I don’t think you’ll get consensus on the “it’s disrespectful” reasoning. It might not be inherently religious (although most religions I’m aware of expand upon it to specific procedures or prohibitions) but “respecting” the vessel which once contained a life seems very much tied up in sentimentality and woowoo more than sound reasoning or pragmatism. It’s just engrained into social norms at this point but, purely speculation, burial and burning were probably done for the same reasons other animals do it - you don’t attract other predators or suffer the scent of death inviting maggots, flies and other vectors for disease. It probably became more ritualistic and religious over time. If I’m dead someone can dangle my lads from their rearview like a pair of fuzzy dice for all I care - which will be not at all because I’m dead.

Desktop design decisions. A lot of folks hated Unity. I know I did - they turned something familiar into something Apple like and I couldn’t stand it. I’m genuinely not a fan of the unified menus and such. It didn’t help that users were basically forced out of Gnome 2 into it when Unity became the default.

Within Unity they Integrated Amazon results into the Desktop Search. That was likened to spyware since your queries were being shared with Amazon, much like MS integrating web results into their own search. Ubuntu fucked up harder because, absent any filtering, their search occasionally produced adult products in the results - ie sex toys and such. Imagine telling your kid Fluffy needs a new knotted rope chew toy. They start searching “dog knot toy” just to have the results filled with BadDragon knockoffs.

They’ve leaned heavier into enterprise over the years and that has alienated a lot of the Desktop audience which helped bring attention to OS in the first place. They went from “Linux for Human Beings,” making desktop computing more accessible throughout the world, to becoming essentially the Microsoft of the Linux world.

Their snap backend is proprietary. You can’t just host your own snap repository. Even if you host your own local snap cache, it ultimately must point to and retrieve from their repository to populate that cache.

I’m sure there’s other stuff worth pointing out that I’ve forgotten.

Prefacing with my usual “I’m not a dev, just a tinkerer” disclaimer: new wave, goth rock, industrial and EBM are my gaming/coding gotos (my musical tastes go far beyond that but I definitely never “outgrew” my angsty, anti authoritarian tatses). I’ve been a big fan of Nine Inch Nails and Reznor’s work, and his influences and collaborators. New Order, Gary Numen/Tubeway Army, Bauhaus, Thomas Dolby, Peter Schilling.

I lean more towards industrial while scripting, messing with my self hosted stuff, wrenching on my truck or mower or whatever. 16volt, Sister Machine Gun, Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, …

Have
Some
Links

If you are asking whether or not I draw a distinction between “the screen is blank” and your now clarifying “the home screen is blank” (“blank” meaning “devoid of advertisment,” because what home screen is ever literally blank?) then yes, I do. Words have meaning and “blank” doesn’t mean “no ads on my home screen.”

Maybe I’m the dumbass you’re trying to make me out to be but I’m pretty confident my interpretation of what you said wouldn’t be uncommon, or that there many people who don’t realize a smart TV’s connectivity is always active.

“It’s blank therefore not connected” makes as much sense as saying “my phone’s screen is off, therefore not connected.” If you’ve got a smart TV, “Off” is more akin to “Standby.” If it’s connected to internet you should assume it’s receiving updates, the latest ad rolls, etc at all times if you haven’t completely firewalled it off.

Can’t speak to them utilizing open APs or mesh networking like Sidewalk but I wouldn’t trust that they couldn’t if they wanted. Thought I’d read up that some of Amazon’s devices even use LoRa which, while low bandwidth, can cover quite some distance.

I still grab the latest highway maps from rest stops. What I haven’t seen, that used to be in almost every gas station and convenience store, were the multi-page county atlases. Damn things would set you back $15-20 a pop but you’d look up a street name, get the page and grid location, then work backward to whatever highway you were taking. We had a stack of them in my buddy’s work van and used them to get to everywhere. Navigating DC by paper map was an experience.

“ADC the Map People” made the ones for the DC/Maryland/Virginia area but stopped in 2010. It looks like they probably also made those massive wall maps used by the local pizza joints too. Doesn’t seem like anyone makes anything similar to them now. Makes me wonder what LEO/Fire/EMS does now; they used to all carry atlases for their service area - even just as a fallback after GPS became widely available.

Proton doesn’t support malware.

Sounds like a win to me.

I thought that was a relatively more recent (Russian?) group, but if you go digging you’ll find “Rangerphiles” more broadly. That would’ve been my guess. Within that was another subset: RAGE (Rangers Against Gadget Erotica) which I think, somewhat confidently, was a consequence of heavy Christian influence within the Ranger community with all the hangups and repression that entails. I can’t say I looked all that hard for an explanation, it was just a browser rabbit hole one night years ago, and I kind of put Christian Furries in a similar camp to LGBT Christians anyway - “I think it’s nonsense, spare me the details and mental gymnastics, but if you wanna retcon Christianity into something better - by all means please do because it’s pretty horrible on its face.”

I can give another good anecdote for this.

Crank shaft holder for Toyota/Lexus. You attach it to a breaker bar, that you can let pin itself against the frame or ground, while reefing on a torque wrench to get the crank nut back on - something like 283 ft-lb for my truck iirc. Not a small amount of force if something breaks or slips and things go flying.

One of the good, brand name options is made by Oni. It’s also over $60. You can get a knockoff for between $15 to $25. The bad knockoffs are just the ring portion shoddily welded to the “arm” (where you connect your breaker bar), and those two halves often come apart at the welds under use. The good knockoffs are obviously cast as one piece from a mold that was probably made from an Oni or similar. They get a questionable dull black coating, lacking the polish and clean finish of the name brand, but they’re still a singular solid tool.

