This isn’t the named senators telling people to not use VPNs, this is the senators saying they are worried US citizens are being surveiled as if they are foreign threats due to VPN use.

They are then asking the person in charge of the people doing that surveiling to change their guidance to reflect that reality, as they currently reccomend VPN use.

There won’t be a response, and then I would assume the named legislators will propose legislation to patch this problem which will not be read or passed by any other politicians to the right of these fairly progressive legislators.

At worst its political theater, at best an attempt to protect VPN use, realistically something closer to the former, and none of the outcomes are these senators trying to take muh vpns

That isn’t really a problem for where many people live though, nor for very long, so some modest storage medium and transmission lines (which likely already exist to many places dark in the winter) coupled with wind or whatever else makes sense locally would be just fine for those locations where it is a problem. There’s no need to transmit from the Sahara to islands at the poles either, there’s so much sun to go around, and so many places to gather it.

I’ll never forget ordering a salad at the only place open late in the off season in the south of France (they served “american” food) and receiving the most delicious plate of chopped greens and vegetables I’ve ever had. It wasn’t even my first meal in France. I don’t think it would have been special to a local, it just tasted like food, not like the tasteless papery stuff I was used to.

Raw ingredients are just awful in the US, unless you shop directly from farmers, and every place you might eat out is supplied by the same very low quality company. Its honestly a bit of a nightmare and I think most people just don’t know or try not to think about it.

Guild Wars, the original, is still up and running. It isn’t what OP is looking for, but an MMO released in 2005 is not only still playable and has people playing, but also gets very infrequent little patches. Pretty cool stuff.

I think, based on conversations I have with people in real life and read online, that the people in the US haven’t challenged the 60 years of propaganda about Cuba, and believe it a totalitarian nightmare dictatorship.

I have a close friend who went to Cuba for ecological research (did you know they still have intact reefs) a few years ago, and when they would tell people they were going to Cuba, the most common reaction was a fearful “that’s scary” and a confused, almost accusatory “why”.

I don’t think they realize that everyone else can just go to Cuba, it’s only the blue US passport and a bunch of old white guys, and probably now more Cuban Americans, with their fear of communism and land reform stopping them from enjoying a very nice bottle of state owned rum and an experience of how other people live.

I’m glad other countries have been stepping up to help the people there, the Cuban people deserve happy and comfortable lives, and we clearly don’t have the appetite to stop starving them of that right now. Until we shake that propagandized view, I don’t imagine that will change either.

No? That’s a weird deflection from the misery of a people, to point at other miserable people and imply, look they’re worse off so we can ignore everyone else. Or are you just lost, read a different piece, and replied to the wrong thing.

What you’re doing sure looks like deflection using whataboutism, but why deflect something you’re not at fault for? You don’t have to help the US government defend their actions.

I know it’s just a little sarcastic comment, but that’s only true if everyone goes along with it. Show them pain in their bottom line and it won’t seem so necessary to their shareholders and lobbyists anymore, and you’ll have a lot louder voices arguing against that law.

Also I’m totally cool being a ‘hermit’ if by hermit we mean chatting with friends on IRC and hanging out in real life, I’m always up for a LAN party.

Sounds like something a Russian asset would say taps head in american

Joking aside, I agree, the US has rotten bones and that’s hard to shake or build upon without the rot spreading. I’d argue, though, there aren’t many nations in the world that aren’t built on racism and genocide, xenophobic white people really got around a couple hundred plus years ago.

There are people in the US that weren’t raised racist, and ones who were but fell far from the tree, just like there are anywhere else. I think the major failing those people (I’d like to say we) have here is a lack of imagination of how we can move to a better tomorrow. The problem is so big and runs so deep its hard to think about its shape much less ways to change it.

Our media pushes us very specific propaganda, our health care is a joke, our education floundering (broken if you live in some places), and our lives demand most of our waking hours to pay for food and shelter. Its no good excuse, but largely Americans aren’t evil, just tired, sick, and poor, and they don’t have the extra to give until everything around them is crumbling. That looks lazy to people who haven’t lived it, but you’ll have to trust this lefty on the internet when I say its not lazy, maybe some learned helplessness, but definitely tired. Come to Mississippi (please don’t do this and don’t read it as a threat) and live for a couple weeks, you’ll see it quick.

