They don’t come around anymore, but I used to say that I was disfellowshipped/excommunicated, whichever was fitting for whatever religion they were selling. If they ask why, which they basically never do, just say “I’d really rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind…”

They don’t actually want to waste time talking to people who were kicked out of the church for “bad behavior”, and in many cases aren’t even allowed to, so they blacklist your address.

No soliciting signs typically do the job, too, though.

This is really catchy and upbeat :)

Are you also upset when they do a donation drive and have a pre-article header literally asking for money?

Normally I’m not a fan of transparent background scrolling content (it’s obnoxious and a waste of space) but the little car was a cute touch. Entirely unnecessary, but cute.

I have a collection of over 80k ebooks. I got most of them in huge download packs decades ago, and removed duplicates. it’s a surprisingly small folder.

I did the math on it long ago and it would take more than 200 years, reading an average of one full book a day, every day, to get through them all.

So I’m happy just knowing that if I get through some of them, it’s better than none of them. Time is limited, make the most of it by doing what sparks joy, and not worrying about what you didn’t get to.

What I don’t get is how anyone can sleep with anything other than blackout curtains. Even the ambient light from street lights and stuff is too bright for me.

I mean I know people do it, I just don’t understand how.

I got a full set of silverware for backpacking that collapses down to about the size of those folding reader glasses (plus a little hard storage case just like the glasses). It’s a spoon, fork, knife, and chopsticks. I think I paid $6 for the set. Not super high quality, since the focus was on weight and utility, but definitely does the job.

I don’t use it much anymore, but it was great for lunch at work, and is good when traveling (staying at hotels and getting takeout - no plastic trash!). I mostly keep it in my overnight backpack so it’s available whenever I’m not home and I can’t forget it.

Keep in mind that all of these could be more or less stopped if there was any real desire to do so.

But there isn’t.

https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/phone-companies-can-filter-out-robocalls-they-just-arent-doing-it/

I tracked down the house I lived in until I was 5-6. I have lots of pictures of it in its glory and I remember it fondly.

It was an old 1800s school building that my parents converted into a house. Very cool building, lots of old-school charm (hehe).

Finding it was a huge mistake. The present owners don’t even live in it, they built a house just to the side of it and use the old structure as support for solar panels, and probably storage for the junk sprawling over the property. Which… I’m down with solar but it’s so sad to see something with so much history, charm, and character… absolutely ruined in under 30 years.

Honestly I wouldn’t even call doctor who science fantasy. It’s just pure fantasy set around space travel and aliens. There’s absolutely nothing science about it, and they really don’t even try to make it seem that way. Anything that should have some sort of science explanation is just hand waved away, and thus internally inconsistent. The dr who universe is basically full of magic. Magic potions, magic wands, magic enemies, magic travel boxes, magic immortality, etc.

I think the sonic screwdriver is about as close as they have ever come to trying to explain any of it, and they basically only did that to point out the (rather absurd, story-necessary) limitations of the thing. One still has no actual idea what it can do or how it can work, just what it usually does and what it can’t do (sometimes and/or probably).

I find this wholly unsurprising.

All ai projects should be forced to show the entirety of their training data. I don’t give a flying fuck if they want to call it proprietary, they don’t own most of the data in the first place. Even if they bought it, it doesn’t belong to them, just like we don’t own digital movies we buy.

And if even a single piece of that training data doesn’t have proper licensing for that specific use for that specific model, or they are ever found to have withheld any of the data, the model as a whole should be immediately scrapped, along with everything even tangentially derived from it, and the company should be fined fully double whatever amount of money that model generated or one years revenue for the company as a whole, whichever is more (no I don’t care if this leads to bankruptcy, should have thought about that before you stole data), and like use if for affordable housing programs or public schools or something, whatever.

They can try again with clean data, also subject to review. One time. Second time they do the same shady shit, permanently banned from the entire sector.

But regardless, we need to stop rewarding them for this behavior. And we need the consequences to actually hurt or we can expect it to get worse, not better.

It’s often both because funneling! Yay!

Nah, send them adrift in international waters. Let them find a new home. Don’t ruin Antarctica.

These’s legitimately important science happening there, and that’s way too much hot air to add to such a fragile environment.

ETA: maybe send them to Cuba. They’d hate that.

Considering the super shady practices involved with plasma “donation”, and the fact that it’s used to make very expensive cancer drugs, take your text and good vibes. That’s literally the better outcome.

Most of the world won’t even buy US plasma because of the really lax collection regulations and super sus conditions of most of the plasma centers (basically the fact that it’s paid and on such short turnaround causes a lot of people to game the system, it’s dangerous, and potentially unsanitary/risky.)

Yeah, I know. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, I just roll with it. But I do regret not taking up a lot of the opportunities that I didn’t realize were worthwhile opportunities. I have a tendency to screw myself over, it is what it is. :)

An older couple who wanted to retire offered to let me take over their cidery, back when I was doing a lot more homebrew… I declined because I knew nothing about ciders, I’d have needed to relocate, and I was in my last year of college.

Big mistake turning it down, even if I would have needed to relocate. I haven’t been properly stable since.

Bar down the street has free WiFi and food. So probably there. The library is all the way across town, so not a great option for me.

Or there’s another bar close enough to my house that I could probably make an antenna and leech off that. I did that with on base housing back in the day cuz I didn’t want to pay for internet.

And here I was using windows in a VM to run rstudio 😪

Times have changed for sure. (Tho I haven’t used rstudio for many years and it may still be unsupported)

Zomg I totally missed this message, I’m sorry, so I guess this is ME checking in on YOU a couple days later ;)

Sorry to hear the glowing didn’t work but thrilled to hear you had a good sleep anyway. That’s hard to come by sometimes :)

Yes! Ok that probably helps a lot. Because I’ve seen a HUGE rise in _core (cottagecore, goblin core, Forrest core, witch core, etc. and that’s just here on Lemmy)

I hope that takes off more and leaves Punk behind so it can fit better. :) I’m sure the distinction exists for a reason.

And yeah steampunk is sort of the odd duck in what the other major __punk actually hit, but I did have some friends waaaaaaay back when steampunk was brand new, big into it, and they took it all the way to the social changes necessary for never evolving past the Industrial Revolution… so I’m probably heavily biased by that (then again in highschool they had canes, waistcoats, and top hats, and basically cosplayed as English gentlemen all the time so… probably not an ideal sample!)