My experience mirrors yours. Back in the day I used to have to do clean installs all the time, but I haven’t for years now, and I’ve swapped lots of hardware and disks, etc. it’s fairly problem free for the most part, except for the creeping sense of doom I feel with each new piece of adware they cram into the user interface. I am definitely planning on switching to Linux, I have an Ubuntu server and have installed a flash drive version of arch on my laptop before, but I just haven’t hit a wall yet that makes all the work of completely switching necessary yet.
Also you realize this isn’t Biden and the dems being nice right? These were terms of the repayment program that the borrowers agreed to with the gov’t—these programs were launched years ago in order to stave off a tidal wave of defaulted loans (which thanks in part to our man Biden, cannot be expunged via bankruptcy) and they were structured so that if you met the criteria, and paid every month, you’d have the remaining balance forgiven after the agreed upon period of time. Sure, they could have tried to not honor their side of that contract, but that would open up exposure to potential lawsuits. So basically this is the gov’t meeting its agreed obligation, ie doing what they were supposed to do, as opposed to some benevolent gift. Also in many cases, these cancelled balances are treated as taxable income, so the people receiving them may get fucked next April by a substantial jump in their tax rate depending on the balance.
I mean I hear ya, but most of those folks look pretty old. A lot of cultures have elder traditions that don’t exactly include looking hot. No idea, but given how old the photo is, might be they’re important village elders, or people like priests/spiritual leaders, and they’re wearing ceremonial stuff also.
Oh yeah, I’ll bet. It hasn’t happened as far as I know, but that’s the kind of situation where things like really strong storm surge or tsunamis would be pretty rough to evacuate from. I assume there are some ferry’s, maybe the region could mobilize a personal craft flotilla for a evac rescue, like dunkirk…
“It’d be a real shame if something happened to your work file. If you pay us monthly, we can make sure your work is protected”
Yeah absolutely. This is one of the things that movies seem to get right. Also in post apocalyptic disaster type movies, you often see freeways with just huge empty traffic pileups.
I was leaving on a car trip a few years back, and unbeknownst to me, about 20miles up the road, a huge thunderstorm had brought down some trees and power lines, blocking one part of the northbound highway, during early rush hour. We got stuck for 3 hours trying to get past it. No matter which side road, turn, whatever we took, it was jammed. We waited for an hour on one small side road only to get sent back because a line was down at an intersection. This wasn’t a major natural disaster, things went back to normal in a couple hours. But it really drove home to me how pointless it would be relying on escaping/evacuating from a real disaster if you didn’t get out early. I don’t say this to suggest that people shouldn’t follow evacuation orders, they absolutely should; an evacuation order is early warning. I’m saying this to suggest that none of us should assume that we’ll just be able to get out in an emergency, particularly in a car. It just doesn’t take that many people on the road to completely seize the system.
Given that half of them were enthusiastically taking horse de-wormer a few years back… this is not impossible
You nailed it. Been trying to resolve this in my head and it’s been a challenge, but the way you framed it exactly describes what I’ve been trying to get to.
I don’t know about the particulars of this one, but these electrification mandates usually have exemptions for critical facilities and backup systems. It seems to be more about never using nat gas powered appliances like say a water heater. This also keeps in line with the new DC energy codes that are becoming mandatory in two years, and those have exemptions for diesel generators and such.
Forgot to add, this comparison is even more skewed in chinas favor as a lot of that emitting is on behalf of industries supplying American/western product needs, so a sort of outsourced carbon footprint in a way.
Yeah I buy that—they have, or at least had, an immense about of population as rural peasants. Also their individual modes of co sumptuous are way less than an avg American. I think this comparison works fine, but the US/USSR one would be enjoyable because they were both so neck and neck and directly competing. China is too, but it’s more of an underdog coming for the aging alpha’s neck kinda deal, whereas USA and USSR have this 40-50 year race. Anyhow, I think it would mostly be safe to assume that generally carbon footprint would be lower under communism. After all, they didn’t have 50+ brands of sugar cereal staring them down when they went to the market.
