My employer keeps sending booze to our houses.

Officially meant for coronaproof zoom social meetings where they play stupid bingo games and quizzes on Friday afternoons.

Why they're sending 2 liter bottles of Rum, 3 bottles of rosé wine and 12 cans of craft beer for the 6th week in a row... I really don't know... I don't even attend the zoom meetings.

All I know is that during breakfast, rum is better mixed into coffee than through cornflakes.

Anyway... Why was this a rant again? Oh right. Can I sue my employer for baiting me into an addiction? 🤔

Maybe that's a normal amount to them.

Not sure how litigious the Netherlands is, if this were in the USA, I'm sure an alcoholic would be sueing right now

This humble flex brought to you by the boss whose brother owns a liquor store.

@SortOfTested Yeah they gave us huge discounts on bikes as well, then I discovered that the CEO is majority shareholder of that bike brand.

With bikes it's nice, but free booze can actually really feed an addiction. I don't get super easily addicted — but that's also because I tend to avoid having addictive substances in crates next to my desk.

@bittersweet Hmm..maybe start reselling them? A little extra pocket money xD

Start showing up to important zoom meetings absolutely hammered.

They'll get the message.

@SortOfTested Humble flex is a very nice word for funneling company resources to your family.

@homo-lorens
Funding happy hour is one of the perks of a good company. Our monthly used to drop £750 before corona. Nothing wrong with good times.

@homo-lorens Better than your boss funneling investor money toward bi-monthly trans-Atlantic flights to see their spouse that lives in another country under the guise of "important international business meetings" and then telling their employees that christmas bonuses are in the form of "swag" (cheap notebooks that nobody used) because the company is trying to use funding conservatively.

I wouldn't know anything about that, though *sips tea*.

I saw rum mentioned and @Root was not in the picture. I'm disappointed :(

@junon I do show up to normal meetings under influence. They don't notice I think, because there's not that much of a difference between sober and drunk me.

Not that I'm great at acting normal while drunk... It's more that my sober conversations have always seemed a bit intoxicated.

@JustThat
I see you too are someone unfortunate to have grown up in the dark zone :D

@bittersweet that's the perfect cover, act like a drunken fool all of the time so nobody knows if you're actually drunk.

🤣🤣🤣

@sladuled I second selling the booze.
Get a Facebook account and search for local selling groups. You wont believe how fast you'll get rid of it for a good profit.

@SortOfTested I meant buying the booze from a manager's sibling, if that is indeed the case.

I wish my employer did that...

Two-liter bottles of rum?!
Does your boss have a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder? Are you working on a ship and have to always carry some sort of curved sword on duty?

But otherwise: Xmas is comming. Keep one bottle of the good stuff for yourself. Keep one bottle of rum and one of wine for kitchen use. Keep some beer for yourself if you like beer.
Gift away the remainder of the good stuff.
And prepare the remainder of the rum for use as Molotovs against zombies.

@F1973
The pleasure of my company and the snacks that go with drinking.

@Oktokolo Haha no not one two-liter bottle, two one-liter-bottles.

@F1973 For those who do not enjoy alcohol, I recommend LSD. Eating grapes while on LSD. Hugging giant office plants, on LSD. Cleaning the office coffee machine, on LSD. Having conversations with data analysts on LSD about the shades of purple they use in graphs.

I'm starting to get why people don't see the difference between drunk me and... "sober"... me.

I mean it might not be the most professional thing ever, but that is still pretty cool.

Why complain about that?

@PepeTheFrog I'm too drunk too know if I should be happy or complaining.

I think the main issue is the volume, and the fact that I have poor self control when it's too accessible.

You lucky <Redacted>.

@bittersweet
Nice - one-liter bottles are even better for molotovs.

But i would not recommend LSD. There may be flasbacks and it is hard enough to separate fact from fiction when it comes to current politics and the content of business meetings without also having to take LSD trip flashbacks into account...

@Oktokolo Hmm in a quarter century of use I haven't found any negative effects other than occasionally underestimating the strength of the experience in relation to a negative state of mind — a "bad trip", although personally I rather call it a "confronting trip".

But I have met enough people who do indeed mention some residual effects after extended use... And especially among those who have less skeptical minds there's people who descend into the weirdest conspiracy shit as well.

@bittersweet I went to work on lsd once. Never again. 😆

Had a new batch of blotters, droped in on Friday evening. Inexplicably it lasted through out Monday. "Shit i can't call in sick" and went to work. Everybody was surprised how talkative i was. But thinking back, the how i had the ideas how to improve everything, i feel remorse that i've went and not called in sick.
Luckily today it's a party anecdote of mine.

@heyheni When I was still working in pharma, I met David Nichols a few times and the team I was in replicated some of his work. His research lead to an explosion of LSD analogues, many of which with similar 5HT2A receptor agonistic properties and potent enough to fit on a blotter.

As they were technically legal for a long time (and in some cases still are) they caused a large grey market, also because there are very few LSD labs in the world so shutting one down means there's a shortage in supply to meet the demand.

Out of the dozen or so variants I've personally tried, LSD will always be my favorite. With many analogues one of the metabolic products is the active substance, causing both onset and duration to take rather extreme values. I used 1mg of BDF once for example, and the onset was about 4 hours, then about 45 hours of being on full peak before gliding down over the course of another 6 hours or so.

