I used to be hard-core into cars. I loved driving. Traffic, staggeringly bad insurance, and idiotic driving have largely soured me on driving. Yes, I will always have a car so I can get out to the great outdoors, but I have largely stopped driving in urban environments. The bike, bus, and train are faster, cheaper, or straight up easier than fighting an hour+ through traffic to go to a fun venue nine miles away.

Nowadays, I vote gleefully for everything that improves mass transit, bike infrastructure, and third places. There’s an incredible knock-on effect with traffic reduction. The more bus rapid transit lanes, the more comprehensive the rail network, and the larger and safer the bike lanes become, the faster it is to get around the city- even if one or more options is out of commission due to highway construction or tunnel repairs. A decade ago, I sat in gridlock traffic for three hours to go two city blocks. These days, I can get across town on bike in 26 minutes. Traffic is down- it only takes about an hour to cross the city.

I don’t think even doing that now will save the them. They’ll have to bring in slave labor or stolen children to plug the gap, and it will have to be millions and millions of people.

Do plants feel pain?

From what I’ve read so far, unfortunately, it seems like they might. Plants can communicate with each other and form underground resource networks with other plants, fungi, and microorganisms. Including for illness, boring bugs and pain responses. The smell of fresh cut grass is one of those warning/pain responses.

I’ve wanted to do some bonsai succulents, but the process towards any living thing seems cruel and painful.

God, I’m so looking forward to a time when science, peace and environmental research are at the forefront of the world’s focus again.

Also the colonization of Africa to steal all their gold and minerals while propping up warlords in exchange for armed Russian mercs that crush dissent. That’s happening right now.

Ehhh, it’s still a thing. I had burn in on my S9, and I babied that thing explicitly to prevent burn in. And that was after 4-5 years. My desktop monitors are nearly a decade old starting next year (wow, 1440p still has amazing staying power).

I’d definitely worry about burn-in if you have Teams open for nine hours a day and the taskbar on. It’s crazy to me that phones still burn in from casual use. :/

Me hoping the AI bubble pops and significantly cripples the AI, data center, and AI cars industry:

https://youtu.be/w3gTKdJnMHk

Man, I dunno if you like ebikes, but do I have just the website for you. Clunky, open source, and very you-flavored x3

https://ebikes.ca/

It gives me hope for the future- we’ll weather this storm and come out with a better movement, most likely. But it takes time, annoyingly. I’m glad I read his book!

During the last lavender scare, the Russians were just as paranoid that their gay citizens were western inventions and persecuted them quite heavily.

…while the US did the same, thinking they were also security risks. This culminated in a society so fearful that people used to introduce themselves first by telling people that they had a wife and kids, then their name. A government official even killed themselves at their desk because their son was outed as gay. We even sabotaged our own ICBM program by firing one of the only astronomers we had capable of working on such things, because he was gay.

He went on to be the father of the gay rights movement as we know it today.

David K Johnson has a whole book about the whole lavender scare, it’s quite a good read.

Or worse, getting pushed by new colonial powers like Russia to ban “western” things like LGBT rights while they steal all the gold and other resources from them. I was hoping Prigozhin dying like a moron would have sapped the Russian’s colonial forces in Africa. Unfortunately not.

I have the moto g stylus 2024, and can confirm, it’s a great phone.

If it’s a screen door problem, it means they had to cut costs somewhere. Adding in a battery, SoC, networking + wifi dongle isn’t cheap at all. Adding tracking cameras isn’t cheap either. Redesigning controllers and switching them to optical ain’t cheap. And all that, coming in at less than an index system’s launch price, with tariffs on top. I think that’s just the price you pay for Questifying the index.

Personally, I’m really bummed out that they added in a bunch of mobile crap that will swiftly become outdated within five years. The benefit of the Index was that, aside from hardware becoming worn down, all the processing was offloaded to the computer’s GPU, so buying a new GPU could instantly raise the bar for graphics and framerate for years to come.

Give me an Index 2 with high res screens that are stupidly high refresh rate, even higher resolution motion tracking, and optional wireless accessories.

Thank you for your sacrifice. The same thing happens to me at my bus stop whenever I open my umbrella on a rainy day. The bus arrives as soon as I open it.

That’s a tough sell if you are trying to resell older components to subsidize new ones :/

Hmm. That’s worrying. I was probably going with AMD next to around, but them being semi-EOL’d after six years gives me pause. That would make my current GPU nearly be EOL.

Sounds like they are backtracking based on “market needs” which sounds like “we’ll support this until people get complacent” – not what I want to hear after spending $700+ on a component.

Just out of curiosity, how?

Getting closer to Black Mesa technology :3

Finding things is such a pain in the ass nowadays. You get a problem with something, say you need a spare part. None of the stores have it. It is on Amazon…but it won’t be here for a solid two weeks. It’s infuriating.

Something that should take less than an hour to fix is now a multi week wait, because of stupid online retailers. And it will be something super common, like a tool to tighten up loose spokes on a bike wheel.

It’s a fun game, but 5e really showed its age. If you like these sorts of games try Divinity 2: OS. It was built from the ground up for modern platforms. It does away with spell slots, overhauls magic, armor, classes, and terrain/elemental effects in ways that are fundamentally incompatible with 5e, but make the game a lot more enjoyable.

That didn’t stop me from playing a ton of BG3, but some of the gameplay itself felt like a step back, even as the story, characters, and UI improved.