It’s good to be cautious about nonprofit organizations, but in the case of DSI, they’ve been around a while, have a good reputation, and score well on third-party sites like Charity Navigator.

I’d also like to make clear that their Dark Sky Sanctuary certification isn’t a scientific one based solely on light pollution, but also that the local/state/etc governments have implemented certain policies to help ensure the area remains a dark sky area. It’s best to think of it akin to something like a designated “wilderness” or “wildlife sanctuary” area, but for starry skies. Because DSI works with governments to certify these areas, you’re right that certain regions are likely to be more represented, and some not represented at all due to geographic and political barriers.

P.S. I’m not affiliated with DSI, but have used their accreditations in the past to pick wilderness areas to visit for hiking/camping/photography.

They do accreditations internationally too, though you’re almost certainly right that some locations aren’t as represented, especially since it requires communication and cooperation with the governments for these areas.

Yup. I seem to remember most mainstream albums were around $15-20 in the 1990s. Adjusted for inflation, that’d be about $28-37 today.

Worth also mentioning that car ownership is pretty much mandatory except in a few cities in the United States because of decades of car-centric infrastructure development and neglect of public transportation. Meanwhile, the average annual cost to own and operate a car in the US is around $10,728 in 2022, which is a heavy financial burden for many when the median household income is around $70,000.

Bade is the past tense of “bid” and is technically pronounced the same as “bad”. Link: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/bade

Essentially, the pronunciation follows the same pattern as words like “sit - sat”, but the spelling pattern follows a different Old English pattern.

Tap water in the US costs on average about $0.01 per gallon or less. People typically drink a gallon or less per day, so about $0.30 per month. Your water bill is pretty much not affected by the tap water you drink, just the water you use for everything else.

Bottled water is easily hundreds of times the cost.

Just consult this handy chart to determine which type of catgirl you’re facing.

The issue with Nvidia cards is that Bethesda had an agreement with AMD for the game dev, so NVIDIA DSLL isn’t included. This means NVIDIA cards can’t by default take advantage of their full resolution upscaling ability.

I say “by default” because there’s already mods that replace AMD FSR with NVIDIA DSLL. I installed DSLL 3.5 and have been running it essentially without issues (very rarely the screen goes black for a second or two). Getting smooth frame rates on my 2070 super, 3440x1440, High settings other than resolution scaling (which I set around 58%, essentially DSLL “balanced”).

Article about it: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hiker-lost-24-hours-ignored-rescuers-calls-because-they-didn-n1282381

What’s more likely is that in his panic he wasn’t thinking quite straight. It’s very common for people to make decisions that seem silly in retrospect in situations like this.

Anecdotal, but me (millennial), my boomer parents, and a number of my friends have been fortunate enough to collect varying levels of wealth. Almost all of us are relatively more progressive than 10-20 years ago.

Doesn’t help that the conservative party in my country has gone batshit crazy.

Eh, I think porn studios just were looking for something new that’s “taboo” since some sexual acts that 20+ years ago were super taboo are much less so nowadays.

Watched an interesting video recently about the computer used in the Apollo lunar missions. Of course even basic processors now are more powerful, but it’s still impressive how rock-solid stable the Apollo computers were.

Trump and other Republicans have recently not-so-secretly been plotting to invade Mexico in a war on drug cartels. It’s not Canada, but it’s right in line with the fascist playbook.