Has anyone done a decent comparison between USA and USSR during height of Cold War for carbon footprint per capita? Would be interesting to see what the differences were. That said might still be flawed, since USSR had to behave in certain ways as a response to USA capitalism, so hard to say if it would reflect communism carbon footprint not distorted by strong external pressure.
My version of ADHD cleaning was purchasing roombas to cover for my lack of cleaning virtue. Of course they need help all the time, and get stuck if you don’t pre-clear stuff (have a dog who likes to entropically distribute her bones and toys) so the joke is on me, I guess.
This shit is so wild. Large hyper-real push to define objecting to ongoing and unimpeachable military atrocities as hate crimes and anti-semitism. This then means that people objecting are either “Hamas terrorists” or “leftist fascists”. Therefore, use of snipers and para-military force must be employed. Like, all of this potential violence and oppression from a grotesque, albeit impressive, PR / propaganda campaign.
What I can’t wrap my head around, is that the claims are so insanely obviously fake/wrong. It really feels like some sort of shared delusion where the powers that be have agreed to just all agree that this absurd claim is reality, even though it looks the opposite to literally everyone else.
Whoever quarterbacked the destruction of Harvard and Penn’s presidents early on really did a whammy—the reactions at all of these universities seems so insanely disproportionate to what’s going on, it really reads as if they’re being blackmailed or otherwise compelled.
I really don’t see how you justify having snipers trained on your own students who are literally sitting on grass and singing/chanting.
Also, I assume it’s like a trespassing thing, but what is the legal basis for violently arresting students hanging out on quads? Is it just the university has “closed” these spaces, so the normal right to free movement of students is now revoked, and so being in these spaces counts as some sort of trespass?
I guess it doesn’t really matter, they can always fabricate whatever basis they need to bring in the thugs, but it just adds to the strange hyper-real feeling. Most of the protests haven’t had anything remotely approaching any definition of violence. The anti-war stuff in the 60s involved firebombing and lots of “property destruction” etc.
Anyhow, power to these kids, and glad they’re not balking in the face of all these threats and intimidation.
Side note: I realize that minorities and other marginalized groups have experienced the business end of American security state for years/decades/centuries, but is this perhaps a good example of the security state expanding its oppression and crackdown onto more privileged “mainstream” groups? I realize a lot of the protestors are minorities themselves, but I mean in the sense that these are college students at elite universities, some of them presumably from backgrounds of means/opportunity. Some dem senator did a voice clip on the news about how these college students are “leftist fascists” which is obviously garbage, but like everything else now, everything is just fascist this fascist that, with zero relation to the more academic understanding of the term.
If they somehow successfully get this hyper-real fiction to stick, there’s no limits to what they can get up to next—anything that challenges the dominant paradigm will just be labeled, targeted and removed. Not a unique occurrence, but certainly a signal that you’re well into authoritarian land.
I know this is an old, time-tested tactic against leftists and oppositions everywhere, it’s just one of the first times in my life I’ve noticed it really being used and pushed by mainstream media across the political spectrum. Similar shit was going down with BLM post George Floyd, but that was still mostly relegated to very partisan outlets, this feels much more broad-spectrum.
Yeah that’s a good point. Also it’s the debrief, not like the New York Times, so that doesn’t exactly instill confidence.
I get the skepticism in the comments here, but having finished the article, the team seems as perplexed as the rest of us as to why/what is happening here, and seems very interested in getting outside scientists and companies to try and figure it out. Basically they don’t seem to be the standard vaporware sellers playbook, but of course, who knows, most things like this are total bullshit.
My fake conspiracy joke explanation: all those physics breaking lozenge ufos that have been making the rounds the last couple years are some lizard man tech we’ve had all along, and this is a half assed attempt to introduce the tech publicly without having to explain they had it already. OR similar vein, but the super-dimensional tic-tac operators (either aliens or multi-dimensional humans from the future like in interstellar) are trying to share this miracle tech with us and this is the avenue they chose.