Fun interview, I didn’t realize he was educated as an actual medical doctor.

Yeah, I remember almost 20 years ago, an older dude telling me that jet fuel can’t melt steel beams, and giving me a copy of a movie called Zeitgeist on CD-R. That dude would be in his 60’s or late 50’s now.

Before that, people like Art Bell made a living on AM radio late at night with things like the Taos Hum and UFO’s and paranormal stuff.

Like, a lot of early US settlers got sent there because they were batshit crazy and a danger to society. The Puritans were kicked out of England, and then they were kicked out of the Netherlands of all places, how does that even happen, before they ran off to America and did a bunch of crazy shit. We think of the “Salem Witch Trials” with horror and then sing “Land of the Pilgrims’ Pride” without batting an eye, who do you even think the Pilgrims were?

So a bunch of criminals and wackos settled the United States, and when they got too crazy for their village, they just moved west, killed the native men, fucked a bunch of children, and made another crazy village. Pocahantas was like 12. And then if someone got kicked out of that village for being crazy, rinse and repeat until you get shit like Mormonism in Utah and Branch Davidians in Waco Texas and bombing the Olympics and speaking in tongues and sponsoring genocide through Biblical Tourism of the Holy Land.

America is a land of crazy people who have been rewarded for generations for being batshit crazy, and have an ability to not see things clearly in front of their face. This is really nothing new.

Not an ounce of athleticism in Ted Cruz’s body.

Which isn’t a disqualifier for his position. But since it’s Ted fucking Cruz we’re talking about, it’s fair game. He might be the only person on the planet who looks less intimidating with a beard.

Maybe he should stay in his fucking lane. Hope you Texans can help him figure that out in ten days.

No, I didn’t want a dark Section 31 series based on the Discovery/Picard “Dark Trek” writing style.

Michelle Yeoh winning the Oscar was an easy cop out. Now she’s in another league in terms of salary, and Paramount can’t afford to pay her for a streaming series. Both sides go their separate ways and the idea is dropped.

Fortunately for us, she loves the character and wanted to do at least one final act. So I guess the compromise is the movie instead of the series.

And that is cause for optimism because it likely means the script was good enough to draw her back, and concise enough that the Section 31 thing won’t be dragged out.

Hey, we’re finally getting a new Trek movie, and it has a big name actress behind it.

I was kind of hoping that after 2023, she would decide to not do this. I think Michelle Yeoh is fantastic, generational actress; but I’m highly skeptical of recent Star Trek works. She is by far the biggest name to return to the franchise.

Hopefully, they have an excellent story to match.

I bought the OP12 and OP12R specifically because of the high frequency PWM (one for me, one for spouse). We have had issues with iPhone and Pixel pwm, where the text is unreadable because it wobbles on the screen at lower brightness, and eyestrain that comes with it.

I have not had any issues with the pwm flicker on the 12 and 12R. It’s the only OLED phone that I’ve been able to use.

Hah! Beat me to it by a couple of minutes!

Looking forward to the next decade of Luanti and playing with my kids.

There is an ongoing drought in the high Andes. Quito and other areas are reliant on hydroelectric power.

They have to balance between hydroelectric power and drinking water.

This is affecting Bogota to the north as well.

Quito is generally ideal for solar power solutions but it hasn’t happened at scale for whatever reason.

I stopped distro hopping and started hopping around Mastodon instances instead.

I currently have two active accounts. One is more established but the server goes down for days at a time.

The other is pretty robust but I’m still establishing myself there.

I echo the sentiment that there aren’t a lot of Asian people on Mastodon. Although it seems that vivaldi.net is mostly Japanese people.

Monitors are starting to move in this direction. Samsung has a notorious 5k Apple Studio competitor that wants to connect to the Internet and uses the same interface as their Galaxy smartphones.

Standby. Winter is coming for monitors as well.

Meatless nuggets

Got me excited, (I gave up McDonald’s in my 30’s) but this is only McDonald’s in France.

1,560 McDonald’s locations in France,

My god. (I had to do a double-take; I would have thought 1560 McDonald’s locations in the entire USA but I’m off by almost an order of magnitude)

I was too young for most of TNG but stuck with TNG sometime in season 6. I was a kid with single digit age when they destroyed the Enterprise D in the movie and it really messed with me. Then I grew up watching the entirety of DS9 and Voyager, and outgrew it by the end of VOY. Strange New Worlds pulled me back in as an adult.

The theme to Star Trek IV. Underrated.

Also like the Klingon theme.

Best Trek movie.

I’m not sure there’s much of an ecosystem. It’s just three products and I don’t think the guy even looked at the budget tablet.

Usually you end up with products from the same manufacturer because there is a package deal or promotion sale. Which is the case now for their earbuds.

OnePlus is like, the only mainstream phone manufacturer worth it anymore. Half the price of other flagships, high frequency pwm dimming to reduce eyestrain, and still great camera. People say OxygenOS is bloated but that’s because stock Android is so stripped down and has had so many features removed over the years. But OxygenOS kept things that make sense, like a usable swipe down menu, floating windows, per application refresh rate, etc. and still has the IR blaster. And no AI gimmicks.

I really don’t see anything competitive with the OnePlus 12 or 12R in the US market at that price. The high frequency pwm is the biggest selling point for me though. I literally can’t use a Pixel because of the low pwm.

If it’s written by any of the people who wrote Picard, forget it and let the man rest in peace.

Yeah, OP12 and OP12R both have high frequency pwm. So does the Fairphone 5, apparently.

240Hz pwm dimming means lots of flicker and eyestrain at lower brightness levels.

I guess I’ll just hold on to my current phone a little longer and see what the OnePlus 13 brings.

I’m probably the only person in the world who hasn’t played Minecraft.

We have a family Minetest server runnning Asuna since Summer 2023. Usually based around just crafting different things. Even for a few months we just put on creative mode and built two huge cities about 8,000 blocks apart and sky train connecting them, and then a third underground cave city about 2,000 blocks away.

We’ve had major upgrades of both Asuna and Minetest within the past few weeks so it’s pretty exciting.