My company switched up retirement plans and they held a seminar to explain them. The person running the seminar said that we should be putting 15% of our salaries into retirement.

Nice idea, but if I put 15% of my salary into retirement, then I wouldn't be able to pay my bills. I'm not living extravagantly or anything (buying something for $20 for my enjoyment seems like a splurge to me). Still, whenever I seem to be getting on a better financial footing, life throws me a curve ball. Need new hearing aids ($3,600). New a new dryer ($750). Might need a new car soon.

So either I need to be paid a lot more, I will be working until I'm 90, or I put away the money and go deep into debt but can retire. (Just kidding. I'm nearing 50. I likely won't have enough to retire. Maybe when I'm 80.)

And his followers will excuse it in one of two ways:

1. It's all fake. They'll claim that the Democrats swapped the real list for the released "fake" list and that the real list has Biden's name, not Trump's. Their proof? Some YouTube video linked to from a Facebook post where a white guy wearing sunglasses in his truck says he saw the real list with Biden's name on it!

2. Trump was undercover. They'll claim that Trump was actually working undercover to expose these people. Being on the flight logs "proves" that he was only there to spy on these people. Why? Non-specific Excuse! Therefore, Trump's name on Epstein's list is actually a good thing and they support him more!

Meanwhile, the rest of us will scream in frustration.

Yes, they did. Before that, LEGO also released blind bag minifigures for Steamboat Willie and Minnie Mouse. I'm currently designing a LEGO MOC to display my figures with a small rendition of the Steamboat Willie boat. (I purchase my parts used from BrickLink to reduce costs.)

I've never ridden a motorcycle, but I have had a bug (and part of its web) go into my mouth and down my throat while biking. Just thinking about it makes me want to gag. If, after that, you offered me a bike helmet with a front visor, I'd have put that thing on ASAP.

Now take that bug incident and make it happen at 30-50 mph? No way would I have my face hole exposed for bugs to invade! (And that's totally apart from the safety issue.)

I needed Unicode symbols for a story I'm working on. (I want to use them as "magic runes" so I could type them into a document, but without using the standard "runes" that are typically used.)

Shape Catcher let me draw what I was looking for and then get a list of Unicode characters that matched that drawing. It's not exact so if there's no perfect Unicode match, it will give you ones that are close. This actually turned out to my benefit as I found shapes I hadn't considered but which worked nicely for my uses.

Hey, I may feel old, but I'm not THAT old! Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to yell at some kids to get off my lawn.

Back when I was in high school, a friend of mine introduced me to his friend. This kid, knowing that I'm Jewish, started to go on a rant ending with "the only thing Hitler did wrong was not finishing the job!"

Him saying that me and my family should be killed for the "crime" of being Jewish... Well, offended seems too light of a word. I blew right past offended and landed in ANGERED.

Now, usually, I'm a pretty relaxed guy. I typically don't get angry even if I should. But this made me want to punch the guy right in his Hitler loving face. My friend had to hold me back.

(And before anyone asks, this wasn't the kid being "edgy" or trolling me to get a reaction. He actually worshipped Hitler and thought he was a great man.)

I'd say that my wife is boycotting Hobby Lobby despite crocheting a ton, but that would imply that she's shopped there in the past. Still, we'll occasionally pass by one and laugh about how we'd never go in there.

Not a customs officer, but over a decade back I had job duties that involved posting photos of babies online. The parents would give their consent, maternity would snap the photos, and I'd put them on the website (complete with the option to order prints).

One of the babies was named "Secret Angel." First name Secret, middle name Angel. That girl would likely be in her teens or early twenties by now. I still sometimes wonder if Secret had any trouble with her name given how much kids can bully other kids for the slightest thing.

That's why I append my sarcastic posts with /s. It's a habit I picked up on Reddit where you could easily see someone posting that same comment, but being 100% serious. The /s kind of ruins the joke, but I'd rather the joke be ruined than have people think I was serious when I said those kinds of things.

I frequent Lemmy, Mastodon, and Threads. I feel like this is true in any of the three. Occasionally, I'll wade in, but more often than not I regret it.

This is especially true on Threads where the algorithm sees you arguing with someone saying X and then says "hey, you must want to see more posts that say X." I finally realized that all I was doing was feeding the algorithm and stopped replying.

For the longest time, I wanted to see the Percy Jackson series adapted. (I'm not counting those movies!) Thankfully, it is and the first book/first season will be coming out in December. I hope they are able to expand to the entire universe that Riordan made. There are so many stories that would be great to see.