Notices by Don Romano (alt) (thor@noagendasocial.com), page 16

@mcread It seems to have been working since 2000.

@jack Which one of them?

@jack You only hear of huge corporations attempting to diversify by buying successful startups. This is on a much smaller scale, and the companies aren't even trying to make themselves attractive anymore. It's more like owners wanting to get rid of a mess.

I've heard of a similar model where you look for business owners looking to retire, but that's more if you don't want to go through the hassle of starting your own business first.

I think I'm starting to understand the business model of my employer, and it's hilarious, because I've never seen it before:

1. Find a company in a similar business to ours that's failing for a non-financial reason such as demoralised employees.

2. Buy the company on the cheap.

3. Shut down the company and take over the customers and any employees who are still productive.

4. Profit.

My employer has no sales department. It just eats other companies.

@eazysprech IMHO, it was small enough that they could've just made it an intersection.

@eazysprech What I drove through the other day was basically so small that my car was taking up 50% of the thing, and there really no island in the middle of it to speak of - just the sign.

My spreadsheet of walks to work. I use a stopwatch app and pause it whenever I stop during a walk, so factors like traffic or me popping into a store on the way there doesn't affect it. I don't bother logging the seconds, because I'm not *that* quick at fishing the phone out of my pocket.

I should find more excuses for taking walks. It's kind of ironic that I'm working on getting a driver's license as I'm finally getting into the habit of walking every day.

They say you're always supposed to blink when exiting a roundabout, because it's always a right turn, but I've seen roundabouts tiny enough that you don't really need to turn right at all.

For me, 8-bit systems were:

1. What kids our age played for a couple of years before the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive (US: Sega Genesis) came out.

2. Surplus stock sold at a discount because no one wanted last year's model.

My Atari XE didn't feel so cool anymore when I saw that my cousin's Nintendo had way better graphics and sound, and also, all the latest games.

I did eventually get a NES, but my parents didn't like the expensive cartridges, and the SNES came out soon thereafter.

@selea I didn't "grow up" with it as such either, since I wasn't a very active gamer, but there was a time when a bunch of my cousins would get together to play Link to the Past, when we were teens, and that kind of defined what Zelda was to me.

For reference: Mine is the one from Link to the Past on the SNES.

Your preferred version of Link from Zelda reflects how old you are.

@masterofthetiger In theory, with a great deal of inconvenience, I could.

@wistahe "Social democrat policies" is perhaps more accurate than "socialism", since Norway is very much powered by capitalism. It's just kept in check by socialistic elements. Same story in Sweden and Denmark.

@wistahe I keep hearing of poor souls who are forced to live that way. Meanwhile, I don't even have my work email on my phone or computer, and my work laptop is more or less permanently installed on the desk at work... Then again, this is Norway, where historic socialism has established a strong culture of work-life balance. In some cases, it actually tilts the opposite way and people leave work early on Fridays, etc.

"I asked why he thought defectors from the Norwegian Communist and Red Parties almost always went for the Labour Party, not the Socialist Left Party?"

"«That's simple,» said Gusland. «In Labour, you think capitalism sucks, but the alternative is worse — so you try to patch it up. In the Red Party, we agree, but think it must be scrapped. In the SLP, they try to combine both. Most people get that this won't work.»

I thought this explanation was so good that I didn't think more of it."

@wowaname That... would actually make a lot of sense, given how brain dead the rest of his family is...

For some stupid reason, having verbal diarrhea on Mastodon is much more entertaining at the moment than a million other productive things I could be doing.

I have some electronic parts I could order to start a new project, but every time I'm about to hit the "Order" button, I wonder why I should bother. None of this is part of some grand plan I have for starting my own business.

Well, it sort of is, except the plan is more of a daydream...

@jack I have a mild Scandinavian accent. That one doesn't have a great track record for science. More of a mixed bag, really.

Not convinced that I would ever want a phone with face recognition instead of fingerprint recognition. It won't be up to me, of course. Progress marches on, and at some point in the future, there won't be new major iOS releases for the iPhone 7 Plus anymore, and I will have to upgrade. By that time, it won't be face recognition anymore. They'll be tapping into your brain at that point, I expect.