For anyone like me whose bullshit detector calibration is off from the past 10 years of crazy, this is indeed a real tweet from the official White House Twitter account.

Well it kinda depends. If criticizing the government could get you disappeared, then yeah, it’s logical for your parents to discourage that so they don’t lose you. It’s possible that they lost someone in your old country because of that and they don’t want to have that happen again.

On the other hand, if your new country has freedom of speech enshrined in law (and that law seems to be followed) then yeah, it would be silly not to criticize if you have criticisms.

Your mom has a point, focusing on things you cannot control might not be the best use of your time. If you disagree, then that’s fine, that’s your decision. I know that personally, I can get fixated on politics which will make me depressed, anxious, and overall shitty feeling. I need to carefully balance awareness/protest and what I can reasonably hope to achieve with my general quality of life.

For some reason “dildo” is way funnier than “you dildo”. Thanks for the laugh

There’s no way it’s intentional. If you’re not familiar with the phrase “white power” in a racist context, the product description is perfectly accurate and reasonable. It took me a few seconds to figure out the problem, so if someone is unfamiliar then there’s no way they’ll identify the problem.

How is improving the specs of a standard a scam? It’s not like a phone that entices people to buy them with new “features” of questionable utility. Cables are boring! Most people don’t buy HDMI cables for fun; they probably only buy them when they get a new device or when an existing cable dies. And even then, who is going to shell out for an expensive version of a cable that they won’t utilize its capabilities? Most people buy whatever is cheapest.

Tell the time, the date, and act as a stop watch according to the manufacturers website. My $250 watch does all that and it looks better.

I can totally understand buying a nice/expensive watch, they look nice, the feel nice, they’re accurate, they can do cool stuff. I don’t understand buying a watch that costs more than most cars cost, especially if it only does the most basic watch features.

Why would the WGBH logo give people nightmares? That thing was my childhood. We lived off of PBS shows. Arthur, Zoom, Between the Lions, NOVA, Frontline, Masterpiece, etc.

Oh I understood. I agree with you.

I would argue that something that was once available at home that is then restricted to a single place that must be shared with lots of people isn’t freely accessible.

My local library is within walking distance, but it’s pretty small. The Internet is free but not awesome in terms of speed.

If it’s only available at one place, it’s not freely accessible.

Logistically, how would that work? Libraries would have to be everywhere and they’d have to be massive. The IT infrastructure to support that would be immense. How would privacy work? Where could I go to have a private telehealth appointment, for example?

Ah! Thank you for the explanation

If Tesla’s stock crashes, then the value the banks could get from selling it is much lower.

If Twitter and Tesla go bankrupt, the banks will have loaned out billions to own something worthless.

At least I would assume that’s how it works.

What’s real wheel drive, supercharged, and mid-engined?

This glorious machine!

It has nothing to do with disliking learning. Trying to learn and use a system of measurement without being immersed in it is really hard. For years, I’ve set all my temperature measurements on my phone and thermometers to Celsius, but because I’m surrounded by people and systems that don’t use metric, I have to convert back and forth between the two. It’s a lot of mental effort for basically no gain.

Every day, customary speed and distance units and my intuitive understanding of them are reinforced when driving and seeing street signs. I know how long a kilometer is, but if you say “My brother lives 45 kilometers away”, I’d have a difficult time truly understanding that. I wouldn’t be able to estimate how long it would take to drive there, for example.

Another issue is cost. In my job, it would take weeks or months to update all of the documentation and code to metric. Then customers would have to approve of all those changes. A whole bunch of machinery still uses customary units too, so they would have to be replaced or updated.

I say all of this as a metric lover and evangelist. It’s not trivial to convert an entire massive country to metric. Countries that have converted already should be hugely proud of themselves for accomplishing a difficult task.

I feel gross agreeing with Rand fucking Paul about something.

For something slow moving and sticky like fake maple syrup, a plastic bottle will let you squeeze the syrup out instead of waiting for it to slowly drip down to the nozzle.

Good to know, thank you! I’ll have to look closer when I visit a forum next.

Reddit does shitty stuff, but at least I’m able to find stuff on there. Why Discord took off as a medium to replace forums is beyond me. It’s not easily searchable, and search engines can’t index it. If people aren’t fastidious about replying to messages they’re responding to, it’s just a nonsense stream of consciousness from dozens of people.

That being said, I hate the formatting of most forums. Reddit and Lemmy’s comment nesting is excellent. It’s very easy to follow conversations.

No, their airlines are not an ancillary product. They are their main product. According to Boeing’s earnings reports, the commercial aircraft segment of the company made up 56% of total revenue in 2018, 42% in 2019, 27% in 2020, 30% in 2021, 38% in 2022, and 43% in 2023. The rest of their revenue is split between the Defense, Space and Security segment, and the Global Services segment.

Prior to 2017, the vast majority of the earnings for the whole company came from the Commercial Airplanes segment. Since then, that segment has been operating at a loss. Since 2022, both Defense and Commercial Airplanes have been operating at a loss.

If you’re curious you can look up Boeing’s 10-k form. Page 56 has the revenue breakdowns.

Why would they love this? More claims means they have to pay out more. Even if they’re assholes and don’t pay out, they still have to process and fight claims which costs money.

The Constitution came into effect nearly 13 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed.