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It's even supposed to be in the teens in my neck of the woods with wind-chill approaching 0. We're not prepared for that kinda cold here. Gonna be fun. I'm not worried, but can't help but think of the poor, elderly, and otherwise disadvantaged that populate most of the south. Many won't survive, several more will see their homes lost to fire in an attempt to get warm. Happens every year in the richest fucking country the world has ever seen. Merry fucking Christmas indeed.

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5 hours ago, Dead1 said:

Mr Joyce is a scoundrel and exemplifies everything that is wrong with modern Australia.

It was a joke. He is a turd.

 

5 hours ago, KillaKukumba said:

Surely infectious diseases can't count days?

The longer the time in the confined space the more chance of exposure. I'm not saying flying doesn't increase the chance of - especially upper respiratory -  infection (my wife almost always gets a cold after at least one leg of a long haul flight), but cruises are worse.

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21 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

It was a joke. He is a turd.

 

A clever turd though!  I remember when Qantas was posting big losses which were actually profits but masked by write downs of intangibles like value of air routes.

 

We always get colds after being on a plane for a longer period of time.

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19 hours ago, Parker said:

I was in Denmark, and it said, "rocket," on the menu at a sandwich shop. I asked what it was, and was told it was lettuce. It didn't look like any lettuce I had ever seen. Now I know what I ate.

Knowing Denmark it was probably hashish and they called it rocket 😄

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7 hours ago, Thatguy said:

The longer the time in the confined space the more chance of exposure. I'm not saying flying doesn't increase the chance of - especially upper respiratory -  infection (my wife almost always gets a cold after at least one leg of a long haul flight), but cruises are worse.

Not to mention the increased risk of food borne infection, physical transmission via touching surfaces every nasty fucker has dragged their dick handlers over, and the sheer volume of people you are packed in with. Absolute breeding ground for norovirus.

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14 hours ago, Thatguy said:

IThe longer the time in the confined space the more chance of exposure. I'm not saying flying doesn't increase the chance of - especially upper respiratory -  infection (my wife almost always gets a cold after at least one leg of a long haul flight), but cruises are worse.

I don't disagree, but a petri dish is a petri dish and I don't plan getting on either a cruise ship or a plane, however that's because I can't be bothered not because of any bug I could catch.

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7 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Ah Christmas, that magical time of year, where the amount you care for your friends and family is judged solely on how much you spent on them that year. Fortunately it only comes once a year

Yep, we spent $1300 on presents this year ...not that I was involved in the present decisions that much!  Not a single metal album for me in all of that!

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Shit my friends and family must think I don't care about them. We spend a little bit on the girls, but my brother's family haven't gotten anything from us for more than a decade, much to my sister in laws disgust. My parents get little more than token presents because they don't want anything at their age and on my wife's side there is a few nieces and nephews that get $20 spent on them. I spent nearly $300 on booze yesterday (for my wife and I) and it's probably the biggest expense we've had this year.

 

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My family has never been big on expensive Christmas presents. My brother's wife thinks the bigger the present and the more of them means people care more and she gets narky if he doesn't spend a few hundred dollars on her every year, and it's made worse that she expects the same on her birthday 2 days after Christmas. But the rest of the family have never worried too much about it.

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Ugh.... my most recent ex was the exact same way. If you don't spend X amount of dollars on her present then you don't care about her. Made inexorably worse by the fact that she didn't reciprocate it. For x-mas last year I got here a really nice specialized backpack for mountain biking, $250 or so. She got me...... a bluetooth adapter for my vehicle, and not a very good one either. Probably cost like $20.

I'm honestly quite happy being single this holiday season.

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My son has been acting a lot more materialistic lately. I can tell he's kind of joking around at least some of the time, but he'll literally walk into a room and open with "buy me a Nintendo Switch!" Sometimes he'll continue: "buy me a computer! Buy mom a tablet so I can have her tablet! Get me a Samsung S22! Buy me wireless earbuds! Give me an allowance!" Sometimes he'll just repeat "buy me stuff, buy me stuff" over and over. He's also not shy about telling us that we're "poor" because we "can't buy him a computer" and because "we live in an apartment and everyone else lives in houses". Fucking middle school. I know it's some of the rat turds in his class shoveling this stuff at him and he's just repeating it back.

The most annoying part is, I went out, finally, after a few years of wanting to, and bought him a fucking Nintendo Switch, and a few games, and a nice controller. It's just been sitting in my room for a while, wrapped up, waiting. Taking it back has crossed my mind.

