Bill Paxton, holding hands with a slightly taller Bill Paxton wearing sunglasses. They’re standing in front of a poster for the movie Twister, but the title has been replaced with the logo for the board game.

My roommate made it during a literal fever dream over a decade ago, he was in bed, fiddling with his phone’s photo editor mumbling “I have a vision” over and over again. The tag line “he called me a ne’er do well, he’s dead” was something I said while playing GTA next to him at that time, and he added the quote to the final image.

It’s weirdly cropped since I’ve used it on different phones over the years, here’s what it looks like now.

No waiting; the email was in my inbox as soon as I applied.

I was able to make my account immediately, just this morning. Not on Google Play yet though, had to download the apk manually.

With our current calendar system, anything other than a 7-day schedule is going to shift from week to week. My schedule at that company was 8 days long, so it shifted ahead by one day each week. Your proposal would do the same, just in the opposite direction. Having employers stick to fixed schedules is a much easier ask than having the whole world change how we keep track of time.

I’ve worked a schedule like this before (4 on/4 off) and while it’s nice at first, it wreaks havoc for long-term planning, since your schedule shifts from week to week.

Whenever I’d try to make plans with friends, I’d have to cancel 75% of the time, because I’d either be at work, or I’d have work the next day and I couldn’t be out late. Extrapolating my schedule didn’t really help anything; there’d be entire months at a time where I simply wouldn’t see my friends with normal 9-to-5s.

3- or 4-day work weeks are great, but they should be fixed in place on the workers’ end.

I’m starting a new job on Tuesday. Normally, I would’ve started on Monday, but day 1 at this company is just about watching training videos. So I’ve convinced my recruiter to let me watch those videos from home, instead.

It’s barely an hour of footage overall, no quizzes to take or paperwork to fill out. I would’ve spent more time on the commute. I have no idea how I’m going to fill the time after this.

I was playing video games with my little brother, until about 4 AM. Made no effort to keep track of time, although we were probably setting up a heist in GTA when midnight rolled around.

After growing up with a bunch of retail workers and hearing all their horror stories, I generally try to avoid all the “classic” Christmas tunes as long as possible - the only ones I ever seek out are Christmas At Ground Zero by Weird Al Yankovic, and Straight No Chaser’s album from 2009.

Straight No Chaser - Who Spiked The Egg Nog?

Braking doesn’t even have to factor into it, I can’t stand the feeling of going on and off the throttle. Cruise control exists for a reason, people.

An avocado! Thanks…

Eight months.

The day after my 21st birthday, late September, I’d left home to go to trucking school. Went through a trucking company’s in-house “apprenticeship” program, which was somewhat predatory in hindsight.

Anyway, I went through this program, managed to get my CDL, which took several months by itself (through no fault of my own - the program was designed to take that long), and when I finally got a truck to myself, it only took me about five weeks to grow tired of the sudden isolation. I was finally allowed to go home around Easter.

After my three allocated days of hometime, I decided to quit that company, and I found a better job closer to home.

And to appease the invading forces, I also have a void:

One of their prison labor programs is for fighting wildfires.

If Harris wins, ideally I’ll do all the things I’ve been putting off until after the election. I’ve been meaning to update the address on my driver’s license, the registration on my car, and several other things like that.

I live in a deep red state; I’ve been paranoid about getting them done, for fear of my voter registration “happening” to get lost in the process. And then I’d finally have an excuse to never visit my hardcore right-wing parents ever again, because my mail won’t be showing up at their house anymore.

If Trump wins, I’m not going to update anything. I plan to flee. I don’t have the means to leave the country, but I’ve got friends in blue states who are happy to take me in. That’s better than nothing, I guess.

I was a truck driver a few years ago, working on a dedicated account that had me rapidly experiencing burnout. 14-hour days, sleeping in the truck. I was supposed to work 5 days a week, but more often than not, I’d have to work a 6th day to end up at my house. I technically got weekends off, but I had to go back to work at 12:01 on Monday morning, to stay on time. I was in a death spiral for a while there.

One morning, having overslept, I’d let myself get into a rush, and I’d backed my truck into a parking bollard at my first pickup. Damaged my hood, bumper, mirrors, and a bunch of other important bits. My truck was going to be in the shop for a few weeks, at least.

After my safety department got their pound of flesh, my dispatcher gave me some alternative work in the meantime, covering for an absent driver in a local position. Said position involved doing shuttle runs for a nearby factory, just taking truckloads of their product to a warehouse a few miles away, dropping them off, and bringing empty trailers back to the factory. No appointments, no paperwork, no live unloads. Just showing up and driving, for an hourly wage instead of mileage. 8-hour shifts, without having to sleep on the truck. A diamond in the rough I didn’t even know my company offered.

I asked to be moved to that position, and I was instantly approved, since dispatch wanted to replace that other driver anyway. That was late February 2020; shortly after I got acclimated to the new digs, the pandemic hit. I didn’t lose my job; my trucking company kept all of their shuttle drivers on-site at the factory. Said factory only ran a skeleton crew though, not putting out enough product to keep all of us busy. None of the drivers complained though, we embraced getting paid to sit on our asses with open arms.

Contingency, from Local58

Emergency broadcasts of any sort, fictitious or no, already put me on edge, but the idea of the US government having one ready to go, specifically to order people to commit suicide to spite some kind of existential threat, is especially chilling.

https://youtu.be/3c66w6fVqOI?si=JsF_-x6A65iwbaC_