I’ve been overcharged/“taken for a ride” by five or so taxis in my life, never had trouble with a ride-share service, even in countries where they are operating illegally. Never had a clearly drunk driver, too, unlike a couple of taxis I’ve taken.

When there’s any kind of language barrier, choosing the destination in the app rather than trying to speak it is so much easier, and using in-app translation messaging, too. When arriving in a new country, not having to get money out at the airport (avoiding rip-off ATMs or money exchangers) and being able to pay online is so much better than cash, especially when you’re not familiar with the currency.

Certainty of price, and ability to give instant feedback are great at keeping things honest. Sure, Uber/Grab etc are terrible companies, but I swear most taxi licenses in the world are owned my organized crime, so not much of an alternative. There is so much that needs to be done with regulation to get rid of the ‘gig economy’ and make sure that drivers are properly compensated/employed, but the app-powered ride service is just so superior in every way for the passenger, in my opinion.

May I suggest a back-up battery for your phone (I just use my laptop USB as it’s always with me and works when the PC is off).

You’ve triggered my working with GameCube/Wii through Cygwin PTSD.

Operation: Inner Space

Sunt iarăși eu, Picasso!^Oh!

Yes, to me, the nuance is what’s important here.

“You’re welcome” implies you did something good, and you know it. “I am good for doing this for you. You owe me!”

Whereas “no problem” implies it didn’t cause you any trouble. “Doing this for you was not detrimental to my life. You owe me nothing.”

Akshually, you can often know the pronunciation of a Chinese character from one of it’s radicals. I don’t know how many characters this is the case for for Chinese (and how it varies between different spoken Chinese languages), but for Japanese it’s like 80% of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters#Phonographs

If you haven’t come across him yet, check out John Francis Peggotty, the (alleged) ostrich riding, blinged-out, Irish little person bushranger Birdman of the Coorong.

I’m from a country with ranked choice voting. We can vote for our preferred third-party candidate and it’s not only fine but better. Even if they don’t get in, they will get a portion of government money for help with campaigning in future elections, and our vote for the first viable candidate will be counted instead.

In the USA this is totally not the case. Your electoral system is designed to prevent third-party votes from meaning anything. As an anarchist who hates the politics of both neoliberal US major parties, I would still vote democrat, because a third-party vote is literally a wasted vote. It does not influence the 2 major parties in any way. They know there is no real threat from minor parties or independents unless they have massive overwhelming majority support.

Change the system through political action, community engagement, and spreading information. This vote will not change a thing unless it’s for a major party, and only really if you’re in a swing state. It’s shit but true.

Yes, very sure! It’s probably because I’m not Dutch that I even considered it. Turned out really well, had to use lower heat then you would for frying regular bread as not to burn.

Toasted ham and cheese with quality ingredients. It’s a tasty marriage of sweet sugar and salty ham, crisp toast and melty cheese.

Best one I made was when staying in Antwerp. I got the cheese in Amersdam - a truffle gouda. Butter was also dutch, from memory, but I can’t recall exactly. Nice and salty. Bread was local - Suikerbrood. Sweet bread that browns easily. Ham was prosciutto from France somewhere.

Have to put the butter on the outside and pan-fry slowly to ensure the cheese melts. The If you don’t have a sweet brioche bread, sprinkle sugar on the butter to get that crisp, sweet exterior.

most inkjets clog like a motherfucker when not in use.

If you have an inkjet printer, even an expensive one, you have to leave it plugged in and in standby mode so it can do it’s regular cleaning cycle.

A good middle-range inkjet printer (like a Canon MB2700) can be economical and durable; unfortunately most people’s experience of inkjet are the ultra-cheap ones sold in big-box stores, sold at a loss, to sell over-priced cartridges, and not left plugged in/don’t have cleaning cycles.

I tighten them and it saved my monitor! Robbers broke in to our house, stole a bunch of stuff. The computer monitor was still there, connected to the computer, dangling from the table.

How do I know they tried to steal it? Because they tried to cut through the cable with PAPER SCISSORS, because they didn’t know how to unscrew the cables.

I feel sorry for the dumb robbers. I hope they didn’t pawn it and are still enjoying playing Wii Fitness without the balance board, which they neglected to take with the console.

Yes, my Logitech mouse, which is great it every other regard, had the left button give out after about of year of very heavy use (StarCraft, not that my APM is that high). With the addition of some superglue and a piece of plastic I’ve been using it for 4 more years, still going strong.

Depends on where you’re talking about. In Australia the right wing are using nuclear as a diversion to slow down the transition to renewables, so they can stay on gas and coal longer.

There’s no nuclear power in Australia, and the time needed to create the industry, train or poach workers, create a plant and get it up and running makes no environmental or economical sense compared to what they are already set to achieve with wind, solar and storage.

If you’ve already got nuclear up and running, use it, but each new plant needs to be compared to the alternatives for that specific location, and the track record of the nuclear industry and government in that location.

I have this problem. A couple of AAA projects I worked on, years of work, got cancelled and all that exists now is “stolen” footage. Then there’s the dozen mobile apps that have been pulled from the app stores (or gotten “out of date” and no longer supported). Can’t find APKs or store listings, just 3rd party site reviews are the only evidence of their existence.

Yes, but the video has been deleted and reuploaded several times after been called out.

For any cave dweller who haven’t seen it, here’s Hbomberguy talking about the history of this video and it’s plagiarism, as @Mago alluded to. https://piped.video/watch?v=yDp3cB5fHXQ&t=5071 (if the timecode doesn’t work, it’s arond the 1:24~25 mark.

Not at all, we’re all just being jackassed :).

Here’s a fun video essay on the craziness that is Falun gong and the Epoch Times if you want to go further down the rabbit hole: https://youtu.be/ncr62WQnIHA?si=XsIoYofM9wJK7Pwk

By age eight, he had acquired “the superb great law with supernatural powers,” which was supposed to include invisibility, levitation, etc. Li Hongzhi

There’s enough provable atrocities being committed by the Chinese govt to worry about the conspiracy theories as well. Especially when a lot of the body and organ harvest theories are spread by a California mansion dwelling homophobic cult leader who can totally levitate he just doesn’t have to prove it to you!