Ohhh. As someone who also went through an editing program recently, yeah, I think AI has taken a lot of those jobs. Are you a member of any editing guilds like the EFA (if in the US)? They seem to have more one-off jobs for freelancers, but there was a regional guild I was part of that posted more corporate editing jobs, which maybe sounds more like what you’re looking for. But right after AI got big it quickly became apparent that even the experienced freelancers were having a hard time getting steady work. I wish you luck. At least you have a good chunk of experience. I gave up because I didn’t have any.

But how do they know which email that might be? Do they even know which of my accounts are for business or personal use? If I send an email from my business email to a bunch of friends and relatives to plan a party, will Google assume those are subscribers and pull my party-planning content from my email and put that info… somewhere… on my business page? I don’t want them reading any of my emails, ever.

The email from Google was laughable in that it contained almost no info on how this process is supposed to work. All it means to me is that I don’t have control over my own content. This should have been opt-in instead of opt-out.

I think this might be the best time to start having these conversations: when things are getting bad for almost everyone, and there is so much governmental upheaval that changing the economic system becomes a lot less disruptive than it would be during good times. It’s only going to become more and more clear that capitalism is failing.

My favorite economic system so far is a land value tax with UBI. I still don’t know exactly how businesses would operate, but this system would eliminate the parasitic generational wealth siphoned from hoarding property and housing. It would also allow for people to not work if they’re unable to.

I’m sure it’s probably just delusional hopium that we could ever get through the threat of fascism and come out of it with a better system than what we had, but that’s about all I got left right now. The rest is just doom.

Look, communicating awkwardly doesn’t make you a horrible person. I think part of it is you have a confidence problem. It sounds like you always cowtow to your coworkers’ reactions, even going so far as apologizing when you haven’t objectively done anything wrong (your responses don’t seem that weird, but maybe it is the way you say things). It seems odd to me that anyone would be offended by an offer to go home early, unless you’re making it seem like you specifically don’t want them to be around.

At the end of the day, your coworkers are just people with their own issues and imperfections. They are probably not experts at communication either, so don’t treat them as such. I would not take any social cues from coworker 1.

You may not be able to change the dynamic at work, so my advice is to find a way to socialize outside of work (with people who actually like & respect you!). That way you won’t have to rely on your workplace for those needs.

How is that post borderline insane? It’s a lot of unnecessary detail, but outgrowing your high school mates is a pretty common thing that people sometimes don’t know how to handle.

No, those are different things. Intrusive thoughts are your brain telling you terrible things like you suck at your work or your hobbies, you’re worthless, your friends don’t actually like you, and hey remember that time you did a cringey thing in front of people? They’re not true, and you’re not intentionally having these thoughts, but your brain can’t easily rationalize them away. It’s usually something that builds up over a lifetime so that you don’t even realize it’s happening. Thats how so many people get stuck believing the intrusive thoughts.

Don’t go to Facebook first! We need to start normalizing ways to organize outside of those giant corpo-fascist sites.

Especially at work, where you can’t leave and should probably be focusing on the work.

Apparently they’ve decided once every 5 years is enough for women. Now I wonder if that’s because of the doctor shortage…

Oof. Soon every job is going to ask “HoW mAnY fOlLoWeRs Do YoU hAvE?”

Exactly. I don’t think you meant to, but you just described the majority of billionaires.

You win, lol. That’s terrible.

My mom used to be a great cook but now she just makes everything in the microwave, often in plastic containers. This year she seemed to forget half the things she was going to cook. We had plans to make beignets and homemade eggnog (we didn’t). For Christmas dinner she made this elaborate meal plan and then changed everything at the last minute. She somehow didn’t think about starting the rice until the chicken was done cooking… then suggested we have nasty precooked pouch rice. For Christmas dinner. It would be different if she didn’t cook much or know how, but cooking is her whole thing! I’m honestly baffled. I’ve decided I’m just going to volunteer to cook the entire dinner next time. I’ve been a professional cook before. I can make something fancy, even if I’m the only one who will appreciate it.

If it chipped, then it is likely some kind of vinyl or composite made to look like wood. Nowadays the fake wood looks realistic enough to fool people! But real wood doesn’t chip like that.

I’m surrounded by pine trees, blackberry bushes, and ivy. Christmas looks pretty green to me!

Looks a lot like a Thomas Kinkaid painting.

I know unfinished business doesn’t necessarily mean business in the economic sense, but it’s still funny we call it that. Like even ghosts can’t escape capitalism.

But why do we need to recreate “real life?” Don’t we already do this relatively well in books, TV, and movies? People keep saying we won’t use AI to replace creative writing, but this (and propaganda, making bot conversations seem like real people) are the only use cases for this kind of data. LLMs don’t need to improve their conversation skills. What they really need is to stop hallucinating, and this kind of data won’t help with that.

I mean, sure, you could argue we’re already there.

Mormons have three tiers of heaven. According to some, even Hitler would make it into the lowest tier. I’m not sure what you’d have to do to actually go to hell, which is supposedly just lonely infinite darkness away from the presence of God.

Corps have been complaining for years already that people aren’t buying enough. Millenials are killing this industry and that industry because we don’t consume enough - “enough” being whatever level they’ve decided we should consume. They feel entitled to our dollars, whether or not their product or service is any good.

If they were smart, companies would lower prices to be more competitive and incentivize people to buy more. Instead they’ve doubled down and posted armed guards at the store exits to intimidate the customers they have left. They’ve slipped data collection into every interaction. It’s pretty obvious they’re not playing the long game anymore.