After telling a generation of kids to get stem degrees or they’ll be doomed to flip burgers, I feel I have the responsibility to say this is no longer the case. The jobs still pay well but; between ghost job listings, recent layoffs, and every entry level job wanting like 4 years of hyper specific experience; I have observed it being nearly impossible to enter the job market or move around it right now, and the whole thing feels very oversaturated.

Unless you’re willing to build bombs. Don’t know much about that end of it cause I’m not interested in developing things intended to kill people. but that’s where the money is if that’s what you’re about.

Why are you making that assumption?

Making everything about money and power when there’s a child and feelings involved is pretty insecure, yeah. Some benefit of the doubt is warranted.

Your analysis that they’re just “flexing” by doing a nice gesture for a child of a divorce that they are involved in, says more about you than anyone else in this situation.

Why bring the kid at all then? They already had a free and eager babysitter right there.

I feel differently. I don’t know the ex or their partner of course but I see it as an olive branch. They share blood through their child together. They’re going to have to be around each other regardless of how things ended. The only person who loses with this grudge being held is the kid between them.

I yield that I have never been in the position of loving someone and being betrayed like that. I know it evokes strong feelings and I’m not minimizing that, but it doesn’t really matter at this point whose fault it is or who chose what. None of these bad feelings will ever change what happened or who that person is. The only thing you can change is your own behavior in the future and to manage your own feelings and expectations with that person so it doesn’t happen again. Fool me once, fool me twice and all that.

So I’m not saying you have to forgive and forget. I wouldn’t ever put the ex in a position of personal closeness or trust ever again. If that’s what this is to OP then 100% stay home. However, if I am correct in seeing this as a chance to acknowledge what happened, move on, and lower tensions between them for the kid’s sake, then I think it can be positive. It’s also a valuable lesson for the kid to show them the ideal way for an adult to behave after interpersonal conflict, how they as an adult should ideally work through tough feelings.

It depends on the person though. If you can’t move past those feelings, if you can’t model the ideal, which would be completely understandable, then the best thing is probably not to go. Work together with the kid to help them understand the situation. Might be time for a heart to heart with them and to let them in on the feelings you’ve been dealing with so they can fully understand what’s keeping you from going.

It’s a 14 year old kid, they’re mostly self sufficient at that point. Whether you’re “stuck” babysitting or get to relax on your own I see it as a win-win. If the couple want to squander their vacation time solely with each other (in which case, why did they take the extra week from OP instead of just leaving the kid with him the whole time??) while OP gets to bond with their child on a free vacation, I just don’t see how that’s a punishment.

Leave it up to the kid, they’re the one that wanted their dad with them and the whole reason he’s invited.

Abandoning your kid, making them feel like a burden, to go fuck around with strangers, just to get back at an ex who happens to be the mother of your child, seems like an asshole move here. Please don’t do this OP.

Edit: OP is the father, my bad. Editing now.

Definitely don’t introduce a stranger to your child on a family trip just to make your ex jealous and/or take advantage of their new partner. This is a shitty thing to do. Just spend the free vacation with your kid or don’t go if you can’t be civil.

Nah if you read it it’s definitely still the onion

More than a few teeth/entire jaws were lost over this I reckon

I’m not downplaying anything or suggesting we’d be going back to the current status quo in four years, and if you actually read what I wrote in a slightly less cynical way you’d understand that.

I’m telling you now that things will decline under trump and you will vote for the new status quo that will have been wrought about in four years instead of pushing for a platform that even expresses a desire to make things better, and you will fight against anyone telling you we should work together to achieve that end.

I’m not going around calling anybody anything, and I’m especially not denigrating their intelligence. We’re not allowed to question your candidates and you’re so convinced of your own righteousness that anyone who disagrees is a dipshit or a fascist that deserves everything bad coming to them. But sure, you guys are definitely morally superior to MAGA and totally different from them in every way.

Also, voting for democrats is not “taking action against the Republicans”, it’s taking action for Democrats, because a) that’s just the reality of how voting works, no matter how much you libs cry foul and doublethink yourselves into believing it’s not, and b) the Democrats are not taking action against the Republicans. If they were, they would have done something in the last 4 years to prevent the Republicans gaining ground or at the very least run a campaign that wasn’t objectively bad and ceded the framing on every issue to the Republicans, making themselves look incompetent.

This outcome works for them, the DNC, just as much as it does for Republicans. They don’t give a shit about winning elections and they don’t give a shit about you or trans people or minorities or any people who will actually suffer under Republican policy, no matter how strong of a hallucination you get from them being the only alternative to the Republicans you’re allowed to consider in our quote-unquote “democracy”.

Nah, this works for Republicans. Things will decline and Republicans will be voted out in 4 years, the Democrats will maintain the best case scenario of the status quo for the time, and then 4 years after that the Republicans will get voted back in, probably a Vance or Musk type. It’ll be a circus, the democrats will barely try and probably actively throw the election. You libs will all have false hope, refuse to see the campaign for what it is, and go right back to blaming the voters when the candidate of “this is all very good actually and should keep happening as it is currently, and fuck anyone who says otherwise” loses yet again.

It’s very clear what is happening and yet because you feel cornered, you refuse to get mad at anyone on your side who actually has the power to change things, and reject them for not doing so in order to make room for someone who will. You stand for nothing so you fall for anything. Well your “team” has been doing that long enough, and look where it got us. Perhaps you’re right and it’s too late now, but more of the same was never going to fix this.

Nothing that any of us could have done could ever counteract a bad (or good, this goes both ways) campaign on the national level. Sorry. Vote harder next time I guess.

Only for 90 days

Anything to avoid self reflection.

Yeah, the problem is that the Republicans are the only ones acknowledging the hurt people are feeling right now, and providing any answers for it, even if their questions and answers are complete bullshit. The Democrats are completely derelict of their duty to counter that bullshit with real answers, so the bullshit goes completely unchallenged and people vote for the guy with answers.

The average voter doesn’t believe fascism can happen right here, right now. It’s unpleasant to think about so they don’t, and the media they consume doesn’t provoke that sort of thought. It’s ignorance, not malice. You can’t expect the entire country to be as terminally online as we are.

Close your eyes and lie very still

Hard disagree on all points.

Shit.

Not sure why you would think Germany is the best in this respect as I’ve often heard the opposite in my travels there. They are very anti-tech in government, privacy/cybersecurity reasons are what’s usually cited.

Yes