I've been using LO pretty much constantly for the last two years (even wrote a novel on it). Like any interface, it just takes time to become familiar. In fact, I like the way Writer organizes styles and style configuration far better than Word, and often, even for DOCX files, do initial style set up and layout in Writer and then move to Word if I have to (which is seldom enough).

LO is a damned good office system. Its default UI is older, but since I used MS-Edit and Word pretty extensively back in the 1990s, it feels familiar to me. There is a ribbon interface, but I've only tried it a few times before remembering why it is I actually don't like the Word ribbon.

And he certainly can't be held responsible for Brexit, which is why Britain is in the state it's in now. It's fascinating to watch how the Tories, and their fellow travellers across the pond, hold a government that is only been in power for a year responsible for their own actions.

It means the next time they show up, they'll need a court order to do so.

F = G * (m1 * m2) / r^2

Or as we call it, Newton's inverse square law, where the force of gravity on any two objects is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Space is really really really really really big (the observable universe has a diameter of about 93 billion light-years), so it is literally impossible for any combination of mergers to have any effect beyond an infinitesimal region of the universe. Even a galactic merger which caused two supermassive blackholes to merge would have little or no measurable effect on a neighbouring galaxy as far away as Andromeda is from us (about 2.54 million light years away).

In fact, it's not until LIGO that we have even been able to detect the mergers of super dense and super massive objects like neutron stars and black holes, just to give you an idea of how the inverse square law limits the influences of gravity over very large distances.

The COVID mRNA vaccines were the culmination of decades of research into genetic vaccines that could be in essence engineered to target a selected antigen without the years of trial and error that are required by the methods we have been using since the 1950s. Within days of the virus genome being published, they had a vaccine design, the months it took to get to the public were taken up with studies of the safety and effectiveness of the heretofore untested technology, ramping up production, and preparing for the distribution of a medicine that required cryogenic storage.

It would be unreasonable not to give the Trump administration credit for not mucking up this process. But the unprecedented speed of development wasnâ(TM)t due to Trump employing some kind of magical Fuhrermojo. It was a stroke good fortune that when the global pandemic epidemiologists have been worried about arrived, mRNA technology was just at the point where you could use it. Had it arrived a decade earlier the consequences would have been far worse, no matter who was president.

The lesson isnâ(TM)t that Trump is some kind of divine figure who willed a vaccine into existence, itâ(TM)s that basic research that is decades from practical application is important.

Do you have a reference for that? All I've seen is visas for the ultra-rich.

Besides, since trump has been happy to cancel student and work visas for people who say things he doesn't like, more visas would not help.

Both can be true, actually. As an aside, Russia truly lost in Ukraine in the first six weeks; most of their goals failed. Even if they were to take all of Ukraine, it would be so Pyrrhic as to not be a "win".

But, for the two statements: First: Russia cannot win in Ukraine. "Winning" is defined by history. There are lots of ways to end the war that will have Putin apologists claiming 100% victory, the best victory, everyone walks up to him and talks about his great victory, he's so powerful! So Russia is unlikely to take large amounts of Ukraine now; they have already taken the easy parts and are stuck on the medium parts. But if you change the "win" condition, he can easily win just by claiming victory (and having enough gullible fanatic to parrot his lines).

Second: Russia (well, Putin) will not want to stop at Ukraine once he declares victory and finds a few more Georgian votes. That seems likely, but he may have to stop, since Russia's military and economy is in terrible shape (as always happens after a long war). Putin is old, his allies in Russia are unhappy with the war, and his ability to wage war is far less than it was before he invaded.

I eagerly await the follow up articles on the whereabouts of DB Cooper and the identity of Jack the Ripper.

> Kansas City, it's a big destination for conventions
> because it's in the middle of the country.

Really? I used to have to travel there for work occasionally... not conventions or anything, just a remote site. So I'm not sure about its convention facilities. But KC's airport is just bloody awful and most definitely not suitable for the level of traffic of a major convention destination. The only airport I've personally experienced as worse is Newark... and that's mostly the people that make the place so unpleasant. MCI's people are nice. But the airport itself is just so god-awfully designed I have to think the architect was an active misanthrope who intentionally set it up it to make people miserable. Arrivals aren't so bad... but departures or transfers... ugh... it's like they wanted KC to be a roach motel. You can enter, but you can't leave.

I think a big problem is that there are no controls on the use of that little three arrows in a triangle logo that is supposed to indicate recyclability. So there are many products that are not, in fact, recyclable that do have the logo on them. So how do I know that this plastic bottle is recyclable and this other one is not if they both have the logo? How do I know that only the lid of the pizza box can be recycled, but the bottom of the box has a plasticized sealant that can't be recycled when the logo is on the bottom and there are no instructions otherwise? And as someone else mentioned, just what the hell is the difference between cardboard and paperboard and which inks do and do not make either one impossible to recycle and how is anyone to know when they're on-the-spot at the recycling station and everything has the logo?

So what happens... that could very easily have been predicted if anyone with at least two brain cells to rub together had bothered to do so... is that many people just say "fuck it," look for the logo, and if its there it goes into the recycle bin. Now, you may point to the recycling habits in Japan to counter. But let's be real, Americans are stubborn arses about such things. It will be a multi-generational effort to instill that sort of attentiveness to sorting and recycling here. And no such effort is underway, not even in.California.

What is therefore needed is a new recycling logo... one that is trademarked and only licensed to be used on items that genuinely are recyclable; in fact and not some wishfully thinking fever dream. Granted, there will still be people who use the bins interchangeably. We'll never get the "caring about the environment is communism" people. But if we took this one small step to drastically lower the effort, we'd have the "fuck it" people properly and effectively recycling. And I would bet good money that there are more of the latter than the former.

I watch a lot of maritime disaster videos, so YouTubeâ(TM)s genius algorithm thinks Iâ(TM)d be interested in traveling on a cruise ship.

There's always Debian.

As others have said, Thread is IPv6 so it is theoretically addressable from the Internet (though current border devices don't allow that). But since "protected subnet" is not the primary security mechanism for Matter, we'll likely avoid Skynet Over Thread.

If I understand you, you believe that IoT is the biggest threat on the internet? Uh, no, the internet has way worse threats. And you think that I hurt your security by installing them?

So, I think that you are terrified of things you don't understand, and "things you don't understand" includes most technical issues. So, you screech and whine loudly about those things. "Ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand". Also "those who know what's best for us must rise and save us from ourselves." And Thread is not even in the top 20 current issues covered by that song...

Sounds good. Thread is available for anyone and is a mesh, so the more you deploy, the healthier the network becomes. Matter gives actual security, not "you can't easily get to the network so we assume it's safe". And it all works locally, without needing to talk outside your house. Plus, matter + thread controllers/routers are available in all Amazon/Apple/Google controllers, so you don't need Yet More Random Devices to make things work.

If you don't want smart devices in your house, no worries. Please stop moaning and whining every time they are mentioned; we know. And the world has so many real problems that we don't have the bandwidth to listen to problems solved by "well, I won't install any and I'll shut the fuck up." But if you do want convenient control over your house, and are willing to trade off some security for some functionality, this is an improvement.