I went on facebook marketplace and bought a pretty beefy decommissioned half-size rack. I think it’s about 18U or 20U. It’s even got wheels and came with a patch panel. I think I paid like $80 for it. Also bought a 1500VA rack-mount UPS from the same guy on the same trip.

The thing’s been a dream. I mean… apart from having to run to a harbor freight to buy a drill so I could drill out a few rivets and disassemble it to fit it into the back of my mazda because my truck was out of commission.

My advice though, is to make sure your rack is built for what you’re putting on it. Don’t use a two-post, non-floor-mounted rack for a heavy-ass UPS and servers, for instance. Likewise don’t use one of those wall-mounted network gear racks for heavy equipment. Get a 4-post or cabinet style rack. Check your local marketplaces. Be ready to make a drive if you need to. I drove 4 hours to go pick up the UPS and rack because it was perfect and a great deal.

Well, it’s multiple things.

1. People are paid for their time on the council, and by law the pay is AT MINIMUM 25% more that whatever you were already making, but could be considerably more depending on the pool of eligible citizens. Remember, the pay is the GREATER of 125% of whatever you were already making in your private job, or 200% of the average pay for the eligibility pool. So if you’re making $40,000 per year and get called to council, you’re gonna get paid a minimum of $50,000 for your term, but if the average pay for your eligibility pool is $40,000, then you’re gonna be paid $80,000 for your term. It’s structured so that there’s always a strong financial incentive to serve.

2. People don’t vote because they feel their vote doesn’t matter. When you’re part of a pool of 10 million people, one vote is more or less negligible. But, when asked to serve, you’re now one of only a handful of votes. Maybe one of 5. Maybe one of 11. But your vote absolutely matters in a way that nobody could dismiss.

And tbh, if somebody declines, it’s really not that big a deal. Eligibility pools would be big enough that a nontrivial number of people could decline the position and we’d still have plenty of eligible citizens. Worst case scenario is come kind of coordinated general strike against serving on councils, but to be fair, if the population is pissed off enough to enact a general strike in a meaningful way like that, they would have enacted a Branch No-Confidence movement long ago.

Funnily enough, I had this exact scenario assigned as a project in my political science class in college.

What I came up with is a lottery-based council government. The system is designed with none of the “gentleman’s agreements” that the US systems seems to be based on, and assumes that if it’s possible to abuse the system, then the system WILL BE abused. So it’s designed to minimize the ability for the system to be abused.

You want to get rid of career politicians? Make it so they don’t even have the option of running for office in the first place.

Councils

The way my system worked is that all governmental tasks are performed by a council created for a specific purpose. Every council is made up of an odd number of members, with a minimum of 5. Councils can be created to manage a geographical area, such as a state, county, or city, or for a topical purpose, for example, medical oversight. Each council has the ability to create lower councils that report to it, but only within the purview of the parent council. For example, a State Council can create a Municipal Council for a city within the state.

Sitting at the top of the entire structure is the Prime Council, which always consists of exactly 11 members. Decisions of the Prime Council are final except in the case of a supermajority overrule as detailed below.

Lower councils are subject to the decisions of higher councils with one exception - a parent council’s ruling can be overturned and vacated if a supermajority* of child councils that existed at the time of the ruling vote to overturn it. For example, if a State Council outlaws gambling, but 75% of Municipal Councils vote to vacate the ruling, it is overturned. But, for example, if a Municipal Council votes to allow prostitution, the state or national council can overturn that ruling on its own. Again, however, this overturning can be overridden by a supermajority of child councils. However, the chain ends there. A parent council CANNOT vacate a supermajority vote passed by the collected child councils. Child councils must have a reason for existing can cannot be created simply to stack a supermajority vote.

A singular case can only be tackled by ONE council at a time and cannot be interfered with during the proceedings by any other council at any other level. For example, if a Municipal Traffic Council is considering a motion to raise a speed limit on a road, no other council (Municipal, State, or even the Prime Council) can interfere in that case or tell the lower council how to rule on it. However, once the case is complete and the ruling announced, THEN a higher council may take up the issue and/or vacate the lower council’s ruling.

Decisions of lower councils can be appealed, but a parent council has no obligation to take up the issue and can simply deny the appeal.

