In these states, control of the governorship and legislature is split between parties. These states are Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Currently, 39 of the 50 states have a trifecta and a triplex of the same party. Of these 39, 23 are Republican, and 16 are Democratic.

If you’re assigned something to read, read it aloud to yourself. This engages not just the internal monologue part of your brain, but speaking and hearing parts, and your brain makes stronger pathways when more senses are engaged and working together.

Don’t buy (eta: or download) flash cards, draw them yourself. This engages sight and abstraction., plus motor skill areas.

Write your own notes, then read them aloud and highlight them yourself. So many parts of your brain make connections by doing this. Don’t just read. That’s not very helpful; you don’t have to study long if you study well.

I think there’s a name for this, but I’m tired and will rely on Cunningham’s whatever.

e: don’t forget about all of your senses – you have way more than 5.

There are other ways it celebrates like the main page (which you should check out), but I think you're less likely to know about the deletion discussions.

NOTE: This is separate from formally nominating an article for deletion. If you wish to participate, do not actually follow the article nomination procedure. Also, Wikipedia operates on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Why YSK: Wikipedia often presents as self-serious, but in reality, the only thing keeping the project from turning into a giant shitpost is collective self-discipline. You might find it funny to see how Wikipedians really act and maybe get involved in the festivities even if you don't normally work on the project.

Seemingly as part of April Fools celebration, lemmy.zip instance hosts a famous game of "The Button"!

The rules are simple: each player has one chance to push a button. If no one presses a button in 15 minutes after you did it, you and your team win!

Just found it out in a random Lemmy corner and I think others might wanna join in on the fun:

https://thebutton.lemmy.zip/

P.S. enter your user and instance names, and a bot will PM you your personal login link

Picture only because I accidentally posted this as media instead of text in Voyager.

The verb run is only conjugated as "ran" in the simple past tense, as in:

• I ran a mile.
• He ran the company.

For literally every other conjugation of that verb, you should use "run."

It baffles me that ran has somehow overtaken the other, much more (historically) common, much more appropriate, conjugation of "run," which applies to most situations where you have a helper verb like to be or to have:

• I did run a mile
• He did run the company
• I have run a mile
• He has run the company
• I would have run..
• I might have run..
• I will have run..

This applies to a lot of other verbs with similar vowel changes like sing/sang/sung, ring/rang/rung, etc. In general, if you're using an irregular/strong verb that has an "a" in it, it is only meant for simple past tense.

Now, all of this is really only appropriate for when you're meaning to sound professional nowadays, since simple past tense is overtaking all those other verb conjugations. But for now, it's still a good YSK.

One about killed a woman by not identifying her pregnancy is ectopic. Many anti abortion folks are convinced that even ectopic pregnancies can be viable.

These places promise things like free pregnancy tests and medical advice to get people in the door.

They really just exist to pressure women into not getting abortions. They will lie through their teeth - all the classics, like suggesting that an abortion makes it impossible to get pregnant again, or that abortion causes cancer - they’ll say anything to prevent an abortion.

They are pretty much completely unregulated, and present themselves as secular non profits.

I think after Artemis 3 they are supposed to have regular annual trips or something happening to the moon. Their window opens on April first but it could be later if they have issues. Here are some NASA livestream links

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf_UjBMIzNo

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NaJklsJonD4

If you go to uBlock Origin's settings and then select 'Filter lists', there's a list maintained by EasyList and another by AdGuard that both block cookie notices. To my understanding, this isn't enabled by default (at least it wasn't when I installed uBO).

Apologies if this is common knowledge; I didn't know about it until recently.

Why YSK: Cookie consent pop-ups are annoyances full of dark patterns designed to frustrate you into affirmatively opting into superfluous data collection and letting companies profit off your information. Saving just a few seconds on pages you browse adds up, and this is especially true if you use something like Cookie AutoDelete that makes your answers to these pop-ups transient.

I am sure a lot of us Lemmings have known about SomaFM forever. But i always like to show new people !

https://somafm.com/

If you have assets in a bank, stock market, investment platform, 401(k) or other pension then there are a number of risks that threaten not only the existence of those funds but your access to them.

