That's just enough to buy my wife and I ice cream cones at the best place in town and leave enough of a tip that we don't feel like we're being cheap. Date night sorted!

Yeah, that's the guy, dude was a C-list basketball player for a few years. Also an MMA fighter with an 0/1 record apparently.

Depends on why/how my needs are being met I suppose. If this is a post-scarcity situation where everyone's needs are met and no one has to work, I'd probably keep at my current job. I install and repair nurse call systems (the buttons you push in a hospital to tell the staff you need help) I mostly enjoy the work and someone is going to have to keep doing it. I live in a town with a huge hospital and could easily keep busy without leaving town.

If this situation where only my own basic needs are met and not everyone else's, I wouldn't keep going to that job. Management is kind of a pain and they can certainly afford to train someone who needs the work. I'd still fix whatever kind of shit I knew how to because honestly, I love working with a wrench but, I'd be doing it freelance at that point. I'd probably start by knocking on the doors of local machine shops, fixing machine tools and lasers was more fun than nurse call and if I wasn't tied to one specific brand, I could probably keep busy without driving 4 hours a day (I quit that job because I was tired of travel). If that took off, I'd try to turn it into a business and train someone to pick up the slack so I could still take the occasional vacation without leaving regular customers hanging. If that wasn't enough to keep even just me busy, I'd probably start asking around about other random shit that needed to be fixed. Lots of people deal with broken shit because they can't afford to fix it and if I was only looking to stave off boredom, not having to make a profit, I could probably get it done affordably.

Pretty similar here. First time I saw a CNC mill run I was immediately hooked. I used to work as a field service tech for a CNC machine tool distributor and I can honestly say that I absolutely loved the work. You drop into some random factory, spend between 3hrs and a week fixing it and then probably never see the exact same issue again. It's mentally engaging but almost never tedious or repetitive. You can get stuck working late or even spending a night out of town with almost no notice but, I like things a bit unstructured so for me that wasn't a big deal. Also, I'm problematically introverted so for me the field service gig was perfect. I got to work alone most of the time but I was also forced to interact with complete or relative strangers virtually every day which is good for me because if I can avoid people as much as I'd like, I get a little weird.

Mine's a little weird to explain but if a woman goes off to slip into something more comfortable (like, actual pajamas, not talking about the euphemism for changing into lingerie) I not only get turned on, I'll get a little obsessed for a while. First time it happened was senior prom, I went with a friend of mine (just as friends) and afterwards a bunch of us ended up at her place playing video games. At one point she was like, "sorry you guys are stuck in your formal wear but I'm getting out of this thing". She came back in sweatpants and a T-shirt and had ditched her contacts for glasses (I didn't even know she wore glasses at that point) and for some reason, I couldn't stop thinking about her for like, months. Tried talking her into dating a couple times but no-go. After that, when girls I dated would get into pajamas to chill with me for the evening, I'd always lose interest in chilling and want to take them right to bed. To this day it drives my wife nuts that she'll buy sexy lingerie and not get more of a reaction than when she just changed into sweats.

I didn't put the comfy clothes thing together until my wife and I started vacationing with other couples. Every time a woman we were hanging out with left to change into comfy clothes to hang out for the rest of the night, I'd be like, "Why the hell am I so attracted to Bob's wife all of the sudden". Eventually It clicked that I apparently have a thing for pajamas which was a huge relief because I was a little worried that I was falling in love with a couple female friends there for a minute. Turns out it's a lot easier to turn off when you know what's going on.

Public speaking ability. She was on speech and debate teams all through HS and college so she is utterly unbotherered speaking in front of a crowd. Once we were the best man and matron of honor at a wedding where the grooms had said they didn't want us to give a speech, when the DJ double checked this the day of, they were clearly regretting the decision. She caught the DJ and told him to be ready for a toast in 15. She disappeared for 10 minutes, came back and gave a speech that literally had people in tears.

Meanwhile, I have threatened to leave a church if they insisted on making me read the pre written Sunday morning announcements.

Same here. Had been considering it for a while and then scheduled mine right after Roe fell. Best $20 I have ever spent.

I actually never minded using condoms and even still, I wished I'd done it earlier. So much better, even the stretch where we still used rubbers because the wife wasn't ready for creampies yet, I came so much easier knowing there was virtually zero chance of pregnancy.

Since it sounds like you've lived mostly in the south, I'm going to quote some advice my wife gave to a co-worker when she first moved up Georgia.

"You may think you have winter clothes but, you do not. Buy a coat, gloves and, a hat when you get here. They don't carry them heavy enough down there."

Also, if you're going to try to be outside in the winter, consider bomber hats these if you're not familiar. They look dopey but you wouldn't believe how much warmer they keep you. I keep one in the car for emergencies and I'm convinced it's saved my life during some breakdowns at -50.

Don't fall into the St. Cloud mentality of the Twin Cities being 45-60 minutes away meaning you can't take advantage if it.