Shoot we’re also talking about a pretty big place. Oregon to Virginia is a long way and there’s a pretty big culture gradient in the middle.

I hope our friends around the world block us out, push their leaders to dismantle the crap institutions the US has exported for generations, and really question their own biases before it gets as bad as this. I don’t think the US is unique in any significant way, y’all are susceptible to these things too, it’ll just be a different flavor and a different time, and I’d like to hope we will have fixed our shit by then in time to have your back, but I’m pessimistic.

I try to differentiate between nations and citizens here, where I can. We aren’t our grandparents, but our government literally is and was made by them.

Also trump did get help from Russian organizations to get elected in 2016, so there’s clearly ties, and not in the same way to China or Venezuela. Also also he can be both a fundamentally American creation and a Russian asset, that would be very effective as a way to dismantle the post WWII status quo, which seems to be a specific goal of Putin’s Russia. FWIW I don’t really think he’s a direct asset, though there are 100% people around him on the take from whoever will pay, I’m just imagining why someone might believe that.

I don’t doubt you saw something that scared you, but rockets and missiles are literally the same thing barring payload and trajectory and nobody is using bespoke software to puzzle out aerodynamics in 20xx, that’s table at the back of the college textbook stuff these days.

NASA didn’t even exist until after ICBMs were invented in both the US and the Soviet Union, so idk what y’all are on about. NASA used old ICBM tech to make rockets that weren’t for military use. Atlas, an ICBM, is what launched the first US astronauts to space during the Mercury program.

Also Von Braun was a Nazi

Not having a right to privacy doesn’t mean we should record everyone’s every move if they aren’t locked in their windowless basement. Which they would have to be since its legally OK to have cameras pointing at your neighbors bedroom window or backyard, or to fly a recording drone over their house.

Additionally I think we should have a right to privacy in public. Why does your right to have your own surveillance fiefdom in your building extend to the street where I’m just trying to go for a jog? It interferes with my peace of mind, and it makes neighbors appear more like police than people I should be able to rely on.

I’m also exceptionally skeptical cameras have any impact on crime. I know police rarely investigate or solve property crime, and unless they prevent the crime from happening outright (doubt), or the camera owner has a full time live human monitoring to respond to an immediate action (businesses), it serves no purpose but to give the owner a false sense of security and to peep on your neighbors.

Getting broken into can be a very traumatic and violating experience, and in a better world we would try to help both the person who is driven to robbery and the person who’s space was violated. In the one we live in, people slap cameras and floodlights everywhere, mental health care is nonexistent, and we punish such that the cycle of poverty and crime continues. Thus nothing is solved and the world gets worse.

Police cameras and municipal cameras are even worse in these ways, now it isn’t the guy next door, its the state and all the money and power it holds doing a peep into your bedroom and a follow down the street. They don’t trust you, they don’t want you here, and you had better watch yourself. That message isn’t for everyone of course, but if you’re already marginalized in a community, it sure reads like the message is for you.

If we do install cameras, like red light cameras or speed cameras which have proven to do something, we need to be extraordinarily careful about where we place them and how we use them. And they should only be there until the underlying problem is solved, not placed as a solution themselves.

I’m not sure that’s how that shakes out, you can’t exactly extinguish open source projects, they may go dormant but they are still there, and there would be the last open source proton build to start from too.

It would also annoy the very people who are most likely to make their own compatibility tools and inconvenience themselves to spite bad business practice. Maybe in some future world where everyone is on Linux/proton, the people who just blindly use windows today because they always have would just keep using the now proprietary proton, but that’s far from the way it is today.

Honestly I just use what is easiest to get working, used to do every game manually, then used Lutris, now I use Steam, probably will use something else that’s easier in the future, especially if/when my library disappears. Til then I’ll support the company that made it much easier to leave Microsoft behind. Nice bonus: valve is one of the least bad large companies in the US at time of writing, so it feels less awful to give them money.