Courts

Courts, as we understand them, do not exist in this system, per se. Civil and criminal cases are handled in the same way; there is no separation between the case types. Likewise, there is no differentiation between the natures of the decisions that can be handed down. Every court case is presided over by a council created especially for the purpose of hearing this single case. All the other rules surrounding how councils work detailed the Councils section still apply.

The Lottery

Council members are selected by lottery from all eligible citizens. Each lottery is specific to the seat being filled. To be considered eligible for a given lottery, a citizen:

1. Must be a member of the geographical area that the seat’s council represents. For example, if the seat is on a Municipal Planning Council, the citizen must live within the city.

2. Must meet the qualifications defined by the higher council when this council was created. In this case, perhaps, qualification requires that the citizen hold a bachelor of science degree in any subject.

3. Must NOT have previously served on this same council.

4. Must NOT have been declared unfit for service by a medical professional.

All citizens of legal age are automatically in the lottery pool by default, and the lottery operates on on opt-out basis.

If a citizen is chosen for a council, they have the option of declining the position. In which case, another eligible citizen is selected.

Additionally, a citizen can elect to be removed from the lottery pool for any or no reason for one year at a time. This election can be renewed indefinitely, but it must be renewed UNLESS a medical professional declares that they are unfit for service. An unfit-for-service declaration can be made for a specific amount of time or on a permanent basis.

Antagonistic Resignation

Any council member can resign their position on a council at any time before their term is over. In addition, a council member may enact the right of “Antagonistic Resignation” whereby they remove both themself and ONE other member of the council. There is no veto or override process allowed. To clarify, any council member can remove any other member from the same council by also removing themself at the same time. The replacement council member(s) will be chosen via the lottery.

Antagonistic Recusement

A council member MAY NOT vote on or interfere with the vote on any issue the results of which they may directly benefit from. That is to say that if a council member could personally benefit from a decision on a matter, they are REQUIRED to recuse themself from the case and may not interfere with the case in any way, including but not limited to public discussion or press releases related to the matter.

A council member with a conflicting interest in a single case must either resign from the council or recuse themself from the case. As with Antagonistic Resignation, the recusing council member chooses ONE other council member that must also recuse themself from the case to preserve the odd number of council seats. Again, there is no veto or override process allowed. However, unlike Antagonistic Resignation, the recusing council member MUST choose one other member for recusement - they do not get the option to decline. If the number of active seats on the council would drop below five for this single issue, interim seats will be created and filled by lottery for this specific case only, after which the additional seats will be removed from the council and the interim council members’ terms will be considered complete.

Protection and Compensation

Serving on a council is a full-time job and may require taking a sabbatical from work. While an individual citizen has the ability to decline a council seat, NO other entity, individual, or organization may punish or otherwise act against a citizen for choosing to accept the responsibility of service. Therefore, it is considered unconstitutional for any entity to retaliate against a citizen for accepting a council seat, punishable by a fine of not less than 50% of that entity’s yearly income. It is understood that this is a harsh penalty, and the severity and calamitous nature of it is intentional and intended to avoid even the outward appearance of impropriety or retaliation. If a citizen CHOOSES of their own accord to decline a council seat out of a sense of duty to an organization, that’s allowed, but it is absolutely not acceptable for an organization to demand, tell, ask, or even imply that a seat should be declined.

It is required by law that an employee (and this shall be construed loosely, to include any person who is in any way a member of an organization) of an organization be reinstated at the end of their council service to their same position, pay, benefits, and tenure as though no sabbatical had been taken at all. This is inclusive of any required “re-onboarding” time.

Council members shall be paid the greater of 125% of their reported yearly income or 200% of the average salary of the relevant lottery eligibility pool. This shall be to incentivize citizens to fulfill their duty and serve on a council.

Councilar No-Confidence

At any time, the citizens may petition a geographical council (Prime, State, County, Municipal, etc) for a status of Councilar No-Confidence. This petition shall require the signatures of 55% of the individual citizens of the geographical area represented. Upon submission of a completed petition, the council will be dissolved, and a new council will be chosen by lottery according to all the requirements for the council being replaced. This action is automatic and cannot be vetoed or overruled.

Branch No-Confidence (The Nuclear Option)

If instead, the No-Confidence petition contains the signatures of 75% of the individual citizens of the geographical area represented, the council and ALL LOWER COUNCILS created by it, directly or indirectly, are dissolved and replaced as above. This is akin to pruning a branch from a tree - every branch and leaf connected to the branch is also removed. Note that this applies to EVERY level of the system, so a No-Confidence petition signed by 75% of the citizens of the entire country and submitted to the Prime Council results in the entire system being wiped away and reset.

