To quote a friend of mine who traveled to Australia recently, “I wouldn’t say Australia is the most racist country, but they are definitely the country that is the most comfortable with their racism.”

I honestly don’t remember. It was a long time ago. I also tried Mint thinking it might be more intuitive, but I couldn’t get WiFi to work with either of them.

20ish years ago I installed Ubuntu on a laptop with the intention to get off Windows. I then spent 4 to 6 hours a day for the next two weeks just trying to get the WiFi to function. None of the fixes I could Google up worked, and that was frustrating. It was the people in the Linux forums that finally made me quit trying, though. The amount of gatekeeping was kind of shocking. Like, how dare I bother such mighty computer men with my plebian questions. I should feel honored that anyone condescended to respond at all, and I should gratefully accept their link to a fix I’ve already tried and fuck off.

I bought a new PC last year and I hate Windows 11 so much that it’s got me eyeing Linux again. But the thought of having to repeat that whole ordeal again makes me feel sick to my butthole.

I was hoping it was going to be jaankenschnitzel.

Same here. It’s been a while since I’ve owned an actual TV to hook them up to though.

Pyrophoric (adj) – Liable to ignite spontaneously on exposure to air.

Just in case you weren’t entirely sure what that word meant either.

I don’t want to sound like I’m defending Biden, but I don’t know why people find this surprising. I’ve only been paying attention to politics for about 30 years, but he’s been saying this loudly and proudly for as long as I can remember.

Maybe people are just now noticing because it suddenly matters more than it used to. It definitely hits different when Israel is actively attempting a genocide, and it feels to me to be in pretty fucking terrible taste to beat that particular drum right now, but people are acting like this just came out of left field. He has been absolutely consistent about calling himself a Zionist for decades. It really shouldn’t have come as a shock.

No, because active noise cancellation doesn’t offer any hearing protection. It doesn’t make the noise go away, it works by sending out an extra soundwave which is a mirror inversion of noise to be cancelled, sends out peaks where there were troughs and troughs where there were peaks, and they cancel each other out as far as your brain is concerned. But to work the destructive soundwave has to be as loud as the sound it’s cancelling, and now you have two sound waves blasting away, still moving air and putting pressure on your eardrums, and it’s that pressure causes the damage to your hearing.

Proper PPE has a passive barrier that physically blocks the bulk of the vibration from reaching your eardrums in the first place. Active noise cancellation does kind of the opposite of that.

Well, you’re in luck because we are living in basically the platinum age of women fronting cool rock bands.

Just off the top of my head:

Bones UK, Sniffany and the Nits, Cable Ties, Amyl and the Sniffers, Mod Con, Waax, Gutter Girls, Flagipanis, Panic Shack, Tiger Pussy, The Hellfreaks, The Darts, The Creepshow, The Spookshow, Zombina and the Skeletones, Bat Fangs, La Butcherettes, The Death Valley Girls, Sleater Kinney, The Veleteers, The Julie Ruin, The Bobby Lees, The Coathangers, The Regrettes, The Pink Slips, The Blushes, Bratmobile, LA Machina, Scrunchies, Skating Polly, and The Nova Twins.

I could dig up more if I start scrolling through my playlists, but there are tons of women out there right now making great music. Seems like every time I turn around there’s some cool new thing.

The list of subreddits I really miss is actually pretty short, but one of them for sure is ThatsABooklight. Not the most active sub, but you could lose most of a weekend scrolling through all the weird stuff that got dressed up as a movie prop.

Yes. I love mine. I originally got some bone-conduction headphones to use at my job because I work in a high noise environment and they still work while you’re wearing earplugs, but I use them pretty much constantly now. It’s really nice to have my music or podcasts and still be able to hear when someone asks me a question, or to be able to hear traffic coming if I’m out walking or jogging.

I’ve had a couple pairs of them now and weirdly bone-conduction headphones seem to be the one electronic device that under promises on its battery life. I don’t know if maybe I just got lucky, but the cheap no name set I got off Amazon promised 5 hours, but even after a year still regularly lasts 8 or 9. My Shokz Open Run Pros promise 10 hours, and I routinely get 15 or 16 hours. So that’s nice.

Lucero is pretty legit. Really nice guys too. My buddy made friends with the singer way back when he was in his previous band and subsequently Lucero is one of the few bands I’ve been following since basically day one.

Some of these are more country than southern rock, but you might also like Jason Isbell, 16 Horsepower, Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, Corb Lund, Wovenhand, Larkin Poe, Pink Williams (if you’re not turned off by leftist politics), and Hank Williams III (if you don’t mind a lot of drug references), and The Goddamn Gallows.

Sponge bath?

Wash basin.

Somewhere in storage I have a tapestry of dogs playing pool.

That is Larkspur. I’m from Denver, and recognized it immediately (also I image searched Larkspur ren faire to double check I wasn’t misremembering what it looks like). I’m sure other ren-faires have similar things, but that castle facade has been there since at least the 1980s, and I kind of doubt that was something you could get pre-fabricated back then.

Is this a shocking headline for people who weren’t alive when the Cold War was still going on? Because when I was a kid Russia making plans for nuclear retaliation was just a typical weekday.

Is it too late to bring back the lettuce?

I live in the Rocky Mountains and I see this shit all the time. Everybody thinks they’re a special little Disney princess, and they are shocked, absolutely shocked, when Bambi freaks out and kicks them in the face. As if that weren’t the sensible reaction to being cornered by an apex predator.

Wild animals are dangerous and unpredictable. Just leave them alone. Even the cute ones can hurt you.

I for real thought it was from the dad jokes sub. I was super relieved when I realized it was a link to a news story about an actual bear, and not that the punchline was supposed to be that the bear was black and stole something.