Something I was taught in film school 15 years ago was that communication happens when a message is perceived. Whether the message was intended or not is irrelevant. And yet here we are, “communicating” with a slightly advanced autocomplete algorithm and calling it intelligent.

I have a bunch of different zigbee models, but my overall favorites are the Sengled Zigbee plugs. They have power monitoring, which can be really useful for automations.

For example, my computer monitor makes an annoying high-pitched squeal when in standby mode, so I have it and my PC on separate Sengled smart plugs and if the PC plug is drawing low enough wattage for 10 seconds that I can be sure it’s off or asleep, my automation turns off the monitor smart plug, and when the PC plug wattage jumps back above the threshold, the monitor plug gives power to my monitor again.

Obviously that specific use is a bit niche, but the ability to know when not-smart devices are using more or less power and run automations accordingly can be really useful.

There are other brands besides Sengled that have power monitoring, but I’ve found theirs to be pretty reliable, just make sure you get the zigbee plugs, because they also make wifi plugs that look basically identical to the zigbee model.

That’s just the Emacs logo in the top-left. At least I assume Emacs has a terminal since there’s that old “Vim proverb” about Emacs being a “great OS, it just lacks a good editor.”

They’re cable, the FCC has no authority over cable. Fair point on the lawsuit front though.

Not even in the Apocrypha, in Acts 12 they voted to replace Judas with Matthias. And then later in 1st Corinthians 15, Paul claimed to be an apostle. So, not even counting the apocrypha, at best Kirk would be the 15th.

My personal scores have increased by about 100 points in the last 6 months (I started getting worried about interest rates getting even worse and consolidated my credit cards under a personal loan with a definite payoff date).

At this point I really don’t care what my credit score is, but this feels like a bad time to have debt, and for once in my life I feel lucky that I’m able to be paying off debt faster than I can take on more - which really hasn’t been the case since I went to university in 2007 (and never finished for financial reasons).

I think the real reason they were hired was to give them something to do other than ask for the Epstein files all day on their podcasts. Kash Patel and Dan Bongino were both very outspoken about wanting the Epstein files released before they were given jobs leading the FBI. Honestly letting themselves show their incompetence to the world with this case may have been part of the plan all along. Make them look like the fools they are, and people will stop believing them when they inevitably decide they want to talk about Epstein again.

I would imagine they mean something like jellyfin/plex, which don’t necessarily get you away from torrents. Unless you want to go the slightly more legal route of ripping DVDs and Blu-rays and re-encoding everything for yourself. I say “slightly more legal” because while you are legally allowed a backup or archival copy of your own media (in the US), you still usually have to violate the DMCA to break encryption so you can rip your archival copy.

Most of us that are younger than the Boomers or maybe Gen X don’t want to count on Social Security because we’ve been hearing our whole lives that Social Security is on the chopping block because the government is in so much debt. And at this point we kinda just expect that ladder to be pulled up behind the Boomers before we get anything, because that’s already happened in so many other areas like home ownership.

I also think people need to remember that Social Security is their own money that they paid in over their lives, and they are owed it back.

And also that even though the US government has a large amount of debt, we’ve also spent the last 50 years giving tax cuts to the rich, we’d probably be just fine if we went back to a 90% marginal tax rate on the top earners like we had in the “good old days” of the 1950s.

Grew up in the great plains/midwest around the dairy industry. Had extended family who owned a smaller dairy farm. This all sounds pretty standard. Not saying it’s right, but none of it sounds new to me.

I would imagine there were plenty of people who bought modern marketing that was designed to cruelty-wash the dairy industry. The reality is there’s no way to insert yourself between an udder and a calf without cruelty, and that’s the only way to get cow’s milk. Unless we can figure out how to get milk from lab-grown organs, which probably comes with it’s own ethical issues.

I hate to say it, but if that’s what it takes to get Nettanyahu and his Zionist cronies turned into red mist, it might be worth it. But also in 2025 I’m not entirely sure anything would happen outside of some “condemnation.”

Unless the Vatican decides to reboot the Crusades, which also sounds about right for this Indiana Jones timeline we’re all living in.

Unfortunately the phone call is the most important thing on my list. Bright side is I might get the house tidied.

Wikipedia lists the coordinates of his his old house. It’s not available on english Wikipedia though, so probably safe to say it’s “the dark web.”

It took me a second to realize you didn’t mean github.

Based on the attempts we’ve seen at censoring AI output so far, there doesn’t seem to me to be a way to actually do this without building a new model with pre-censored training data.

Sure they can tune models, but even “MechaHitler” Grok was still giving some “woke” answers on occasion. I don’t see how this doesn’t either destroy AI’s “usefulness” (not that there’s any usefulness there to begin with) or cost so much to implement that investors pull out because none of the AI companies are profitable, and throwing billions more to sift through and filter the training data pushes profitability even further away (if censoring all the training data is even possible at all).

It’ll just be old Playboy magazines and the copy of Forbes magazine with his face on the cover that he had Stormy spank him with.

Honestly the minute they realize “liberals” are happy some of them are waking up, they’ll probably get back in line. Most of them joined the cult to “own the libs” and that’s the only thing they actually care about.

I’ll admit I tried talking to a local deepseek about a minor mental health issue one night when I just didn’t want to wake up/bother my friends. Broke the AI within about 6 prompts where no matter what I said it would repeat the same answer word-for-word about going for walks and eating better. Honestly, breaking the AI and laughing at it did more for my mental health than anything anyone could have said, but I’m an AI hater. I wouldn’t recommend anyone in real need use AI for mental health advice.

As someone who was in Christian Schools/Home-School for my entire education, this is lowkey the real reason. Most won’t (openly) admit it, but the whole Christian school movement was a response to desegregation. Eventually the reasons would grow into “we don’t want our kids being taught Evolution” and now “we don’t want our kids learning that LGBT exist” but the original reason was desegregation and racism.

As someone who has casually considered running for office in South Carolina (because our local representative is an incompetent buffoon, and while I don’t consider myself qualified to run, I know I could do a better job), I kinda agree. If you want your representatives to be normal people, and understand what reality is like, then you really need to pay them at least a somewhat liveable wage, because as it stands, the only people who can afford to do the job are those who are basically independently wealthy, own a car dealership or some other business that basically runs itself, or are retired. I’m not saying politicians should be making boatloads of money. But their pay should also be a liveable wage for the area they represent.