Hey everybody! Get a look at Money Bags over here being able to afford to go to the dentist!

(kidding, low key jealous… please marry me so I can have benefits/health coverage)

Oh yeah, totally non-fatal fire, just a church and two homes burned to the ground.

I was so tempted to try their service, but it was always in the back of my mind, inside the part of my brain that was conscious during marketing 101 class in college: “What’s the long term business model here? What happens after they have everyone’s genetic identity?” Then it dawned on me like ooooohhhhh that’s the plan… no thanks.

The automotive manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler were partially nationalized in the wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis as were several banks… these were less a full government takeover and more of a government guided restructuring, but the government owned large stakes in these companies. Before that, the only full nationalization of anything substantial was the bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad and subsequent establishment of Consolidated Rail (branded as ConRail) the US’s only national freight rail company.

Conrail was later privatized into what is now the private companies CSX and Norfolk Southern. The collapse of Penn Central was the largest bankruptcy in history until Enron in the 1990’s. Amtrak, our national passenger rail corporation, is also a nationalized entity created around the same time as ConRail, for similar reasons, and is still nationalized (although the Trump admin wants to privatize it).

Leonard Nimoy was a pretty tough celebrity death for me. It was like losing a super cool uncle, a person who’d been in my life for my whole life, but hadn’t seen in a long while, was dead.

Skin on different parts of the body tastes different. It also depends on how it’s cooked.

so many LLM’s just tell their users they’re always right

This is the problem, they apparently cannot be objective as just a matter of course.

Indeed it is brother… indeed it is.

Rugby players.

I don’t care for sports so much, but a ton of my friends play rugby. Several of my exes play rugby. I’ve got cousins who play rugby. I live in the States and, while rugby is popular, it’s no where near the levels of enthusiasm where like 90% of the people a person hangs out with plays it (and you not also play or have any real interest in it). Mostly to support people I was dating, I’ve been to like ten games in my life and, while I understand how the game is played, I’m just completely uninterested in sports and following sports as a hobby or interest. I don’t know why, but rugby people love me and I love them.

Season 1 was basically Seth MacFarlane’s TNG fan scripts… it’s a Star Trek series through and through.

Way to go Elevance Health and the Centene Corporation!!! Women 🙏Can 🙏Be 🙏Monsters 🙏Too!!!

Haven’t seen it here yet, but it’s one of the greatest and most prolific YouTube channels about science fiction and the future… Science Fiction and Futurism With Isaac Arthur

• How to Colonize Mars
• How to Colonize Venus
• Building Orbital Rings Around Earth
• How to Get to Alpha Centauri
• How and Why to Industrialize the Moon
• Settling the Atmosphere of Jupiter
• Godlike Aliens
• Alien Invasions
• How to Escape the Galaxy

Behind the Bastards is fucking great! If you like their stuff, you might also enjoy “Respect The Dead (A Podcast Where We Don’t).” It’s a kind of queer younger sibling to BTB and a whole lot of fun, but they only cover people who are for sure dead.

This is going to be my Year of Linux, finally taking the plunge. Nothing special, just a used laptop running Mint to replace a Chromebook (who’s hardware has finally failed). Gonna try to replace my gaming PC next year once I’ve got more of a handle on the different distros and have played around with them (and more money).

I was 21 years old.

It’s on the list… got some homework to do, but this project is shaping up be an afternoon instead of the months long thing I thought it would be.

Thanks! Will definitely be asking more questions as I get started in all this… but step one has been identified: beg the IT lady at work for a used laptop or buying a used/refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad.

Someone pointed out work laptops and made me realize my company is about to do a whole laptop replacement cycle (kind of embarrassed I didn’t think of that, but that’s why we ask questions). Gonna check with the IT manager if I can have one or if they’re already spoken for (donated to a school, etc). If I can’t do that, looks like a cheap eBay Thinkpad with Mint or Ubuntu is where I’m going to end up.

Budget is basically: whatever I need to spend to have a device last at least six to seven years or beyond. I’m willing to spend more for quality, but the thought process is that if I can buy used and still get quality/longevity then that’s what I’ll do. Someone else suggested to try and get a used machine from my work, which almost embarrassingly hadn’t occurred to me. They’re about to do a laptop replacement cycle and, while I’m not issued a work laptop, there’s going to be like fifty to choose from (if they haven’t already been promised to a school or something). Gonna ask our IT manager about it Monday.

Also, thanks for the info about the distros, having only fooled around with works-out-of-the-box PC’s for forever now, switching over to Linux can be a bit overwhelming.

This Chromebook has some problems… battery life, charging port not holding onto the cable, a dead button under the touchpad, and a crack in the screen is what has me looking at all of this. I’m not very handy and, with everything wrong, it’s looking like a used laptop might be cheaper than replacement parts.

Everyone has been suggesting used Thinkpad so that’s the front runner right now. Thanks for the suggestions!