Every Olympics is a political catastrophe. I've now watched all too many of them. They're huge events and all it takes is some controversy or a fuck up by some middle manager and the whole world freaks out.

Overall, this one East that bad on France's, except probably the river pollution thing (which I hope pushes them to long term cleanup efforts). Most of the rest was all the USA (we're #1 in being assholes to people) being assholes. Our pearl clutching about religious insensitivity, transphobic right wing hatred, and generally bring dicks was well over the top. So, that's not on France, but the US and our own swimming in Christian nationalist right wing sewage that spilled over onto the rest of the Olympics.

Video games. I used to play 4-6 hours per day (or often more), every day. It was kind of my default activity when I wasn't forced to do something else. If I ran out of steam trying to focus on work or family I would drift into playing a video game. The result was a MASSIVE sink of time into something that left me with little afterwards. I didn't learn new things, I drifted away from my kids, and I didn't take care of my home.

Video games are fine. They're entertaining, but they're also potentially life consuming. I watch people who want to do more with their lives, but instead they just put more time into some game or another.

I managed to kick the habit and it's been a great 10 years since then where I play very little and only in very short, controlled bursts when I can play with my kids for a bit (they usually destroy me these days). With all of that saved time, my career started flying, my home is in better shape, and I actually don't drift away from family events like I used to.

I've been accused of being a bot in online games due to my robust vocabulary, resistance to abbreviation and slang, as well as pedantic punctuation use. It has been happening for decades.

Note: rarely have I been accused of a being a bot for my skill at gameplay. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

Now, if you wish to truly delve the depths of linguistic proclivities, one should peruse the works of Terry Pratchett, especially the Discworld novels. Any and all of his works are wonderful prose and deep storytelling.

You're spot on.

With about 10% overhead on the travel time, a pretty mainline high speed rail line would take about 15 hours to go from DC to San Fransisco. Each train (assuming Japanese trains like Amtrak is buying for Texas) can carry about 1323 seats, plus standing room. They can run 16 trains per line per hour. So, that's 21,168 people per hour passing on the rail.

Assuming the 15 hour lead time (and no loading time of note because Sergents are really good at yelling people onto trains), within 24 hours, the Pentagon could move about 211,680 soldiers coast to cost from time t=0 to t=24 hours. That's coast to coast, mind. If you do it from say the middle of the country to SF, it's only a 4.7 hour trip, so now you can get 19.3 hours of soldiers moving (and arrived) around 408,542 people delivered by t=24hrs. Then, it's another 508,032 every 24 hours after that.

Now, while it's not particularly feasible to have commercially driving HSR across the empty center of the US, the military has a whole different set of priorities, and damn, that's a lot of equipment & people that could be moved really fast. Yes, planes are faster, but there's no way they'll keep up with HSR once the train pipeline fills. This is a latency vs carrying throughput load equation and trains will win it big time. Always have, always will.

The US way way way behind on building infrastructure. Our infrastructure deficit is trillions of dollars, and our transit modality is decades behind Europe, China, India, japan, and even starting to slip behind sections of Africa. We're failing as a developed nation because we refuse to invest in modern transit (and many other issues like healthcare, usurious education costs, and losing our democracy to dictator thinking). We're flailing hard right now. HSR should be a massive investment for our country, along with regional/city rail (trams, metros, heavy regional), but since our population mostly has never ever seen a modern city like Paris, London, Beijing, Tokyo, or Rome so they have no idea what it can even be like to live somewhere well designed for people instead for for cars.

Though, watching the military test the rails by moving a half million people in 24 hours would be hilarious for those of us not trying to coordinate it.

Removed by mod

The hiding of the control panel is just extra pain for the fun of it. I know it's the same tool they've had for many generations now so they're hiding it because it's ugly, but it's the real way to get things done. Hiding it is just making everyone's life harder, which is basically the Microsoft approach to OS design.

An old man vs a felonious rapist insurrectionist old man. Our single vote first past the post system bought us this situation. The US seriously needs a better voting system like Ranked Choice Voting or STAR voting. Anything is better for the Republic than what we have now.

I'm not hugely invested in the 3D printing world, but here's my setup:

Printer: Creality Ender 3 pro v2 Filament: Mostly Matchbox Upgrades: just stiffer springs for the bed holder to help keep it level longer

Software: Cura for slicing FreeCAD for part design My kids also use Blender for making designs

As long as you check the bed leveling every so often (I don't have an auto leveler) it does just fine. I make all kinds of technical parts and models along with other stuff for fun.

What can I say? It works and it's a reasonably low maintenance setup.

If the PoE is stable, then it's a nice and relatively unique board. Not sure about the NPU support. There's a ton of boards and chips coming out with those claims, but I'd like to be able to get clearer info on drivers and library compatibility.

Is there a source for the data? I'd love to include the charts in some materials we're building for transit advocacy, and knowing the sources would help ensure successful distribution.

There's all kinds of wacky taxes, regulations, and barriers to prevent the US industry from having to compete with the world. One such example is the Chicken Tax:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/chicken-tax.asp

That one keeps the Toyota Hilux out of the US.

If I'm stuck on a windows machine, one of the first packages I try to install is git-scm.org's BASH.

It's not actually Linux, but it's got a command line and enough programs to really help get work done.

I'm holding that saw and waiting while the fascist right continues to boil itself to death. It's a question of whether we boil with it or not.

The Dems are a center right party and we're stuck with a (mostly) two party system because of our First Past the Post voting system. That means I vote for the one of two choices closest to me, so Dems it is in the general election.

Give me a Ranked Choice Vote and Dems move to my #2 slot under an actual progressive party candidate.

Fairvote.org

I just thought of another: Bernard Cornwell. His novel series (Sharpe, The Last Kingdom, etc) are phenomenal historical fiction.

Brandon Sanderson

The man is a top flight book generating machine. Where he's taking the Cosmere, I don't know, but I'm gladly awaiting for the novels he'll write the in future to find out. Reading the Stormlight Archive and Mistborn is a joy.

I also really enjoyed how he wrapped up The Wheel of Time. He is much less reluctant to kill off characters than many other authors, and that series needed some serious character culling to bring closure.

I like the UNIX/Unix-like category since it could include Linux, OSX, MacOS (current), and ChromeOS, but it doesn't. It would look much different, percentage wise, if those all summed up.

This also is only desktop OSes. Add in servers, smartphones, and embedded systems and it's a much different landscape, but I'm sure MS DOS will still hang on forever.

Do you think that would stop people who buy Escalades and Ford F250s? They already drive over the lines in my city because they're too wide. The vast majority of people who buy those kinds of vehicles are self-centered and selfish enough to not care if they're being dangerous in narrow lanes. They are already doing that.

Hell, I saw a person drive their Ford F650 to fucking Starbucks last week. It barely fit into the parking lot. Not a parking spot (it definitely didn't fit into that), but even just turning and maneuvering in the lot was nearly impossible. He likely burned a gallon of gas just jockying in and out of the lot.

Indeed! It's really hard to explain just how much smaller the traffic feels in European cities, even when there's lots of vehicles they're still less massive overall. I have taken video footage of traffic in a few different European cities just to show people how much smaller, quieter, and less dense rush hour traffic is. Even when comparing it to my US mid-sized city's traffic.

It's just nicer to be around roads with fewer and smaller cars.

Yup. EVs also run into the tonnage limit quickly too. A Tesla Model 3 single engine is 1.75 tons (no extra parking costs), but the dual motor is over 2 tons.

The US has way too many vehicles that should be about 20-30% smaller and lighter for basic city driving. Even the "small" vehicles aren't small anymore.