A year of my salary is between 1lbs to 2lbs of gold at current prices. Hiding a few pounds of something isn't very difficult, I do it every Christmas.

Fur future readers: I was making a joke about Christmas dinner if that wasn't clear.

How would you go about using 1lb of gold to procure food, water and fuel in a crisis bad enough to disable government/banking?

History has shown than people usually lose all their gold in situations like this, pretty much all the time.

A hacksaw? Just cut it into smaller chunks.

It might be worth considering why drug deals are always portrayed as a high stakes, dangerous event (it's because to do the sale, the physical products have to all be in one well known place where everybody knows both the place and time).

Just let AI run the world. It quite literally can't do any worse than our existing leaders.

Is anyone surprised that advertisers damage yet another thing they touch?

> I think this will be better for all in terms of finding their true purpose in life.

I'm sure people losing their good paying jobs and being forced into shitty ones, or not finding replacement employment at all, will be just what they need to find their true purposes in life

There are few things that make me irrationally seethe like being called a resource. I understand why they do it, I even accept that I'm nothing more than a resource to them, but it really isn't a big ask for them to refer to us as humans when speaking directly to us.

People are emotional and react in unexpected ways to even the smallest perceived slights, myself included.

A late birthday recognition might not feel important, but if one already feels like management doesn't care about them? I can easily seeing that as a confirmation of it that causes resentment. I can also see it doing the same for any number of management related issues.

I can tell you personally that the action which most seriously affected my performance at a workplace was being denied a bereavement day because the official policy was to only allow one. I felt more than slighted and every single negative action taken afterwards by HR/management, no matter how small, caused me to resent them more.

> People are emotional and react in unexpected ways to even the smallest perceived slights, myself included

Most people react quite predictably to slights. The issue is, if you don't have enough context, you might not understand you are slighting someone.

I think the biggest problem in the workplace is that those higher up, or more successful in a company will put more stock in following the company rules/culture than making sure someone is ok.

Your point about bereavement leave is a good case in point, I had a similar incident where my manager at the time said "Well your aunt's not your close family is she?" when I asked to attend a funeral. I told HR and they went wide-eyed and silent for a bit before ushering me to the comfy seat while they tore a bollock off my manager. Had they not done that, I think I probably would have rage quit.

But why would my manager think that this would be a rational thing to do? Did she thing that one day would mean I delivered a critical project on time (no, I was a junior) My manager made a judgement that it would be fine to reject a bereavement leave.

The point is, now that I am manager, I make sure that my underlings are and feel cared for. The short term productivity for being a prick to them will evaporate in days. If I can't do something for them, or allow them to do something, I say I can't and why.

Am I a great manager? no, because I'm not really organised. But my team work well despite me, rather than because of me.

> when I asked to attend a funeral.

This is where you went wrong.

You don’t ask, you tell.

Whether they pay you for any additional bereavement leave beyond what is required is a different matter. They could agree to pay from accrued leave, or sick / personal leave, or unpaid time off.

> I can tell you personally that the action which most seriously affected my performance at a workplace was being denied a bereavement day because the official policy was to only allow one.

One of the things I remember most from my career was a manager "rules lawyering" about bereavement leave when my aunt passed away. Ironically, HR was very sympathetic and accommodating, and it was a non-issue with them.

I've been treated "worse" by jackass execs and managers, but always in the context of work. Someone acting in the way this manager did about a personal situation sticks with me much more than those.

My ex didn’t go to her own father’s funeral because the company said she couldn’t have that much time off. Six months later when she talked about it at work they were horrified she hadn’t felt she could go, but how could you possibly make that up to someone? I think they might have actually worried she would sue them.

I told her to go and we’d sort out her work situation when she or we got back.

It kinda came out of the blue so we didn’t have time to hypothetically it out so we could just operate on autopilot.

Since then I’ve had bosses who heard of a death/critical illness in the family just say, “Go.” No discussion or details needed. Just go. Because being petty or precious about the whole thing just makes you public enemy. And when clever people work for you they don’t always come at you straight on. They come at you sideways and you don’t even know it’s revenge. They just passive aggressively let something slide that made your life miserable.

it also depends on whether everyone is treated equally, or whether some are treated worse or better than others.

> being denied a bereavement day because the official policy was to only allow one

I think when setting up policy like this you have two choices:

a) have a fixed number of days --> fair, objective

b) allow it to the manager to use their judgement --> variance across company

The former has the tradeoff that you experienced.

You could also give people an additional unpaid day off if they ask for it. The good thing about bereavement days is that people don’t tend to abuse the policy much given they would have to kill someone first. Dead grannies are only allowed to make you sad for 72 hours sharp, is a bit of a harsh rule if executed without leeway

Or I mean, just treat people as human beings and let them deal with family emergencies? I'm in the Netherlands and I don't think I've ever had a manager that would say anything other than "Take all the time you need" (and genuinely meant it) for a family member who either died or is in hospital/got injured etc. I'm sure there's a minuscule chance of someone abusing this by lying, but I find that if you don't treat people like shit in the first place, they're not gonna lie about stuff like this.

I continue to be shocked by how hateful and nasty some of you are when someone doesn't wholly approve of AI.

Their salaries depend of it.

It's not really happening - there's still the classic stuff if nothing else but even modern output is pretty diverse between sloppier and less sloppy.

I wonder how long until Canada gets pressured into doing the same, just like we always do?

I haven't kept up to date but does the US have that much more leverage over Canada anymore? Last I checked we have tariffs on most exports, including crude, wood, steel and aluminium (probably missing a bunch). General goods are tariff'ed at 35% while China is tariff'ed at 47.5%.

They could get us to ban DJI for sure but I'd assume it'd be more through carrot than stick, because at this point we've been pretty consistently beaten for the last year.

> General goods are tariff'ed at 35% while China is tariff'ed at 47.5%.

Incorrect. General tariffs are only on goods not already covered by CUSMA, which, other than the specific items already called out (aluminum, steel, etc.), is a very small set.

I stand corrected, I guess there are still plenty of sticks to beat us with.

for now we are still putting the 100% tariff on cars that cant even drive on our roads, on the US' behalf

you mean like the time they invaded and took Washington DC?

Canada being the only country to successfully invade the US

or did I mix up my pronoun references again?

I'd like to own things and have control over what I can and can't do on a computer.