Possibly a Dark Crystal situation. If one goes, their opposite number follows…

AKA, the ones with integrity.

The Trump Regime is making history rhyme. I hope that he and the rest of his ilk end up in a room, and never come out.

You can use RUFUS to install Windows, and preemptively remove restrictions. MASGravel lets you activate Windows once you got an internet connection. ShutUp10 for configuring your privacy, and also for uninstalling AI stuff. I recommend the premium version if you want ShutUp10 to automatically revert Microsoft’s meddling after updates.

I recommend MASgravel’s Windows Enterprise 25h2 GAC .iso for your RUFUS, it has the right balance between debloat and still being usable by a typical person.

I encourage the conversion of books to digital formats, it is just that the method here is shortsighted. The physical copies can be useful if something goes wrong, and can be appreciated by some humans after the digital archival has redundancy.

Nope. I never really got into phones. The only reason I bought my smartphone, is because society demanded it. You can’t access many things without one.

My first and only smartphone is an iPhone 16, all the previous cellphones were cheap dumbphones for about $20. If possible, I prefer using email and a PC browser, because desktop computing is my natural habitat.

Phones suck. I have to pay a subscription for something that I don’t like using, and barely touch most weeks.

Setting aside the bad ethics of destroying rare books, the capitalist in me is very confused: Wouldn’t you put in some effort to save the rare books, if only to sell them?

If you already have the data inside the books, you can put them up for auction, donating to libraries, and so forth. You get money, a reputation for ensuring that they find a home, have a physical backup if the storage drives fail, and so on.

…my inner capitalist is disillusioned. 🤨

Marching into the stock exchange and telling people what the numbers should be, probably…no, almost certainly. 😦

When the economy goes to shit, the practical trades are the great bastion of the working person. Strippers will thrive.

…/s? 🤔

It wouldn’t be surprising to me if California or NYC ends up being the new capitals of a refreshed America. They still have sane leaders who aren’t bankrupt in all the ways.

I don’t drink booze, because it seems like an expensive habit. I don’t got any friends nor go to bars, so it is likely going to be a miserable experience. Also, one of my parents was an absolute boozehound, and certainly not someone to be respected. So I avoid alcohol, because I don’t know what kind of person I would be.

It is just disadvantages all around, with no upside for me.

00000

When it comes to American society at large, I suspect that capitalism is the root of why alcohol use is dropping. Third spaces are going extinct, budgets are tighter, time is limited, and work demands greater effort to make ends meet, and most people lose their childhood friendships as adults. The opportunity to enjoy booze is dying.

Gabe Newell would be a better administrator than Hegseth. This timeline is FUBAR. 😣

I hope to see most of this “court” on the gallows, live. They are traitors.

Thank you. This kind of information, while disappointing, is helpful, because architecture is inherently messy, expensive, and has to be thoughtfully planned.

Honestly, I think the solution is to put an arched bridge over intersections. This lets pedestrians to cross intersections freely without disrupting traffic. The big problem is that this requires a bit more infrastructure, since these bridges have to have ramps for the wheel-chair bound, bikers, and people on crutches. There is probably an disability architect who has calculations and knowledge about the costs and planning this kind of thing would take.

…still, probably cheaper than traffic accidents, even if it initially costs a good bit of dough.

I am guessing that at a four-way intersection, the arched bridge would be an X shape, or Lamda-ish if there are three spots. People move to the center, then point themselves towards their destination. The underside of the bridge can host traffic lights.

An out-of-police-jurisdiction response center, with monitoring staff. Police and other social workers call in to report potential encounters, then are actively monitored via the body and dash cameras. The staff are not employed by police nor the city, instead it is hired by the state government, into which local governments put their taxes.

The staff are a mixture of government staff and civil rights members. Each monitoring shift has least one member of the state and civil rights working together as a pair, and the pairings are reworked each month. This makes it harder to develop a ‘good old boy’ club for corruption to take root in.

Police footage that hasn’t been actively monitored is reviewed a week or two after the fact, with a team of reviewers to go over it - they do stuff like redactions, legal analysis, deletions of mundane activity, and so forth. As with the monitoring pairs, the reviewer team is a mix of state personnel with civil rights watchdogs. If the center’s review team can’t agree about what to do with footage, members pass a copy along to their respective organizations.

Cops have spent my entire life being shitty protectors of capitalism and racism. Of course I would distrust them by default, because they haven’t given me a reason to trust their character and motives.

As to my proposals being unrealistic? I think they would be much cheaper and practical than the current version of policing. A fair chunk of a town’s money is spent on wrongful conduct lawsuits, due to the police abusing their power. We can have much more money to spend on social goods, if we took away the unimpeded powers of police.

Your typical forum-goer doesn’t have the potential to kill strangers. If someone has the power to kill, they must be held to far greater scrutiny and responsibility than the ordinary person.

If it were possible, I would prefer the police to not exist outright. Barring that, the next best thing is to highly regulate their existence and procedures.