The same thing seems to be happening with regard to regular citizens and ICE raiders, and I’m here for it.

Agreed, I love to see it.

I’ma homebody and live in bumfuck where thankfully almost nothing ever happens, but I’ve signed up for an action newsletter for news and information on how I can help, and I do my part to donate locally to my food bank and other things I care about. Dunno that it helps with the current state of things, but it’s something. Hopefully more opportunities to help in the future as I hate this draconian shit going down.

Apologies for misunderstanding your comment, that’s on me.

Holy shit, my brain did the 10 year skip again. Fuck, it’s been a long, long mess.

You know what? That’s entirely fair.

Ah, gotcha. Weirdly vague comment, but in that case, I agree.

What does that have to do with anything? Terrorists hijacked a plane 14 years ago and now we’re here.

The terrorists today are domestic, running around in tacticool gear and working for our government.

Is this provided via T-Mobile or did he just rip off T-Mobile’s logo font?

You can’t have roving mobs destroying your city every night.

No, the curfews are for L.A. residents and civilians, not ICE and the L.A.P.D. The roving mobs are still out.

TACO.

I hate that. I had my home built to spec a few years ago. The exterior siding is cedar shake stained a chocolatey brown with forest green trim, and the interior is white walls but with natural wood trim, pale golden laminate wood flooring, and two tone hickory wood cabinets, and the interior doors are all just natural wood unpainted.

I’ve leaned into the wood aesthetic with my DIY standing desk and custom pine desktop stained a dark red oak color, among various other earth tone color hints, and splashes of brighter decoration here and there.

Was going for “cozy cabin/cottage” and I think we nailed it. It’s very rustic.

I really hate the modern trends of white, black, steel, and glass.

Sounds great. I’m in my 40s with myopia, astigmatism, and more recently, presbyopia.

Progressive lenses don’t work for me, and needing two pairs of glasses is not ideal, even if it mostly works. Plus I can’t even just buy reading glasses off the shelf, even my short range office lenses need a prescription and are expensive as hell.

Autofocusing lenses sound like an awesome alternative.

As a former VMware employee this is just sad.

VMware was a great place to work, with a lot of people who cared about what they were building and supporting, and now it’s just a hollowed out vulture capitalist’s pump and dump. Anybody with any sense is migrating to alternatives, if they haven’t already.

This is a weirdly aggressive take without considering variables. Almost petulant seeming.

6” readers are relatively cheap no matter the brand, but cost goes up with size. $250 to $300 is what a 7.8” or 8” reader costs, but there’s not a single one I know of at 6” at that price.

There’s 10” and 13” models. Are you saying they should cost the same as a Kindle?

Not to mention, regarding Kindle, Amazon spent years building the brand but selling either at cost or possibly even taking a loss on the devices as they make money on the book sales. Companies who can’t do that tend to charge more.

Lastly, it’s not “feature creep” to improve the devices over time, many changes are quality of life. Larger displays for those that want them. Frontlit displays, and later the addition of warm lighting. Displays essentially doubled their resolution allowing for crisper fonts and custom fonts to render well. Higher contrast displays with darker blacks for text. More recently color displays as an option.

This is all progress, but it’s not free. Also, inflation is a thing and generally happens at a rate of 2% to 3% annually or thereabouts during “normal” times, and we’ve hardly been living in normal times over the last decade and a half.

I would rather pay more for a better device, and preferably not one from Amazon if I can help it. Its only a matter of time before they start cracking down even more on side loading

They already started that technically with removing USB downloads. I got sick of their shit and jailbroke my Kindles. They live in KOReader now.

Is the price of an eReader that big of a deal? They practically pay for themselves with use over time, and they last a ridiculous number of years.

My first Kindle was the K3 Keyboard for $140 in 2011. It finally died in late 2018 after nearly 8 years of use. I regrettably binned it, as I didn’t know you could replace the battery at the time. Shame, I really liked that thing.

I bought a Kindle PW4 for “cheap” ($80 or $90?) in 2019 to replace it, but I hated it after spending some months reading on a larger tablet, Replaced it with a “premium” Boox Nova 2 eReader for $310, and I still use that one today. I plan to just get a cheap battery replacement when it kicks the bucket, as it’s easily user serviceable and a new battery for it is less than $15.

I also got a Kindle Paperwhite Signature in 2023 for $135 as an “upgrade” to the Boox, but it was more a sidegrade. I use both of them alternatingly today.

So I’ve on average paid about $48 a year on eReaders. Seems reasonable considering how many books I’ve gotten for free or very deep discounts via stuff like Bookbub, as well as “free” Prime First reads and Kindle Unlimited books I read over the years as a Prime subscriber, Project Gutenberg and Standard eBooks, as well as digital library access.

I’ve paid more than $48 in one month for subscription services at times that I used less than my eReaders, which see use daily. And you don’t have to be like me and buy multiple, you can buy one reader and use it pretty much indefinitely so long as the battery is user replaceable, so the upfront cost is sort of irrelevant over a long enough time span.

Interesting. I actually take an omega-3 supplement, but it’s flaxseed based, not fish oil.

Man… this shit kills me (literally and figuratively). After I got my glucose under control, she (the above noted doc) told my wife “do what he’s doing” in response to an entirely different, unrelated health condition.

One doctor (second after I “cancelled” that first one I mentioned) told me I was cured after I tested 5.1 a1c. I’m like, are you serious? Get me some fucking donuts right now, I’ll wait. We can test again in an hour and see. He backed off the “cured” talk really fast. Then later proceeded to evangelize about statins over multiple visits like it was his job to sell them.

Thankfully I’m now working with a NP who’s knowledgeable and considers holistic health options (lifestyle change, exercise, etc.) as well.

This. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

When I first got diagnosed with T2 my doc tried to put me on the Mediterranean diet. You know, the one with all kinds of pasta? Yeah, no fucking way that worked.

I ended up having to do keto for about 8 weeks to get my glucose levels under control and then meticulously jab test myself for every freaking meal for about 10 months until I figured out how a variety of foods affected my glucose levels. Mostly just gotta eat high protein, moderate fat, and low carb, but also have to supplement a lot of fiber (soluble and insoluble) and various vitamins so I don’t suffer dietary deficiencies.

At the end of the day, intense resistance training exercise still has a larger impact than any other lifestyle change. And I still occasionally have to go on jab sessions with the vampire stick on the rare occasion my glucose gets out of whack again.

———

Edit- I hope to Hell he’s not talking about T1 diabetics. A cooking class isn’t gonna help when your pancreas has left the chat.

That would be great, but… Murica and all that. If they can fuck us without lube, they will.

Guarantee Walmart starts pricing things at $xx.96 and milking $0.04 on every transaction.

Yields are down a bit right now, unless you’re willing to go with a sketchy, not sure if FDIC insured “bank.”

Currently I’m seeing rates of around 3.5%, or 3.63 APY.