It went a lot deeper than that, but I’ve already typed a LOT and think this mostly gets the gist of it.

Nah, don’t need to actually have one. Just need to request one.

“Hey man, haven’t heard from you in a while. You alright?”

“Yeah, everything’s great man. Just sitting here drinking a Bud light lime.”

“Bud light lime? For real?”

“Yeah, man. Definitely a bud light lime kind of day.”

“You need me to call the cops?”

“Sure thing man. Thanks for checking in.”

Hell, it doesn’t even need to be in production anymore.

Never need one until you do.

Both my wife and my friends know this one.

If you ever see me drinking a Bud Light Lime, talking about Bud Light Lime, or requesting a Bud Light Lime, that means I’m likely being held against my will. Come back with the police.

$325?!

Fucking what? For that you could get 10G fiber, but WWHHYYY?

I have a literal server rack in my laundry room running proxmox hypervisor and multiple self-hosted services, and even at that I only have 1G service and feel like I’m getting anally raped paying $110/mo for that.

On of the fusion reactor designs works this way. Sorta.

The reactor creates a magnetic field, then fusion happens, creating a magnetic (or electric… iono. Not a nuclear engineer) field flux in the same coils that created the initial field. Fusion stops, then the flux is ‘harvested’ somehow to generate electricity directly. Then the field is primed again, and fusion happens again. It’s pulsed and happens 60-100 times a second.

I think the company working on this is called Helion.

Yes. You are correct and I am a dumbass.

In _Babylon Alexandria, docking ships were required to surrender any and all written materials to the library. There, scribes would make a copy of everything that was submitted.

The originals of the documents were stored in the library and the copies were given back to the ships.

First instance of intellectual property piracy?

Ah, yeah, you mean the puddle in the gas station bathroom that I never seem to notice until I have a mysterious wet spot on my pants and have to walk around with what’s probably somebody else’s slowly-drying body fluids on my leg?

Excuse me while I burn those pants and bathe in bleach.

You can hang them on the in-wall type too. Just wet a small spot on the tp (don’t use toilet water, ya gross), and stick the wet spot to the wall. It’ll adhere and drape the tp over the sensor.

I’m 8 years older than my wife. We’ve been together over 11 years. When we first got together, she was 21 and I was 29. Now I’m 40 and she’s 32.

As long as you’re both consenting adults, there’s no power disparity, you have commonalities, and you’re both at the same stage in life, age is meaningless.

I graduated with a degree in French.

I’m a software developer. I’ve literally never used it on the job.

C’est la vie, c’est non ?

I keep having to deal with this asshole senior developer that makes the dumbest fucking decisions that affect the entire codebase, giving me tons of extra work in the process, guilts me when I need to take time off, and writes dogshit code on top of that. I have no idea how this complete dipshit made it to senior.

It’s me. The dipshit is me.

Jimmy’s pizza and abortions - your loss is our sauce.

At my high school, the administration banned the color and word “fuchsia” (kind of a purple-ish, pink-ish color).

For some reason, the senior class (year 12, the class one year above me at the time) had become obsessed with the color/word. They had taken to wearing fuchsia shirts with the word “fuchsia” on them. On a given day, you’d likely see a few dozen of these shirts roaming the halls with students inside them.

The ban came because, allegedly, somebody had made up a story about a Mexican hooker named “Fuchsia” (because that’s a Spanish name, right?) that was the supposed inspiration of the color craze.

So naturally, the admins banned the color and any mention of the word. Using the word “fuchsia” in any context, or wearing the color in any way was three days in in-school-suspension (during-the-day detention where you sat in a cubicle with literally nothing to do - you weren’t allowed to read, no schoolwork, or anything — just stare at the wall for 8 hours). Second offense was a week out of school suspension. Third meant you failed your year and had to repeat the grade.

So, the seniors started wearing other obscure colors with the name printed on the shirt. “Indigo” “Chartreuse” “Vermillion”. Every single one of these colored shirts had the name of the color, and the words “You can’t ban all the colors” underneath.

It was by far the dumbest ass rule I’d ever seen.

Ah, dammit. Yeah, that was a typo :).

Judging by the text of your post alone, you’re bilingual.

Had you not said that English wasn’t your first language, I, a native English speaker, would never have know.