The only good news about the royal family is when they’re finally stricken off the civil list and made to pay taxes like the rest of their subjects.

how about they leave the fluoride in it for starters?

They don’t say anything because getting on Trump’s bad side is bad for business. Duh.

Same reason why the tech industry players are frantically trying to out-sycophant one another to please His Cheeto Highness.

Well, I trust Clarkson’s assessment of Elon Musk: it takes one to know one.

So instead of quietly sitting on his accidental inclusion into the hot mailing list and waiting for a truly big one to come down the pipe, he spills the beans - and no doubt got ejected from the mailing list faster than you can say “Is this administration a data security disaster or what?!” - to write an article about how he got a two-hour advance notice of the US military bombing lousy targets in lousy Yemen.

Not smart…

This is his brand of image:

“Sinister” is the word you’re looking for.

And if this seems vaguely familiar, here’s why:

Dictators, fictional and real alike, love sinister portraits of themselves.

If I had money, I would buy this artwork and organize to have it displayed everywhere and covered massively by the media to piss him off.

The problem is income. Bad food that makes you fat and diabetic is the ultra-processed kind that’s a lot cheaper than fresh produce and quality semi-processed food. A lot of the population simply doesn’t have the means to eat well.

The other problem is that ultra-processed food is highly addictive. It’s been proven that the combination of fat and sugar - which can be found in most of these processed food - is as addictive as cocaine. It’s hard to resist.

In other words, in the modern world, staying healthy and in good shape takes a lot of self-control and a lot of money. The poor today suffer from rich people’s diseases of yesteryear thanks to the agro industry.

The second amendment is a myth. I guarantee you no citizens will rise up against the government with they AR-15 in 2025 when they’ll be facing an ultra-militarized police force and the entire tech industry turned into a giant ubiquitous surveillance apparatus out to root out dissenters.

Not to mention, for citizens to even think of rising up against the government in any significant number, they’d have to want to do it, and most people would rather sit comfortably at home in front of the TV and forget about what’s happening, when they don’t actively agree with the ambient fascism.

You’re assuming Trump and his henchmen will obey the courts. I predict that very soon, they won’t even pretend they give a shit about the judiciary anymore.

The dull part is staring at a swimming pool wall in the cold outside instead of going for a drink, doing exciting sports of boning my hot wife 🙂

I like your callsign incidentally 🙂

It’s just stainless steel tiles hanging on steel cables as far as I can tell. Pretty low tech. I guess time would bring them down eventually - entropy is a bitch that way - but I assume the designers took wear into account and replacing the tiles is scheduled at some point.

Incidentally, the stainless steel thing is a theme in this swimming pool: the pools themselves are lined with stainless steel plates at the bottom instead of the usual ceramic tiles or vinyl lining, and lit with blue light. Really futuristic and smart-looking.

Why are the American people so …weak?
In another month, Americans will have non ability to mobilize and fight the Dictatorship that is almost fully installed.

The exact same thing happened in Germany in 1933. This is the exact same playbook: way too many people are willing to accept a little fascism because the fascist promises to drop the price of groceries and target groups of people they don’t belong to. Then the fascist doesn’t drop the price of groceries and turns against those who supported him - by which point, it’s too late.

What you’ve just discovered is that today’s Americans as just as dumb as the Germans of 92 years ago - dumber in fact, because they knew what happened in Nazi Germany, an advantage the Germans who trusted Hitler didn’t have.

The Americans should’ve known better, and yet they voted the orange fascist in. Plus ca change…

Google does not automatically mean bad

Yes it does.

Google does everything with an angle, and that angle is putting you under surveillance and collecting monetizable data on you.

Google has (or had, maybe?) fantastic products. They’re truly great! The translator, the map, Youtube… But they’re great for exactly the purpose of luring you into using them, so they can abuse your privacy with them.

Google products are trojan horses: they’re irresistible but their true purpose is nefarious.

The triangular blades come with two straight edges and one angled, serrated edges. The two straight edges work equally well front and back. The serrated edge only work as intended, like a chisel.

In fairness, there is one valid reason why the company would have chosen to make it impossible to reverse the blade: to avoid support calls and warranty claims from people trying to use the serrated edge the wrong way around.

Because if you think about it, they went out of their way to make the socket one-way: it would actually be cheaper to manufacture the notch on both sides than the way they made it on one side only. So they really did intend to ensure the blade can only be mounted one way.

But here’s the thing: you have to be really, REALLY dumb to use the serrated edge in reverse and not realize it. It’s completely obvious that the tool isn’t working right, and there’s something sharp sticking up instead of down on the glass. So I don’t buy the idiot-proof anti-warranty-claims argument: I’m totally certain it is done to limit the life of the blades.

Although mind you, it’s rather academic: when an edge is spent, I simply sharpen it with a fine belt on the belt sander and it’s good for another few months anyway 🙂 But of course, you need a belt sander if you want to do that.

He who cares about privacy even a little bit and uses Google DNS servers doesn’t really care about privacy.

They’ll keep a reduced staff dedicated to truly essential police work, such as rounding up the terrorists who commit acts of vandalism against Tesla dealerships.

In fairness, it’s not new: I remember in the late 80’s, people entering the US on the visa waiver program were given a green cardboard form to fill out in the plane before landing. The form has a bunch of questions like “What are you coming to the US for?” “Where are you staying?” etc.

Standard stuff. But it also had a really silly question: “Are you a war criminal?” That’s a seriously stupid question: if you’re a war criminal, you’re unlikely to answer truthfully, and if you’re not, you’re going to answer No of course.

Some smartass in the plane joked that he would answer Yes for shits and giggles. Well, the joke was on him: he was detained and grilled rather thoroughly for 10 hours and then kicked out of the country. He kept saying “It was a joke! It was a joke!” but the INS officers kept saying “We’re not amused and you’re going to find out just how much we are not.”

The same sort of story was posted in the newspaper - perhaps around the same time, maybe mid-80’s - about a dude traveling with a violin. When the immigration officer asked him what it was, he said “A machine gun of course!” Same thing: he was pulled out and interrogated rather roughly for hours.

All that was pre-9/11 and pre-USA Patriot Act, when things were still pretty chill. But even back them, it was standard advice not to fuck around with immigration in any way possible.

No question.

What I meant was, visiting the US today is like visiting Germany in 1934: if you must do it, do your utmost to avoid getting in trouble with the Gestapo.

The true good advice to give is: don’t go to the fucking United States.