First of all, don't expect to hold onto them unless you go along with the government's game of Simon says. For example, there is a good chance that you will be forced to get digital ID to access these in the future.

Vietnam is an example of what is likely to come soon, where biometrics were made mandatory to access all bank accounts. The 86 million accounts which weren't biometrically verified were frozen and are now being closed. Transfers equivalent to around $390 or more also require biometric verification.

Many in the western world have also had their bank accounts frozen or closed for perfectly legal political views. And now when you move or withdraw money you may be asked what the purpose is and the bank may deny your request if they don't like your answer (just one example). Banks are also required to report anything deemed suspicious to the government.

If such restrictions can be applied to bank accounts, there's no reason why they can't be applied to accounts at stock exchanges and accounts with 401(k) and pension providers.

In Hungary and Poland, all private pensions were seized by the government and nationalized, leading many to accuse the government of stealing their pensions. Existing state pensions aren't safe either, as they are often considered unsustainable due to unchecked government spending and aging populations.

Banks and pension providers can also fail, as we saw in 2023, and US banks have continued to fail every year since then. While on paper there are often guarantees to cover such events, these usually only cover up to a certain amount, and these may not be honored during a financial crisis.

In 1993, Loyd Jowers was interviewed on the ABC News program PrimeTime Live. He said he had been paid $100,000 by the alleged Memphis mobster Frank Liberto to help organize the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

Jowers owned a restaurant, Jim's Grill, very near the Lorraine Motel, where King often stayed while in Memphis and where the assassination took place.

Jowers claimed that besides Liberto, a man named "Raoul" and several Memphis Police Department officers were also involved in the assassination planning and execution. Jowers identified Memphis Police Lieutenant Earl Clark as the shooter.

Martin Luther King Jr's wife and children saw the interview, and sued Loyd Jowers... for $100. The trial occurred in late 1999.

William Pepper represented the King family. The three-and-one-half-week trial, referred to in U.S. government records as simply King v. Jowers, was conducted in Memphis in Shelby County Circuit Court with presiding Judge James E. Swearengen.

Thousands of documents were presented; over 70 witnesses took the stand or were cited by deposition, audiotape, videotape, or by other witnesses.

Some observers commented on what they perceived as a surprising lack of American media interest in the trial. Bárbara Reis was a correspondent for the Lisbon daily Público who attended several days of the proceedings. She was quoted as saying, "Everything in the U.S. is the trial of the century. O.J. Simpson's trial was the trial of the century. Clinton's trial was the trial of the century. But this is the trial of the century, and who's here?"

The jury required only one hour of deliberations to reach a unanimous verdict that King was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. They found Jowers responsible, and also found that "government agencies" were among the co-conspirators.

The King family was granted the $100 they requested in damages, and they saw the verdict as vindication.

The day prior to his death, Martin Luther King Jr. seemed to prophetically refer to the threats on his life, in what would be his last speech:

We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight; I'm not worried about anything; I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

You should know this because those who do not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it. You may have reason to be suspicious of high profile assassinations.

Just search for “’your state’ unclaimed property” and make sure it’s a .gov site (usually comes up first).

Search by your name (it could be last name and just the first initial), check the boxes, and claim the money.

You will get an email with instructions on what to include – it is usually the claim form itself with your signature, a picture of your driver’s license, and your social security number (often just the last four digits).

Occasionally, they will ask for proof of an old address. If that happens, and you don’t have one – check your credit report from https://www.annualcreditreport.com/ (it is a legitimate government site despite the .com domain, and you can get a free credit report from every agency one a year). Your old address should be listed there.

I just got myself a little under $1,000 in unclaimed funds. Some refund from my old college in one state, and unclaimed shares I forgot about in another. Even my teenage son had $350 sitting there as an old insurance/hospital refund – so check your kids and spouses, too!

At least 347 and up to 504 civilians, almost all women, children and elderly men, were murdered by U.S. Army soldiers. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, and some soldiers mutilated and raped children as young as 12.

only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., the leader of 1st Platoon in C Company, was convicted. He was found guilty of murdering 22 villagers and originally given a life sentence, but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after his sentence was commuted.