Also, don't fall for the "The cities are a war zone, you'll get shot down there" crap that a lot of people outside the metro try to sell. Minneapolis really isn't any worse than any other city that size and neither is St. Paul. A lot of the people who are deathly afraid of the cities are really just afraid of cities in general and don't have any real concept of what is or isn't a bad neighborhood.

Also, I'm seconding the food recommendations but I'd add that my wife and I were in St. Cloud this spring and we went to Arroy Thai & Filipino which was also great.

I'll go first.

I had a long distance GF when I was in my 20s. We only saw each other about once a month so obviously we spent a fair amount our limited time together fucking because, 20 year olds.

So, we're going at one Saturday afternoon and halfway through, I hear a group of guys on the other side of the bedroom wall making fake sex noises to mock us. Normally a pretty passive guy but in what might have been my most "establish dominance" moment to date, I just fucked her harder because she was a screamer and I knew she'd drown out any noise these dudes were making.

Anyway, that's how we found out that the exterior walls of that apartment were just as thin as the interior walls.

Not playing with it yet but, the wife and I just decided to order a Lelo Tiani. We've been seeing a bunch of ads for a similar toys on TicTok. https://www.lelo.com/tiani-duo

I like to say "don't become an anecdote."

Lol, this makes me think of a guy I went to highschool with. He was a farm kid who would get up early and work around the farm before school. One day he spills gas on his flannel shirt before school but doesn't have time to change so he figures it'll air out enough on his way to work (it didn't). Second or third class of the day was shop. He starts working in the welding booth without stopping to put on the flame retardant overcoat. A hot spark hit that gas soaked flannel and dude light up like the human torch. He had some serious burns but makes a full recovery. For years after that though, the shop teacher used to say to anyone who complained about the overcoats, "go ask Phil if they're worth it or not".

I had a friend in highschool who's dad had lost part of his pointer finger to an encounter with a saw blade. He had just a little bit of the bone beyond the second knuckle that was weirdly pointed and it hurt like hell when he jabbed you with it. I know this because I used to help them build shit around their farm and if he caught us being unsafe he'd poke us in the chest with that damn half-finger while he yelled at us about it.

Those lessons really stuck too.

If your business relies of billions in VC money every year to stay afloat, then you don’t have a sustainable business and probably shouldn’t keep doing what you’re doing.

This right here. We need to see unprofitable "disruptors" close before they wreck existing systems and drive up the cost of living and/or drive down the quality of life for everyone. How many previously profitable businesses who provided decent jobs closed because they couldn't complete with Amazon while Amazon wasn't even technically making a profit? How much of the current housing crisis is driven by AirBNB and such? They drove up housing prices in the name of cheap weekend rentals and now the weekend rentals aren't even cheap anymore.

There used to be lots of delivery models that were profitable while paying people fairly. Door dash and others just convinced us all to cut each other's throats for a brief window of savings.

"Bro, we hitting the bar tonight?"

"Hell yeah! I'm three beers away from extra heavy drinker status this month. Let's get that AB-Inbev cash!!"

(Sounds of chest bumping)

Ooof. Current job has a big problem with that.

I'm in facilities for a company with 2 dozen buildings. We're big enough that we have a drafting department who needs to sign off on all of our drawings and documentation. For reasons that are always changing, they never want to convert the contractors' schematics for remodels into something that can be shared. If we're lucky, the contractors are willing to share prints with us directly more offen, we just have to hope the labels are still there when it breaks and/or ring out individual wires. Huge waste of man hours on our end but every time we suggest fixing it, the drafting department insists that it can't be done for whatever reason. Our department has offered to handle these schematics several times but, "that's not in our scope".

They will switch jobs before things come crashing down. All they want to show is a slight uptick in sales or revenue to take credit.

I used to work in field service for a machine tool company. One of the machine brands I serviced had a couple years in the late nineties that hated to work on. The machines were always cheap but those years were egregious. Corners cut everywhere and the original parts were so shitty we'd usually have to retrofit shit from a different year. Eventually bumped into a guy who'd worked on them at the time who explained the history. The owners of the company at the time were about to sell out to another manufacturer and they wanted to jack up the profits before the sale so they cut every corner they that they didn't think would be noticable before the sale.

The brand stayed afloat for another ten years but everyone I know who was in the industry at the time said their was never any coming back from the damage two years of shit machines did to their image.

Worst part about was, because the machines didn't start having issues until after the company sold, the new owners got all the blame and got stuck with bill for all the warranty work. Literally no incentive for anyone else to not do exactly the same as the original owners.

Yeah, I also met my wife online back when you'd lie about meeting someone online. Spent our first couple years telling people we met "through a friend of a friend".

I'm guessing this was around the time you guys met since she introduced me to StumbleUpon shortly after we started dating.

Have you ever read Command and Control by Eric Schlosser? I've never read anything that made feel so terrified and hopeful at the same time. The number of close calls (that we know about) that we've had but, cooler heads (or random chance) saved us at the last moment is both horrifying and grounds for having a fair amount of faith in most people to do the right thing with these things. Of course, the amount of times we were saved by random ass chance is absolutely terrifying.