Just wanted to say that I took your advice, and posted an update to this thread. It turns out that moving to LibreOffice would have virtually no benefit in any regard whatever according to the city IT manager. Thanks for the advice!

Follow up: I called the IT dept and spoke with them. Apparently they already get the “low cost” licenses with Microsoft for users who don’t need access to office (which is the overwhelming majority of them) and just basically get them an email address. The cost increase is really down to the city having added more staff, which means more licenses, since they’ve got a fixed rate contract locked in with MS. It sounds like moving non-power-users into LibreOffice would have negligible benefit and cause more disruption than not. Ah, well, swing and a miss. Thanks for the support, everyone!

Oh, yikes, that’s problematic. I was afraid of that. It really doesn’t feel good to look at that and say “and therefore, sorry firefighters, we need to pay Microsoft half a million a year to let us have Excel”, but I guess I get it.

Nah, the cops are losing some positions too. Our council is pretty good compared to some others, (and, honestly, our PD is pretty good too. They’ve worked really hard to keep a good working relationship with the community) but they’re definitely hitting a bunch of stuff that nobody wants to see cut either. It’s pain across the board. I guess if we have to make cuts, that’s how to make them, but I’d like it if Microsoft took one for the team too, here.

Again, I specifically want to leave the power users alone, but my experience in business/industry is that 90% of folks with Excel on their machine don’t even know how to write a function. There’s no sense paying lavish amounts of cash for those particular people to have Excel when LibreOffice will likely suit their needs.

Those are great points, it’s almost always better to walk in the light. I think I got too attached to the validity of my idea. I’ll reach out to them and see if someone can have that discussion.

Is LibreOffice calc much worse? And, again, I feel that most users of office suite software are fairly basic users. I want to specifically leave MS Office power users alone, let them keep their licenses, but if people are just using the basic features, there’s no reason for us to be paying outrageous amounts for MS Office licenses for them. Yeah, I’m aware that this is going to increase the load on the IT dept, but I’m hoping that the targeted user base are basic enough users that they can be onboard with an orientation video for most cases.

Well, the biggest change in our case was that she basically did not want to be touched for the whole pregnancy plus a full year afterwards. To provide some context and what I mean, she’d get annoyed with holding hands, and really frustrated with hugging. Physical contact is big for me, so that was really rough. Then, she convinced me that every pregnancy is different and that probably wouldn’t happen the next time (it did). It’s been over a decade, and I’ve basically just come to terms with the fact that sex really isn’t a part of our relationship anymore. That was a really, really difficult thing to adjust to, but I did adjust to it. I eventually saw that it had to be a choice, and had to ask myself what was more important. I decided that I liked my relationship with my wife and my kids better than I liked sex. I’m not going to try and convince you that it’s better; it’s not, it’s just different, and I’m good with that. Definitely not everyone would be, YMMV.

I don’t want to frighten you, OP, I’m just telling you my lived experience. It really is different for every person, and having kids is not an easy thing, so it’s going to change you. You can’t say how your partner may change any more than you can know how much you’ll change in five years. Only you and your partner can decide what you’re both willing to put up with. If you want to stay with them, do it. If not, don’t.

FTA: The user considered it was the unpaid volunteer coders’ “job” to take his AI submissions seriously. He even filed a code of conduct complaint with the project against the developers. This was not upheld. So he proclaimed the project corrupt. [GitHub; Seylaw, archive]

This is an actual comment that this user left on another project: [GitLab]

As a non-programmer, I have zero understanding of the code and the analysis and fully rely on AI and even reviewed that AI analysis with a different AI to get the best possible solution (which was not good enough in this case).

Holy shit this is bad. There’s already tons of reports of the already expanded ICE field personnel calling detainees “Mexican bitches” and not following well-established law and law enforcement laws and procedures. At least with local law enforcement, you still get some people joining because they’re true believer types that want to really protect and serve. Not everyone, sure, there’s plenty of asshats in local enforcement, but there’s always a few boy scout types that put on the uniform thinking of helping grandma cross the street and stopping actual bad guys instead of shooting minorities. Nobody who wants to do good in the world is going to be joining ICE right now. It’s basically MAGA welfare; get paid to be a gun carrying shitheel whose only qualification is being able to spot brown people. He’s effectively making a gestapo here.

Surely this won’t blow up in any of your dumb, fascist faces when King Donald decides that you need to go to CECOT for life because fox news said so.

Yeah, I know. I’d still like to see it because I want to believe that we can have nice things.

We don’t need to be inserting our military or projecting power into this. I would like to see us broker a lasting peace without lobbying for national self interest. It’d probably be a good idea to offer to work with China here, as I seriously doubt that they want to see a nuclear exchange happen next door. This war won’t help anyone, especially if nukes get involved.

But, then again, I think this puts us a bit ahead of schedule for the post-nuclear horror, right? Too bad we couldn’t get Irish re-unification first.

Frankly, I don’t. I read something about it a while back, and I remember being really disappointed that he was stepping back from that.

Dunk hospital, welcome to the Dunk Ward, I’m your Dunk Nurse today, what brings you in today?

You got dunked on by WHO?!

We got a pope, they got a cope.

It’s stupid and meaningless, but hooo boy it gave me a whole 0.2 seconds of dopamine saying that.

Well, a few things:

1. they say the only bad press is no press.

2. We’re at a moment where anger against the wealthiest people on the planet has never been higher, except maybe during a revolution. Bill is among this group, and he’s likely cognizant that Dingus and Doofus up in DC are exacerbating that sentiment. Maybe he’s hedging his bets to keep from getting put against the wall.

3. Didn’t he fly to Epstein Island? Wasn’t it shortly after we found out about that that Melinda divorced him? Probably not the most recent thing he’d like to be remembered for.

Or “that’s irrelevant!”

Oh no, not my ego!

Nah, I saw a year or two back that Bill was pulling back from his climate and disease philanthropy. I think this is just him jumping on a chance to do some PR by dunking on Musk.