Brewers want people to want beer, and to perhaps puritans, that desire could appear as “addicted”. However, brewers don’t want addicts - liver failure, destitution, death, are all things I doubt a brewer wants to see in their consumer base because you can’t drink if you don’t have a liver, don’t have money, or don’t have life.

Did I, as a child, think my dad was addicted to alcohol because I saw him drink everyday? I did, that’s the appearance it gave. Was he? Not to the clinical point of addiction, technically - he functioned, maintained relationships and a job, and wasn’t more than occasionally emotionally abusive. He fit the type of customer GP seems to talk about - appearing to be addicted but not wholly, truly addicted.

My company is also heavily pushing AI, which is worrisome but no surprising - part of my goal for the coming year is to showcase using AI in a productive and innovative way, can’t wait.

Eventually my Google Nest Minis will stop asking me to try Gemini and force me to, and they’ll all get binned unless I can find a firmware replacement which I doubt is out there, and then I’ll get deep into HomeKit and local voice recognition for turning the lights on and off and setting timers because that’s literally 99% of my use-case, and I’m sure Gemini would fuck it up.

I find knitting very soothing, and it also scratches the same itch as programming.

This has led to many a “that doesn’t sound right” when looking things up with friends, or odd technical questions that have serviceable information available but not at the top of results.

Also, republics are “anti-tax” in word and pro-tax in practice, as is the American way. When it comes to particularly republicans, anti-tax is code for removing social safety nets. They want taxes if it pays them, or pays the right contractors, or funds the military etc but when those tax dollars could go to social welfare they suddenly think it’s time to trim the fat.

I feel like it was fairly customizable - the Mac system settings let you do a lot of drag and drop of controls, and I recall iTerm having a similar interface for customizing the bar in its own settings.

I do think it should’ve been given a lot more love, but that’s Apple for ya I guess

Drugs are an alluring and easy avenue for people who have a difficult time fitting into their social expectations and dealing with pressures. Obviously this isn’t where it starts, but treatment is so difficult and the punitive effects are so harsh that it creates a system that’s incredibly difficult to get out of…so why would you?

This isn’t always the case, of course, but my own anecdote:

My best friend in high school got hooked on heroin - not sure exactly what started him on it or why, but I could tell that he knew he didn’t want to be in that place, and that he as genuinely trying to get clean but the resources were limited and often harsh.

He did get clean for a while and applied for a job at Walmart - this kid was stupid smart, we’d do EE and programming projects all the time and I always felt like he was miles ahead of my understanding of technology - but this was what he had available because of his history.

The Walmart drug test popped for the drugs he was using _to get clean_ and they denied his application. Went home, relapsed, got found dead by his mother. It’s awful.

[1] https://www.oreilly.com/animals.csp?x-search=duck&x-sort=old...