The nature of my job is that I often listen to people tell me their life story while I’m replacing their kitchen faucet. It’s not that I can’t do small talk - I just find most of the topics incredibly uninteresting. Like I said earlier, I know how to play the game, I just find it mind-numbingly boring.

This goes both ways, though. I’m acutely aware that most people aren’t interested in the things I’m most passionate about, so I don’t bring those up either. But when I do meet someone with similar interests, I could talk for hours. Those conversations are rarely about people or events - mostly about ideas.

I don’t feel like it makes much difference whether the person is close to me or not. It’s not that I don’t care about what happens to these people, but a huge part of the topics people generally small talk about are the kinds of mundane things I have almost zero interest in discussing. For example, if something interesting happened to you over the weekend, I assume you’re just going to tell me about it - I would. But I sometimes feel like people expect me to ask about those things, and when I see others do it, I’m often a bit skeptical about whether they’re actually interested or just going through the motions. Thus this thread.

You have data caps on your broadband connections in the US? Does your phones have rotary dials too?

$190 bucks a month for a limitless connection is insane. I’m too cheap to pay 30€ a month for unlimited fibre connection so I use 4G router which gives me around 40Mbps unlimited connection and it costs me 10€ a month.

Yeah, but this is what troubles me. It’s not that I don’t know what’s expected of me in these situations - I know how to play the game. I’m just not interested in it.

I do try to think about whether there’s anything even remotely interesting about what’s happened to them, and if so, I’ll ask about that. But in many cases, there’s not. Unless their vacation was to a place like North Korea, the most interesting part to me is what kind of plane they flew on and whether they found the baggage carousel mesmerizing.

I can’t believe how little news coverage there has been about this. Seeing that thing land was probably the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen.

It wasn’t the first starship launch but it was the first where they tried to land onto the chopsticks. Last time I believe they simulated the same thing but landed in the ocean instead. They did get just one try with this particular rocket since if it was unsuccesfull the rocket would now be in a million pieces.

That’s not a claim, it’s the name of the company. I’m not aware of Altman being the one who even came up with it.

What does?

How dare you imply that humans just make shit up when they don’t know the truth

…or you can just keep watching videos from human creators like you have done so far. If the content you’re consuming is already the kind that’s difficult to tell from AI in the first place then not much will change.

What’s an example of a claim Altman has made that you’d consider bullshit?

It’s a common tactic of news outlets to choose bad pictures of people they’re against and good pictures of people they’re for. Once you see it, it cannot be unseen.

you know he’s not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right?

He actually is. Everyday astronaut has done several interviews with him and the dude knows about rockets and engineering.

If SpaceX landing and reusing rockets is not impressive to you then what is?

That was the most impressive thing I think I’ve ever seen

But surely a 15 year old Canon don’t have a GPS on it? I just can’t think of what technology they could use to detect someone taking a picture in order to interfere with it other than camera surveillance and some sort of an AI system to detect cameras. I’m not doubting you, just curious about how it could possibly work and especially how to evade it.

Yeah I love all that. Flipping old cars is something I’ve thought about as well but something I’d be even more interested in is doing the same with boats. Now that I’m self-employed I’ve tought about getting a project boat that I could work on when ever business is otherwise slow. I couldn’t fit a large one on my yard but some smaller fishing boat would be interesting to start with. When looking at old boats they often look like just even a simple pressure wash would double their price.

It’s a difficult subject to discuss without sounding like you’re either bragging or talking down to those less well off.

I recently bought a new-to-me truck. I paid in cash, and if I wanted to, I could’ve bought two more. If I liquidated my investments, I could have bought three more, so six in total. I’m self-employed now, but I built all my wealth while working for a (plumbing) company where I was surrounded by people earning twice as much as I did. Yet, these are the people who need to finance their cars, have massive mortgages, and are always in a bad mood due to stress.

I understand that some people have been really unlucky and struggle to improve their financial position despite their best efforts, but these aren’t the people I’m talking about when I wonder how a working-age person can’t come up with a thousand bucks for an unexpected expense. I hardly even consider that a lot of money.

but I want to buy some land at some point, basically so I have more area to build stuff and make stuff.

I feel you there. What kind of things would you like to build? For me, it’s things like a rainwater harvesting system, solar/wind power, a pond with a pier and sauna, a chicken coop, a heated workshop with a car lift, a root cellar… I basically have an infinite list of projects I’d like to pursue.

modern cameras are blocked from taking photos

Really? That’s interesting. I wonder what the technology is that they’re using to detect cameras in the first place. When I think of a DSLR for example, it’s a passive sensor that’s only receiving photons but it’s not sending anything outwards. Some phones have laser autofocus so that I imagine could be detected but even that’s quite rare technology on phones.

Yep. The only way to prevent daily snacking is by not having snacks in the house.