Early-model Cylon.

It can’t be, I haven’t paid for WinRar yet.

I moved one old laptop to Linux over about a year ago, and committed to an effort to actually make it do the things I wanted to do, like play games, and run Windows-only tools or find viable replacements. To say it went well is an understatement. Within a few months I had switched every computer I owned, and I’m never looking back again.

Granted, I was already quite familiar with Linux on the server side. This was not my first attempt to use Linux on the desktop, either. But it was my last, because I’m never going back to Windows ever again now.

It’s true that the infrastructure is already in place but it is important to understand that it is not simple infrastructure, and with a few exceptions, it is already pretty much fully utilized by Canadian and Mexican heavy crude/bitumen so it’s not like they can just double their capacity and start processing Venezuela too. You’re right about giving an opening to pressure Canada/Mexico though.

But it’s questionable if there’s really much upside for the US on the financial side. The opportunity to pressure is definitely there, but more pressure isn’t going to get blood out of a stone. Venezuelan oil will still have costs associated with it, and Canadian and Mexican oil is already really cheap.

The oil itself may be essentially free the way they’re stealing it with military force, but It’s not going to be cheap to build up Venezuela’s production infrastructure and it’s not going to be cheap to transport the oil stateside, and both Mexico and Canada already have all that infrastructure in place too, and already give a huge discount to the US since they have nowhere else to affordably sell or refine their oil as they have effectively no indigenous refining capacity for heavy crude and few other export options. During a few of the oil price plummets around Covid, Canadian oil (Western Canadian Select) was actually selling for negative prices, Canada was paying the US to take it off their hands and refine it for them. With global oil prices already trending relatively low, it’s going to be hard for oil from Venezuela to realistically compete with situations like that.

The most believable explanation that I’ve heard is that this is not really about directly stealing Venezuela’s oil reserves as much as it is about denying it to Russia and China, and maybe securing them in case of some future conflict. And that, I think, makes an awful lot of sense geopolitically as distasteful as I personally find the whole affair.

Trump certainly needs some fucking Dante’s inferno in his life.

Provided they’re not nazis or fascists or sex traffickers or anything like that. There are bad people out there who prey on vulnerable depressed people and they can be really really nice (at first), and they can wear any costume they want, to fit into any subculture. But some subcultures are more hospitable for them than others. Most subcultures are pretty okay, there’s a few where I would potentially be very careful. Just be smart about it, and be vigilant for abusive behaviors, grooming, and other red flags.

It’s probably also so Canada’s surrounded so that when he invades us too Europe won’t be able to help. I wish I was joking. I now think that’s a real possibility. And it might come sooner than we think.

Lenovo Thinkpads are the only reliable choice pretty much and even then it’s a bit of a crapshoot whether they include them or not. HP Elitebooks used to have them too but it seems like they also stopped in 2021. Apple’s never had them as far as I know. There’s a few other one-off small-run options here and there too but they’re few and far between.

I realize I’m in a very significant minority, but personally, having access to the mouse pointer for short jogs here and clicks there without my hands leaving the keyboard home row is a gamechanger and a non-negotiable feature to me. I’d never claim it’s a great way to move the mouse, but it has extremely high utility due to its convenient positioning, it’s always available even in tight quarters, and anytime space permits it pairs well with a secondary, traditional mouse for movements that are more numerous or complex or need more precision, it works very well with a text-heavy workflow.

It’s a mouse for people who would rather minimize their mouse usage, and I guess that’s me, or at least that’s the workflow I’ve gravitated to all my life. It’s not an ideology thing, it’s simply the fact that it’s deep muscle memory now, and whenever I try to use any computer without one I struggle so much, and I’ve actively tried more than once to wean myself off it, I can’t, it becomes a constant irritation that any other mouse feels so disconnected from my typing.

Touchpads are just insanely frustrating to use, I have no idea how some people tolerate using them daily unless it’s all they’ve ever known, and touchscreens are even worse in some ways since your fingers block the screen exactly where you’re trying to press, not to mention getting fingerprint smudges all over it even with the best techno-magic coatings. I loathe them both.

