Yeah, my first thought was the cops, too. That’s usually when the authorities hush up.

Is the bee ok?

Thanks for linking those. I can tell you that most people that know English as a first language have very little to no knowledge about the history between Poland and Ukraine. Like many things in the international world, it’s very complicated. But now I understand it a little better. I would agree that Poland is under no obligation to support a government that can’t seem to separate it’s independence from fascist leaders of the past, which does raise questions about the direction of the future. Yes, Ukraine needs to be free. They need an the help they can get. But what if they win, and fascism takes hold?

I mean, look at how the US is falling to fascism. People aren’t careful enough.

Maybe give us a quick synopsis? I live in neither country so I don’t know the nuances you’re referring to. Did Ukraine officially say something against Poland? Or a portion of Polish government? You’re pointing to a blog post and not a news outlet, so that’s a very niche source and not typically deemed credible in the US (where I live). If you have a link to like The Guardian, or something like that, I’d absolutely believe it.

I could… tell when I made it to the bathroom. The sesame oil was not digested at all. I have eaten the same type of salad before and since.

Maybe it’s a unique thing to just me, but no, I’ll never try that again just to see. It was a horrible experience.

Pretty sure it was being raw that did it. I’ve cooked with it since and never had a problem. But when it goes on a salad, it’s typically just right out of the bottle… Never again.

Just as a heads up to anyone reading this… Don’t use sesame oil to make an oil and vinegar dressing. I did it once and shit my pants so bad I never wore khaki pants again. That stuff isn’t like Olive oil or anything else in your kitchen. It is Instant Bad Day in a bottle.

I play FFXIV. I’ll break it down by expansions, but it’s the one that didn’t follow the general downwards trend so much.

1.0 - trash. They couldn’t figure out how to work together. One guy spends forever making the best looking water wheel ever, in the background, that you never interact with. It’s too graphically intensive, and flows the wrong way from the water. It doesn’t match the building it’s attached to. Meanwhile, they forget to add roads towards main cities. It’s an unplayable mess. It’s literally unplayable, as they killed it off to replace it with:

2.0, A Realm Reborn - they really fixed it under one guy’s leadership. It’s playable, and works. It’s outdated somewhat today, but has a lot of moral grey areas and twists. There’s a lot of running around and time wasting, which was common back then.

Heavenward - they made a great story. It’s one of the best expansions. Streamlined and faster. No needless “talk to 5 villagers” quests like previously.

Stormblood - not as great. There’s a lot of setup they use later. The world building is really great, though. Some of the best looking areas.

Shadowbringers - the best expansion they’ve ever made. Perfectly balanced world building and characters, and story. This is peak FF, with the best music as well. Probably because they can ditch much of the old A Realm Reborn story.

Endwalker - ties it all together. The story leads up to “death is inevitable for everything that has ever lived, so just die now” kind of depression hopelessness that you wonder how they’ll get out of it. Well, because it’s Japanese and FF, it’s the power of friendship that saves the day. But, this really feels like the culmination of everything they’ve learned in the previous expansions.

Dawntrail - this is the downward slide. They force you into a role to support someone for ruler that is almost slapstick bad. Characters don’t make logical choices. The theme is all over the place and can’t decide what it wants to be. Many people say to stop at endwalker, but we’ll see how the next expansion goes, which is years away.

There’s plenty to say about the game otherwise, but the general thought is that they’re gradually cutting corners, taking longer, and under delivering as they’re stretched too thin. They’re feeling the same pressure everyone else in the world is - not enough money. Which is crazy, because FFXIV is THE game keeping Square Enix alive.

Allegedly, he was given liquid capital by Russian oligarchs to buy Twitter when the courts ruled that he was obligated to buy it. He might be rich, but that kind of money wasn’t just sitting in his checking account. It was his company valuations.

Once he got tangled into Twitter, that’s when he seemed to really go off the deep end.

Thank you so much for reporting back how you fixed it! This will definitely help others at some point.

