This isn’t the named senators telling people to not use VPNs, this is the senators saying they are worried US citizens are being surveiled as if they are foreign threats due to VPN use.

They are then asking the person in charge of the people doing that surveiling to change their guidance to reflect that reality, as they currently reccomend VPN use.

There won’t be a response, and then I would assume the named legislators will propose legislation to patch this problem which will not be read or passed by any other politicians to the right of these fairly progressive legislators.

At worst its political theater, at best an attempt to protect VPN use, realistically something closer to the former, and none of the outcomes are these senators trying to take muh vpns

Apparently the port of Seattle (who run seatac) have been running fundraisers to help pay for TSA employees transportation and food, which they claim is why they aren’t seeing the level of staffing drop like other airports.

This statement from the port commissionner on the local news site the South Seattle Emerald, explains why ICE is not expected for now.

Lots of military bases out on the coast though, and some very important shipping infrastructure. Shoot, the US seems to think we can just remove leaders all over the place, why shouldn’t Iran? Bet a lot of very wealthy people have vacation homes out there.*

I would hope that an attack on any target like those would trigger additional outrage at the unnecessary nature of the whole conflict, not bring California in line with the trump administration. But who is to say how people react, hasn’t been an attack on the US continent in many many years. I could cynically imagine Newsom doing a 9/11 style pivot into a presidential bid, though I have a hard time imagining it working.

*In my preferred solution, the US backs off and stops killing people

Same. Sometimes when I go for walks in the rain I bring one of those little gardening fork things and clear out the drains. I imagine I look wild wandering the streets with a garden implement but it’s very satisfying and rewarding, especially knowing sometimes that water floods peoples houses.

Of course the US was just filling the same wound Europeans left. I’m not trying to play a blame game here, but if you’re pale, the nation you were born in probably had a pretty big part in our current world dynamic. How far back do you want to go as well? Maybe the Europeans should have dealt with their religious extremists instead of shipping them off to the “New World”, that wasn’t that long ago.

I think this line of reasoning is ridiculous and just serves to benefit the people running the death cult. Just like wishing for bloodshed among a group of people you think is far enough away you can ignore. This is the kind of stuff that trump and his ilk are all about.

I know it’s just a little sarcastic comment, but that’s only true if everyone goes along with it. Show them pain in their bottom line and it won’t seem so necessary to their shareholders and lobbyists anymore, and you’ll have a lot louder voices arguing against that law.

Also I’m totally cool being a ‘hermit’ if by hermit we mean chatting with friends on IRC and hanging out in real life, I’m always up for a LAN party.

You could say the same about people voting for the lesser of two evils. Just lazy hypocrites who can’t follow their own chain of thought to its necessary conclusion: genocide and kids in cages but polite, and just out of sight enough that we don’t have to join the kids in the streets.

I wouldn’t say that about either though, we’re largely talking about people who genuinely want to improve the world we live in and have morals, we shouldn’t be spending our time punching those people for wanting to do it “wrong”.

Its ultimately on the DNC and the Harris campaign for doing a terrible job providing a candidate and a platform for their wide coalition. We should be hammering them now, instead of those darn ‘lazy voters’. If we don’t, they are going to make the same mistakes, and we’re going to get another Bidenesqe four years of back to normal followed by a return to right wing populism when nothing gets better for anyone under one term president Center-right.

I don’t think the company knows what it is anymore. They still pretend to be all about quality coffee and customer connection, but then push wild promotional drinks and very low service times while closing stores and cutting staff. They are clearly a fast food chain, but deny it, and do a poor job of it while also being a lousy place to hang out.

I worked at corporate for a while, and the culture, as it appeared to me, was all about folks vying for promotions and more desirable projects, with little weight put into what was or wasn’t good for the people who are in stores, customer or barista.

Maybe the new CEO has a better grip on this stuff, but his remote hq next to the golf course tells me he’s not gonna be better, also his previous company, Chipotle, isn’t exactly a place I seek out in 2026.

I did a bit of research along the lines of this article a few months ago to settle an argument, specifically about the state of Iowa in the US, about just corn for ethanol production (the primary source of ethanol in the US). I made a few assumptions, but always took the more generous middle ground for ethanol.

First its astounding how much land we dedicate to crops there, its 68% of the state for all crops, with 94% of that being feed corn and soy beans. That’s 22.6 million acres (91,300 km²) dedicated to two crops we largely do not eat.

Second and more on topic, the state of Iowa net produces about 56,389 GWh/yr from ethanol taking up 4.5 million acres (18,212 km²), and it would only take 28,000 acres (113 km²) of solar to produce the same amount.

I like haven’t done the math on this one, but I bet you could make that up from solar on walmart roofs and parking lots in Iowa alone. Maybe that’ll be my tomorrow project.

I like to hope we scale EVs down in size and weight and ramp up train/trolley/trolley busses to reduce required energy to power transportation, then we wouldn’t need to cover Poland with panels!

I do not doubt that some are celebrating, and for good reason, but what comes next doesn’t seem likely to be better for the people who live there.

History shows these moments lead to more oppression and suffering while out of country execs and wealthy individuals grab as much loot as they can before the inevitable popular uprising.

Said popular uprising is immediately sanctioned and hamstrung by the US/world bank and economically held liable for the debts the occupiers ran up. Then they collapse into either authoritarianism or “infighting” with rebel groups funded by the US.

