You’re missing the underlying issue that these people care about, once again, “celebrities” I’ll never meet. It makes fuck-all difference what their politics are. What am I going to do, get past layers of publicists and show them the light? I’m not L. Ron Hubbard, and times have changed.

I know some of the names on that list. But honestly … favourite celebrities? Like, I’ve got a favourite bartender, but people I’ll never meet? Seems a waste of time to rank them.

Not to mention, what people in the entertainment industry have to say about politics is moot. It’s bad enough that politicians want to curb creative output in a certain mould. Do you look to your local favourite meteorologist for dog-grooming tips? If not, perhaps celebrity political thoughts are equally useless.

All these damn website changes. Last week, the camera spex were in Ohms.

Whatever new name comes to pass, it needs to get abbreviated to SHIT.

Talk amongst yourselves.

The TSA in and of itself has always been a make-work security-theatre project. Just as we did just fine without creating the Department of FatherHomeland Security, it’s not like there’d been a whole bunch of hijackings under the previous airport-screening scheme.

Sure, you’ve got 9/11, but that was far more of a failure on the part of the national-security apparatus writ large than the folks at security at any given airport.

At this point, the biggest danger in air travel is boarding a Boeing. It’s a shame Airbus hasn’t hired Tom Bodett for a “we’ll keep the doors on for you” ad campaign.

But back to the shoes. I have lived exclusively in Birkenstocks – the generic two-strap Arizonas at that – since 1993, with a minor excursion for my first job (“Men at the DN-R wear ties”). I have no idea what I could hide in those, especially in sufficient quantity to blow up a plane, without ripping the soles off, carving out some space in the cork and then attempting to reaffix the sole in a stable enough manner that I could even get to the airport, let alone to security.

This was a stupid rule from the get-go. That it took nearly 20 years to admit that tells you pretty much all you need to know about airport security.

I would be apoplectic if if took five days for a number port with a constantly changing website and clueless customer service. Not to mention data simply being completely shut off after hitting the “high speed” limit.

Except for being assigned a completely new number instead of porting, with the old carrier having released it. The impacts here on 2FA and having to tell everyone you have a new number when most of your contacts don’t answer calls from unknown numbers. Except you can’t for days anyway, and who knows what calls and texts you’ve missed in that time.

I was fully expecting this to be a categorically terrible vanity project, but the grift exceeds expectations.

I saw the second in “5D” … which is to say the rollercoaster chairs watching a 2D movie while water occasionally spritzes (ironic, given the setting) and scent bursts pop out, not smelling like anything relevant, just a vaguely unpleasant but otherwise anodyne smell. I think I’d have better been able to actually watch the movie without all the distractions people pay more to get.

The first two were great cinematic works, so I have high hopes for the third. Shame it’s still a year and a half out.

You can always check the modlog.

The reason I provided was “Blaming falling fertility rates on Covid vaccines via a preprint is not appropriate for this community.”

You provided no context for irrelevant links. That’s not how Beehaw works.

I went to a conference for college newspaper editors at the University of Georgia in 2000. The goodie bag included a copy of a UGA professor’s book When MBAs Run the Newsroom. And prescient. Now they run everything and have no fucking clue what the business actually does.

Golden parachute time! They can take some time off while figuring out what to fuck up next.

So far, so meh. Talked with my mom yesterday and got an update about how my dad is doing in his nursing home. Apparently badly, as he’s been banned from the dining room for spitting up food on his way out and refusing to use a napkin.

Sorta feels like the endgame. In lighter news, mom realized she’d sent half the expected amount to start the month, so I live to eat another day. It’s so weird, being accustomed to having all manner of food in the pantry in a previous life, to realize that there really isn’t anything left.

I turn 46 on Friday, but I have nothing to celebrate.

Agreed. Luckily, they don’t seem to have the full list of Mullvad IPs, so if I really want to read something, I just try another tunnel.

I got fixed the same year I had a cervical spine fusion. Since I’d well met my deductible, getting snipped ran $35.

Welcome! I suspect you’ll find what you’re looking for here. This is a great group of Beeple who will challenge you while respecting you.

But why not Firefox or a fork? Vivaldi is Chromium. I use Vivaldi, but only for my less-savoury links.

Not the ruling itself, but corporations file all sorts of motions before and during the initial trial specifically so that if a motion is denied, voila! Now the jury verdict and compensation decision isn’t what they’re challenging, but rather technical aspects from rulings by the judge overseeing the trial court … admission or inadmission of evidence is always a popular one.

To suggest that anyone else has the sort of law firms on retainer to play this game all the way to the top is folly. It’s just another way in which the system is rigged.

Not at all … it’s just that corporations, unwilling to take no for an answer, have functionally unlimited funds to throw toward several rounds of escalating court cases while defendants … don’t. It creates an inherently lopsided situation the legal system wasn’t explicitly designed for, but now this is just standard.

Companies walk into these trials essentially seeing the first round as a rehearsal.

Before you built up your collection, how did you use to discover new music back in the day? I’m guessing probably from the radio, this is that for the current generation.

In high school, sure, but CDs were still $20 ($44 in 2025 dollars), and my dislike of the fake tone of advertising made me want to abandon it as quickly as possible. Younger than that, I’d do the whole “hope a track comes on and hit record on a cassette” thing.

When I started college in 1997, mp3s were an entirely new concept, and I wasn’t exactly rolling in cash. My first foray was IRC Fservs in the dorm, and after that, I don’t clearly recall the order of operations regarding Napster, LimeWire, BearShare, Kazaa, ratio FTP servers (one of which I operated via dyndns and led to being exposed to music I never otherwise would have been), and likely a couple of other sources I’ve since forgotten about.

So yeah, it was piracy to start, but finding trance at the turn of the century was nigh impossible without shelling out a Jackson in hopes that the tiny electronic section at Tower Records would hold some gems I’d only be able to discover after purchase. Once tracks became anywhere from 79 cents to $1.89 I slowly rebuilt my extant collection with purchased copies (320kbps sounds much better than 112 to start, and I do like supporting artists) complete with full metadata.

Back when Amazon didn’t completely suck, they often had promos on digital goods when one opted for slower shipping; I got a lot of free music that way, as you could get a $1 credit for each item, leading to the somewhat absurd situation of things being effectively cheaper when purchased and shipped separately, which isn’t where economies of scale come from (and wasteful as hell in terms of packaging).

I guess no one was available to poison his tea …

I hate that this is how our legal system has evolved. Trial courts mean nothing when a corporation loses, because invariably an appeal is filed, and if the circuit court upholds a ruling, well, time to talk to SCOTUS.