Because shifting schedules by an hour randomly in the middle of the year twice is physically damaging and bad for your health, that impacts you. And maybe it’s not so bad for you, you work shifting hours, no biggie. Try to imagine that you had that regular schedule and suddenly it changed, it did bother you, perhaps make decisions based on that.

If you can’t imagine anyone else having thoughts, feelings, or emotions different from yours, consider that when you’re crossing the street the day after daylight savings time, you’re being passed by people who didn’t get enough sleep and maybe they’re like you, but they might not be, and that could directly impact you too.

It’s such a simple small change to a weird tradition that has no more purpose in our modern world than the “moonlight lamps” of the US or the penny farthing. They may be historically important or interesting, but that doesn’t mean you should be forced to use them. Change can be scary but it’s gonna be ok, daylight savings time will inevitably end up the way of the funny big wheeled bike, it’s just a matter of when and how. You can always choose to wake up early all year round.

I like your approach in that they don’t all just flow to the same 2 distros and there are multiple options at the end of most lines. It’s also quite readable. I do think there’s even more room to just try stuff out though, distros are not particularly rigid, certainly not when you’re first trying them out and you don’t know the differences.

I happily use MXLinux to game on new(not so new now I suppose) hardware, run a media box, and on a couple work/school laptops for example. It’s just what I tried and felt cozy with after I got angry with windows and mint. I’m sure other distros are technically better for my uses but nothing I’ve tried has really been so much better to justify the switch.

The different desktop environments. Really basically described as the interface, XFCE is a very lightweight one, whereas mint is MATE, and mint cinnamon is… cinnamon which are each different from each other (I don’t know I’ve never used them for long enough to find out)

Yeah when I start ranting about the government’s cheese caves under Missouri people think I’ve finally cracked, but they’re real. It started as a program to help farmers during the great depression, but by now it’s just socializing the dairy industry and keeping prices artificially high. I don’t think they sold it to fund the program though, they distributed it through food security programs.

There’s gotta be better foods for the government to stockpile and distribute to the hungry than cheese though, it’s tasty, but it’s not great for you and it’s not filling many nutritional gaps. Not to mention lots of people can’t even eat it without getting sick

This or sit down to read a chapter before bed, look up and it’s 6 hours later and I have to pee and I haven’t touched my glass of water and my alarm goes off in 4 hours

Never in between

This man helped me kill the lawn inside myself, and now I’ve killed my lawn and I’m on my way to kill my parents’ (lawn) too. I might have even accidentally learned some botany along the way

A really great channel

My suggestion, since I’ve done something similar. (Depending on what is there now) I’d recommend killing the weeds by laying down layers of cardboard and mulch on top (after cutting them down). Some plants are too pernicious for that and require digging up taproots or targeted herbicide, but the majority of the stuff under it will die and be nutrients for what you plan on planting there. As the cardboard, mulch, and old plants rot, you’ll have exceptional soil for pretty nearly free (depending on the cost of the mulch and your time). As a neat bonus you’ll get all kinds of interesting fungus to look at too.

Lots of people in a pretty small area in relatively dense cities that currently drive or fly between the cities (technically called strong city pairings). There’s also a pretty enormous tourism industry in Florida that captures much of the Midwestern US/anyone not going to California or Hawaii for their beach or disney vacation. Florida is also flat which makes for very cheap high speed rail. Note how the map goes out of its way to avoid the mountains out West.

That being said, I’m not sure this map is one of the ones made with serious city pairing calculations. I’m skeptical that Quincy, IL has a really strong draw for high speed rail, for example, and that long gap between Portland and Sacramento/San Francisco, while beautiful and filled with cool places, is way too sparsely populated to justify 6hrs on high speed rail. I think it’s a sort of meme map that’s been going around for years, though I wish it were real.

That could be the heater for the self defrost, if this refrigerator has that feature. It would be connected to a thermostat to prevent overheating, and would be under or against the cold plate.