Research has highlighted that the My Lai Massacre was not an isolated war crime. Nick Turse places it within a larger pattern of American atrocities enabled by deliberate policies from commanders, such as "free-fire zones" and "body counts", as well as widespread racism amongst American military personnel. Many other atrocities were also covered up by commanders.

Why you should know about this: It is important to know about history so that we can learn from it, avoid the mistakes and atrocities of the past, and know which institutions have a history of performing atrocities, trying to cover them up, etc. and what that looks like.

Be it a deadbeat parent with more than enough funds to help their children or spouses making use of their significant other's dependency on them, economic abuse pervades life and remains a blindspot.

Very soon after the program started, due to the emergence of the Cold War, the western powers and the United States in particular began to lose interest in the program, somewhat mirroring the Reverse Course in American-occupied Japan. Denazification was carried out in an increasingly lenient and lukewarm way until being officially abolished in 1951. The American government soon came to view the program as ineffective and counterproductive. Additionally, the program was highly unpopular in West Germany, where many Nazis maintained positions of power. Denazification was opposed by the new West German government of Konrad Adenauer, who declared that ending the process was necessary for West German rearmament.

Many are complaining about fuel prices going up because of the war on Iran, but prices were already high because of high taxes:

• US fuel taxes make up 20+% of the price
• European fuel taxes make up half of the price
• It appears 7.6% of the German government's revenue comes from fuel taxes.

You can avoid these taxes by making your own diesel at home, potentially saving money while reducing waste and being less dependent on geopolitical affairs.

Biodiesel is easy to make from new or used vegetable oil and can be used instead of diesel in 21st century cars.

• Short version: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Bio-Diesel
• Long version: https://www.dudadiesel.com/biodiesel.php

If you want to save a lot of money, ask restaurants for their old cooking oil cheap or for free. Biodiesel can also be made from animal fat, which is cheaper than vegetable oil, but there are fewer guides on the process.

Diesel can also be made from used motor oil if you have a centrifuge and a still for distillation: https://carobjective.com/how-to-make-diesel-fuel-from-used-motor-oil/

How to make a simple still from a pressure cooker, copper tubing and bucket: https://www.instructables.com/How-to-make-a-still/

Making a fractional distillation column isn't that much harder: https://www.instructables.com/Build-a-Lab-Quality-Distillation-Apparatus/

With this you could potentially separate crude oil into various components and use them for both gas and diesel cars, stoves, heating, oil lamps or sell them. Small sellers may be exempt from taxes depending on where you live.

For gasoline you could also try the ideas here, although they seem to be expensive or impractical for road users: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Synthetic-Gasoline

Joseph Stalin was a communist leader inspired by Leon Trotsky

Trotsky was a communist revolutionary and intellectual. He once wrote "In politics, obtaining power and maintaining power justifies anything" in his book "Leur morale et la nôtre"*

In this book, Trotsky justifies the use of lies, infiltration of other political parties, smearing, even hostage taking. He says absolute ruthlesness is necessary to overthrow a hostile system and wield power. He concludes "We are acting for the greater good. We can't be restrained by normal morality".

Joseph Stalin took Trotsky's advice literally. So he murdered Trotsky because he saw him as rival. Stalin also started killing people because he believed they could be sympathetic to capitalism or opponents to his power.

Matvei Bronstein: Theorical physicist. Pioneer of quantum gravity. Arrested, accused of fictional “terroristic” activity and shot in 1938

Lev Shubnikov: Experimental physicist. Accused on false charges. Executed

Adrian Piotrovsky: Russian dramaturge. Accused on false charges of treason. Executed.

Nikolai Bukharin: Leader of the Communist revolution. Member of the Politburo. Falsely accused of treason. Executed.

General Alexander Egorov: Marshal of the Soviet Union. Commander of the Red Army Southern Front. Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Arrested, accused on false charges, executed.

