I think you’re paranoid.

The estimates vary a bit but you can say a significant portion of the people fired in the tech sector lost their jobs for financial reasons, not AI as is often purported. The tech sector over hired a lot during the pandy and that meant they’re correcting that. And the investment into so-called AI are so big they need to save somewhere else, i.e. overhead.

Either you’re not realizing that you’re answering your own question here (i.e. it depends on many factors so there is no universal answer) or you are sloppy slop slop.

Wait until the younglings are gone and then try to offer food on the reg. You need to be present. And be prepared for stubborn refusal.

They are smart birds to a point. If you leave some sticks out and then later they incorporate them into their nest, they won’t think oh this kind human did this for me. They needed sticks and took them. If you stay out of their feathers they’re not thinking oh this human is so respectful of my boundaries. They’re thinking this terrain is mine! So you’re operating on the assumption that you have some sort of getting along with the creatures credit that only exists in your mind. As far as the birds are concerned you were at best a dormant threat they could live with until something made you an active one and you got attacked. And now that’s all you are. And it’ll take time and effort to change that.

Can you check the manufacturer of the frame? Maybe their website offers a clue. If not, where did they buy them. If it’s a brick and mortar optometrist, go there. Or convince your partner to get new frames with more standardized lenses.

Then I fear blaming Christianity is a bit weak. I get that you are annoyed. I might be too if I could be convinced to exercise. I think you are hitting this annoyance nail with too big a hammer. Because the fact that a week consists of seven days is also due to the influence of Christianity. And even in sensible the-week-starts-on-Monday-Europe wall calendars on sale often list Sundays first. Your mobile phone probably has a setting for that as well. Take it as a lesson learned and let it go.

Does it mention that as far as this watch is concerned the week starts from Sunday?

Did you read the manual of the watch before you started using it?

New account, Vader?

Only the shittest superpowers imaginable.

They’ll add “I’m not sure but” to every reply because they still can’t get it right.

… it is old-fashioned English–think Meredith, Esther, Olga, Gretchen…

I realize this is kind of beside the point but bear with me please. None of these names are English. Meredith is Welsh, Esther is from the Bible, Olga is Russian with a tinge of Scandinavian, and Gretchen is straight up German. Now, your actual name might be English so it is only tangentially relevant. And while you could dismiss this all as smarteassery on my part, which would be fair, I just want to impress upon you that what you think about names may not be correct. It’s not a popular piece of advice in 2026 but: do your own research first before you go to the courthouse. Just confirm with the search engine of your choice that you got the right idea. Don’t trust disagreed m so-called AI with this.

I wish you best of luck with your search. I’d suggest “Lee” - a common family name both in the anglosphere and a variant of a common Chinese one as well.

Ellis Island misspellings are a piece of patina of the US. I think at this point in time that makes them in themselves worth preserving. I don’t mean to talk you out of your plan here, it’s just fruit for thought.

If I created a battery that didn’t need charging until 100 years later, I probably would not sell the tech to phone manufacturers like Apple. We have seen some impressive miniaturization with the technology including the batteries in terms of capacity vs. size. That came by iteration; it got better with most new models. It’s conceivable that if a battery would store a century of juice we would have maxed out development of the rest of the device. But tbh I don’t think that will happen. There will be new modems, new chips, new storage technology. But the battery would stay the same? Apple in particular would hate that. They would also prefer you buy a new device every time or every x years at least. So they’ll put a smaller one into the device and sell the wonder battery as a power bank. They will also cater to the hiker and prepper segments of the market.

Also, people born in countries with good healthcare today have a good chance of living well over 100. So they might be utterly confused at 112 when their phone suddenly shuts down.

I can imagine such a scenario as well because we are humans and we would do dumb shit like that.

FTL can mean different things. It could be the Trekkian warping space around you. It could be the Galactican jump to somewhere else. Or a portal. Or something else. Which tech it will be will matter. And different to most sci-fi, there could be more than one way if indeed c can be smashed.

The problem with space is that it isn’t completely empty and stuff in it moves like evil landmines. You don’t want to warp into a moon or jump inside an asteroid belt. Which means you will need this sort of highway or scenic spot system of space that is actually confirmed empty so travel along the route doesn’t blow you up or jumping doesn’t mean you accidentally end up in a black hole. In my mind, that would prohibit the use of the technology inside a star system because there are two many moving parts to consider and keep track of. So you need to take a year-long sub-LTS access ramp to reach the highway at the edge of the solar system before you can move safely faster than a flash. The same is true for the resource rich destination.

That’s why I can also imagine a scenario where having the technology might not be as impactful as we fear and thus not lead to war. The infrastructure would have to be so massive to make this work, it isn’t an immediate advantage to have it. More of a burden really, provided the economy still roughly works as it does today. And if we have the tech to reach the edge of our solar system in a shuttle bus service kind of way, we will be already enlarging our resource pool with stuff we find inside our solar system in an early Expansian kind of way. Better ROI on that than stuff from further away.

One of the funniest videos of politicians that I’ve seen recently was a casual meetup of Poland’s PM Donald Tusk and the then incoming Hungarian PM Magyar. He had just defeated Viktor Orban, Putin’s fifth column in the EU and authoritarian asshole of the year. Magyar introduces one of his ministers to Tusk. I don’t remember which ministry but her name is also Orban. Tusk is ever so briefly taken aback by the mention of that name, which Magyar realizes and quickly adds: “No relation.” They giggle at the mixup and Tusk just fires off nonchalantly something like: “Well, my name is Donald.” They laugh and move on.

Citations needed

Didn’t have it for ET but for Disney movies that weren’t published on VHS at all because in my region they just kept rereleasing Snowwhite and Jungle Book in theaters periodically.

I’ve recorded songs off the radio too. I have copied VHSs as well later in life when a buddy had to bring over their recorder so we could hook them up to each other.

And the first music torrent was in maybe 7th grade and up. Somebody would get a new CD for their birthday or xmas and after a couple of weeks of exclusive listening Guns’n’Roses or Metallica would go from friend to friend where everybody got themselves a copy on cassette tape. There would be strategic planning like you get Michael Jackson (we didn’t know back then) and you get U2 or whatever around December.

Never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you go… Be careful what you wish for.

There was a time in the early 2000s when good old Google search was so good, it got you your results in record time. One query and a couple of clicks. And then they realized they could sell more ads if your search took just a couple of queries longer. Every query was a chance to sell more ads. And the results got worse.

Personally, I don’t use a search engine that spits out so-called AI results. I manage the old-fashioned way because I’m old. But the principle to give you shittier results to get you to rephrase your search and thus multiply ad sale opportunities surely applies here as well.

I think this is far more normalized in the US to bring god into everything. After all, it’s one nation, under god. And in god they trust! It’s on the money after all, thoughts and prayers. And lordy, the language is full of religious references, from oh my god gosh golly to dang darn dammit. There is also the performative “I was praying for” whatever, jeez, Jesus help me. I’m already irritated by all these religious vestiges in the language.

Piety is also this sort of monstrance required for political office in the US. Even when it’s quite unbelievable, like in the case of 47 who would only own a bible if he could sell it. And if you’re not a Catholic or some Protestant, you have you be Mormon or Islamic just enough to tick the religious box. But we might draw the line at Scientology because that’s all just made up nonsense, isn’t it.

I find it offensive when people just assume I believe in any god. The older I get the more I think Christopher Hitchens had a point when he said that ardent believers in monotheist religions are predisposed to vote for and follow authoritarian leaders. One god, one fuehrer.