No clit-mouse, no deal.

(There are dozens of us. Dozens!)

Some people are screaming. Most are not. And the words, from those screaming, are cheap. The silence of actions continues to be, and likely will continue to be, deafening.

that’s perfect. chef’s kiss.

Instead of getting the new world order we wanted, mom says this is the new world order we already have at home.

Not for long!

It’ll keep working too, maybe until it encourages you so much you have a heart attack and die, because you know, it’s AI, it doesn’t have any knowledge or accountability and it certainly doesn’t have any concern for human life.

This is intentional genocide.

Very, very clearly, even by their own admissions, if you put even the slightest effort to read between the lines they basically say it themselves. And anyone who says otherwise is spreading propaganda (some unwittingly, with willful ignorance, but still propaganda).

And they know exactly what they’re doing. They’ve been targeting reporters and journalists since the very beginning, to minimize reporting on this. Even early in the war, the ones who were reporting from a “safe” distance far from any so-called “militants” get “accidentally” fired upon. They’ve blocked humanitarian efforts at every step of the way. They’ve done drone strikes on aid convoys, including the flotilla with Greta Thunberg, more than once.

I think the outrage from the public at Israel’s actions could be stronger, but it’s already more than strong enough to justify that something serious should be done. And it isn’t. And it won’t be. And I don’t think more public outrage is going to change that. I think the public needs to start asking hard questions about their own governments and political leaders and why they still support Israel. Because it’s not an accident, and it’s not a secret, that Israel still receives overwhelming international support in what they’re doing. Perhaps with a few cautionary finger-shakes and a sternly worded letter or two, but the money and the logistical and political support continues to flow almost completely unabated. This completely crosses party lines, it’s something almost all the economic and political power of the western world is supporting.

We’re all complicit, even if we don’t realize it, even if we don’t have any obvious choices available that would prevent it. Ignorance, willful or otherwise, is not a defense. I don’t think it’s within my power as an individual to do anything to stop this, but I can at least choose not to be ignorant about it, to see what we have wrought and admit what we are responsible for. And I can encourage other people to see it too. I will remember what the Palestinian people were before now, and I hope that as many of them survive as possible to continue being that, and more in the decades and centuries ahead.

Well, I’m not going to pretend stuff’s not going to get real weird for a werewolf, but I can clarify some of the orbital mechanics a bit.

First of all, the moon still has all its normal phases from orbit and in pretty much the same durations. For the moon to always be full, you would have to be permanently between the sun and the moon, which is not where an orbit will typically put you. A couple ways you could do this: You could orbit the sun instead, or at least orbit closer to it than Earth does. From Venus’s orbit, both Earth and our Moon are always “full”. Or you could set yourself up at a lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun.

The other less simple way you could achieve an always-full or at least frequently-full moon is to get into what’s known as sun-synchronous orbit.

The simplest way though, might be to just land on the Moon’s surface. The terminator between day and night on the moon’s surface only moves at about 9.6 miles per hour, even slower the closer you get to the poles. An athletic werewolf could probably jog to keep up, and stay permanently on the “full” day side.

The problem is you have failed at least one, probably both, of the foundational rules of any capitalist society.

First rule of capitalism: Be rich. Second rule of capitalism: Don’t be poor.

Oh PLEASE let them completely enshittify the entire financial system. If anything will ever completely free the world from money’s tyrannical yoke, it will be tech billionaires’ incompetent attempts to “disrupt” and “improve” it.

Sometimes I’m open, but I also lie a lot, to keep the AI bots and advertising algorithms guessing. What’s real and what’s fake? Who knows, we live in a post-truth world anyway.

If that’s what you learned from your economics degree, you’re part of the problem. Spend a lot more time on business ethics, moral philosophy and humanities, maybe get some degrees in that too before you start feeling like you’re qualified deciding how the world ought to work.