General Mikhail Tukhachevsky: Supreme Marshal of the Soviet Union. Nicknamed the Red Napoleon. Arrested, accused on fake charges. Executed.

Grigory Zinoviev:: Communist intellectual. Chairman of the Communist International Movement. Member of the Soviet Politburo. Accused of treason and executed.

Even the secret police themselves were not safe:

Genrikh Yagoda : Right-hand of Joseph Stalin. Head of the NKD Secret Police. He spied on everyone and jailed thousands of innocents. Arrested and executed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genrikh_Yagoda

Nikolai Yezhov : Appointed head of the NKD Secret Police after the killing of Yagoda. Arrested on fake charges. Also executed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Yezhov

Everybody was absolutely terrified during this period. At least 500 000 people were murdered. Over 1 million people were deported to Gulags, secret prisons in Siberia, where they worked 12 hours a day.

Joseph Stalin decided to crush Ukraine for resisting communism and supporting independance. In 1933, he seized all Ukraine's food. In the next months, 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death. The situation was so bad that thousands of Ukrainians turned to cannibalism. When Nazis invaded Ukraine, some Ukrainians thought they were saviors

https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor

https://www.history.com/articles/ukrainian-famine-stalin

Hitler was a monster, but we really don't talk enough about how bad Stalin was.

Food engineering has grown to the point where food is treated as "products". Taste, feel and looks are highly engineered to optimize our sensations.

Looks: Marketing of food products use wildly unrelated items (glue to mimic cheese, shoe polish to mimic seared meat) to make the food look appetizing. This sets up for completely unrealistic standards.

Taste: Sugar has been pushed in our diet under different names (dextrose, fructose, corn syrup). Salt has been optimized to excite our senses. But the proportion is carefully controlled to ensure we never feel overwhelmed or saturated with a particular taste.

Feel: Food companies hire the best engineers to optimize surface characteristics to ensure their 'products' has great sound, great texture and so on. Pringles famously worked on double curvature for specific mechanics.

These food companies have created 'products' that are extremely far from nature. They are engineered heavily to maximize profits at the cost of consumers health.

What can you do:

1. Read labels: Most countries have food regulatory bodies that require companies to publish their nutrition info. Check the "daily value" information. Check the "serving size". DO NOT TRUST WHAT IS PRINTED ON THE FRONT. The real info is always in the back in a boring black and white table.

2. Spread awareness: Companies are betting on the fact that you are too tired, too occupied or too ignorant to care about all this. I understand you may have bigger problems. But always remember that you may have 1000 worries but when you have a health issue you only have 1 worry.

3. Reach out: If you struggle with food addiction and over consumption don't struggle alone. This battle cannot be won alone. You are fighting against an army. Join local support groups. Help yourselves to gather allies. If you know know someone who is struggling, reach out and help. Any food that you make at home ( no matter what you make) cannot possibly be as unhealthy as ultra processed crap.

Why YSK: The English Wikipedia's front page (the "main page") offers a surprisingly diverse, compact, and accessible way to find an interesting topic you might not have heard of before. This assumes you're a reader only and don't care about editing.

A lot of this is surface-level, but I'm trying not to assume anything – while hopefully giving a bit of "here's what you'll find if you click two links deeper" and professional ~~bias~~ opinion. Feel free to skip around to the sections that you find more immediately interesting, since they're largely independent.

(For accessibility, I'll be doing this with the Vector (2022) skin, the default. It's similar if you use Vector (2010) like I do, but there's a good chance this introduction isn't very useful if you do, you fucking nerd.)

I'm going to break the front page into six regions:

• Toolbar (ignoring since it's general-purpose and present on every page)
• Header
• Left/right sidebar (ignoring for the same reason as the toolbar)
• Content
• Directory

Header

The header (starting past the toolbar at the top, which appears on every page) is a little "Welcome to Wikipedia" message. Besides linking to articles like "Wikipedia" and "English language", it has the job of linking to the official introduction to Wikipedia under the text "anyone can edit" and linking to the page "Special:Statistics" when it links the numbers of editors and articles.

