All your power and water are belong to us

Climate change.

Literally.

Can’t prove a negative.

They think they stopped school shootings based on criteria they made up. Unless someone was physically on the way to a school, armed, they didn’t stop anything.

Wannabe Minority Report.

No worries.

Kinda covered that, but ANH (which wasn’t ANH on release…) gets full marks for being first even if it is kinda silly at times. ESB is great. Darker, more serious, the cast and writers hit their stride. ROTJ is pretty much of the same vein as TLJ or TROS. A rehash or retread of already done themes with fluffy happy critters perfect for toy sales. Not great, but not awful. I liked it as a way to say goodbye to characters I never thought I’d see again. Man, was I wrong.

The first one of the new set was ok. Slightly darker overtones.

Backing up a bit - the second trilogy had an all-star cast, yet a wooden log had more writing skill, acting ability, and charisma than the people on the screen. It was like people in a classroom being told to take turns reading out loud from the assigned book. The lack of acting and directorial skill was made up for by the abuse and overuse of CGI. Awful. I have never watched the second set since release. Lump the Boba Fett series in with this set, it was so wooden and poorly written they had to bring in the Mandalorian to rescue it.

Han Solo? Throwaway movie. Really didn’t do the character justice. Turned him into an Errol Flynn “Robin Hood”. I think everyone’s forgotten about it even existing.

The new set? Love the practical effects. Way less CGI. Awesome. But now the acting was ridiculous and over the top as were the characters. I know she gets some hate, but I think Ridley did a decent job of it with what she was given. The rest? Meh. Just written crazy with shameless bad writing, merch placement, and trite lines.

We’ll have to see about the new Mando movie.

Best Star Wars? ANH, ESB, R1, Andor. Some of the Mandalorian series. Probably some of the animated ones, but I haven’t watched them.

Eh, turned into more of a critique than I wanted, but I guess I’ll leave it.

“Inspiring?”

Stfu unless you’re an influencer, I guess?

Replace us?

Subjugate, control, and exploit us.

They can’t handle not being feared, worshipped, and not having peasantry to make them feel powerful.

Funny enough, my friends rarely post or I’m not interested in them going out to whatever bar and posted selfies. So keeping up with them is the least interesting aspect of facebook. It’s sort of replaced some of the hobby group forums I used to be a part of. If you can find well moderated groups it’s pretty decent. Just hafta viciously hide ads and FB becomes reasonable to use.

They probably went to other social media platforms. Not really a win.

Probably similar to anyone having a conversation where they ignore the “red flags” of a potential partner. Someone drinking too much, an offhand remark about bad debt, stuff like that. Except now you ignore the response that might be a non sequitur, repetitive, or just not make sense.

JP went from a Dinosaur Movie to a very generic monster movie with the exact same plot every time.

Greedy evildoer wants SuperDino for nefarious purposes and must be defeated. Repeat.

*Actively maneuvering into…

“Descent” sounds passive.

Still collecting that paycheck and not rocking the boat.

Next in AI: realistic eyes!

Here comes America’s “Four Pests” campaign.

We swapped last year. Getting hit with several big oil bills every winter sucked, and the price doesn’t really go down.

Oil furnace hot water baseboard heat - yearly boiler cleaning and maintenance, oil filter changing, complex issues like valves, pumps or whatever that we’d had that probably averaged easily a couple hundred a year in preventative and actual maintenance. Roar under the floor when the unit kicked on. Negotiating delivery schedules and price contracts with heating oil services. Colder than normal and need an earlier delivery? Fee. Takes a while to warm the house up due to needing to heat the mass of water and circulate. Got rid of a big boiler, pipes, and fuel tank.

That said, I found the baseboard heat very comfortable and uniform during winters. I miss that slow, even heat sometimes.

Heat pump system - removed our built in AC handler and installed the heat pump unit, forced air, used existing ducting from AC. Got several thousand in incentive rebates from the State to install the efficient units. Covered installation costs easily. Maintenance is far easier, I swap a HEPA filter every 4 months or so myself. Quiet operation, quicker heating or cooling. Love the dehumidifying feature during summer, it gets really humid.

Downsides: drier air in the winter, we now run a regular ultrasonic humidifier in the winter, but could have installed a whole-house humidifier with the unit. That would have cost thousands more. The unit is the “extra” efficient version that is supposed to run down to -20. Wouldn’t you know it, this was the coldest winter for the longest stretch we’ve had in forever, and the unit struggled. We did not install the “heat strips” that would have added more heat in such a situation. Again, thousands $ more.

And of course the electric bill is higher. I would say that the additional electric cost compared to the overall oil cost, maintenance, and contracts for the oil furnace is lower. Not ridiculously lower, but the heat pump system is clearly a winner as far as cost to operate.

Summing up…Get a good heat pump for your climate. You will realize savings and a reduced headache for maintenance. However, it isn’t a miracle solution.

No idea, I don’t use it.

Airlines ABSOLUTELY change their prices if you repeatedly check routes to a city. I have watched them change by over $100 over a few hours a day when contemplating a trip using their flight searches.

I now do all the flight route and time checking with a browser private window, no location being served, and VPN with an exit far from where I am, then use a phone on a cellular network to do any booking or vice versa in order to prevent tracking or some sort of identifying hash they might grab.

It’s such a cheapass scam to basically gouge a customer based on interest.

“We can’t make as much money off of them!”

No impact on employment? How so?

Weren’t there layoffs due to AI implementation, expected or actual? Or is the time and work-hours needed to correct and understand what AI is doing not realizing the expected savings?

Also, AI/LLM in the popular over-invested sense is the Tesla FSD of corporate tools. A badly designed, over-promised system that doesn’t live up to the hype and far too often commits errors, some of which are lethal or have other serious consequences.

IMO AI should be a tool used in parallel with humans, like research or medical diagnostics, able to see things we might miss or rapidly try new multi-step combinations we might not think of. Not as a human replacement.