Not knowing which one will hold up and which one might give you summer teeth is a huge risk for any uninformed home gamer just trying to DIY some auto repairs on the cheap.

So the people who “can barely run their phones” are also the ones consciously seeking out adb files and acknowledging the warning that pops up when they proceed to install them? Because it seems like every single time I heard of a bunch of rubes being pwnt, they’d all installed some fake tool or Jerry Smith tier bubble popping game that unsurprisingly ended up being malware… distributed by the fucking Play Store. When Google’s “Play Protect” doesn’t seem to actually matter, why would anyone want to allow them to then monopolize app distribution under the false flag of “security?”

Yeah, Jellyfin was my best example. I’ve got the motions memorized, to get to the admin panel, as well but Homepage is my homepage so it saves those few seconds. I agree otherwise about urgent messages. Important stuff of mine hits a Discord webhook for now.

Eventually I’ll set up some other alternative to get push notifications. I took the time to write a few half-assed cogs for pycord, and I enjoy(ed) the process and using them, but I don’t really trust the platform. I might need to give good old IRC a go again. I’m sure some Android client can do push notifications on a specific channel/sender basis.

Most are definitely just showing off; “Look at how many photos I have stored,” “I have so many podcasts and ebooks,” “Bow to me, mortals!”

On the flip, some are useful. PeaNUT gives UPS off/on line power status at a glance, Jellyfin shows active streams iirc, FreshRSS shows if there are unread feeds, Portainer shows if any containers have stopped, etc. Jellyfin is a big one since I don’t have to get into the WebUI to see if updates or whatever are going to interrupt someone. Otherwise I’m mostly in agreement and just use links in lieu of widgets and silly API calls.

04 Tundra with a tape deck. And a 6 CD changer! Although I think that has some stripped out gears, bad motor, or something 'cause it stopped working years ago. I took it apart once to get the discs out but didn’t bother making a diagnosis since I rock a cassette adapter anyway.

The more I see about the mid 90s through 00s Toyotas, the more I really don’t want anything newer. Unfortunately everyone else seems to have the same opinion. There’s not a single gen 1 Tundra at any pick’n’pull junkyard within 20 miles of me, and running ones are selling for more than I paid for mine used 14 years ago. Blows my mind my little 22 year old pickup has somehow maintained or increased in value in this ridiculous market.

They weren’t replying seriously. It’s a reference to the film “Clerks II.”

You had it in the form of the comment, made by the person they were replying to, calling out tokenism on the show. That was your context. All they did was ask, in response, if those characters were what was being called out because they seemed “a bit much.” Which isn’t gay bashing or racist on its face. All it tells you is they felt those characters were exemplary of tokenism for whatever reason. You could’ve worked all that out if you’d acknowledged the context you already had. Instead you bit their head off over a slight you made up in your head. Damn. :-/

I’ve only had to use it a few times so far but I’m 2 and 0 against the ugly, rusted, green metal U-Channel posts that originally held our mailboxes. 2 and 0 against fenceposts (one 4x4, the other round metal for a chain link).

I’ve also since seen people get one of those biting scissor clamps, on hi-lifts and purpose built tripod pullers, but I’m not sure how they’d perform against metal - whether or not the teeth would get a solid bite.

Definitely more than one way about it.

Farm jack (widowmaker, hi-lift, etc) has been my solution for poles and posts, so long as there’s enough to get a loop of chain around. Take a pair of 2x4’s and a lag bolt - attach them on either side through the top eye in the jack so you’ve got a sort of tripod. Wrap a loop or two of chain around the post and fix the chain to the jack. As you ratchet it up the chain will bite into itself and the post, eventually pulling it up. You do need enough exposed for the chain to grip but it works a treat.

I found a decent video showing off the idea.

They also make for an okayish winch. It won’t pull for far, given the short travel, but enough to unbury a tire in a pinch. Just never have your face over the handle and always be properly terrified of how unstable they can be. Not that any jack should ever be used without stands, but especially not a hi-lift.

When I die put my bones in an empty street
To remind me of how it used to be
Don’t write my name on a stone
Bring a Coleman lantern and the radio
Cleveland game and two fishing poles
And watch with me from the shore
Ghostly steel and iron ore ships coming home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG6gpwYH1DM

Made me think of this. Apologies in advance. Now to find a distraction from the melancholy it always elicits.

My first act as president is spitefully eating giant, delicious, fluffy, syrup-soaked Belgian waffles to my death. With the simultaneous, apparent, demise of the waffle who dealt the killing blow, there is no defender ergo no challenger. Vice president Butterworth signs orders abolishing the bloodsport and God Emperor Commander President Waffles is declared the nation’s leader in perpetuity.

And somehow it all seems way more rational than the last… fuck me, it’s only been 16 months? Fuck.

The “human” in me, whatever ages-long culmination of society and culture working tirelessly to reign in unthinking instinct and superstition, wants to agree with you. On the other hand “Ogg want not stop smashing 'til bad man stop gurgling.” Yeah, he’s decrepit and addled but he isn’t Lennie hugging the bunny rabbits a bit too hard. He knows the monster that he is, completely unabashed, and I’m not sure any punishment could be too much to attone for the crimes he’s undeniably guilty of. Nevermind the atrocities for which he is accused but which will also never be properly investigated.

Fully acknowledging we could make it a Line of Succession endurance match and we’d just be pummeling puppets for a moment’s catharsis. Taking frustrations out on living effigies, political avatars of our actual owners. Not that it wouldn’t be fun fast-tracking whiskeyleaks’ face into its future Kenneth Copeland form.