They had a screening of Free Willy and changed their minds.

Expert on shooting plants with laser beams here. Not quite enough power yet but a swappable battery system and a renewable source with a molten salt reactor could easily solve that problem.

As someone who lives near an industrial coast, oil rigs aren’t exactly sightly. They’re hideous. The decommissioned ones turn into artificial reefs eventually but I imagine wind turbines would too and never explode or spill oil in The Gulf.

I said six as a joke but I thought I’d put together a list anyway.

• The knife is Global. I was a sous chef in New Orleans and everyone on the line had their preference. I like Japanese steel Santoku knives even if it cost more to resharpen. If I’m chopping a hundred onions, it matters. (I can sharpen a knife but when it’s your job, you get a professional to do it. Cheap knives, I just sharpen myself.)
• My jacket doesn’t seem to have a brand (or it’s faded away). I bought it off the shelf because I was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans while traveling with a stylish woman and she was like, “That looks amazing on you!” In retrospect, she was lying and just wanted me to look credible instead of a shiftless transient wearing a stupid t-shirt.
• Lodge or (better but overpriced) Le Creuset enameled cast iron pots will last you forever.
• Osprey bags, in my experience are solid. They’re probably overpriced now but not having your bag or zippers be a problem when traveling for work or pleasure is worth $50 every time.
• I worked construction for awhile and I stick with DeWalt tools. They did a battery volt switch thing that maybe wasn’t necessary — it was an advancement in battery tech — but the adapter was cheap. I don’t need my drill or sawzall often but when I do, it better fucking work.
• To give a modern example, I’ve had good experiences with Cotopaxi bags and pants. My boss bought a bag from them after seeing my bag last. And you can wash the pants in a sink if you’re into hiking.
• Thule has also served me well. But that’s a specialist thing so I didn’t include it in the top 6.

To be clear, every single one of these companies might have been bought by a private equity firm that intends to ruin it and milk the brand equity while making everything worse. I’m not endorsing any corporation. I just have found those companies to be worth paying a bit more for compared to generic.

I know they make money off the store but making a quality, repairable product and selling it at a reasonable price is a really good business model. Other companies should try it. When Steam Deck 2 comes out, I’ll be buying it. And probably repurposing my original Steam Deck as a media server or something.

There’s like six companies left on Earth that do that and they’ll probably be around forever. I know it costs 30% more for quality and Valve has the store to supplement it. But I have a 20 year-old leather jacket and an even older kitchen knife. I saved up for both because I was broke and in my early 20’s. They’re probably both better today after going through their paces. I know a guy who works at a shipyard who gets his boots re-soled because he likes his boots. Same boots for decades. Occasional maintenance required.

It affects other in-bed experiences but whatever. My wife can complain all she wants. Subscribing to brilliant dot org helps support my favorite YouTube channel and it’s important to be brilliant.

And people make fun of me for being an alchemist. My science shed may not be as big as the LHC or FermiLab but I have over seven buckets and 2 balloons and there’s over 100 elements. It’s only a matter of time. (I know what matter and time are. I’m not being irresponsible.)

As a cat burglar, women generally have better jewels, though. Sometimes you have spend money on good moccasins to make money on jewels.

Elon is probably mad it launched on an Ariane 5 and it went so perfectly, we’ll get an extra decade of science out of it.

The Ariane 5 really was a reliable rocket. It had some failures early on, like basically all rockets, but then it had 82 successful launches in a row and then one partial failure before having another long perfect streak.

Obviously, more expensive than modern reusable rockets but JWST was important enough of a payload, that I’m glad NASA/ESA chose Ariane. (Plus, given JWST’s delays, I imagine when that decision was made, SpaceX was still iterating and having occasional explosions.)

I have a Steam Deck and a Switch and I definitely plan to buy the Switch 2 when it’s available (and I mean actually available, not available on eBay or if I camp in front of a GameStop for three weeks).

