That’s a beautiful dog and a wonderful picture.

That would be it. :-)

It’s impressive that after all these years and all those billions of dollars, Zuckerberg still gets up every morning and thinks, “How can I make the world an even worse place than I have already?”

The current Democratic leadership hold basically the same views as the pre-MAGA Republicans. And anyone who thinks they weren’t evil needs to read up on Newt Gingrich. I’m happy to see them differentiate themselves from the progressives. They’ve been coasting along on support from people who have always supported the Democrats, but haven’t looked closely at what that has come to mean.

The Final Sacrifice. This isn’t a “it’s kind of bad” film. This is an “even self-funding doesn’t explain how this got made” film. It is fun to watch only because it’s so unbelievably bad.

I’ve tried that in the past, but I don’t think it will currently work. I’ll look into it, though.

Thank you! I will check that out.

Have you ever noticed that both stocks and bonds refer to devices for imprisonment?

I recently upgraded to Windows 11. I’ve been putting it off, but there are a few apps I need that simply do not work under 10 anymore. Bleah.

I’ve been using it on a work machine for several years, but I am still surprised at just how much it sucked to switch from 10. My personal setup has been heavily customized over many years to suit my particular needs and wants. More than half of that customization is no possible under 11. There are workarounds for a few pieces of it, but even those are unlikely to remain stable and functional for very long. Microsoft is constantly changing things that cause unsupported features to break.

So I now have a slower, less reliable, less versatile, and less configurable software environment. It also conducts far more surveillance and sends even more information about me to Microsoft. There is not one single way in which this could be considered an upgrade, except by Microsoft’s shareholders.

I’m going to set up dual boot with Zorin. That will allow me to boot into Windows 11 for the few things I need that will only run in that environment. The remaining 99.9% of the time I will just run Linux. (I already know Linux pretty well, I just haven’t run it as my primary desktop.)

I suspect my next project will be replacing my Android phone’s OS with something less invasive.

In the interest of fairness, I have to post an update. Kickstarter had not done anything about the problem for a while, so I stopped using it. I just discovered today that they actually did fix it.

We have reached the point where companies are willing to lose a small number of privacy-oriented users in exchange for detailed data about the rest. I am already running into sites that are not fully functional from a privacy-oriented browser. (For instance, I can no longer see prices or make pledges on Kickstarter when using LibreWolf.) That will get worse, but I also expect some sites to break with Google and Microsoft so they can continue to serve (and make money from) the larger group. It will be interesting to see how it settles out.

It is good to see reality force itself on people who claim it doesn’t exist. The laws of physics and biology are not negotiable.

John Oliver deserves a Congressional Gold Medal in recognition for all of his work. He has made a point of not only reporting on, but actively antagonizing, bad people in positions of power and bad corporations. And he’s managed to be quite funny while doing it. The man is a national treasure.

I think we need to start holding paintball battles around Flock cameras. Just to provide the surveillance techs with some entertainment, of course.

“Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” --Stephen Colbert

There’s an old joke: Friends help you move. Real friends help you move the body.

Friendship comes in many different forms and at many different levels. There’s nothing wrong with having casual friends who you see primarily to have a good time, but that is not all there is. More serious friendships involve mutual support as well as shared interests.

Thank you for explaining that!

That sounds delicious! Now I need to find an Indian place that also serves fries.

Translation: People noticed something shortsighted and irresponsible that the Trump administration was doing, so they backtracked it and moved on to their many other shortsighted and irresponsible projects.

Things like this are yet another reason we have got to get these people out of power as quickly as possible. These things aren’t just stupid, they result in massive physical damage and they kill a lot of people.

Actually, one of the funny things about this is the degree to which Elon is obviously bothered by every little thing. He’s the richest human being to have ever lived, but he is so rife with obsessions, insecurities, and fears that he is probably less happy than most of us.