Yep, it eventually dawned on them that it wasn’t smart to force everyone to take off at the busiest time of year, so they started using the employee’s work anniversary instead. But, by that time I already had one foot out the door.

Yeah I had that in my previous job, but they didn’t call it PTO. Also we didn’t use PTO for our official holidays. It was really stupid: we would get 12 months worth of time off on January 1st and all of it expired December 31st. This naturally caused everyone to basically take December off, which meant our busiest months of December and January were super fun.

In my current job, PTO is earned for each working hour at a rate decided by your seniority, so you gain more PTO per hour the longer you work there, and you can bank up to a certain amount and the excess is lost. It’s a pretty big bank, so I think it’s an okay-ish balance between stealing our PTO and encouraging us to use it. I guess it could be worse.

This is different from when I lived in Norway, where I had “unlimited” sick days, all bank holidays off, and an additional 5 weeks of time off a year + vacation bonus in the summer, plus time and a half for any overtime beyond 37.5hrs/wk with double pay on Sundays and holidays.

Sort of. There is no legal requirement for any time off in the US. But PTO is a very common arrangement.

It is what it sounds like: Paid Time Off. Basically you have some hours available your will be paid for but you don’t have to work. You earn PTO at a certain rate for every hour you do actual work, so you have to earn it.

You don’t have the right to use them whenever you want; that’s up to your boss, usually. You usually have to trade any kind of time off for your PTO: vacation, holidays (even mandatory ones), sick days, etc. There is usually a minimum amount of hours you have to take at a time, so you can’t always take an hour here and there, but sometimes you can agree to make up time with you boss.

For extended time off, like if you have surgery, you can usually work with your employer to use a reduced rate of PTO to make it last longer, like get 40% pay. When it runs out, you don’t get paid. You may still be able to keep your job, within the rules of FMLA (12 weeks), but you have no income. I am not sure what happens to insurance at that point, but I think you’re covered as long as you’re employed and pay premiums.

Of course this is not legally required and it’s rare that it’s even offered if you’re part time or work for a small company, since those aren’t required to offer any benefits.

I don’t work in HR, I’m not a lawyer or doctor, my experience is my own, this is not legal advice, your state laws may be different, etc, etc. YMMV.

You’re right, of course. I don’t, but next time I will. I grew up with A4 and can usually tell from the aspect ratio by eye, but yeah I’m not paper size Rainman either, so it’s possible I’ve never noticed.

A4 is the closest thing to US Letter. I don’t think there is anything close to US Legal (aspect ratio is all wrong). I’ve never received a single A-sized government letter, but I would love to be pleasantly surprised someday.

Look, it’s not called transport for nothing

Merriam-Webster says this:

“When cooking over a gas stove, avoid wearing loose, (flammable/inflammable) clothing that could catch fire easily.” Which word is correct: flammable or inflammable?

It’s a trick question. Both flammable and inflammable are correct, as they both mean “capable of being easily ignited and of burning quickly.” This makes no sense to the Modern English speaker. In English, we think of in- as a prefix that means “not”: inactive means “not active,” inconclusive means “not conclusive,” inconsiderate means “not considerate.” Therefore, inflammable should mean “not flammable.”

[…]

What do you do? If you want to keep things crystal clear, choose flammable when you are referring to something that catches fire and burns easily, and use the relatively recent nonflammable when referring to something that doesn’t catch fire and burn easily. Inflammable is just likely to enflame confusion.

Personally I use “inflammable”, but if I were writing warning posters I would have to reconsider that.

“flammable” actually has an interesting story:

Since 1980s use of the word, especially in safety warnings, has been sometimes discouraged lest it be misunderstood as “non-flammable” through confusion of the two prefixes in-.

Ref: inflammable on Etymonline

Your comment led me down a bit of a rabbit hole and I found this on Wikipedia:

When writing in languages such as Danish and Norwegian, where the empty set character may be confused with the alphabetic letter Ø (as when using the symbol in linguistics), the Unicode character U+29B0 ⦰ REVERSED EMPTY SET may be used instead.

It also mentions what you are alluding to:

In the past, “0” (the numeral zero) was occasionally used as a symbol for the empty set, but this is now considered to be an improper use of notation.

And, as a programmer, don’t get me started on nulls…or undefined…or truthyness.

As a Norwegian, I find it annoying that they “stole” Ø for that purpose. I put a backslash through my zeros instead, so it looks different. I usually pick a coding font with dotted zeros for the same reason.

I write plain text. I just happen to format it like markdown.

They are most likely referring to the PHQ-9 questionnaire. 25/27 is not great, indicating severe symptoms.

Thanks for confirming they exist. I have never seen one that precise.

Yeah that makes sense. And in a pinch (no pun intended), measuring your solids by volume or even just eyeballing it is good enough for a lot of cooking (baking is a different matter).

But let’s not forget that Europe was not always metric, either. They went through the same process. They had the same units (or similar units) as US has now, with a lot of the same quirks. That was the entire point of the metric system: have one consistent set of units. United States was onboard early for metrication, but backed out before it completed it, so here we are.

Sure, I get that, and we already have dual labeling on a lot of stuff, maybe even most of the stuff. The problem there is that nobody actually reads the other labeling, so they are also not learning.

They need to go back to what they were doing before: First decide that we’re moving over so that mandates can be enforced.

Second, do what you were saying, and do dual labeling during the transition–but make metric most the prominent.

Third, educate kids in schools to use it (this already happens to a degree).

Fourth, launch massive informational campaigns to teach people how and why to use metric.

Fifth, step down the dual labeling gradually as more people are comfortable with the new units.

I expect there to be a long tail of non-metric units in use (see UK), but if we can switch more things over that is still an improvement. Heck, I’ll even take them just decimalizing and removing some smaller units (like lbs/oz).

The history of metrication in the US is as frustrating as it is an interesting read. It can certainly be done and many countries have shown it can be done, but it takes commitment and support from the highest levels.

If accuracy is not critical you can use some simple tricks to convert between them.

30C is roughly…2 x 30 + 32 = 92F which is only 6 degrees off the actual value which is 86F.

I accidentally a word. Converting recipes from Norwegian and metric to American and US customary units.

I’m aware. I have a scale, too. But most people didn’t weigh dry ingredients. So when I translate for someone else I have to use the “normal” measures they’re used to. For myself, I speak the language and just use metric, my scale, and a measuring cup with both markings.

I’ve had to translate recipes from Norwegian to American and this struggle is real. Never thought I’d need to look up material density tables for cooking.

Yeah I think at that point it would be easier to just go metric.

Most Americans actually seem to be five with metric and probably would not mind it too much if we just switched. The objections are basically: 1) it’s too expensive to switch now (okay), or 2) it’s part of our identity (doubt). I swear to God everything is a culture war with some people.

More rational people, especially in STEM where it’s already the standard, prefer it.

In general though, I would argue that Americans know metric better then Europeans know US customary, for what that’s worth

It’s mostly about what you’re used to. Americans buy soda in liters, run 5km and do drugs by the gram. But we buy gasoline and milk in gallons and our recipes call for flour by volume. It’s mostly inertia. At the end of the day you have to communicate with people around you so you use units they understand.

It’s just not that fine tuned of an instrument. The furnace also runs on intervals so it’s just going to naturally fluctuate a bit. Like with anything “it depends”, but I doubt it’s possible to keep the room within a tenth of a centigrade just with a consumer level thermostat. Maybe in a small room with resistive heating? I’d love to see actual measurements of this.