I don’t know who needs to hear this but if the batteries die in your electric toothbrush, it’s still a toothbrush

"We've learned how to fight abuse. It's a solvable problem. We just have to stop repeating the same myths as excuses not to fix things."

Still relevant seven years later. From @anildash via @jkottke

medium.com/humane-tech/the-imm

@gulovsen Right? If a person consumes three cans of diet soda, that’s 36 ounces or 1.065 liters. For Pepsi, that’s 450 kcalories total, while for Pepsi Zero, that’s… zero.

As someone who once drank full-HFCS Pepsi and now drinks the zero-sugar stuff, it often didn’t stop at one liter per day!

@dave I think that’s absolutely correct. The future keeps bringing change beyond what most of us are comfortable with, relentlessly.

One can chalk it up to age (as I do), or one can blame various targets, and the thing that marks the MAGAs as “the bad guys” is who they’ve chosen to blame.

I realized today that neither of my cars have the ability to play CDs.

The EV era and the CD era apparently do not overlap.

Sure, “generative AI” image models are all the rage, but don’t sleep on slightly-older-fashioned FaceApp de-aging, aging, and re-gendering.

This is what I looked like, will look like, and would have looked like, apparently.

Every night, I pick up a medium soda from a local chain convenience store*. I do this at night because, well, that’s when I have time to leave the house. But I don’t want to drink soda at night, caffeinated as it is. So each night I pick up the next day’s soda.

Since I’m not planning to drink it until the next day, I don’t bother inserting a straw, which is how I’ve come to notice something odd.

The manufacturing tolerance on plastic lids is pretty tight. So tight, in fact, that if I just slap a lid down on a cup full of soda and carry it to my car, the jostling and release of bubbles often pushes up on the lid so much that soda leaks out of the side of the cup.

But wait, what about the hole in the lid? Shouldn’t the gas escape through the hole in the lid, rather than pushing up and creating a dome? It turns out that when I don’t insert a straw, there is no hole in the lid. There are two cuts in the lid, making an X or + into which a straw may be inserted, but if I don’t insert a straw, those cuts are basically sealed tight, tighter than the edges of the cup, for example.

I’ve started to use a fingernail to bend up one of the corners of the straw cut-out, just to let a very small amount of gas escape, so I still have bubbly soda the next day.

Some other time I’ll talk about why I have had as many as four (4) medium sodas in the fridge overnight.

  • I said “pick up,” not “buy.” Despite owning only electric cars, I visit a gas station every day. The incentive program at RaceTrac is incredibly effective. Over time I built up enough points that I get a free medium soda or slushee (or a small coffee) every single day. Of course, I go every day, because why not? And since I’m there every day, sometimes I also buy roller grill items (America’s equivalent of Asia’s street food), and sometimes candy. So RaceTrac is giving away a lot of soda–which costs them very little–and managing to keep me as a customer, despite the fact that I will never again need to buy their main product. Pretty impressive!

@GeePawHill I have never heard anyone say “tupple” aloud, and never seen anyone suggested it could be pronounced that way before just now. I don’t judge anyone who wants to pronounce it that way, but I do question your assertion that everyone would understand. I don’t think I would!

Judith Love Cohen was the engineer who made Apollo's Abort Guidance System, which was crucial to saving the ill-fated Apollo 13. She finished it while in labor, then (the same day) delivered her younger son -- the actor Jack Black.

This is one of those utterly remarkable #space stories that I stumble over once in a while and it blows my mind afresh every single time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_L

@msprout @Trendar @jeffjarvis If you’re upset about the trend of blaming “Millennials,” make a list of the people who did so, rather than perpetuate the nonsense by blaming “Boomers.”

  • an ignored X

On mastodon, I have felt strangely free to post when I think I have something to say, and remain a silent observer when I don’t. This might come as a surprise to some, who wonder why I think I had to say that, or this other thing, but that’s life.

For whatever record anybody is keeping, I support people. I believe in people. LGBTQIA+ people, straight people, people of different ethnic backgrounds, people who believe in different things or nothing, people. I support people living their own lives, making their own choices, loving or not loving whom they wish.

I support anybody willing to to support the same people I do, while allowing people to opt out. Some people opt out by pursuing trans-exclusionary views, or anti-immigrant views, or views that involve the superiority of one ethnic groups and inferiority of others. Believing any of that nonsense is opting out of the amazing wonder of a pluralistic modern society. It’s siding with the bad guys, and nobody should want to be like a nazi, or a confederate, or any other historical losers who also thought they should treat others badly.

Be a winner! Don’t just tolerate people, support people! Love people!

@KingShawn

I’m sorry I offended you. I think everybody wishes things were different, or even that Fox “News” would go off the air. Clearly passions are high.

@KingShawn

Of course! Were I king, that’s how it would have gone. Unfortunately, I’m not king, and my admittedly limited experience with negotiation suggests one doesn’t always get everything they want.

But maybe you have insider knowledge that Dominion didn’t even ask for that? The wording of the settlement seemed like the result of tough negotiation to me, but I’m no expert.

@KingShawn

Winning the legal case would not have resulted in an on-air apology either.

Only settlement terms could have ensured that, but it seems Fox was willing to pay a fortune to avoid it.

As it happens, Dominion isn’t done suing, and Fox isn’t done being sued.

@eric This is amazing. I’m now planning to listen to her audiobook next!

USA the last 1 week:
•Black teen shot for ringing a doorbell
•Two teen girls shot for sitting in a car
•A 7 mo pregnant woman & her unborn child were shot at a Walgreens
•20-year-old woman shot dead for turning into a driveway
•Four young people shot dead at a birthday party

Imagine thinking the solution is even MORE guns.😐
#GunReformNOW

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