Indeed.

HJF. That guest list… That wasn’t a black tie dinner. That was an assembly of overlords meeting with the kings of their respective kingdoms. Those are the people one would assemble if feudalism is the goal.

I agree that there was unfavorable media coverage of the Vietnam Conflict. There was also a fire hose of positive media coverage, as well as a very intensive campaign to conceal how badly things were going, along with a lot of disinformation around why the US was there in the first place. Hell, I recall reading newly disclosed details about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident not too long ago.

Anecdotally, my family were boat people fleeing the Communist regime. To this day, to a one, they are all hard-line Conservative, even when subjected to profiling under this administration. I like to think I’m somewhat informed and have certainly consumed a lot of media regarding the US and Vietnam. Somehow, I only first heard of the My Lai Massacre around 2005. Again, merely anecdote, but media control by the governments is a hell of a drug.

My original points stand: we get to Monday morning quarterback a lot of shit; better an imperfect ally than more enemies; and however long it takes for someone to come around, better that they come around than not.

You are using a modern, privileged metric informed by an intensive media penetration that was unavailable during the first three campaigns you mention, and only to a slightly higher degree in the last two.

Most enlisted I have known, and it’s a lot, thought they were defending the world from despots. Hell, even the officers I know initially thought they were serving the public good. The rest I know who don’t fit into that category just wanted to be able to afford college and a family.

And even if the Marine in the picture knows NOW he only served a bloodthirsty tyrannical regime, the fraternity of the USMC, the commitment to the Constitution… It’s some deep, deep connection. Even the most disillusioned Marines I know are still loyal to the Corps and the Constitution. Moreover, it is better that one realizes US hegemony later than never, yes? So how about we welcome those have opened their eyes and remedied their ways?

Or we can just keep shitting on allies and see how that works for us.

I collaborate with other people who are also on DRS. Before I had teammates on DRS, I tried using Blender, Openshot, Shotcut, KDenLive. Those NLEs are just not there yet.

I actually started my solid modeling/parametric journey on FreeCAD, and I prefer the parametric workflow. I switched to Inventor when FreeCAD kept crashing when the object tree was ~60 primitives even on my monstrous workstation. I would love to go back to FreeCAD, because fuck AutoDesk in its ear, so hopefully they get the stability + complexity under control.

Rant on, bruddah! I am also in the “must use it for work” group, and I despise my work laptop with the fury of 1000 suns. In my personal work and prior to this new job, I was staying on Win 10 for Inventor, AutoCAD, FL Studio (and a bunch of VST synths I bought), and DaVinci Resolve Studio. My experience with my work laptop has spurred my nearly-complete jump to Linux.

FL Studio has been replaced by Bitwig, new learning curve and loss of the VSTs just being the cost I have to eat. I almost have DRS running in perfectly in Aurora Linux. And my two Win 10 machines will just go into an isolated network until I can figure out workarounds/replacements for the Autodesk garbage.

I don’t really get all the hate on the comments.

Agreed. “Oh no! Not an ETL!” I wish more applications were backed by MySQL, MariaDB, Mongo, etc. Give me the option of encryption at rest, and when it’s time to change apps, I have granular control over everything.

On the other hand, the advantage of all the hate is everyone presenting their faves and providing their reasons. So …net win for the audience?

That green ellipse is called a paragraph break. It denotes a shift in thought or conversational topic.

My example was poorly chosen in the context of the preceding paragraph. Mea culpa. But to address your request for more information on that admittedly poorly chosen example: that was at the start at the Russian invasion, so I don’t have the source readily available. It might have been Jacobin or a YT geopolitical analyst based in Europe. And bluntly, I am disinclined to dig through my histories in order to satisfy nitpicking pedantry.

Yeah, we’re definitely missing each other here. I own my role in communicating poorly here. And you are reading much more deeply into things that have not been said.

I feel like you are digging for an argument that doesn’t exist.

Okay, sure. Maybe that’s fair.

I come to Lemmy for conversations that are fun, funny, thought-provoking, and helpful. So, on that note, I’m out. Enjoy your day.

That’s the exact point at which you departed from accuracy into fantasy-land, and what I was taking note of.

That was an example I presented of my disbelief regarding that war. You are welcome to hone in on that topic, but even I said “WAT,” i.e. my disbelief regarding conclusions at which some people outside the US arrived.

This is an impressive type of sophisticated negging whereby you criticize yourself as a way to implicitly criticize the reader, and tell them they’re an idiot.

If you choose to read it that way, you are welcome to that view. I do think US news consumers are propagandized. The more I learn, the more I realize I have been stumbling around blindfolded with regards to US actions, domestically and abroad. My ignorance is mine alone. I was aiming for light and humorous at the depth and breadth of my ignorance. If you would like more clarification or elaboration, rather than making assumptions, I’m happy to discuss.