IDK, that could be different. I bought some surfaces ~2 years ago that apparently aren’t capable of upgrading to 11. They’re perfectly usable, so I’ll have to put Linux on them. I think anyone that’s capable will find that they have to do that, or throw out perfectly good hardware to buy the next shiny thing.

The only problem is I did switch my laptop to Ubuntu back in the day to avoid W7. Or maybe to was 10? All I did was stream video, like Netflix, on it. Turns out, Netflix wouldn’t run because they locked it down to specific OSes. WINE could run it, with a horrible stutter. So I had to dual boot, then I switched to a VM of Windows in Linux, which ended up just being another step to get to stream a movie. Coupled with hours of driver problems to solve, it just wasn’t worth the hassle.

Now, it’s a matter of “can I stream?” Because otherwise, they’re e-waste. I really hope they can, because while I’ll have to keep my gaming PC on w11, my htpc and tablets I will gladly switch.

I can’t imagine I’m alone. If people can get their programs out of the walled garden of Microsoft, I think they will. Not so much new features, but that they can just do what they always do. We’re creatures of habit. We probably won’t see adoption in high numbers, but more than before.

Also, it’s entirely possible I’ll have to eat these words if streaming still doesn’t work right.

Well shit. I guess I can’t play it anymore. There’s still duotrigordle, waffle, and a million others though. Plus I was starting to see ads on the app.

If it happens past your lifetime, it doesn’t matter. So for sure it’ll pass. These sayings are meant to apply to you, not history.

I look back to the serenity prayer, which is really just a bit of Buddhism: “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The Buddhist path is “why is there suffering in the world?” Because of attachment. You want things to stay the same. Things change. You want your parents to live forever. You don’t want to be sick. You wish your job didn’t suck. Why can’t I just win the lottery and have my problems go away? You want to cling to the good times and not have the bad. You can let go of the bad, and the resultant suffering because of it will fade. Letting go is incredibly hard, because our biological bodies are hard wired on routines. But if you can overcome that, and accept that whatever happened, happened, you can move forward. You can’t change the past. And whether you like it or not, time and the world moves forward. You can move forward with it, or let something hold you back.

And just to clarify, I’m an atheist, so my understanding of both the Serenity Prayer and Buddhism are seen through the lense of someone that doesn’t believe in an afterlife or religion in general (strict Buddhism is not a religion). I encourage you to find your own conclusions.

I just want to ride on my motorcycle

Well, right, it doesn’t have to be a specific OS. I haven’t done much research because I’m my current situation, it’s not a good option for me as (for instance) some of my required 2FA apps won’t validate on a rooted phone.

If that changes, I’d do more research, obviously.

I rooted my phone years ago and it was a chore. Once it finally worked, hardly any of my apps would run and nothing important worked because suddenly a rooted phone isn’t “safe”. It was such a pain in the ass to do updates and fight programs to run that I stopped. I didn’t want to spend hours fixing a device that I really didn’t want to think about.

I would love to install GrapheneOS and have it mostly just work. I hate having my phone locked down like it’s not mine, and it’s one of the reasons I won’t use it for anything important over my desktop.

I didn’t even know Putin claimed he’d take Kyiv in 3 days until you said something and got all upset about it, brochacho. But now that you made us all look it up, I’m definitely repeating it to everyone, everywhere.

Can you tell me more things that make Putin look like a fool? Since that seems to be what your goal is.

You think they’d divulge the intelligence report, thus potentially exposing their sources, to settle Internet arguments?

If it was internal to the US after the investigation when all the involved parties were identified, a la 9/11, then I would expect it. But not in international relations.

It’s pretty decent at stopping mosquitoes from getting to your skin, sun burn is lessened, but our technology definitely can overcome that. It just takes a little more effort than existing, like hair does.

The Catholic Church thought they could pour their brand of religion into the entire continent for hundreds of years, gaining loyal support and broadening their power. Looks like they just found out they exported the bigotry, but couldn’t force loyalty when they change the message.

This is the danger we keep seeing when people use a religion as a power vehicle, and wrap it in “fear of the other”. Doesn’t matter if it’s Catholicism or something else. We’ll continue to repeat history over and over because clearly it’ll work THIS time and that leader will be able to control it.