• The introduction to Wikipedia is designed to be helpful for editors and non-editors. The "policies and guidelines" and "navigating Wikipedia" introductions can help readers learn to identify why material is written the way it is, discern bad articles from good ones, and easily find what they're looking for. These are very short introductions but can be used as pseudo-directories to more in-depth information.
• "Special:Statistics" gives general statistics about Wikipedia (many of which, like the number of "oversighters" or "stewards" or "bureaucrats" will be gibberish to anyone who's never worked on the project) and also links to external statistics which are much more detailed.

Like every article, you can find a "Talk" page on the upper left, where people discuss the page itself. You'll also find options for:

• "Read" – Duh.
• "View Source" – Normally reserved for "Edit", but only administrators can edit the front page. (Source is normally much more readable than this; see next point.)
• "View History" – You won't find much of interest here, even if you care about the main page's history. Nearly all of the main page is transcluded from templates which are edited elsewhere. Looking back at even the past 100 edits brings us to October 2018 (average about one edit per month).

Note: Ignore the statistics like "revisions since [page creation date]", etc. That's just an extension that makes editing a bit easier.

Contents

The contents of the front page are these six boxes (from left to right):

• "Today's featured article"
• "In the news"
• "Did you know ..."
• "On this day"
• "From today's featured list"
• "Today's featured picture"

I used to ignore all of these, and I didn't appreciate them until I decided one-by-one over years to give each a fair shake by just trying them for a couple days (and not approaching them from my usual completionist mindset).

Today's featured article

"Featured article" is the highest status an article can attain, and it means it meets strict, heavily scrutinized criteria. A featured article has undergone an open peer-review process where, at minimum, several very experienced editors attempt over a lengthy discussion to find any possible flaws. In total, these represent about 0.09% of all articles, and there's an ongoing drive to reexamine old ones to make sure they still hold up.

"Today's featured article" (TFA) is a daily slot chosen via editors nominating articles already with featured status and other editors discussing, so it's selection after an already-selective process. They are well worth your time if you have any interest in the subject, and they're simply better than what you'll find in a professional publication like Britannica.

The content itself consists of a link to the article (in bold) a short introduction (usually a trimmed version of the article's lead section), an image of or representing the subject, "recently featured" articles (in descending chronological order), an "Archive" of all the TFAs, "By email" for a subscription, "More featured articles" to see all the featured articles grouped by subject matter, and "About" for basically what I just said in fewer words.

In the news

Wikipedia is not the news, but Wikipedia often documents breaking news when its subject obviously has more than passing notability. Typically, "in the news" (ITN) consists of four to five bullet points of news stories in descending chronological order. Each story gets a single-sentence description (a "blurb") along with a link to the event itself (in bold) and links to subjects involved. One story gets its own picture, although this isn't always the top one.

There are criteria for these, but as these are current events, the standards only enforce a baseline level of quality. The section is surprisingly globally representative. It will also usually safely cover blatantly major news stories, like: "Mojtaba Khamenei is elected Supreme Leader of Iran following the assassination of his father, Ali Khamenei." However, it isn't a replacement for news publications because 1) it will miss most of your local and regional stories, 2) it only covers five-ish events at a time, and 3) there is latency.

The "Ongoing" list covers current events which have either been ongoing for a long time or which will foreseeably continue for a long time. Especially for protracted events, there'll be a separate "timeline" article so readers can catch up.

"Recent deaths" does what it says on the tin: it lists people (with Wikipedia articles of some baseline quality) who usually died within the last couple weeks-ish. The quality ranges anywhere from "fine" to "excellent", typically more toward the former.

"More current events" takes you to the current events portal (see 'content portals' later under 'Other areas of Wikipedia') which has muuuuuuuch more coverage of current events. "Nominate an article" is kind of inviting you to do so, but it's also inviting you to watch the shitshow that goes on behind the scenes.

Did you know ...

"Did you know ..." (DYK) is a trivia section that's mainly designed as a hook to several articles (one of which gets an image). Like the previous two, it's done via a nomination process; an article can only be nominated seven days after it’s created, expanded by 5x, or promoted to Good Article status* (these are the formal rules). Often, you’ll find a niche subject that someone very recently put a ton of passion into researching and writing about.