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11 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

At least we’re expecting decent weather around Christmas, literally the one thing I’m looking forward to.

Yeah I think we are going for about 27 and once the rain today racks off we are in for a week of dry warming temps up to the mid 30's.

 

4 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

My son has been acting a lot more materialistic lately. I can tell he's kind of joking around at least some of the time, but he'll literally walk into a room and open with "buy me a Nintendo Switch!" Sometimes he'll continue: "buy me a computer! Buy mom a tablet so I can have her tablet! Get me a Samsung S22! Buy me wireless earbuds! Give me an allowance!" Sometimes he'll just repeat "buy me stuff, buy me stuff" over and over. He's also not shy about telling us that we're "poor" because we "can't buy him a computer" and because "we live in an apartment and everyone else lives in houses". Fucking middle school. I know it's some of the rat turds in his class shoveling this stuff at him and he's just repeating it back.

The most annoying part is, I went out, finally, after a few years of wanting to, and bought him a fucking Nintendo Switch, and a few games, and a nice controller. It's just been sitting in my room for a while, wrapped up, waiting. Taking it back has crossed my mind.

Thankfully my kids were never like that. They brought home enough shitty school habits (and shitty music) but they never did the want, want, want thing. They asked for stuff like any kid and sometimes those things might have been extravagant or expensive but they never harped on things.

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15 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

 

Thankfully my kids were never like that. They brought home enough shitty school habits (and shitty music) but they never did the want, want, want thing. They asked for stuff like any kid and sometimes those things might have been extravagant or expensive but they never harped on things.

Kind of a new development for him. I'm not a fan. It's all stuff he would use; he loves Mario Maker on his 3DS and designs levels all the time, which is what he most wants the Switch for, and he's learning about coding at school, so a desktop computer would make sense, and he plays chess on my wife's tablet all the time. I get why he wants it. But no way can I get all of it for him in the near future, and it makes giving him stuff a lot less fun. We used to make games for each other out of paper. The world is a cruel, cold place.

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Things are made more difficult by the "buy everything" parents who buy their kids whatever they ask for no matter what the cost. I know my kids were upset when they asked for phones and didn't get them until we thought it was appropriate. I know they wanted their own 3DS's before they actually got them. But one of them also wanted Lego and the other wanted expensive art supplies so whether they liked it or not they understood they weren't getting everything.

I've always had an abundance of computer gear around the house and my wife has had an abundance of game consoles so they never really did without too much electronic stuff, they just didn't have something they could call their own until we decided they were ready. While they might have been disappointed by that sometimes I don't think their lives were changed for the worse by such actions. (Although I guess I could be proven wrong by some psychologist)

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39 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

Things are made more difficult by the "buy everything" parents who buy their kids whatever they ask for no matter what the cost.

That's my wife.  Though to be fair she never got what she wanted as a kid cause her parents made shitty financial decisions and they lived in a strange kind of poverty where food was scarce and they lived in a caravan-shed combo but her dad could buy motorbikes and expensive firearms. 

 

So now she feels like she needs to make up for what she didn't have.

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I have a small family-wife, 23 year old only child, Mom, brother sister and two aunts. It's not like in the old days, where people would save all year and finally treat themselves to a big gift around the holidays. Now if you want something, you click and it's delivered to your house. None of us really need anything and if we do it's a hobby interest that none of us are going to subsidize.

Last few years, we all agreed to donate to charities that we each pick and get together for a nice meal. I might buy a book or CD  for family members. My brother, Mom and wife and I still give gifts to our daughter as she's the only "kid" in the family but it's in reason. We got her through school. She's holding down her first nursing job at Hopkins in Baltimore, making enough coin to live with her girlfriends and pay her bills.  Were not dropping any big bucks. 

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@Dead1, I grew up much like your wife, with fuckall. As an adult, I did very much the same. Buy all the things I never had. I still fight the urge at times, but I'm much better than I used to be at living within my means. Could be age realizing material things just don't really provide the rewards you imagine they will. Helps that most stuff these days is either wildly overpriced or junk quality (or both). I spent quite a bit on the kid when she was small to ensure she didn't feel like I did way back. She never really appreciated it and I'm not sure she could have, but it made me feel better. I finally quit when I realized that it's only satisfying when the person receiving the gift appreciates it as much as the person gifting enjoys the giving.

We've been conditioned to believe giving equals love and the more giving equals more love. It's corporations warping our brains. Decades of it and doomed to only get worse.

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