From a spy craft and capabilities standpoint it’s an amazing attack. I’m skeptical that using the devices as bombs is more useful than using them for spying, but who knows? It is super fucked up that random people who happen to be near the targets could be hurt. But between that and the stuxnet attack, it’s safe to say that Israel is capable of crazy sophisticated attacks.

Thanks. I honestly haven’t been following it all closely. (I guess that’s obvious from my last comment). But why blow up a bunch of people in Lebanon?

So if I understand correctly, Israel managed to get a bunch of people in Hezbollah to use pagers and walkie talkies that contained bombs. But they have not been able to gather enough intelligence from control of those communication devices to find and rescue the remaining hostages? And if they weren’t able to catch useful information from those devices, why did the people holding those devices deserve to get blown up?

Burke accused the court of denying him his religious rights, which included his belief in two genders, male and female. “This is a mockery of justice,” he told the judge.

He can exercise his “religious rights“ to be a bigot, but not at the school and not as a teacher.

Crowdstrike completely screwed the pooch with this deploy but ideally, Windows wouldn’t get crashed by a bas 3rd party software update. Although, the crashes may be by design in a way. If you don’t want your machine running without the security software running, and if the security software is buggy and won’t start up, maybe the safest thing is to not start up?

The Washington Post got the What’s App transcripts and multiple participants confirming the content of the chat. They then asked the mayor’s office about it and the spokesperson said that the question was anti Semitic.

Correction, they asked about the Zoom meeting (which they had the transcript and on the record participants):

Asked about the Zoom meeting with chat group members, the mayor’s office did not address it directly, instead sharing a statement from deputy mayor Fabien Levy noting that New York police entered Columbia’s campus twice in response to “specific written requests” from university leadership. “Any suggestion that other considerations were involved in the decision-making process is completely false,” Levy said. He added, “The insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print.”

Eric Clapton is wildly overrated

He was a developer on whatever company he had that got folded into PayPal. It would be accurate to say that he never was a good developer.

There are enough vegans who absolutely discuss their diet immediately to keep the joke alive. Given how difficult and isolating it can be in many places, I get how it can become really core to one’s identity.

Are we sure that this isn’t a giant space Jiffy Pop?

If you think there is even a remote possibility that anything in American politics would involve anything but the very lowest of bars, then you’re gonna be pretty disappointed. We’re at the point where we’re begging half of the voting public to please refrain from electing treasonous, felonious, fascists. The bar is so low, it may be the only place left on the planet that isn’t full of microplatics.

PSA if you have one grandparent who was born in Ireland then you may qualify for Irish citizenship. Getting all the needed documentation together and going through the whole process can easily take the better part of a year, so don’t delay.

Even with citizenship, moving abroad is a lot of work and expense. I no longer have any illusions that “cooler heads will prevail” or that “the adults in the room will maintain the status quo”, so having an out, even an extremely expensive one, is very comforting.

📠

They probably killed Kennedy and MLK but now they’ve lost their edge?

Fuck Ronald Regan

Do you want them to make the retirements age 90? I’d rather not give those assholes a perverse incentive to reduce benefits.

I want her to be able to put liens on all his properties. I doubt that can happen but it would be glorious.

You’re probably right but it still pisses me off. No one else gets to pull that shit. Defendants that want to be heard in court can take the stand and all the risks that come with cross examination.

I used to stick to that rule and get a sensible mid sized Toyota Corolla or Honda Accord that’s a few years old as needed. But in 2013 (the last time I needed to get a new car) the cost savings were really low compared to new. I think the used market was particularly hot so you’d save less that 10% of the cost, so I ended up getting my 1st and only (so far) brand new car ever.

Sounds like you’re doing everything you can. It sucks that you’re going through this; I hope the situation improves and you don’t get furloughed.

I’m guessing that if you could get to all your jobs without the car, you would have already done so? Saving on gas and insurance can help, but depending on where you live that might not be realistic.

You could try contacting local food banks and see if they ever make accommodations for people who are working during operating hours. They might not but there’s no harm in asking.

Right now you’re in a serious hole from missing work for a family emergency. I don’t have much advice for getting back onto steady ground aside from being super crazy frugal and working extra hours in the short term (which is fucking exhausting mentally and emotionally and physically). Do you have any long term plans for having more breathing room years from now? If your steady state is “one car repair or illness away from defaulting on payments” then that’s a hard path. Do you or your wife have prospects for better paying jobs in the future? Are there training or educational opportunities that could help? Are there cheaper places you could live (smaller, worse neighborhood?) to save money while working towards better job prospects? Living on not enough money in crappy circumstances sucks but it is definitely more bearable if you know it’s temporary and you’re making progress towards something better.

Good luck.