salad-tycoon

My uncle was a forensic child psychiatrist. He told me once about a very poor family, both parents had the equivalent IQs of lukewarm water and over all were dull and struggled in every aspect of life.

Yet, they had a kid that was actually very bright.

One time during a family session the kid would complain that he got made fun of at school a lot because he smelled of burnt rubber.

Turns out, the dad would burn tires in the “living room” to heat the house and explained to my uncle that it was cold (freezing) and they couldn’t afford other heat so it was tires or freeze.

Story always stuck with me. He said his job in this case was to help the kid understand the reality of his situation and help him live with it so that he could move on past it when he was finally old enough to move out (and move up) in the world.

Maybe your dad also struggled with something that he kept from you that caused him to not want (or be unable to afford) to turn the heat up. Or, maybe, he was just a controlling jerk. Or some combination of the two even. I have no idea of course of your life but thought the story mildly relevant and worthy of sharing.

Say more? Please. As in, everything after “last week.” Take us back, if you will.

I live in the country. Amazon takes days to ship out here, though sometimes it has 1-2 day. Walmart has same day shipping (not delivery, regular shipping) and is cheaper or comparable to Amazon.

Or like me, I use disposable emails via simplelogin (?) and iCloud hide my email. I have hundreds. “Roflz” but I’m a citizen so guess I’m okay?

They have the Master Chief collection or something (almost all the games in one with a selector screen), I remember a year or two ago booting into and playing online game, plus there appears to be a discord server that organizes players to better reach playable numbers.

You’re absolutely right. If it was a song from iTunes you bought you sure as hell could burn it on a dvd or cd or whatever. (Right? It’s been a long time.) So if I buy a movie why can’t I archive it on a DVD?

I don’t really leave thank you notes as they don’t add anything but just to balance out the opinions here:

Thank you for taking the time for that wonderful explanation, may it teach some of us/me to think before we shoot. I found it very enlightening and am sure many other drive by casuals do as well.

Kind of seems to me, the heart of the critique is that 1. unthinkable amounts of financial and social and political credit have been thrown at this which necessarily has deducted it from other fields we could have invested in, instead. 2. Thus, with such wealth you would expect at least a couple of discoveries.

Not my post, but I think point 1 is stronger than 2.

I read it as a socially awkward but very bookish very young teen. My one quote summary is “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” I never became Mr. Popular but found it very helpful in trying to understand somethings that were unobtainable for me at the time.

I need to read it again, I think about it a few handful of times a year, many years later.