One time when I was much younger, I borrowed a trailer from a buddy to haul around some stuff that wouldn't fit in my Jeep.

When I initially borrowed it, my friend set up the hitch and locked it in place. I figured I'd be able to do the same when it came time to return it.

Well, I didn't do it right. I got on the road to return the trailer to my friend, and about 1000ft down the road, the trailer popped right off the hitch and started barreling down the road behind me toward a car.

The car stopped before the trailer hit it. A guy got out, grabbed the trailer, pulled it up to my Jeep before I could even say anything, and hitched it properly while I was apologizing.

He just said, "No worries" and went on his way. What a cool guy.

Just one tattoo. I got it at 20 about a year after my dad passed away. It's an homage to the only tattoo my dad had throughout my childhood, which was a bird on his arm. I got it done by an old friend of his, who owned a tattoo shop. He free-handed it off of a grainy, faded photograph that I pulled out of an old photo album. He did a fantastic job; it's a 1:1 replica.

It's faded just a bit now (I've had it for nearly 15 years), but not badly. I'll probably get it touched up in a few years to brighten up the colors.

The "small issue" you described is a logistical one that remains unsolved by bureaucrats, lawmakers, judges, or anyone else. "Bad actors ruin it for those who really need it" is the same "small issue" people use to argue against many services people genuinely need in order to survive.

"Deport them all and let God sort 'em out" is the course America has chosen, and it is the immoral course, as far as I am concerned.

we need more people processing immigration paperwork

Agreed, but it won't happen, especially under this administration. They don't want more immigrants, even "legal" ones. They say they are only against "illegal" immigrants, but let's be real here. Lemme know when they sign into law some additional funding for hiring more bureaucrats to parse immigration paperwork. I won't hold my breath.

When immigrants know the legal pathway is unreasonably slow and will not be improved in any way, there's no incentive to do it the "legal" way.

Regulations virtually always lag years behind technology, don't they? In the interim period with absolutely no regulations, we must take it upon ourselves to protect ourselves and loved ones from being exploited.

Given just how wealthy the AI bubble is making some people, we may not see any common sense regulation for quite some time. Best to adapt to that reality imo. Gonna tell my friends and family to call me by my hacker alias, "X360N0_sc0peX" on the phone or I'll assume they're a bot.

I don't think it has to be all-or-nothing when it comes to caring about your rights. I care about my rights, but might still have to deal with a Windows PC for select use cases.

I have friends who undoubtedly care about their rights and simultaneously own an iPhone. Does it make them a hypocrite? I don't think so. I think it means that "caring about your rights" is situationally, and generally, really difficult to put into practice in 2024 and not everyone can go full RMS and completely forgo all cell phone use on principle.

Jokingly: "Linux is free if your time is worthless"

Though this tongue-in-cheek tagline takes the "free as in free beer" misinterpretation of the term "free software", I've always found it a fun way to describe the time investment you'll need to make if you've spent your whole life using Windows before making the switch.

The Incredibles isn't Randian propaganda by any stretch. This interpretation is wildly missing the film's messages about society. Brad Bird, the director, called the "Ayn Rand" interpretation of the film "nonsense" and "ridiculous" in multiple interviews when this interpretation started getting parroted by people who didn't get the point of the film.

I think it got misinterpreted a few times. Some people said it was Ayn Rand or something like that, which is ridiculous. other people threw Nietzsche around, which I also find ridiculous. But I think the vast majority of people took it the way I intended. Some people said it was sort of a right-wing feeling, but I think that's as silly of an analysis as saying The Iron Giant was left-wing. I'm definitely a centrist and feel like both parties can be absurd.

I've started baking bread this year and it's been fun.

The "hardest" part is deciding to make the dough at night before I go to bed so it can ferment overnight. But the next day, all I need to do is throw it in the oven for 45 minutes and bam, fresh bread.

I'm struggling to get the crust right, though. It tends to come out very chewy rather than crispy

Gotcha. You mentioned you put the PC into Recovery Mode and tried to reinstall Windows, but it didn't work. What happened that prevented the re-installation of Windows? Did the PC just shutdown during installation, or were you wholly unable to get the Windows installer to run?

If you're still able to boot into Recovery Mode/Safe Mode, try opening up a Command Prompt and running the SFC Scan and DISM commands outlined here: https://www.howtogeek.com/222532/how-to-repair-corrupted-windows-system-files-with-the-sfc-and-dism-commands/

let’s be real, youtube is a big waste of time

I see people say this a lot, especially on the fediverse, and it makes me wonder why people think youtube is a "waste of time" when youtube's uses are what the user makes of it.

I primarily use youtube for learning things. There are so many thousands of hours of useful, educational content on youtube that I find the suggestion that the entire platform is useless clickbait to be reductive and disingenuous.

Sure, there are channels I watch for typical mind-numbing content like Let's Plays and such, but I wouldn't suggest that youtube is wholly a waste of time just because there's plenty of mindless content on it.

Just like Reddit or Lemmy, I can create an account and subscribe to a bunch of dumb shitposting communities, but I can also subscribe to a bunch of interesting hobbyist/intrigue communities.

My hand sanitizer only kills 99.99% of germs. Should it not be allowed to be called hand sanitizer because it cannot kill all of them?

I'd agree with this comparison if the ruling meant that they had to advertise their wings as "~99.9% boneless" the same way hand sanitizer labels itself as being ~99.9% effective.

(They’re created with computer too.)

I've got bad news for him regarding how modern pickup trucks work.