What national ID?

The US doesn’t have a national ID card. I have a federally-issued ID card as a lawful permanent resident, but the typical US citizen has what? Their main proof of citizenship is their birth certificate, issued by their state, and doesn’t have a photo (and if it did, would probably be a baby photo). The people with passports tend to have enough money to travel internationally, which is a pretty small proportion of the population (as it’s a big country, so even a lot of people who can afford vacations will vacation in the next state over at most).

There was a single season sitcom in 1990 called Ferris Bueller. His sister was played by an unknown actress by the name of Jennifer Aniston.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098795/

It’s a wonderful comparison going back at least thirty years: https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1994/07/15

While kids are now more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD due to increased awareness and better diagnostic methods, this can also lead to an interesting “reverse echo” effect where their parents have a sudden realization that they’re ADHD too.

Hearing about the symptoms from a doctor talking about your child can be an eye-opener that stuff we called “laziness” and “being too sensitive” back in the 80s might have a better name.

The quick adjustments to tileable blueprints sound amazing. Such a great idea!

Somehow I thought the pipette on water to get an offshore pump (like how you can pipette on an ore field for a miner) was already a thing. That and the quick access to landfill will save so much time when designing nuclear plants.

The spidertron stuff sounds nice too, but they’re usually so late game that I haven’t minded the slightly clunky v1.1 status quo.

Honestly, I’d love to see a real, factual documentary about the Onion/Avclub over the years.

From what I’ve seen, there’s some fascinating stuff there, from the college town founding through the internet highs and the acquisition by Gawker (after the Hulk Hogan lawsuit), with some employee unionization along the way. Maybe they could even interview the clearly unqualified forum dev who jumped on a live chat to talk about how the Gawker system that replaced Discus was a clear improvement.

I used to be a big Avclub fan until about 2018 or 2019. Then it became way too ad-ridden and clickbaity. The Onon was equally ad-ridden, but felt like it kinda retained its soul.

To be fair, Avril Lavigne signed away the movie rights to Sk8ter Boi to Paramount in 2003, and we still don’t have that movie.

Selling IP rights into another medium is not the same as a guarantee that it will be developed (though it is a first step).

If you get married or start dating in the new country, it’s worth being aware of how much more culture shock your partner is likely to experience when visiting your country of origin.

I kind of made this mistake after leaving my home country for many years, getting married, and moving home(-ish) with my spouse. I needed time to readjust to the surroundings, but it was mostly digging up old memories. (Also, it wasn’t exactly where I came from, so some things were different.) I mistakenly fooled myself into assuming that things that I remembered would be natural for my spouse, which was obviously stupid.

I was dumb. Don’t be dumb.