There’s a surprising lot of ways that the Switch and the Deck play different roles for me. I prefer handheld gaming now — thanks to the Switch — so it’s nice that I can use the Steam Deck for my PC game backlog but also things like connecting to a gaming PC or console (or emulation or whatever). And since it’s also a Linux PC in disguise — it uses Arch, by the way — you can bounce over to Desktop mode and install basically anything. I’ve even used it for quick work stuff in a pinch.

But even if I sometimes enjoy customizing my Deck and checking FPS, sometimes, I don’t feel like fiddling with settings or care about FPS. As the article notes, Switch is a walled garden and a standard platform so it can’t do as much but every game is going to just open.

I literally put several caveats in the text saying it wasn’t representative of Afghanistan as a whole.

The latter. I mean, America was founded by a tobacco company and people so weird in their religiosity, they were kicked out of 17th century Europe.

I do think we can solve the oligarch problem. So, part of me was like, “We’ve met this challenge before, motherfuckers.” It wasn’t meant to dismissive but I’m pretty sure I could open hand slap Elon Musk and 24 of his 38 kids would feel it.

Just a reminder of what Kabul was like in 1972 before…well, it’s complicated. The Soviet and American wars didn’t help but there was a trend towards religious nationalism before either. And those were probably wealthy, urban women. But they didn’t get arrested for having books and wearing skirts. Human rights can backslide faster than you’d think, given the right conditions.

Oh no, what will we do if billionaires control the U.S. government.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907

And those are just J.P. Morgan.

I think this whole concept speaks to how differently we all use social networks. For some, it’s a passive news source. For others, it’s entertainment. For others, it’s a place to be social.

Ideological balance is the least important feature for me in picking a social network. I’m there to joke around and talk to interesting people. In real life, my friends and I don’t go “You know what bar we should go to? That new ideologically balanced one down on 2nd St.” (and then my horny friend says we should go to the bar where he met a hot girl once and we end up at TikTok¹, AGAIN).

¹ That’s a joke. I’m 40 and my friends pick bars based on proximity, beer selection, and how long they have the baby sitter for.

I’m not a liberal — I’m a leftist — and I consider a Tankie to be someone who gets so wrapped up in hating the U.S. or West in general that they start defending the likes of Stalin and others who used a facade of Marx/Lenin to consolidate power and do horrible things. Like, you do not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to Stalin.

Incidentally, here’s Thomas the Tankie Engine:

I made that for a shitpost in 5 minutes using Midjourney so don’t judge all the obvious A.I. flaws or that I used machine learning. I’d pay a real artist if it wasn’t a throwaway bit.

I live in New Orleans and the police on Bourbon St. ride specially-trained, very large horses for crowd control. I’ve definitely seen some drunk tourists try to resist an officer’s command to calm down by trying to push back on the horse and the horse just being totally unphased.

I wonder what the final nail in the coffin will be for MOND. It seems like there’s new observations every few months supporting Lambda-CDM (even if it’s obviously not complete) over MOND. At some point, MOND is just a clever idea that was worth exploring and didn’t pan out.

I read the Financial Times despite being on the left but I find that useful because they don’t cover DC drama unless it legitimately matters. I’m not at all interested in broadening my horizons by reading American conservative bullshit. I already know what they’re going to say. I prefer to read new perspectives. To give an example, I’d rather read a novel by an African woman than learn what propaganda Fox News is pushing. I just don’t care anymore.

“Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”

— G.K. Chesterton

I use Bitwarden as a password manager and 2FA manager. I like that Bitwarden automatically copies the 2FA number after filling a password — if you want it to — so I just hit paste and it’s all quick and easy. It’s a lot of trust to put in one product/company, obviously, but I use biometric, FIDO, or ssh keys for critical stuff (at least where I have the option).

I also use Authy, in part because I used it for years before switching to Bitwarden. I liked Authy a lot but it was just less convenient than using Bitwarden. Also, a few sites — Twilio (Authy’s parent company) ones, specifically — seem to require Authy.

Passwordless is coming along but pretty slowly. So, definitely setup 2FA. Tech companies can’t seem to wait to switch to passwordless. Other types of businesses are super conservative about logins and probably won’t adopt it for a few more years.