gizmonicus

I would love to be able to just take the bus to work. Even that would be great. Instead I have to drive and deal with traffic. I could be browsing lemmy or checking my schedule for the day, or taking a damn nap. But no, I'm "free" to take literally the only transportation option I have: my car. Walk? Nope, way too far. Ride the bike? If you like unprotected bike infrastructure and people passing you at 60mph, sure. Take the bus? Sure, just drive 10 minutes to the closest stop and take two different buses to get there on time.

God forbid we spend money on infrastructure that benefits us all. No no, let's build asphalt oceans so we can ply the open road with our Ford F-9000 Pedestrian Pulverizer Special Edition with the CUMmins My Ass v8 9.0 liter Diesel. Because you wouldn't want anything fuel efficient, then you can't bitch and whine about gas prices of course.

But it's cool, I guess. It's not like we're slowly cooking the planet with our shit box cars and stupid obsession with rugged individualism.

Ah yes, the car: the pinnacle of freedom. Except no, it's the opposite. It's like being addicted to cigarettes. Once you've become fully dependent on them, and built your routine around them, and literally your whole schedule revolves around them, you forget how much life was before you decided to pick it up.

Freedom of mobility is being just as able to get from point A to point B as anyone else despite being physically unable to operate a motor vehicle. Freedom of mobility is not being stuck in endless traffic jams, burning the planet to the ground to stay cool in the middle of a 12 lane asphalt heat trap. Freedom of mobility is being able to hop up to the corner store without ever setting foot inside a car.

We, citizens of the USA, are slaves to the car.

This is the hurdle, but we have to find a way. I honestly believe this is a big part of the dysfunction in the USA at the moment. We are so disconnected from each other. Cars exacerbate that problem.

I saw one the other day: "I met Jesus in prison". Damn, what did he do?

I was handed a water bottle the.other day at a volunteer event and was lamenting the fact that in the US, we don't have attached caps. I almost immediately lost mine. It's possible to make them attached, AND not suck.

I've not been paying attention to the memeverse lately and having returned now to find that Möth is a thing again just warms my heart. Like a 1000W sodium lamp.

Well isn't that just adorable.

Let's be honest, the teachings of Jesus aren't that great either.

Red pill. You can make money, but you can't make time.

The annoying thing is: if everyone did this, phantom traffic jams wouldn't be a thing, and even real road obstructions would have significantly less impact and we would all get where we want to go faster, collectively. But we won't, because I got mine.

Considering how important it is to me that I'm not some piece of shit manager, yeah, it was a little personal. I take that kind of thing seriously. It kinda doesn't work as a meme reference without the meme.

Not everyone in my position is a sniveling little shit, as much as you may think. I do get paid more than my team, but not by some ridiculous margin. The lowest paid person gets 70% what I do and the highest paid person is at 95%. When I took over it was no shit closer to 40% for the lowest paid member. I fought for that to be fixed and burned up a lot if political capital doing it too.

When COVID came along and pay cuts and layoffs were a real threat, I told my boss to cut my salary before anyone else's. We never had to, thankfully, but I literally told him I would quit if they cut one of my subordinates pay or laid them off without first taking out of my pocket.

I had a direct report who, for three years wanted to be in a leadership role. I fought for a new position for him and put my own ass on the line recommending him for promotion every chance I got. He's been promoted past me and I hope (since I can't see his salary anymore) he is getting paid more than me because he's earned it.

I'm not some superstar manager, but I do feel like I keep my team out of the political battles and turf wars so they can focus on doing what they do best without dealing with all that crap. That's my job. When something goes wrong, I'm accountable. So when the people doing the work get it wrong and take a critical system offline by fat fingering a command, I'm the one answering the phones and taking all the shit for it and smoothing things over with stake holders. And unless it was a result of gross negligence, I'm not going to give them hell for it either because I've fucking been there before.

I didn't even want this damn job. I was perfectly happy being the technical lead and not having job recruiting and performance reviews to do, but I took it because I knew at the very least I would do my best to advocate for the people I care about, and that's not something I could say about everyone who applied.

So you can make snap judgements and assume because I manage a team that I'm just collecting a paycheck while everyone else does all the hard work, but I don't and I won't because it's unethical and shitty and despite your own insecurities, I actually give a fuck about other people.