All these damn website changes. Last week, the camera spex were in Ohms.

I would be apoplectic if if took five days for a number port with a constantly changing website and clueless customer service. Not to mention data simply being completely shut off after hitting the “high speed” limit.

Except for being assigned a completely new number instead of porting, with the old carrier having released it. The impacts here on 2FA and having to tell everyone you have a new number when most of your contacts don’t answer calls from unknown numbers. Except you can’t for days anyway, and who knows what calls and texts you’ve missed in that time.

I was fully expecting this to be a categorically terrible vanity project, but the grift exceeds expectations.

I went to a conference for college newspaper editors at the University of Georgia in 2000. The goodie bag included a copy of a UGA professor’s book When MBAs Run the Newsroom. And prescient. Now they run everything and have no fucking clue what the business actually does.

Golden parachute time! They can take some time off while figuring out what to fuck up next.

I was on a VPN well before Texas pulled this shit, simply because I don’t care to have the ISP that I’m already paying double-dip by selling my history to data brokers. Honestly, I think a VPN is necessary for basic online hygiene at this point.

Agreed. Luckily, they don’t seem to have the full list of Mullvad IPs, so if I really want to read something, I just try another tunnel.

Not the ruling itself, but corporations file all sorts of motions before and during the initial trial specifically so that if a motion is denied, voila! Now the jury verdict and compensation decision isn’t what they’re challenging, but rather technical aspects from rulings by the judge overseeing the trial court … admission or inadmission of evidence is always a popular one.

To suggest that anyone else has the sort of law firms on retainer to play this game all the way to the top is folly. It’s just another way in which the system is rigged.

Not at all … it’s just that corporations, unwilling to take no for an answer, have functionally unlimited funds to throw toward several rounds of escalating court cases while defendants … don’t. It creates an inherently lopsided situation the legal system wasn’t explicitly designed for, but now this is just standard.

Companies walk into these trials essentially seeing the first round as a rehearsal.

Before you built up your collection, how did you use to discover new music back in the day? I’m guessing probably from the radio, this is that for the current generation.

In high school, sure, but CDs were still $20 ($44 in 2025 dollars), and my dislike of the fake tone of advertising made me want to abandon it as quickly as possible. Younger than that, I’d do the whole “hope a track comes on and hit record on a cassette” thing.

When I started college in 1997, mp3s were an entirely new concept, and I wasn’t exactly rolling in cash. My first foray was IRC Fservs in the dorm, and after that, I don’t clearly recall the order of operations regarding Napster, LimeWire, BearShare, Kazaa, ratio FTP servers (one of which I operated via dyndns and led to being exposed to music I never otherwise would have been), and likely a couple of other sources I’ve since forgotten about.

So yeah, it was piracy to start, but finding trance at the turn of the century was nigh impossible without shelling out a Jackson in hopes that the tiny electronic section at Tower Records would hold some gems I’d only be able to discover after purchase. Once tracks became anywhere from 79 cents to $1.89 I slowly rebuilt my extant collection with purchased copies (320kbps sounds much better than 112 to start, and I do like supporting artists) complete with full metadata.

Back when Amazon didn’t completely suck, they often had promos on digital goods when one opted for slower shipping; I got a lot of free music that way, as you could get a $1 credit for each item, leading to the somewhat absurd situation of things being effectively cheaper when purchased and shipped separately, which isn’t where economies of scale come from (and wasteful as hell in terms of packaging).

It’s sort of weird to have a “transcript” of a written document.

I hate that this is how our legal system has evolved. Trial courts mean nothing when a corporation loses, because invariably an appeal is filed, and if the circuit court upholds a ruling, well, time to talk to SCOTUS.

It’s definitely promising. I just meant that he has that gift of oratory. The next couple of cycles could be interesting, as the DNC won’t abandon money, even as more and more voters, especially younger ones, see no representation across the country.

Thank you for your service.

While I agree with the premise, these juxtaposed images don’t convey what you’re hoping they do.

In my defense, this was just a YouTube suggestion after finishing another video. I do share NPR text links here regularly, but only when the text version is what I run into. This is somewhat the difference between being paid to provide news and volunteering. But I get where you’re coming from.

Being able to see facial expressions and hear inflection allows for a deeper experience. I tend to read transcripts most of the time because it’s just faster. But for understanding who Mamdani is as a full introduction, text alone won’t get you all the way there, and I’d only so far seen clips.

In Trumpian Washington, swamp drains you.

OK, so. A majority of Americans did not do so. Grossly simplified, one-third did, one-third didn’t, and one-third stayed home. If you’re being fed the line that a majority of voters wanted Trump, it simply isn’t true. Millions stayed on the sidelines because of Gaza and feeling like there was no point (which, in many states, there isn’t; there are like seven where your vote matters).

You don’t have to be nice to her. But how often have you seen “bitch” used as a pure pejorative on Beehaw? Consider your audience.

Tone it down a bit. Most of us didn’t vote for him, if only because a significant chunk simply didn’t vote.

But “bitch” is a bit beyond the pale for Beehaw. That’s objectively not Beeing Nice.

That the establishment is flailing tells you this is a movement with legs. I don’t think they can shut it down like 2016 Bernie, so … it’ll be interesting to see what comes next.