So it's very much possible that you had a "designer" psychedelic on that blotter 🤷

@bittersweet really? Awesome 😃
Yea I liked the lsd derivatives Al-Lad and LSZ very much too. AL-Lad is like mdma without the feeling dumb and after mid-week depression.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

What you can do is send me a job application for a senior dev at your company. Shit sounds like a good time.

@AleCx04 The Netherlands are indeed a good place to live.
You don't need a car which saves you money. Good public transport. And a healtcare system that doesn't bankrupt you (100$ per month in Insurance). Heck, the dutch even get 8% additional extra allowance to go on their 25 days per year paid vacation.

https://youtu.be/kYHTzqHIngk
🎥 Why Grocery Shopping is Better in Amsterdam

@heyheni are you telling me my boy heyheni is from Zurich but lives in the Netherlands? I have always seen CERTAIN locations from over there with you lads with envy concerning work conditions and stuff as well as healthcare. I love Texas broski, I really do, with a PASSION, but this cowboy will leave this place for something better in a heartbeat as long as it keeps me as wealthy AND healthy

And learning a new spoken language would not be an issue. I don't flex about shit on this platform but I speak 3 already, a fourth wouldn't be that much of an issue :P

@AleCx04 If you speak English and move to NL it's difficult to learn Dutch. Especially at dev companies, everyone will just be speaking English. Especially in Amsterdam there's the situation that supermarket employees don't even speak Dutch because they're the children of expats.

@bittersweet you say it as if I was on the same league as the mfkers around your area. English ain't even my first lang son. I know what I am about.

@AleCx04 Haha OK, then bring it on!

The "wealthy" part might be an issue though, because we do tax employees quite aggressively. 37.35% tax on income up to €68,508/year, 49.5% on the part of the income above that limit.

But I believe that unless you really already have a lot of wealth or a ridiculously high income, NL is still more beneficial compared to US, in terms of reaching the same standard of living.

Many European countries have a harder wealth ceiling, but lower risks/costs as well.

@Nanos Amsterdam is relatively high crime for Dutch standards, but most crime is nightclub owners being pressured in mafia-like rackets, criminals pulling up to other criminals to shoot them, and drug dealing.

What I mean is, apart from bike theft, the chance of becoming a victim is relatively low for the average not-already-criminally-involved citizen.

In NL, how you do groceries depends on where you live of course — I know many people who just exit the train coming from work, grab a single day's worth of stuff in the city center, and bike home with the shopping bag hanging from their bike steer.

Personally, I order 1-2x per week from AH & Picnic, which both deliver all your groceries in crates to your kitchen.

Whats the rum brand tho? Shareee

@zemaitis Eh I got 8x 100cl Captain Morgan Spiced Gold, a Zafra Master Reserve 21, and a Ron Zacapo Centenario 23.

I usually drink Kopke & Taylor's Port, or Meukow, Kelt or Camus XO cognac — so Rum is a bit wasted on me to be honest.

You can send them to me.

@superposition Eh, as much as I like a good binge, Amsterdam doesn't seem like the best place to be with a depressed mindset. Better plan a good hike through the forest, less people, more nature, that always cheers me up.

I'm neither into hookers nor weed, but the Amsterdam city center is largely a tourist facade for both sex and drugs. Currently it's of course completely in lockdown, but even outside of apocalyptic times the city has always managed it in waves going from more restrictive to permissive and back — to manage tourist flow.

If you want to enjoy a really good Italian Pizza, taking the first restaurant next to the main railway station in Rome doesn't get you the best experience. Coffeeshops & brothels follow the same rule. Rent prices are insane in Amsterdam so that's reflected in the cost of products/services, and no one cares about rating/reputation because there are no returning customers.

@superposition I would turn it around: If we die in the end anyway and everything before and after life is just void — make it count.

I mean — it probably doesn't count FOR anything, it just counts for you... NOW.

The universe doesn't care whether you become a billionaire or a hobo, whether you help orphans or murder puppies. It probably doesn't even care whether humanity goes extinct — we're just a silly infestation on a speck of dust in one corner of infinity.

So if you're not living life for any kind of Kudos-points or Afterlife-credits... It is indeed just a pointless experiment.

But as far as we know you only get one shot at it, one time to experiment.

I don't believe that means you should treat your body like a temple and live a long and humble life — sometimes you gotta experience what it feels like to snort ketamine off someone's butt cheek.

And at my core I'm an Hedonist, I believe pleasure is the greatest good, the meaning of life, the universe and everything is the pursuit of ultimate forms of joy.

But I think there's value in planning and pacing yourself as well. Pleasure is only good if it outweighs the hangover, if it's a net positive thing.

I believe strongly in the right to self-determination — including the right to commit suicide. If you feel like you're "done" at 40-something and want to stop, that's your right.

But I will personally always be too curious about the rest of my life to permanently commit to oblivion.

@superposition

I think your mission should be to establish a good baseline level of hedonism then. Make the peaks a bit less extreme to prevent cratering into some rock bottom situation.

A little bit more of a scoop of icecream instead of choking trying to swallow the whole container.

@JustThat

This whole rant was a reflection on the nature of hedonism, on the question whether there's a binge without a hangover, pleasure without pain, desire to live without the occasional stare into the void.

So... Still very much on topic?

*snorts mdma from macbook trackpad, cursing at the state of the world one last time before drifting off into a world full of pink cotton candy clouds*

Hello I'd like to apply to this amazing company pliz hire me