It runs Android, so it’s just as hackable and vulnerable to authoritarian systems as any other smart phone.

Now if it was a true feature phone… good luck sideloading spyware. You’d have to disassemble the phone and mount the chips in an EEPROM reader to get anywhere, and that’s not an effective remote exploit.

Why would you eat cake without butter creme frosting?

I know you’re just ribbing me, but if I may be neurodivergently serious - despite having an unrelenting sweet tooth, it comes down to two things:

1. Too heavy
2. Too sweet

Either one by itself is okay, the two together is just a major hell naw.

The heaviness is also why I am not a fan of most cheesecakes. A super-light one, fine. But I frequently cannot finish most slices of cheesecake unless they’re particularly narrow slices, far thinner than usual.

Some exobiologists have also suggested that even if we settle habitable worlds with active biospheres, there is so much research needed to ensure biocompatibility that anyone settling there would be quarantined for the first century or two in order to suss out any long-term pathogen or other nasty. And that if one is found, those settlers would be SOL without an effective cure.

It takes a few eggs out of our current basket and puts it into other nearby baskets, so as to avoid complete species failure if our original basket falls or gets dropped.

Not the most ideal solution, as we should really step out of our stellar neighbourhood to achieve lasting civilizational redundancy, but it’s far better than not taking any eggs out of the current basket at all.

Plus, incremental efforts in achieving civilizational redundancy always have better results than great leaps, both in terms of consistency as well as resiliency. Figuring things out a bit at a time is nearly always more effective than trying to solve everything all at once.

Absolutely fair where personal preferences are concerned!

pie is superior to cake in every way.

For me, that depends. I have had both shitty cakes and shitty pies. The cake needs to avoid butter cream or frosting in favour of whipped cream, and the pie needs to NOT be mostly sugar in the filling/topping.

I’ve had a sweet tooth since childhood, and the only foods which have ever turned that sweet tooth against me (in terms of having an expected sugar presence) have been both pies and cakes.

Yes, but if Dems remain in the minority, it’ll still be a Republican majority, giving them more time to dismantle democracy even further.

It’s the bigger picture which is most important. You cannot create lasting local change without removing the autocratic boot from above.

I mean, yes, let’s make these transphobe Dems as uncomfortable as possible. But America needs to roll back the fascism and authoritarianism, first. Without that first step, every other positive action is a house built on sand - it can be blown away from the top with infinite ease. And then it’s 1939 Germany all over again with pink triangles and pogroms aplenty.

And honestly, I see that outcome as the much, much worse one.

The one on the right can still have the boot’s tab slip under the plug’s tab, preventing the plug’s tab from being physically depressed far enough to release the plug from the socket.

Choosing between the party where every elected official wants to unalive you, vs the party where only a handful want to do the same…

Yeah, that is a tough one. Really difficult decision, there.

LG products are decent. The first washer+dryer set we had lasted 14 years with only a few minor error codes towards the end, which were trivial to research, fix, and clear on our own. Our current LG set has been running error free for 6 years now, and we honestly expect another decade of use, at minimum. Sure, some limitations are annoying - no tumble config allows me to lower the temp for longer and gentler drying. But it all works well.

Of course, our next set will be Huebsch, which is the Canadian re-badge of Speed Queen. We didn’t get this make because we only found out about this re-badging earlier this year. We had considered importing actual Speed Queen appliances (6 years ago), but went with our current set when we realized that the import costs alone would be gratuitous, and the warranty wouldn’t be applicable outside of America.

If you are in Canada, look into Huebsch, which is the Canadian rebadge of Speed Queen.

And Speed Queen is known to make washers and dryers that last for decades without significant repairs so long as they’re used properly. Plus, IIRC they keep parts for any one model for a minimum of 25 years, and have been known to still have parts for machines more than 75 years old.

And this is why the only Samsung products I have are RAM and SSDs.

And the SSDs are backed up daily.

Samsung should not have gotten into appliances. They seem to be singularly terrible in that field. No-one else comes even close to their level of incompetence.

The fact that any homeowner can take their house entirely off-grid without consequences, and use their vehicle as a partial whole-house battery, takes many of those concerns off of the table.

Combine that with many companies offering EV conversions to vehicles that are old enough (minimal electronics), and you can easily bypass any enshitticiation with solar panels and an EV conversion that costs much less than a new EV.

Your mechanic likely isn’t learning how to work on EVs

Many EVs have DRM out the wazoo, requiring the mechanic to spend $1,000,000 on a piece of software that has a $6,000/mo subscription just to authorize a brake replacement with the mothership. Otherwise the vehicle refuses to even roll, much less move under its own power.

And then the mechanic needs to rinse-and-repeat this spending spree with every other manufacturer who is also making EVs.

That shit becomes prohibitively expensive shockingly fast. And manufacturers are going whole-hog on this technique to send people back to dealer garages (who don’t have to pay those fees) for a slice of those profits, instead of independent shops that provide no profits whatsoever. They’re literally enshittifying cars until the only people capable of fixing them are dealers, or those independent shops who got wealthy enough fast enough to pay for that software.

For me, the issue with my older vehicles is the cost of fuel. The math is clear - an EV is radically cheaper over the long haul, especially for something like a sedan. Plus, far fewer moving parts to break.

I think, however, that a conversion of an older car is the trick. Sure, modern EVs are a shitton heavier, but only if you want it to go 700-1,200km. I don’t. I would only need a 100-200km range because bombing around town will be it’s only duty. Which means far fewer batteries and a powertrain weight that likely matches the original engine and drivetrain, allowing me to retain the original suspension as-is.

Slate is also funding Fascism, being a Bezos project.

But it hits most other requirements, true.

Downside is that I want and need a traditional sedan with a full-sized trunk capable of securely holding at least 3-6 adult bodies, not a truck. If I was to get a truck, I also need it to haul 5,000kg on the regular across steep/alpine roads, 8,000kg+ in a pinch over mostly flat and level roads. The Slate truck is utterly incapable of that. And I have two F-150 7700 units that can and have done exactly that.

My advice is to always avoid laptops unless you absolutely could not do without the portability.

I have also had great success with surplussed business-class machines. Like, the models which are impossible to buy from any brick-and-mortar location, and can even be difficult to buy online because the company typically sells those models through MSPs (Managed Service Providers, outsourced IT provisioning companies for other companies). These models are usually super-robust because they are meant to NOT be disposable, and usually have much higher config ceilings on RAM and storage, and can easily remain relevant for a good 7-15 years while consumer models scream to be replaced at the 5-year mark.

I have never bought a vehicle for more than $5k, and most were 25+ years old when purchased. Most lasted 10+ years with virtually no significant repairs beyond the post-purchase glow-up.

Downside is that I have been hankering to get into an electric for some time now, but I am running into a few blockers:

• 10yo Chevy Bolts are still $20k+ CAD
• I refuse to fund/promote fascism with a Swasticar
• None exist with ease of repairability, and DRM is growing every year
• None exist without significant privacy concerns
• I will never tolerate a subscription - I will gleefully crack the software at the first opportunity

The more Conservative, the more Corrupt.

i can just choose not to eat pineapple pizza and let other people eat whatever the hell they want.

If more of humanity could adopt this simple piece of philosophy, our entire civilization would be so much better off.