I would really urge you to re-examine that leap you took from “most US readers are misinformed” to “most of the people in these comments are misinformed”

That’s quite the leap yourself. Would you care to elaborate on how I called commenters here misinformed?

I think we might be missing each other’s points, and I think we probably agree more than this topic/thread would indicate. I feel like you are digging for an argument that doesn’t exist. I would rather find where we agree; putting me down and making extrapolations I didn’t intend nor feel doesn’t help anything, except maybe our egos. But I suppose agreement doesn’t make for compelling Lemmy comments.

Lolwut

Exactly, hence, my “WAT.” Let’s set aside the veracity of the US manipulating geopolitics in the UA/RU war; that was an example, but not the point I’m trying to make. Can we all agree that the US has a long history of fuckery when it comes to stomping out anything it doesn’t like or isn’t in line with corporate interests? Bananas, oil, crack cocaine in US inner cities, and democratically elected South American socialists leap to mind.

When my non-US friends tell me some of this stuff from their perspective, it absolutely stuns me that it’s an angle almost completely unavailable in US media. Maybe it’s covered by niche independent journalists, but then there is a credibility gap. Even if the independent journalist were absolutely presenting the truth, it’s still feels like tinfoil hat shit because of how severely we’re inculcated by “trustworthy” news sources in the US.

I like to think I’m a teeny bit media- and news-savvy, but damn… most days I really feel like a blithering idiot.

When even the “more trustworthy” US news outlets (HAHAHAHAHA!) are manufacturing consent, it becomes very difficult for us to be anything other than idiots. Talking with my longtime acquaintances and friends in CA, DE, VN, and JP, the conversations invariably become “Did you hear about [current event causal factors]? This is super obvious, and here is [their reliable news sources].” Well, shit.

For example, the one that really blew me away was the US manipulating geopolitics with UA and RU so as to bring the EU to heel. WAT. “Oh yeah. I think US citizens are the only ones to whom that isn’t obvious. Y’all can’t stand having a true, strong democracy around. That’s why y’all are pushing the right-wing shit here too.”

I consider myself well-read (30+ non-fiction books per year, plus investigative journalism), but damn… some days I feel truly, completely out of the loop.

Hello (former) fellow Lehi worker! Although I was remote except for the onsite weeks. I’m not a fan of 99% mobile apps, maybe more than 99%. I didn’t work on mobile, but I am quite sure that it is in fact a PWA.

Different financial institutions (FI) will all have different appearances, because of the nature of how MX is implemented, and whether on desktop or mobile. In the case of my credit union, it’s right here:

The interface of MX Platform on desktop looks like this:

You might see something like this in your online banking home page:

There are two ways that MX can get data from other accounts which you have to explicitly link in your bank/CU interface. The first method is through Open Banking protocols, which are mercifully obfuscated from the end user. Seriously, if you’re having trouble sleeping, try reading some of the Open Banking specifications. :D One selects their FI from the list, and enters creds and 2FA challenge. The other method is screen-scraping, but again this is abstracted away from the end user.

One of the features where MX slaps more than anyone else (for now) is identifying the source of debits and classifying them. Underneath the hood, debit and credit card transaction strings are chaos. But even if MX gets it wrong, you can manually re-classify your expenses, and it will apply that to future transactions (optional). I already mentioned the burndowns, but if you have an idea for a saving schedule, MX will provide reminders and factor in your growth. Platform will also provide reminders for almost everything.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Sure thing. On which part would you like more detail?

Negative all around. I was replying to OP. The company to which I referred is MX. The public-facing product (API) is actually called Platform, but it’s very explicitly white label software. Customers will generally have little to no idea that they are using MX Platform. It might actually say MX somewhere, but that can be eliminated in implementation.

As others have said, a spreadsheet is the simplest. If you do your banking with a credit union, chances are they make MX available to you in your online banking. A lot of banks use MX too. Their software provides the projections and forecasting you seek, as well as Open Banking connections to all of your other accounts. If you have loans, it also has burndowns of outstanding debts. Extra bonus: MX doesn’t sell your data.

Disclosure: I used to work for MX.

Holy balls. I used to be an instructor in the career retraining field, so I believed your numbers. Trust, but verify: https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now

0_0

The right thing.

Anything worth doing is worth doing again.

They really can. And you should know your rights. The death industry is slimy AF, about on par with timeshares. My late mother-in-law was Lisa Carlson, a pioneer of funeral rights and ethics. If you are going to be dealing with someone’s death or planning to die (and you should be prepared), it’s important stuff. You don’t want to get suckered when you are so emotionally vulnerable, on which the death industry preys. There are a lot of options which the death industry tries very hard to keep hidden from you and lobbies to remove.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Final_Rights.html?id=-qxJEAAAQBAJ

Also: this is the offshoot of Carlson’s funeral ethics organization https://funerals.org/