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Comment Re:Not surprising it's more toxic (Score 1) 84

> lawns came over from the UK but really took off in the US during the post WW2 housing boom

I either have grass or mud and weeds. So I reseed any bare spots every Spring.

Do you mean people tolerated slippery mud and thicket all summer before the 50's?

I get that motorized mowers make everything easier but I see plenty of pictures of nice homes and parks from the 19th century with cut grass at the Historical Society.

Comment Sick Transhumanists (Score 1) 53

Some of these people just want to replace Humans in every way possible, no matter the reliability of the systems.

Wimbledon is not necessary. We don't need tennis tournaments to survive. People enjoy them and being a part of them gives some people meaning in life.

The people who want to take that all away can screw off. Today the line judges, tomorrow the players - and the day after the War Machine.

Comment Independence Day (Score 2) 112

Americans: Fireworks are illegal? Fuckoff, I'm lighting them in the street then.

Worse: some dumbass caused a fire near LA by buying professional show grade fireworks without knowing how to use them.

If he had access to a fireworks store (like I shop at in New Hampshire) he probably would have just bought those.

I buy consumer mortars and those are *plenty* big for home use.

Much kudos to the Chinese who make very reliable pyrotechnics at quite a fair price. I only spent $160 this year despite the tariffs.

Comment Fuel or electrical? (Score 2) 106

Two theories that seem reasonable from what I've been hearing:

1. Contaminated fuel combined with high temps causing the fuel to become gaseous before getting to the engine.

2. Apparently a solar storm hit exactly at the time of the crash, raising questions about induced currents causing an electrical failure.

The emergency turbine shouldn't have deployed if it were bad gas, so that leads to the sudden electrical failure causing the crash.

That turbine works fine at altitude but not at take-off because at least you can glide to a landing if you have electrical/hydraulic power.

Comment Re:sudo-rs (Score 1) 20

The systemd version takes a similar approach - only handling the 99.9% use case of running a local command as a different user based on some basic rules and only really providing a userspace implementation without suid.

IIRC that use case is about 15% of OG sudo's code but most distros carry around all the features. I dunno, maybe it can be compiled without those but I don't see that in distros I've used.

Comment Re:What the fuck?! (Score 1) 29

Corporatism is a distinct concept from Capitalism. That's the one you're describing. There's been a psyop by Socialists to describe corporatism as capitalism so they get more of a merger of business and State (fascism).

Corporations are creations of a government in which governments get a cut and politicians get bribes in exchange for protection from justice for the corporate actors' crimes.

If you read Adam Smith he described this as Mercantilism in his time and recommended free market capitalism as its antidote with an emphasis on the accumulation of capital and investment into more competitive production.

Von Mises fleshed this out more a couple centuries later (followed by Hayek and Rothbard). The definitive work is /Man, Economy, and State/ which breaks it all down in tremendous detail.

Notably corporations in the early USA were limited to public works projects and had time-limited grants (e.g. for building a bridge or later the railroads).

JD Rockefeller bribed Congress during Reconstruction to make corporations permanent, so he wouldn't lose his charter for Standard Oil. He later wrote the Sherman Anti-trust Act to hurt his competition.

Today we have immortal psychopathic corporations with a legal mandate to be depraved and with legal personhood. The Dulles brothers created the CIA to fight wars and conduct assassinations on behalf of the corporations. cf. United Fruit or the Pepsi War.

After the Revolution remember to forbid corporations. The Gini Coefficient is too damn high.

Comment Gaza? (Score -1, Flamebait) 38

After an Iranian missile hit, at least, the parking lot of Microsoft Israel, several reports came out saying that they were helping the IDF with genocide operations in Gaza.

I don't know if it's true but those are the real reports.

The timing and 'quiet' character suggests Pakistan might have told them to get the hell out.

"Developing story" as they say.

Comment Soham Parekh? (Score 0) 34

How common of a name is Soham Parekh in India?

At one time I was in a tech group with three Mike Johnsons. Assuredly different people, though slightly confusing.

But I don't really feel sorry for these startups going for global minimum wage and getting burned.

Hire an American named Steve from Akron and you'll be less likely to be scammed.

Comment Re:OMG! What are the chances...? (Score 0) 67

Probably depends on its characteristics.

He had quite an amusing series of papers popping the bubbles of all the 'debunkers'.

He never proved what it was but he sure proved many things that it wasn't, as claimed by ThE eXpErTs.

Midwit scientists abhor an unknown and run to bad ideas like a safety blanket.

FWIW his grad student at the time had the better ideas, involving relative motion of solar systems within the Galactic Plane. His models were the best fit for the available data.

Comment Re:Huh? (Score 2) 93

CD players were standard until 2019, when luxury brands started to phase them out.

The last manufacturer to have them standard was Subaru, through 2023.

You must be a lessee?

My truck never had a CD player. I replaced the head unit with a cassette player with a $30 Walmart bluetooth unit a few years ago, and it's legit the fastest bluetooth connection I own. About a second after it gets power it's linked to the phone.

It's good to own multiple paid-for vehicles.

ThriftBooks has great deals on DVD's and CD's.

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