“Put in a headlock and thrown to the ground” doesn’t just sound like playful wrestling to me.

I didn’t know that so I looked it up. Source

“In the next hundred days, I will learn to go off the prompter and Joe Biden will learn to stay on the prompter.”

That’s good to know!

Honestly I see this post as a strong example of why generational labels are relevant. OP, the man OP’s talking about, and his mother are all from different generations, and they have wildly different perspectives of wealth because of that. We’ve grown up differently and have different expectations of life because of it creating generalities within generational groups.

Now, those generational differences have been politicized and spun to create divides between the generations, and I think that’s what you’re referring to here as “fake.” The whole boomer vs millennial “conflict” is totally manufactured, and the way OP and the man they reference interacts is a great example of why that kind of division between generations is stupid and harmful.

There are assholes everywhere; every generation, gender, race, country, etc. However, most people are not assholes, and assuming a person will be one because of the group they fall into? Yeah, that’s the kind of thing that will make you the asshole.

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!