The hook is supposed to be "likely to be perceived as unusual or intriguing by readers with no special knowledge or interest" (if it's about a creative work, it must be about a real-world fact). The subjects for DYK are usually extremely random, and the order doesn't represent quality. I think reading one per day is a lot of fun.

The "Archive" section lists every DYK, "Start a new article" takes you to a page which introduces writing an article from scratch,** and "Nominate an article" shows you all the behind-the-scenes goodness that goes into getting these selected.

* "Good article" status is a rung down from "featured article" status (discussed above). It's peer-reviewed by exactly one editor against less stringent criteria. Still considered quite good.

** If you're considering creating an article, please don't unless you've done some editing, and please read this page in its entirety first; it's extremely concise relative to how much you should know by the time you create an article.

On this day

"On this day" is one for the history buffs. Underappreciated, I think, is that it links to the day itself – Wikipedia maintains an article for all 366 calendar days, each of which documents events, births, deaths, and holidays. If there's a holiday of any reasonable import, it'll be shown alongside the date in "On this day".

There'll normally be 4 or 5 historical events on a bulleted list in ascending chronological order. Because a specific date needs to be known, these are typically distributed from about 1500 onward, but there are plenty much older than that. Each event will have the year linked, which Wikipedia also keeps articles on. Because there's such a deep pool to choose from, these articles are normally quite high-quality. Although an article can be about an event from any year, even in the 21st century, diversity is prioritized.

Below the events is a list of births and deaths, mixed together and in ascending chronological order. These have the same quality standards as the events list. If you're looking for biographies, these are more likely to be high-quality than the "Recent deaths" under "In the news".

"More anniversaries" just gives you the Wikipedia articles for yesterday, today, and tomorrow. "Archive" gives you the "On this day" for all 366 calendar days. This section doesn't technically rotate every year. Rather, these are pages that can be changed at any time. So the "March 13" page in 2027 could theoretically be the same as today. By convention, though, they're changed to avoid repetition.

* Pope Francis got mentioned today in both DYK and OTD. I promise Wikipedia isn't obsessed with Pope Francis.

Today's featured list

Much of the information on featured articles (above) applies here. Wikipedia categorizes lists separately from articles due to their major difference in format and function. Featured lists (of which there are about 4750) aren't just bulleted lists of the material or summaries of each item. Instead, they start with prose which introduces the subject and information you may need to understand the list.

The list is normally presented as a table with an image of and relevant information about each item. For lists with especially many items (e.g. list of California tornadoes), the table is usually dropped in favor of a bulleted list with summaries, but even in that example, you get statistics and graphics to summarize the items. All of the information is as well-cited as it would be in a featured article.

Featured lists are great unto themselves, and, in most cases, they also act as a great directory by linking to the article for each item, so you can use it as a way to find one that interests you and read specifically about it.

Today's featured list is chosen similar to today's featured article. The section has a summary of the overall subject being listed, an image of a representative of the list (including a link to that item's article), and recently featured lists (in descending chronological order).

The "Archive" is a list of all TFLs, and "More featured lists" has all the featured lists grouped by subject matter.

Today's featured picture

(Also called "photo of the day")

Most of Wikipedia's media is pulled from Wikimedia Commons, and a featured picture is normally a picture that's been uploaded to Commons and then uploaded separately to Wikipedia to receive featured image status there. Don't ask me; I don't know. Contrary to their name, they're sometimes videos rather than still images.

Bottom line is that these are really good free media which capture a specific subject very well. If you're solely interested in the eye candy, I recommend featured pictures on Commons, but these are nicer to me overall because they have an accompanying article. The article quality itself will range from "fine" to "excellent", because the image is the focus, but an image, to me, is still more enriching with context.

Unlike TFA and TFL, although images need featured status, there isn't a second nomination process; instead, they get a spot on the main page in roughly the order they were first considered featured (looks like about 2 years' delay right now).

