When the experts tell you how to select a general contractor, they usually focus on issues like estimates, experience, licensing and bonding, and references. But as a married woman, I’ve got a few other criteria that are rarely mentioned. The first is: never be attracted to your builder. In my list of cardinal rules, it’s right at the top, because while affairs between an architect and a client have been known to happen, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that says it’s far more likely to occur with a builder.

Think about it. A builder is almost always a strong and capable man, working inside your house day after day. He does whatever you ask. He cleans up when he’s done. He sees you in the morning with your bathrobe. Hears you yell at your kids and he still comes back the next day. It can be like catnip for women, so I make sure that’s a non starter right from the beginning.”

Wow. I don’t know if I should laugh or cringe.

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House Lessons: Renovating a Life Percentage: 37%

Leans a bit hard on the literary references, but I guess the writer is well read and does not mind flexing it, the intertextuality doesn’t feel forced - just mildly distracting. Reading it for the second time felt better.

It’s the perfect timing to to overcommit with camping and hike plans that I’ll slightly regret then later be extra grateful I did it anyway

And the early days of “AI fluency” interviews has been painful to watch. I don’t know how interviews are supposed to work if most managers think “cross validation” is an acceptable answer for a question about generative AI guardrails for vibe coding

At least I gotta give it to them the goal of having both… but this is proven a zero-sum dichotomy time and time again in the halls of city council and voting booths

T: cars are noisy, cities without them are musical @urbantruth.bsky.social https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:thigatosnyxffhfeyxgaahdf/post/3midms2rba22y

I don’t believe we’re close to that, but it’s still an interesting thought exercise. How much more worthless can human life get under capitalism?

Now it turns out that software development became so valuable and abundant that it became the ideal target for LLMs, so bots writing code are taking off even before self driving vehicles. Inadvertently developers made themselves a single point of failure for labour, then imploded.

But I will never not find it funny that his surname is slang (in pt_BR) for someone who gets involved (sexually) with a friends’ partner, probably because of a song from the early 90’s

And does that city has a moderately walkable downtown with apartments that cost less than 1MM CAD?

I guess I should look for things that make me think “ok that’s too much”… perhaps veganism as the ideal diet? Or polyamory as the ideal relationship? These come to mind as the kind of thing that I don’t think I’d ever be able to adjust, but youngsters are welcome to experiment 🤷 (3/2)

I guess if most of these are blind spots for most of my friends, statistically speaking I should conclude there must be a myriad of blind spots of my own. (2/2)

But then there’s an inner circle of people who understand the merits of harm reduction. And another inner circle that don’t think that “immigrants have a duty to assimilate” (is there a word for this?). And a circle that understands there’s no such thing as “apolitical”. (1/2)

I didn’t know CBC was in a position to be so selective about how they reach their audience. What’s confusing is that they have tons of podcasts, so they know how to do this

Invasion of Ukraine, high inflation, genocide in Gaza, trade war, high unemployment… it all boils down to more forcing functions for keeping low interest rates, which fund techno-optimism, while techno-feudalism sprawls and tech oligarchs shape the world. (1/2)

My disgust for this bully nation grows louder. It pains me that I moved inwards on their sphere of influence.