Thanks for the rec! I also love that you presume that there will be a next time, cuz, uh, that’s accurate. These little boxes are powerhouses, I probably want one for a TV set-top box now that all the TV boxes (Roku, Amazon Fire, even Android TV and soon Apple TV) are riddled with ads.

At this point, my only hope is that the failed business model will kill most of these before they get even worse, regulators don’t seem to have any appetite to monitor or restrict/tax the runaway energy usage.

Hardly. The arguments against race-conscious admissions or affirmative action are generally based (unironically) in the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Beelink and Minisforum are legit

I wish I knew a lot of this when I first started shopping for a mini PC. I ended up with a Beelink model that I’m quite happy with, but it seems almost luck that I didn’t pick another one, and I would have liked a “reputable brand” search function.

Pigs are the only animal I struggle with eating, morally.

Yeah, they’re pretty intelligent and emotionally aware, at least as much as your average dog.

Aldi employees do a lot (stocking, cleaning, cashiering, etc.) but are paid relatively well and get solid hours. The stores I have visited seem to retain their workers for long periods, too.

Taxing carbon at its source is the only feasible way of doing a carbon tax, we have to get serious about this if we even pretend to care about the safety and national security threats that come with global warming, rising sea levels, severe/changing weather, etc.

That’s basically the wave in the water planet scene from Interstellar. That’s terrifying.

And I have been very critical of Nashville DA Glenn Funk, including for his malfeasance in using person connections to get fake work to boost his own pension, but the formation of the Conviction Review Unit—once it was actually used, after an initially inactive period—deserves recognition and praise.

Have automakers gotten so used to fat profit margins from SUV sales, particularly during the post-pandemic boom, that they consider anything that requires investment to be “insufficiently profitable”? Or has the high-return mindset of Silicon Valley infected Detroit as well?

Who’s Yellen now? (This song was actually commissioned by APM’s Marketplace when Janet Yellen became Secretary of the Treasury, but feels appropriate now.)

I just started Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, which I’ve been meaning to read for ages.

Before that I read The Queen’s Thief series, by Megan Whalen Turner, which was fun.

Not a surprise, but still somehow crushing. It’s a loss for us all.

Kinda, there was a progression to travel to different planets, etc. I mostly played it with friends and messed around, so I didn’t pursue it very far.

Put a fraction of that in wind, solar, or forced geothermal, and you’d get a real benefit. But the fossil fuel industry demands a fig leaf to cover its naked greed, so here we are.

But really it’s just stealing with extra steps.

Accurate.

yahoo

Nowadays, I don’t know that they could, but more than a decade ago they still had enough mail and search users to be somewhat relevant, and Marissa Meyer had just taken over after she left Google. There was a real thought that Yahoo! could so something new. It obviously didn’t pan out, but for a hot minute, people really talked about Yahoo!

What sort of stuff do you like? Maybe some folks can make some good recommendations to jump-start a more interesting experience.

Recommendations and boosts from other users are how I’ve discovered interesting people there, and at this point, my feed feels just as full as my old twitter feed.

If you like news, a lot of breaking news is happening on Mastodon much more accurately and faster than on Twitter. There are a LOT of publications on there now, here are a few off the top of my head:

• Polygon (@polygon@mastodon.social)
• The Conversation (@TheConversation@newsie.social)
• The Intercept (@theintercept@jouna.host)
• Voice of America (@VOANews@mastodon.social)
• Ars Technica (@arstechnica@mastodon.social)
• Semafor (@Semafor@flipboard.com)
• Kotaku (@Kotaku@flipboard.com)
• The Christian Science Monitor (@csmonitor@flipboard.com)
• Fast Company (@FastCompany@flipboard.com)
• The 19th (@19thnews@flipboard.com)
• Vox (@Vox@flipboard.com)

There are a lot more local news sources too, so depending on where you live, you can probably follow news for your specific area. The account @FediFollows@social.growyourown.services regularly bundles up follow suggestions for different regions, interests, and topics. If you go that account and search for a hashtag (i.e., #texas) you’ll get a lot of active and high-quality local accounts to follow.

Like, two owners ago. Wordpress took Tumblr off Verizon’s hands for $3 million USD, ~six years after Yahoo! bought it for $1.1 billion.

This is even more impressive when you realize that in some regions of the country, power companies are adding zero renewables. TVA, the biggest power provider in the country, is all-in on natural gas, allegedly because its board members get incentives from natural gas providers and refuse to expand predicted demand with solar, wind, or forced geothermal.