Thurstylark

To be fair, free broadcast tv and radio is still a thing, and they are an integral part of the US’s disaster alert system. With the right equipment (read: basic cheap radio available almost everywhere), you can still listen to weather information (both general and severe) directly from the horse’s mouth 24/7 for free.

In a disaster situation, these services will still stand because they require less infrastructure per person reached than is required to deliver high-speed internet to the same number of people.

These services still exist, and will continue to, but the knowledge of them has atrophyed from disuse. They won’t go away, they’ve just been replaced in general usage because of the convenience that the internet provides us.

TL;DR: Get you a weather radio, get free weather for the life of the equipment. Even if it’s not your daily driver, get one anyways, because you’ll be able to hear the most relevant info in the worst situation.

I already don’t own an xbox and am happy about it. Checkmate, MS.

The arbitrarity of some states’ knife laws is also a problem. I don’t remember which state (OK pre ~2015 law updates perhaps?), but I read about one that had few carry restrictions below a certain blade size (somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 inches, IIRC), and if you’re caught carrying one over the limit, you basically have to give a specific purpose for having it. Assuming your case goes to trial, this means it’s more or less up to the judge to determine if your use was valid, which is juuuuuuuussst flexible enough to persecute the “right” people. (assuming I’m remembering correctly that this was in Oklahoma, that would be Native Americans)

Switching gears; Some More News had a pretty comprehensive video about moral panics, which also includes some history on switchblades in particular, for those interested.

I’m having trouble finding it, but there’s a clip of a left wing commentator (I believe it was Sam Seder) saying that they were going to dinner with right wing commentators after some sort of news appearance. He was continuing to talk about the subject at hand, when the other person told him something along the lines of, “Hey, just leave that on the field, man.”

It’s clear that they don’t believe the bullshit they’re spouting. They’ll run propaganda and interference for whatever side gives them money and attention regardless of what they’re saying and how it harms people.

Is it common? That depends on your context. Since your particular context includes an internet connection, literacy, and living in a situation with the means to reserve space for a child that isn’t home full-time, I feel pretty confident in my estimation that it’s probably not common.

Is it harmful? No. Honestly, I think it’s pretty sweet. My only advice is to not let it stray into forbidden territory, but you seem to already have a pretty good grasp of where the line is.

I think this might be a “yes, but no” kind of thing.

Yes, these are test strips. Yes, they change color to indicate a reading. Yes, they use chemical reactions to cause that color change.

AFAIK: No, these aren’t for testing blood. No, these don’t seem to be for consumption by an electronic meter. And no, I don’t think this is what OP was asking about.

Like, there’s probably some good info, but not for this thread specifically :P

Source: Pulling it straight out of my ass, but it is informed by my limited experience with medical test equipment, and much less limited experience with electronics.

Waow. MS can’t decide if their users should have control of their hardware or not.

Your linux bootloader and efi config? That belongs to Windows, and it will make changes as much as it wants. A recovery partition that has no usefulness outside their own ecosystem? Yeah, they know it’s fucked, and they fucked it, but it’s your computer, you fix it!

They get paid when the least amount of people they insure use their services. They’re not incentivized to help those they’ve insured. The less they have to pay out to providers, the better the executive bonuses. Thus, they are diligent in collecting premiums, but can just sit on their hands when it comes to paying out.

The more the system denies and delays a claim, the fewer insured people are willing or able to put themselves through the bureaucracy gauntlet, the fewer pay outs.

They’re not in the business of insurance, they’re in the business of making money from the business of insurance. It’s over-complicated on purpose.