I mentioned your comment to my partner after I saw it. Last night, he showed me he’d bought the FFX/X-2 bundle on Steam for me! So I guess I might actually finish the game after all :D

And to put numbers to your points, London’s population density is 14,600 people per square mile, while urban Houston is only 3,340.

And if you want to talk about the broader metropolitan area, then London goes down to 3,900 people/sq. mi., which is close to Houston’s urban area. However, if we look at Houston’s equivalent to that the density drops to 862/sq mi.

Also, London’s metro is 3,236 square miles. Houston’s is 10,062.

Anyone who compares these as equivalent is disingenuous or ignorant (not necessarily maliciously so, but likely just unaware or oblivious to the massive sprawl that Texas cities have).

There are 2-4 HOV/toll lanes in the middle depending on where you are in the city. I only see 2 in this photo, and they aren’t called out in OP’s title.

Aww, thank you! Having a great team all around (PMs, devs, designers) is a big part of what makes it so great and so fun. I am lucky to have all of them. I also hope you get to work with an awesome PM. The PM can really make work hell for developers if they’re bad.

I thought of myself as a shield for my developers until I learned the industry term is “shit umbrella.” And yup, that’s exactly what I try to be for them! Pass through all the good things and reframe the crap I hear into something we can improve.

Not really, but that’s largely because what I consider to be my area of expertise is extremely niche. I am a Lead Product Manager for an internal software. I started out as an IT business analyst for the software literally as soon as it started development out of the proof-of-concept phase. Two years in, I got promoted to Product Manager. Five more years and I’ve had 2 more promotions, growing to the Lead role I have now.

There is only one person at my company whose knowledge of the application rivals my own, and he started out in QA at the same time, then backfilled my BA role when I moved to Product. I know that application inside and out; its upstream dependencies, its users, its place in our business and our technical architecture, etc. And that’s because I’ve had a hand in building it since the beginning.

People I’ve never even met think of my name as synonymous with the software. I am literally the expert on it. My tool touches almost every part of our business and ultimately makes the day-to-day jobs of over 60k people easier. I constantly learn from working on it, and in seven years it has never been boring.

However, I am no longer the only PM for it. I manage a team of 3, and I empower them to run as autonomously as possible. Every year I am less of an expert because it has outgrown what one person can maintain in their head. I use my knowledge to build up my team, and they are becoming powerhouses in their own right. I am proud when I don’t know something in my app, because it means one of my staff owned that feature so wholly that I didn’t need to be closely involved.

Now, what of this knowledge is applicable to a broader industry? I honestly don’t know, and that sometimes freaks me out a bit. I think of Product Management as my vocation, and yet I’ve only ever done it on one team, one product. I take a course every couple years, but otherwise am not super up on generic Product Management skills/trends. However, multiple people who have broader backgrounds working with Product Managers than I do have called me the best PM they’ve ever worked with, so presumably I’ve gotten something right.

Not really an answer to the question as you intended it, I’m sure. But I do think about my role and my expertise in it a lot. And I really love it.

I highly recommend Super Powereds by Drew Hayes, largely because of Kyle McCarley’s narration. They’ve been my “comfort books” for over 5 years, getting around 10 listens from me despite the series being ~179 hours. (I never listen at 1x speed, though.) He has a unique voice for every single character, which is frankly insane because there are ~65 recurring characters and over 150 total different speakers in the series. He makes it so easy to get into.

Also, there’s at least one mysterious moment where a character is not named. Thanks to the voice he does, audiobook listeners were able to conclusively determine which character that was.

Travis Baldree has also become a favorite narrator of mine. The Cradle series is great, and it just wouldn’t be the same without Travis’s performance.

I used to be bad at listening to audiobooks. ADHD brain would go way off for unknown amounts of time without realizing I wasn’t listening.

Then in 2017 I had eye surgery and decided audiobooks were the best form of media consumption, so I practiced focusing on them. Magic 2.0 was the series that clicked for me. Now I listen to dozens of audiobooks each year. I’ve finished 55 so far in 2024.

