I’ll check and see if I can do that with this one!

I should have thought of that. Thanks! Ironically, I have a very old lead-acid UPS in the basement that I’ve been kind of afraid to plug in again after all this time.

Why removing the battery? I was thinking that could be one good thing about using a laptop is that in a way it has its own UPS.

Would you even fall “down” at all, if it’s at the edge of space? Wouldn’t gravity cause you to just continue walking down the edge like it’s another surface–how “thick” do they say the flat earth is? Have they ever described what the edge is supposed to be like and why no one has found it yet? Or do they maybe say there isn’t an edge, but then what do they claim the earth’s shape is supposed to be beyond the 2-D term “flat”?

I’ve seen a few “debunking” videos refuting some claim or another but I’ve never seen either the flat earthers or the debunkers address some of the most obvious questions about it. Usually they just demonstrate the curvature of the earth or something.

My car armrest has physical buttons (edit: I guess you’d call them “rocker switches”) that I can push forward or backward to raise/lower the windows. It would be absolutely ridiculous to make me navigate a menu on a touchscreen to do that–please tell me newer cars aren’t doing that?

Removed by mod

It’s been a long time since I looked but I hope most cars still have physical buttons/controls for all important functions! Besides being easier and faster to use, without them if a touchscreen malfunctions (hardware or software) everything is gone and you wouldn’t be able to drive the car. Then there’s the tracking and spying, and sometimes bugs and UI changes after updates–and now ads!?# Cars are becoming as enshittified like everything else now.

Not to mention that the this “English is now the official language” decree is, I think, a way to set the foundation for a way to exclude even more people from voting. I predict they’ll come out with some kind of English proficiency test to be allowed to vote.

Believe it. Sure, that may not be the only purpose of sowing this chaos, but it’s a nice side gig for the billionaires who scooped up stocks on Monday and Tuesday while they were “on sale”.

Merrick Garland was Biden’s biggest mistake. By far. But it’s still ultimately McConnell and the other repub senators’ fault. They had the power and more importantly the constitutional responsibility to stop him. They violated their oaths and failed in their duty. It was their cowardice and corruption that allowed this.

Well said.

You may be right, it’s certainly been that way so far. It’s amazing how they never blame him for anything. But also, so far they’ve never experienced real negative consequences from his actions either, other than maybe a few small things they could easily dismiss as not related to trump (even if obvious to others). So we’ll see what happens when they and their friends and families start feeling some real pain. Obviously some still won’t be hurt much and some will never be able to admit trump screwed them no matter what, but others have already realized it and more of them will ‘find out’ as things keep getting worse for them.

Does anyone actually know why we are putting tariffs on Canadian goods?

I think his objective is to try and damage Canada’s economy, but I’m not sure exactly why. Apparently he really is serious about the “51st state” thing along with the Greenland and Panama thing. He’s just that megalomaniacal. He wants to be like Putin.

Shit, I was thinking about getting one but my brain didn’t make the connection that I needed to get it before this. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get it anyway to support some of these companies that may be taking a sales hit because of all this. Or I could just wait a while, maybe it won’t be very long until Mangolini backs down.

As someone who grew up before the negative effects of computer/internet technology became apparent, and who was excited and impatient for it to develop, I agree with the points made in the article. It didn’t have to be this way; in a different kind of society it could have been a boon to everyone. But in our society all the benefits of good things are appropriated by the powerful so they can more readily exploit the less powerful for profit.

So many wonderful possible benefits that might have come from these technological advancements, to help people lead better lives, to address many of society’s issues (hunger, climate change, disabilities, education, etc) simply never happened, because in our society money must be invested to develop them, so only things that would make more profits for the greedy were able to be developed. Yes, some things did get funded by governments or foundations, but they’re only a drop in the bucket to what could be done.

Plus McConnell as leader could have gotten R’s to convict, at least in the second impeachment after Jan 6th, which was a short window when they would probably have gone along with him. It would have made trump ineligible to run again. So I place a large part of the blame on McConnell.

The SCOTUS ruling is just icing on the cake for trump, because once he got into power again, SCOTUS isn’t going to be much of a problem for him no matter how much they might rule against him. He’ll just ignore it and no one will do anything about it because the entire repub party supports him–they are the ones who would have had to check his power but they’re completely on board with him and they have the trifecta, total control.

That’s why I’m worried about the midterms–they aren’t going to give up that power willingly which means they’re more than prepared to do whatever it takes to stop a free and fair election in 2026.

The USA manufacturer can increase the price to $120, and still be cheaper than their Canadian counterpart.

Unless there is no USA manufacturer, or there is but they don’t make nearly enough of the product to satisfy demand. More importantly, if the manufacturers we (USA) have buy much of the needed raw materials to make their products from Canada or other places with tariffs imposed, then a USA-made product becomes that much more expensive.

It’s stupid, and hard on everyone but the blame is entirely on trump. Canada (and hopefully Mexico) imposing retaliatory tariffs is basically the only way to get trump to back down. Like with MAD (mutually assured destruction), the assured part has to be there or it doesn’t work. Even though it causes pain to everyone, retaliation is the most effective way to end this madness sooner–it will hurt the US economy, raise prices, and turn trump’s supporters against him. The more it hurts, the sooner people will be out in the streets.

Officially? Jan. 20, 2025

Great show!

I just installed Librewolf today, using it now. Being a fork of FF it makes a very smooth transition.