The section on the main page will have the image, a short summary of the subject's article (like TFA and TFL), a link to said article (in bold), image credit, "Recently featured" pictures (in descending chronological order), an "Archive" of all the past today's featured pictures, and "More featured pictures" with every featured picture grouped by subject matter.

Directory

The directory after "Today's featured picture" is pretty much static.

Other areas of Wikipedia

"Other areas of Wikipedia" gives you reasonable descriptions of the items it lists, but I'll try to add something.

• Community portal – Just a big fuck-off list of things that editors might find useful or interesting, but some of it can be useful to the curious non-editor, which I guess I can describe (I'll skip the ones I think are pretty much only of use to editors).
  • The Teahouse (listed separately in "Other areas of Wikipedia") is a friendly place where newcomers can get help; usually this help concerns non-technical editing, but anything you'd want to do as a reader is covered there too.
  • The Reference Desk isn't just for editors. Obviously we massively appreciate if you contribute what you learn in your research to the encyclopedia (if it's applicable), but if you're really struggling to find a source for something, the reference desk is theoretically open to anybody.
  • WikiProjects. It's kind of wild to claim non-editors might be interested in this, but seeing the inner workings of some fields can, in my insanely ~~biased~~ seasoned opinion, be interesting. "Women in Red" is one that comes to mind.
  • The Signpost is Wikipedia's newspaper about itself. It's well-written and often surprisingly critical, and like usual, anyone can contribute.
  • "Newest featured content" shows the newest of the best of the best Wikipedia has to offer, namely featured articles, lists, topics (a collection of articles/lists around one subject), and pictures.
• Village pump – For technical stuff; no non-editor will ever need to be here.
• Site news – Nothing of importance to non-editors that The Signpost doesn't cover.
• Teahouse – See point in 'Community portal'.
• Help desk – Nominally different from the Teahouse (the latter is "for beginners"), but I don't think so in practice. Either way, non-editing questions are probably basic enough for the Teahouse.
• Reference desk – See point in 'Community portal'.
• Content portals – These are actually really cool and don't get nearly enough love. Portals are functionally topic-specific front pages to Wikipedia. So for example, the volcanoes portal is the front page of Wikipedia if you want to use it as an encyclopedia of volcanology.

Wikipedia's sister projects

The "Wikipedia's sister projects" section lists all of the sister projects under the Wikimedia Foundation. Yes, these exist; yes, they have a ton of work put into them. They have varying levels of "usefulness", ranging from what I would consider "just hanging on" for Wikinews to "fun curiosity" like Wikivoyage to "occassionally practical" like Wikiquote to "a serious public good" like Wikimedia Commons to "I use this at least once a day" like Wiktionary to "probably as used societally as Wikipedia" like Wikidata. I highly recommend looking at at least one of them; their contributors work just as hard as Wikipedia's, if not moreso.

Other Wikipedias

Lastly, you'll see non-English Wikipedias. A lot of these are very robust, and if you're curious about a more niche language, there's a dropdown on the bottom-right that lets you select from 346 languages. If you're trying to learn about something fairly regional and can translate, the corresponding Wikipedia's article is often better than the English Wikipedia's (or even exists, for that matter). If you're reading an article about a subject from a non-English region, you can always check the sidebar and see what it looks like in that language too. Keep in mind different languages have different editorial standards.

Follow-up questions welcome; I tried and probably failed to overcome nose blindness when considering relevant information.

Now you don't need expensive equipment to debunk flat earthers!

I'm sure you've seen it if you subscribe to satellite TV, or if you watch local channels (either over the air, or if you follow them on social media, or get your news at their website).

It usually starts with the local station. They will run a story disguised as news saying that one of the big satellite providers is threatening to take them off the air, and they will give you a number to call. They may also suggest you cancel your service and sign up with the competition.

The local station may be the loudest, but they are not necessarily at fault! Though they do own some of the fault.

The satellite provider will typically react by taking the station offline... that is, they will take them out of their channel lineup. (They are still broadcasting over cable, and over the satellite provider they aren't beefing with, and over the air.) They will replace the station with a similar but opposite notice about how the local channel demanded too much money and they could not afford to keep the channel without raising your rates.

