Appreciate it, I remember reading many years ago that after WW2, most countries agreed to sign into law that soldiers were legally obligated to disobey unlawful orders and report the person who gave the order to their superiors, but that the US was one of the nations that didn’t.

But a quick search brings up nothing but articles talking about what you posted, so I can’t find any info on it. I wonder if in other countries it’s enshrined outside of military law, and that’s the distinction? I have no clue.

What country did you serve for? AFAIK, the US is one of a handful of countries that don’t have a law stating that soldiers are obligated to refuse unlawful orders and to report those who gave those orders.

I think Facebook had an advantage in originally being targeted at college kids (I think you even needed a school ID to make an account originally) before becoming open to everyone. This meant that the userbase was a little older than that of most social media at the time and it worked as a way to stay in touch with people after you graduated. Then, when they opened it up, it became a way to stay in touch with family as well, which got the parents onboard with something that they had just considered a fad before, like MySpace.

A friend of mine had an alarm clock with big rubberized wheels on it that would drive around the room as it went off, so you had to get out of bed to turn it off.

That lasted a few weeks before he grabbed it and chucked it as hard as he could against a wall while still half asleep, then went back to sleep.

10 is the last version of Windows I’ll be using, and I don’t want to have more full screen ads for 11 pop up on top of whatever program I’m trying to use. The previous time it happened is what prompted me to do it in the first place, and I’m definitely not gonna let them force update my Windows version like they’ve done in the past.

Stuff like this is why I disabled the TPM on my computer. No TPM means that you’re “not eligible” for 11, meaning I don’t get nagged by the random full screen pop-ups.

A miserable pile of secrets and lies. But enough talk, have at you!

Interestingly, underground lines aren’t feasible in my hometown because of how close the water table is to the surface. Any trench deep enough to bury cables in would have to worry about flooding with groundwater or saltwater in some places.

The water table is so high that not only are there many places where basements would flood 100% of the year, but the majority of homes still have septic tanks instead of town sewage lines, and you can find houses where the lawn has been raised up with 3 or 4 feet of concrete to raise the septic tank to comply with modern regulations to avoid contaminating the groundwater supply.

IIRC, people have previously reported that Windows 11(?) switched their default browser back to Edge after installing an update.

There is an alternative that I wish I could think of the name of that communities have been using for a number of years now to set up cheap, small-scale satellite internet networks. I looked into it once as an alternative for my neighborhood to dealing with the bullshit that is Comcast and Verizon, and ended up getting an ad for milsec strategic level network infrastructure from Boeing or something. Regardless, it’s a known and proven alternative that’s cheaper than the big guys and has hit a point where some places have set it up as a part of local government run infrastructure.

Exactly what I was referring to. It’s one of the reasons that the CIA requested the FBI inquiry into Trump that resulted in the raid on Mar a Lago.

I’ve been thinking about spending a few years dead for tax reasons.

Thanks, I fucking love it.

It really depends on where you live and the kinds of bins you have. I keep my bins in my garage because we get snow (used to get snow? Climate change and all that), and there are times when I can smell even just the normal household garbage inside the house. I also live in a duplex, so my entire downstairs is a single large room with a kitchenette off of it, meaning that when the garbage cans stink, they stink up the entire downstairs of the house.

I think the cans the town uses just don’t have a great seal on them, as I’ve heard other people complain about similar issues with the smell, and my parents even have a separate small can they keep outside specifically for their dog poop that they toss into the actual garbage right as they take it out to the curb so it doesn’t stink up their house.

Luckily, I’ve never had the issue of people tossing their poop into my cans, but I’ve heard tons of people complain about it. People not picking up after their dogs at all, however…that’s a different story that’s so bad around my neighborhood that multiple people have installed signs about it.

I surely don’t know what you mean. They’re to keep the raccoons out! That’s why they’re on a piece of velcro, so they’re removable!

Sarcasm aside, absolutely. Even if you wouldn’t get in trouble for people hurting themselves by going into your bins, you could probably get in trouble for messing with town property or something. It’s just the kind of thing I immediately think of after growing up with stories of “Let me take care of that for you” about a guy who’s probably doing 30 to life for prostitution and selling heroin/whatever else the Hell’s Angels get up to.

Oftentimes, these kinds of people don’t bother to check if the bins have already been picked up or not, so you get a bin that smells like dog shit for the next week.

Your friend sounds very creative, I’d personally go for gluing a piece of velcro to the inside lip of the handle with razor blades on it. Of course, I’m also not an engineer, just somebody whose grandfather was friends with the #2 Hell’s Angel for a state who would ask if he wanted him to “take care of” problems like that. The old razor blades and broken glass in the root ball trick worked wonders when somebody was repeatedly stealing the shrubs out of my grandfather’s pots.

Many people do this after the bins have already been emptied, meaning that for the next week, you have to deal with a bin that smells like dog shit.

Reminds me of a story from when I was younger of a guy who killed 3 people with a katana at a drug deal gone bad at a local motel. The courts ruled it was self-defense.

The most cyberpunk “street samurai” shit I’ve ever heard. Just needs to have the dude deflecting bullets to seal the deal.

Trump has been a Russian asset since the 80s. His ties to Russian criminal organizations have been known since then, but the FBI has never been able to get any charges to stick.

The CIA believed that he gave Putin information about current intelligence operations and agents against Russia during his presidency enough to request an inquiry which led to the FBI raid on Mar a Lago, where they found confidential documents on CIA activity amongst all the other confidential documents illegally held there after his term.

He will side with Russia, guaranteed.