One of the things that made our prison system make sense as a machine for me was the explicit carve out in the 13th Amendment:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Emphasis mine. If you’re on the outside looking in, and you don’t understand why the US prison/LE system is the way that it is, it’s because we never actually abolished slavery. We just gave it justification and some window dressing.

And to be clear, I don’t agree with any of it. But it is a thing that bears mentioning in the context of law and justice in the US.

I’ll jump back over to Reddit on occasion if I need to look something up. The adverts are super jarring.

400 is crazy for residential service! That actually sounds awesome.

Over here, you’ll find a pot of water on the stove more common. Our regular outlets are 120v, but our stoves are typically 240v. A water kettle here would be about half as fast as our stoves (generally speaking). Over there, yeah, with 240 being the standard, a kettle makes a lot of sense.

My understanding is that it’s primarily for people that want to unplug from the internet, mostly.

I picked up a Fairphone 6, and I quite like it, if you wanted another alternative to consider.

Does anyone do like an esports ‘decathalon’? I think it’d be interesting.

If you take podcasts as the zines of yore, their place in culture makes a decent bit of sense.

That’s about where I land. I’ve used it the other way, too, to help tighten up a good short story I’d written where my tone and tense was all over the place.

I’ve used LLMs to write automated tests for my code, too. They’re not hard to write, just super tedious.

First flight in 1903, on the moon in 1969. That’s 63 years. There are people who lived an experience where flight went from impossible to us planting a flag on a different celestial body. That’s incredible when you stop to think about it.

I switched to exclusively Kagi on my phone and it’s been a pretty pleasant experience. Not perfect, but fairly serviceable. You’re right, it’s way less cluttered. Going back to Google can sometimes be very jarring.

Worst of all and WTYP are excellent. Those are the two I’ve listened to.

I can also recommend QAA, Knowledge Fight, and Lions Led by Donkeys

I bought my Rebel EOS on EBay with a lens for under $200 I think. It’s a few years old. I spent $100 taking it in to have it professionally cleaned. It’s a fantastic little camera! I’m by no means good with it but it does everything I ask of it and then some.

My go-to is the biggest pack of AA or AAA batteries you can fit in your budget. They’re always handy.

Ah, a fellow misophonia ‘enjoyer’!

Yep! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinz

And people who use the term are yinzers

Those are hard seltzers. The ones I’m thinking of and drink are all just fizzy, flavored water and nothing else!

Have you tried seltzer at all? Throw some fresh citrus in and it’s really good. Might even scratch the same soda itch.

I feel that. Quitting alcohol is big suck territory

Hey, stay strong. Shit gets easier, I promise. Six years sober, two years without nicotine here. I did it, and you can too.