I mean, the US can’t exactly be relied upon to fill that role over the next however many years of temper tantrums, graft and whatever else (nuking hurricanes?)

The housecats of politics. They desperately want out of the house and don’t understand that they’re just an appetizer for the wealthy without regulation to protect them.

Ah, gotcha. It’s just difficult to figure out what this does if you’re not already neck deep in configuring status bar JSON

Screenshots showing what this does in action would help a lot

I rarely turn the sound on for video content on social media, the audio track is very rarely worthwhile

It’s not even much of a skill anymore now that there’s so much focus on natural language question and answer. You can straight up Google “how do I X?” And get a relevant answer for just about anything.

Edit: I’m not even talking about generative AI here, googling simple questions without using AI worked well before the AI craze.

Clowns to the left of me

Jokers to the right

Here I am, stuck in the middle with you

-> booting emacs as an OS

Keep in mind that autism is a spectrum

I feel the same way about any machine that isn’t a Linux laptop with fully implemented hardware support. I can’t stand macos or windows anymore.

In Apple’s defense though, they have better accessibility than anyone else - hands down. That’s about all they do right IMO.

Same, though I think I also picked up SUSE and slackware around the same time

Propublica is funded by recurring donations from a wealthy couple. Common dreams is subscription and donation driven. Relying on the wealthy to fund free content isn’t sustainable at scale.

Because high quality content needs income to continue existing, and you generally get that income via a subscription or the people making your content run out of money and go get jobs.

Edit: just look at what’s happened to journalism over the last 30y if you’re having a hard time understanding why paying journalists and other writers is important. Very few high quality outlets have survived, and they’re largely on life support if they’ve not been bought up to push some billionaire’s politics.

This 👆 - you stop noticing that you smell when you smell all the time. Setting up tests is just avoiding the real solution which is an uncomfortably honest conversation.

Get him some of that crystal stick deodorant, it actually works until your armpit bacteria adjust to it. Usually you’ll get a year or so use out of it before selection grows exclusively resistant bacteria.

I had a housemate who was into Facebook health influencers at one point, absolutely nothing would reach him when we told him “you stink, you need to keep yourself clean.” We had to punt him, the BO was just one of the problems we had with him.

Oh yeah, that’s the cheap part when compared to medical care

Edit: imagine monthly premiums ranging from $700-1200 with an out of pocket (monthly) max spend of $16k+. Oh, and dental and vision are separate policies.

“The rapture started and I was sent back here, God really wants us to stop using fossil fuels”

Cuba, for medical and/or dental care I can’t afford in the US

I prefer buying refurb laptops on eBay personally. eBay’s buyer protections are top tier, you can return the machine easily if it’s not exactly what was represented in the listing or if there’s any undisclosed damage or loss of function. Essentially you’re getting what the listing showed you or it’s like 5 clicks for a seller paid return label to send it back for a full refund (including any shipping costs both ways.)

Amazon is hit and miss in my experience, they care about their cut of that particular transaction and moving product out of the warehouse ASAP and not so much about whether you’re coming back to make more transactions in the future. Their customer service is atrocious too, you have to fight for a refund a lot of the time.

Edit, more detail in case you really want fleaBay to work for you:

If you’re going to shop eBay regularly go look up their buyer protection policies (so you know what they can and will do for you) and also take a look at the item condition and listing policies that apply to sellers.

Sellers often list items under the wrong condition category (like selling broken things in “Used” condition with an “AS-IS” disclaimer) and try to weasel in “as-is no refunds” or similar wording into the listing description. Well, they can say whatever they want, but unless the item meets the condition specified in eBay’s listing policy you’re still entitled to an easy refund at no cost if that item arrives at your door in less than fully functional condition (and with all cosmetic damage clearly described in the listing before the sale.)

Once you understand how eBay handles policy disputes (they always adhere to policy, and almost always find in favor of the buyer when they don’t) you can hold scummy sellers over a barrel and demand a partial refund when items arrive damaged, or just ship the whole mess back to them at their expense and wash your hands of it.

TL;DR: eBay is a great place to buy, not so much to sell