So yeah, Luke Daniels will forever be a favorite of mine! Though he only has a handful of truly unique voices so you’ll start hearing familiar characters in the wrong series sometimes, lol.

The waxed kind are not always PFAS! I use Reach Listerine Ultraclean and they specify no PFAS. It’s a waxy kind that slides easily!

When I first learned PFAS was a thing in floss, I figured it had to be in the stuff I use. Maybe it was at some point, but it’s not now.

Omg, I had no clue that existed. Thank you!

FFX

First time I played was at a boyfriend’s house. I got like 80% of the way through, then we broke up.

Second time, I let a friend borrow my GameCube in exchange for his PS2. I got about 80% of the way through, then he wanted his PS2 back.

I finally got my own PS2. Played about 80% of the way through but had a couple bad builds and couldn’t beat a boss. I didn’t have energy to grind my way into a better build, so I just never finished.

It’s been ~20 years. I still sometimes think I’ll break out the old PS2 and see if my save file is there. I probably won’t.

Similarly, North Carolina allows unaffiliated to choose their primary, but R and D must vote in their registered primaries. Definitely good to know your state’s laws before taking OP at face value!

Lots of things that ultimately come down to hyper-mobility (thanks Ehlers-Danlos!), including:

• Lick my elbow
• Pull my shoulder visibly out of socket (not painful at all, and happens if I carry something heavy if I’m not careful)
• Pop my hip out of socket while standing (sometimes painful, always somewhat unpleasant, so I’ve had to learn how to not do it)
• Hold my hands behind my back and pull them to my front
• Rotate my arm >360°
• Bend my thumb to my forearm

If I’m understanding your description correctly (the image didn’t come through), I can do this too! I heard once as a kid it was impossible and I refused to accept that, so I practiced until I could do it.

Rephrasing to see if we’re talking about the same thing: I can point my fingers towards each other in front of me, then circle one hand away from myself and the other towards myself, and continue looping them in opposite directions. Most people can do it for 1-2 loops, but then end up moving both fingers in the same direction.

First off, I totally agree the argument you responded to is bad and that Biden is driving toward the right goal.

However, if we disambiguate the specific circumstance here, there is sometimes an argument to be made that the one being obstructed is the problem. Think about how many obviously illegal laws Republicans have pushed through. A recent example would be DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE” act trying to eliminate DEI training in companies. It so clearly goes against federal law about protected classes and was deemed unconstitutional because of the first amendment. I don’t think there’s any chance DeSantis actually believed this act was legal or would be allowed, he just wanted the brownie points of “hurr durr, own the libs.”

There are so many cases of that kind of thing, and I think it’s absolutely fair to be critical of those whose laws are being obstructed when they initiate them in bad faith.

However, like I said, that doesn’t apply in this situation; this law was not made in bad faith, and the Texas court is definitely the problem here. I only bring it up because “blaming the obstructionism on the one being obstructed” can sometimes be a legit argument.

Every hotel I’ve stayed in—regardless of state—has had this problem.

And if you read the first two paragraphs of the article, you’ll see the law actually applies to hotels as well; the article just chooses to focus on the restaurant part. So maybe your state-directed ire is misplaced.

Yeah, I should have mentioned the price is pretty insane… I’d desensitized myself to it a bit because of the whole buying-Japanese-toothpaste thing wasn’t cheap, and now I just can’t stand not using hydroxyapatite for more than like a week, lol.

I read your comment earlier today and then by chance was going to reorder toothpaste tonight, and I realized the kind of toothpaste I recently fell in love with has a citrus and a grape flavor, so I hunted down your comment to share with you!

The toothpaste has both fluoride and hydroxyapatite, which helps rebuild enamel. Ever since I started using hydroxyapatite, my teeth have that “fresh from the dentist clean” feeling every time I brush them. I was using a Japanese brand of toothpaste for a few years because that’s the only place I found that kind of toothpaste, but it was fluoride free. Just one tube ago I found a brand that has both!

The brand is Carifree, and this is the one I use.

Looks like they also have citrus and grape mouthwash!