This looks like a continuation of the same old IMF, Chicago boys, school of Americas playbook to me, but way less covert.

I like your approach in that they don’t all just flow to the same 2 distros and there are multiple options at the end of most lines. It’s also quite readable. I do think there’s even more room to just try stuff out though, distros are not particularly rigid, certainly not when you’re first trying them out and you don’t know the differences.

I happily use MXLinux to game on new(not so new now I suppose) hardware, run a media box, and on a couple work/school laptops for example. It’s just what I tried and felt cozy with after I got angry with windows and mint. I’m sure other distros are technically better for my uses but nothing I’ve tried has really been so much better to justify the switch.

The different desktop environments. Really basically described as the interface, XFCE is a very lightweight one, whereas mint is MATE, and mint cinnamon is… cinnamon which are each different from each other (I don’t know I’ve never used them for long enough to find out)

Well we’ve recently entered the race to the bottom category, we’ll see how that one goes

More seriously, the US did lead the way in various ways for a while for the time. Just gotta ignore the racism and colonialism. Unfortunately many innovations turned out to be the limit of American imagination and any attempt to continue to improve and grow is now met with hostility.

It’s probably at least somewhat a product of years of corporate and conservative interests marketing a return to an imagined golden age for economic and political gain. No room for new things in the fantasy of the '50s, just easy money, grass suburbs, giant cars, and unconcerned white people as far as the eye can see.

This or sit down to read a chapter before bed, look up and it’s 6 hours later and I have to pee and I haven’t touched my glass of water and my alarm goes off in 4 hours

Never in between

This man helped me kill the lawn inside myself, and now I’ve killed my lawn and I’m on my way to kill my parents’ (lawn) too. I might have even accidentally learned some botany along the way

A really great channel

My suggestion, since I’ve done something similar. (Depending on what is there now) I’d recommend killing the weeds by laying down layers of cardboard and mulch on top (after cutting them down). Some plants are too pernicious for that and require digging up taproots or targeted herbicide, but the majority of the stuff under it will die and be nutrients for what you plan on planting there. As the cardboard, mulch, and old plants rot, you’ll have exceptional soil for pretty nearly free (depending on the cost of the mulch and your time). As a neat bonus you’ll get all kinds of interesting fungus to look at too.

Lots of people in a pretty small area in relatively dense cities that currently drive or fly between the cities (technically called strong city pairings). There’s also a pretty enormous tourism industry in Florida that captures much of the Midwestern US/anyone not going to California or Hawaii for their beach or disney vacation. Florida is also flat which makes for very cheap high speed rail. Note how the map goes out of its way to avoid the mountains out West.

That being said, I’m not sure this map is one of the ones made with serious city pairing calculations. I’m skeptical that Quincy, IL has a really strong draw for high speed rail, for example, and that long gap between Portland and Sacramento/San Francisco, while beautiful and filled with cool places, is way too sparsely populated to justify 6hrs on high speed rail. I think it’s a sort of meme map that’s been going around for years, though I wish it were real.

The apps are bullshit but the slower cycles take less water and energy, which is definitely a positive.

Idk why the speed is a big deal to folks, it’s not like you have to sit there and babysit it, just hit play and go do something else

I’m not sure I’m totally on board. The Midwestern united states used as an example in the article have current populations of deer. Our killing of the native predators have allowed their population to explode, and In more forested ecosystems at least, those excessive populations actually cause more risk of destructive fire as they prefer to eat native plants and tree shoots as opposed to invasive shrubs. This leaves a dense layer of bushes and no adolescent tree canopy, and as the old trees die, no fire resistant tree is there to take it’s place leaving a clearing of flammable understory.

That being said, the lack of roaming herds of bison trampling as they go also has an enormous impact and if we could pull fences and interstates to restore their habitat, it would almost certainly help our environment.

In Portugal, as well, many of the mentioned abandoned farms were eucalyptus, and many of the eucalyptus farms were cork oak before that. Cork oak is remarkable for it’s ability to withstand fire, that’s what the cork is for! Eucalyptus on the other hand is remarkable for burning so fast and hot, growing incredibly quickly, and spreading on it’s own. While again, grazing animals are absolutely missing and would help, they aren’t going to be able to fix this on their own. We are going to have to do a ton of manual labor.

Honestly, it sounds like the author would likely agree with all this, but I think it’s important to emphasize that in rewilding, we need to restore more than the obvious species. The wolves, beavers, and bears may be much more impactful than the deer or elk, and removing our infrastructure to make room for what should be there may be more impactful still.

Very localized application to specific plants, ideally ones that are virtually impossible to mechanically remove and that threaten to smother local species.

An example would be Holly in the Pacific Northwest US, it spreads freely, outcompetes local species, and if you try to cut it down it spreads out underground like a hydra. Apart from getting machine digging to excavate the whole deep root, a measured amount of pesticide injected into the root crown is about the the only way to deal with it once it is established.

If this question refers to mechanized agriculture there are systems with cameras that recognize weeds in fields and specifically target them with a spray of poison.

If it’s a grass lawn, the best way is to internally adjust the image of a grass lawn from a golf course to a field at a school, church, or park near you where it’s mostly clover and dandelions. Then you don’t need to spray anything. Maybe then plant cool native plants and wow your friends with an impenetrable fortress of 10ft tall joe py weed filled with bees and butterflies but whatever you’ve got regionally.