’t need to worry about him.

    I now have some pictures of him, where he is smiling his ass of while on an excursion with the group of the daycare. Mom was absolutely right about him liking it, but it was useless as an argument to convince him.



  • The problem with C++ is not the lack of safety features. It’s the ever lasting backwards compatibility that is keeping it both alive and down at the same time.

    Having to support 50 year old code, is going to limit any restriction you place. But it is usually the restrictions that make a language good.

    Example: You can write perfectly good modern C++ code without any pointers. But pointers are so ingrained into the language, that it is impossible to remove them.



  • In The Netherlands, the power grid has been turned into a different company than the power supply company. Same for gas and internet. The infrastructure companies are tightly regulated, to the point that they might as well be gpvernment branches. The providers however, are free to offer whatever.

    The result is healthy competition where possible, without any company gaining a monopoly position over the utilities of individuals.

    The drawback is that they figired out that the best way to make money, is of the backs of lazy people. People who don’t want to switch providers, cause that means effort. Hence, not actively looking for a better offer every few years is quite costly.