Heck, people are still producing new games for the Commodore 64.

And Emmett Till could still be very much alive, had he not been lynched.

Watch the Not Just Bikes video, if you have the time and interest. The short answer is: yes. The trucks are enormous because they carry all the equipment for any sort of emergency, so they send the big trucks to every call. Not every fire station has an ambulance unit, so the trucks can get to many locations more quickly.

It’s ridiculous.

Why would they want to be the target of a bukkake circlejerk?

Here in 'Murrica, they send something like in the second photo when grandma falls in the bathroom.

Yes, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. The truck in the first photo is smaller than the trucks my city fire department has. There’s a retirement community not far from where I live, and they send a ladder truck for medical emergencies there several times a week. I’m not really sure what use 4,000 liters of water would be when somebody is having a stroke.

Think of it like chemotherapy, when you have to invest poison in order to get better.

I used to know a woman named April, and her two daughters are May and June. (Both still under age 12.)

True story. I remember back in the bad old days when Firefox had notorious memory leaks, so when building my latest PC, I put in 32GB. The monitor app on my desktop has only ever topped out at showing 30% of memory allocated.

Maybe it’s genetic, but also, my skin improved vastly after I stopped doing the things that harm it, primarily long, hot showers, scrubbing/exfoliating, and overuse of strong soaps. Plus, bonuses like no more oily hair, no more stinky socks, and greatly reduced pit odor. These things are backed up by good science; I just saw a WaPo article the other day with these recommendations from dermatologists. I see a lot of talk about exfoliating, and I know from experience that most people take long, hot showers, so I figure it’s worth passing that information along.

That is my answer, though. I shower in lukewarm water and a little bit of dilute Castile soap where needed, and wear wide-brimmed hats in the sun. I get compliments on my skin softness, people guess that I’m 10 years younger. Honestly, it seems to me that a good half of people’s elaborate skin-care routines are just trying to undo the damage caused by the other half. Our skin is really remarkable in taking care of itself, if you let it.

Clarke’s third law is that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I have the notion that any technology becomes uninteresting and not cool once reaches the level of magic. We are tactile and inquisitive creatures, so objects that appeal to our hands and perceptions are cool. Once we can no longer grasp the parts, literally or metaphorically, they’re no longer alluring.

Phones, cars, screens, computers, anything. Why is Amiga HAM mode fascinating to many people still, even when they’re emulating it on a 32-bit-depth screen that can concurrently play high-quality video streamed over the Internet? That’s why.

I’ve put some effort into improving my visualization since learning about aphantasia. Upon reading the prompt, I was able to imagine a colorless ball, but with shading to indicate a 3D shape, like a preview render in a CAD program. That’s progress! It didn’t have a size inherently. For the table, I could picture a white, rectangular plane hovering in a black void. If it was a normal dinner table size, then the ball was something like a softball or basketball.

And that’s it. That exhausted my ability to visualize. No person, no push, no motion. Best I can do is to see the white rectangle after the ball has rolled off of the edge.

This comment neatly summarizes centrist Democrats to me. “We know that we need to do this to win, but don’t do it because we might not win.” Just like the arguments that LGBTQ groups shouldn’t have been pushing for equality 20 years ago, because it would alienate voters and harm Democrats.

Y’know, sometimes voters respect a principled stand, and the courage to push for what’s right.

You’ve just described all of human culture.

Thank goodness the UN and the World Economic Forum have started talking about replacing GDP with a measure of economic activity that takes human well-being into account. That was one of the points at the Summit of the Future a could weeks ago. Better late than never.

May I point out that this effect is killing small towns and living-wage jobs? Before the car, there had to be stores and groceries and doctors’ practices, et cetera, in small towns. Those provided local jobs for people, and community. Now, people drive into the city, or to the regional Walmart, and the small towns are decaying, mired in crippling poverty, isolation, and the diseases of despair that we see today. So the car might offer “freedom” to load up on a large selection of cheap consumer goods, but at the cost of dignity, connection, and meaning.

(Walmart, by the way, can be seen as predatory, killing small business with prices they can’t match, but also, it is successful largely because it is so well-adapted to a car-based lifestyle. It’s not the cause, it’s an effect.)

I hear this argument often, but it perplexes me. Yeah, the US has large areas with little population density, but surprisingly, comparatively nobody lives there. The places with high population density have lots of people living there. We could have trains in places where people live, but for the most part, we don’t. Not even a single high-speed line to connect the Northeast Corridor, just the Acela. The Great Lakes region has higher population density than, and about the same size as, Spain, but Spain has a well-developed rail system.

It’s not really about population density.

I saw a melanistic eastern grey squirrel this summer, which Wikipedia tells me has a prevalence of about 1 in 10,000. It was just pokin’ around my campsite when I woke up one morning. Oh! And I just remembered seeing eyeless fish and salamanders in caves.

My grandmother died.

First thing that came to mind is a song by a band that I can’t even find online. I have the song as an .mp2 file. How’s that for obscure?

Here’s one that is online: Technical Jelly (Live) - Honor Among Thieves