So who do you believe? Truth is... both of them. Neither of them.

The way local channels work is, they have their OTA (over the air) business. They sell ad time to local businesses. They also do fluff pieces promoting local businesses, or naming segments after local businesses (or national ones whose chains want more exposure). Aside from that, they also license their content to cable and satellite providers. This is important because people who pay for cable and satellite still want local news, and no one can be arsed to spend $20-50 on an OTA receiver (an antenna, but they're flat now, you tape them to a wall and run a cable to your antenna, now you get free TV as long as you're within 10 miles or so (don't believe them when they say they go further, this is always limited by physics, and digital is kind of "all or nothing"). With cable providers, they generally look at how many subscribers the cable provider has and go from there. Satellite is different because DirecTV and Dish Network are basically "everywhere". So they do business differently. They work with all the local channels everywhere, so they have these deals in place that last for so many months or years.

When these terms come up, both sides tend to negotiate better rates, so that's when you see them threaten each other. They both want you to call and complain to soften the other side. If a deal is reached, the issue is dropped until next time. If not... then the channel is removed from the lineup and the channel blasts the satellite provider on social media and their site.

Basically, the local channel wants more money for the contract because they have ongoing expenses. Especially with everything going up, they want to pay people more, pay competitive wages and whatnot, so they ask for more money, year after year. And mostly, they get it. Local channels not being on satellite is not a big problem and when it is, it doesn't last long.

As for satellite, they want to pay less money, and their argument is that they serve more customers, so they are in fact bringing more eyes to those local ads.

In the United Kingdom, Parliament has basically said if you have a TV, you gotta pay the Beeb — the BBC. British Broadcasting Corporation. The people who make Dr Who, and they also have a pretty awesome news network. (Seriously, you should bookmark them.) Typically you can't watch the BBC on TV outside the UK, but you can access it online just fine, and there are services that carry its programming. In the US, there's really no such rule. Anyone can get local channels OTA for free. If you use cable or satellite, there is no set value for each viewer that needs to be met, it's all up for negotiation, and the customers lose.

I generally side with the local stations, but I will not sit here and tell you they're blameless. Both sides are bullshitting you, and neither side respects you enough to spell out the actual issues. They don't trust you, and that sucks. It's expected of DirecTV and Dish Network and the cable companies, we know they're shitty people. Or at least at the top. But your local news? You're supposed to trust them. So yeah, it sucks, but if I gotta pick a side, I'm going local every time. As should you, IMHO.

Satellite sucks, but it's a necessity for many. If you can get Internet, you can often do better with streaming than you can with traditional cable or satellite TV. The idea of 50,000 channels with nothing on is a Boomer dream, and even as a Gen-X'er pushing 50, I got no interest in those. Plus, they're close to 1/3 advertising these days. A show in a 60 minute time slot is 42 minutes of the show, and 18 minutes of ads. If it were 20/40 it would be exactly 1/3 advertising. It's not quite there yet. You want an actual number? Fine. The common denominator between 60 and 100 is 5, so... I'm just gonna google it... it's an even 30%. Now look at your cable or satellite bill. Are those advertisers paying 30% of your bill? Fuck no, they're not! But they expect you to buy from them.

My advice for so many fucked up situations is eat local, drink local, buy local. Whenever you can. Shop with local businesses. Go to craft faires and support local artists. (Disclaimer of bias: my wife is a local artist.) Contribute to people directly whenever possible by buying locally. Try to keep your money in your local community when and where you can. Support the people who support you. Local news is telling you what's happening where you live. Support their advertisers. If satellite tells you to call them, call them! And tell them to keep fighting the good fight. Tell them you have their back. And maybe ask them to be a little transparent about their side. We know they're holding out for more money. Tell them they deserve it. They're working for you every day.

This may be US-specific, and if it doesn't apply to your area, sorry. I just wanna spread information on what I know. If I haven't been to your state or country or province or whatever, sorry — I've been around a bit, but I don't really travel these days.