Home assistant has spent the last couple of years focused on improving usability to new users. A lot of it will self organise. What doesn’t can mostly be set up easily via nice gui fronts, and easy to follow menus.

It’s got an insane amount of functionality, which can be scary. However, you don’t have to touch a lot of that. You only need to play with the bits you want, and it will hold your hand for most of it.

Remember, it’s not a war crime the first time!

That’s true, but they are also not likely to take you on either. They are part of the 95%+ that will not be interested.

A thing to note is that staff tend not to leave good companies. That means they recruit FAR less than you would expect.

A useful method would be to make a list of all the companies you can find that seem to both be going fine, but not obviously recruiting.

Getting your foot in the door with them is the hard part. First thing is to check if you have any contacts there. Ex-coworkers, or people who are friends with a staff member. If so, try and leverage that contact to get your C.V. to them. Failing that, a polite phonecall to HR or the boss (depending on the company), with a follow up email is the best bet.

This method still has a 95%+ failure rate. The aim is to get your C.V. in front of the right person when they need a role filled, but haven’t started the recruitment process yet.

Psychopaths or Sociopaths inherently “dehumanise” everyone. It’s why they feel no compunction in setting up a mother of 2 to lose their job, to boost their quarterly profits.

There are other ways to dehumanise people however. The American media machine has done an excellent job of it.

It’s partly why the recent killing has triggered such a reaction. It’s outside the dehumanising bubble. That then had a ripple effect, akin to a rubber band snapping. It broke the trance a lot of people (of all political leanings) were caught in. It’s now a case of seeing how the ripple spreads.

You might be able to get your hands on an old nuke, but the maintenance to keep it able to go boom is another story. You could make a dirty bomb, but a hydrogen bomb needs maintenance every few years minimum.

I personally think this is why Russia hasn’t used a nuke. They don’t know if they will go off properly, or if maintenance got skipped and they are duds.

I just want a film to get it right. I want the hero to realise he needs to fold out his amazing hand based on instincts and skill.

It depends hugely on what the therapy is trying to help. I personally find this sort of therapy completely useless. I needed active guidance and advice for what I needed to change and do.

A good therapist adapts to what the patient needs. Sometimes that is space to vent. Sometimes it is a guiding hand. Sometimes it’s a (verbal) slap to the face to stop you running in panicking circles.

Making and supporting nukes takes a huge amount of expertise and equipment. Hiding those completely is difficult to impossible.

If you were going to use them as a self defence tactic, you would need to prove you also had a functioning device. Either by showing it off, or setting it off. Otherwise it would simply be seen as a bluff.

I mainly meant it as a goal to aim for. Police don’t have to be brutish idiots.

Our police use a “police by consent” mindset, rather than a “police by force” one. Most don’t even carry guns.

Unless you can trace your ancestry back 5-10 generations, along with enough peerages and titles to matter, you are at best middle class. At least according to the old fashioned mindset.

As a fellow tea snob, I salute you. 👍

FYI, I’m not American, I’m watching from the outside.

The UK police, while they have their issues, are a lot better than American police. A lot of them also love the bodycams. They make their job a LOT easier, with far less hassle.

I’m a major one for transparency. I will accept that a police or justice officer doing their job properly and reasonably, can still make enemies. A certain level of information security, of their private lives, is then reasonable to keep them and their families safe.

Their job life should be documented well however. If their body cam is not working, it should be assumed to hide something, until proven otherwise.

I also don’t see the US’s ICE as police or justice. They have shown none of the restraint and control expected of the role. They are armed thugs, with a powerful backer, and should be treated as such.

There’s 2 tea cultures in the UK. Upper class is straight, perhaps with a little lemon and honey, in quite delicate teas. Working class is strong tea with milk and sugar.

Milk was originally to stop factory tea from cracking cheap cups. It’s now just a cultural thing, normal teas taste weird without milk.

Peaceful protests have an implicit threat. We are peaceful so far. If it is ineffective, some elements might go aggressive.

A good example is the Irish troubles. The protests often started out peacefully. They could explode into civil unrest very easily however. Also, they are backed by the actions of the IRA. If the UK government tried to crush them, the IRA would have struck back HARD. They also moderated their own attack level. They didn’t want to drive people away from the political and protest wings, but make sure the UK government felt it. E.g. by calling in attacks before detonation. Thereby limiting civilian casualties, while maximising economic damage. They were more than capable of getting nasty however.

Even as law enforcement, they have a level of rights to privacy, just like the rest of us. That is why badge numbers are used. They unambiguously identify them, without also spreading who their siblings are, and where their children go to school.

The lack of ANY identifying features for ICE “agents” is VERY telling.

The structure of therapy required for men is different to women. A lot of therapy training is aimed at women. This means when men get up the courage to go, they can often find it ineffective.

I’m 1 for 4 with therapy providers.

I would also argue that a lot of men need structural changes to their life that they can’t make currently. Emotional based therapy is not very effective against structural problems.

There’s an interesting argument that honey can be vegan, by that criteria.

A bee colony is not generally trapped in a hive. They are capable of leaving, if it’s not to their standards, or they find somewhere between. The catch is that artificial bee hives are amazing for bees, compared to natural locations. The only catch is the “rent” taken by the eldritch creatures. They never take too much however, only taking excess the hive doesn’t need.

Basically bees could be argued to be paying rent, in honey, for high quality accommodation.

The false choice trick either works really well, or they clock it quickly and leave you for dust. Our minion caught on far too quickly.

Powering through the tantrums is sometimes all you can do. My record was about 30 minutes or so. By the end I was more wowed by their stamina than stressing. Once they realise that tantrums don’t work well, they move on to other tactics (for better or for worse).

We seem to have dodged that phrase so far. At three, her goto was “you’re not my favourite!!!”. The hardest thing was taking their feelings seriously, without laughing at the cuteness.

If it helps, training them to negotiate helps a lot. It lets them get a “win” while doing what you want. It also requires higher level thought, which seems to help suppress emotional tantrums. Finally, it encourages them to make known what is actually important to them.