Microplastics are terrifying and all that, but I’m sort of more worried about plasticisers like BPA, BPF, BPS and the rest of the alphabet of BP-whatever’s that was created and brought into use after the dangers of BPA were realized.
Just a heads up - if something plastic says it’s BPA-free, it probably uses a different bisphenol compound that is less studied than BPA. And is likely as toxic (or even more toxic)!
But nobody ever talks about those, because science words.
I became disappointed when I zoomed in to realize she had a wallet chain and not a sproingy yellow coiled lanyard thing that was somehow attached to her phone. (Sorry, Amazon link: One of these)
I don’t know why. I guess I just thought the idea was kind of cute and fun. This dad-fucking, bacon grease swilling, subway texter uses a cute little bouncy cord thing to keep her phone handy, amidst an otherwise austere getup - just a zany detail to contrast with the rest. Alas. Just a boring ass wallet chain.
One of my sisters once told me she was proud of me for being out with my bisexuality.
When asked, she said it was because I am liberal, and often refer to the people I date as partners. Then I had to explain to her what nonmonogamy was, and I’m not sure if that was more or less acceptable to her.
It’s kind of weird that you can get 30 years for lying to a credit union once, but only 2 for stealing someone’s identity for 30 years.
If the victim is a federally insured financial institution you get a huge jail sentence.
But if the victim is a person with no safety net, it’s a comparative slap on the wrist.
Skewed priorities.
Interesting.
I signed up for GD with a semi-throwaway email account - not an actual throwaway, but it’s not tied to my real identity, not used for anything but spammy sites where I didn’t want to give them my info. Every site got a made up name.
Wonder what name they’ll slap on the account when they try to farm “my” data from a broker.
I actually have all of the materials to build a motion activated smart light that interfaces with my home’s automation system for my dog’s food/water dish, but the ADHD goblin stole my fixation on the idea before I could design/print an enclosure for the circuit board and sensor.
Ironically, I got focused on building more storage because the parts were cluttering it up, but one delay led to another and then the weather changed. I don’t have an indoor space for woodworking projects, so now parts from both projects are just more clutter.
I knew something once. It was awful.
Having a “smarter” car has made me a bit of an angrier driver.
My car has adaptive cruise control, so it automatically paces the vehicle in front of me at a predefined distance. I use it extensively on the highway, and I often have it set for a bit higher than most other drivers go. This means that I know how fast the vehicle in front of me is going and has been for the entire time they’re in front of me.
This has lead me to realize that most other drivers seem to unintentionally (or intentionally) drive in infuriating ways.
Most folks in the left lane don’t maintain a constant speed, even when the lane in front of them is clear. They often go just slightly faster than the speed of “prevailing traffic” - which means they slow down when passing vehicles (often as slow as 10mph under the speed limit), and speed up quite dramatically when vehicles do get tired of them and move to pass - very often blocking would-be passers.
At best, I view these drivers to be inattentive. At worst, I envision them to be wannabe cops, enforcing their vision of highway traffic on others.
I wonder if they feel the same sense of satisfaction expressed in the above meme?
I would be thrilled to drive this, but my partner would get sick of me referring to every trip to the grocery store as an “away mission.”
Well, when the government fails to adequately regulate, leaving it up to industry to self-report, this is the only foreseeable outcome - for pretty much any industry.
Greed is a massively corrupting influence.
I know that the producers don’t self-report. They’re supposed to contract with testing labs, but when there’s a lack of standardized procedures and oversight, the producers lab-shop until they find a lab that has tweaked their processes in such a way that reports favorably on even substandard goods.
In that way, the labs become facilitators of a flawed regulatory process.
The only real fix is more and better oversight (including verification of results from testing laboratories) and standardization of testing procedures.
I feel like I fully lack the words to describe what I mean here, although I’m confident in my understanding of the idea. (Which is to say, please give me charity when untangling my rambling.)
I share your sentiment and I’ve been thinking about this the past few days.
I’ve read in a few places that Musk is trying to turn twitter into a ‘one-app’ in the same way that WeChat is. The common pushback against that is that we already have that - it’s the web browser. The web browser isn’t going anywhere.
But turning the browser into a closed ecosystem that Google gets to set the standard for, harvest the data for, advertise through, and ensure that users are locked in to their version of the experience/data that they collect essentially makes Chrome the one-app.
In much the same way that google killed XMPP, Microsoft used its weight to hamstring open document formats - this seems like an effort to thread a rope around the neck of the open internet and use google’s considerable market share to close off the open internet.
Somewhat ironically, we may find ourselves in search of a ‘new, open internet’ if corporations continue to define our current internet.
Maybe we’ll call it “Web 1.0.”
Toxic polyamory situation. A partner I lived with and was once very in love with fell away when she got interested in someone new. It was messy and shitty. I wound up dating someone new, who I had a great relationship with, and it was very physical. But I still lived in a 2 bedroom apartment with my ex.
My ex was a bit weird. She sort of viewed relationships as whatever things with no boundaries. Folks just do whatever they want in the moment and there’s no fidelity according to her. (Things I learned after I fell in love with her. Woof.) She also had intoned a few times that my new partner was a slut, which was sort of funny, given that my new partner had a pretty strong moral code.
My ex got a little less interested in her new guy, and tried to seduce me one night. And I rejected her. We had officially ended things, and I did not want to revisit that.
My ex sneered at me. “Fine. I hope you’re happy with [New Partner], and I hope [NP] is happy with you and your… magical penis!”
She practically spat that out at me, and… yeah. It was as funny then as it is now.
And for the record, it’s not magical. I just like to put top hats and little capes on it sometimes.