667

It’s a common trope, in the US at least. The gift can be different in different countries. In the Philippines other local-made snacks might be brought for teachers.

The fibers are too short, but you could probably make a neat paper out of it.

There are some really good flint and steel survival rods available now. Not the flimsy Scouting ones of yesteryear, but ones with anodized aluminum housings, hardened metal strikers and large diameter flint rods.

Started our winter stove with it the other day and am really happy with it.

The one I have, from a survival perspective, is a little risky, because when configuring them for use they must be taken down into multiple parts, but damn if it doesn’t make huge sparks.

Can’t we though? All language is arbitrary at first. A person (or community) often names things, sometimes from pure scratch. The words “Kodak” and “Xerox” come to mind.

That book, along with Brave New World have shaped me so deeply. I’ve read 1984 periodically and each reading reveals so much more than the last because I have new mental lenses each time.

Definitely pick it up again and give it a punt.

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” —George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four

Aye, I did thank you for the correction.

According to Space.com in July 2023, there were 4,487 active Starlink satellites. 26 represents just over 0.5% of the total constellation. Considering it seems like a swarm-type system, 0.5% strikes me as simply the cost of doing business.

Edit: decimals.

Depends on the kind of sail. If they’re using any kind of spinnaker or kite sail, it requires human hands.

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

Strong concur. Religion is fine, but there is no place for extremism.

Reddit quietly changed the /r/redditrequest process a while ago. It used to be if you had no activity on your account for a year, then they would consider handing it over. In this case, if the admins don’t take it outright, then any user can make an /r/redditrequest for the sub. Admins will send a modmail to the sub, but not a message to your account. If you don’t reply within seven days they will hand over your account and you’ll only find out if you have your email set to send notifications when you get the “you’ve been removed as moderator”. I lost modship of a sub I had setup years ago because I didn’t receive any other notification.

When this happens to me, I pick out the most obvious thing in the general direction my partner has pointed and say something about it, like “wow, that is a lot of trees!”

Makes my partner immediately explain what they saw, and I remind them that they’ve got to be specific. It’s gotten better.

[removed]

Adding phrases to become law which have nothing to do with the scope and intention of the overall bill, and are generally wild additions that have no hope of passing on their own.

Sometimes they’re added to intentionally bog down a bill so it won’t pass. The riders are used as a sort of narcissistic bargaining chip in political “negotiation”.

To this end, for some it might be helpful to start with tracking spending (speaking from personal experience). I couldn’t determine what was a reasonable amount for a given category for a budget because I didn’t see my current circumstance.

I spent several years categorizing my expenses into two broad categories: fixed vs variable.

Fixed costs are utilities, mortgages, grocery, and insurance etc, variable costs were anything else (more or less).

By doing it this way I could see the minimum I needed to live—and also how much I was spending on frivolous shit.

Use Google Docs, and make a simple spreadsheet to track numbers. It doesn’t have to be a beautiful sheet, just functional. It will grow with you over time as you add and remove functionally to track different aspects of your finances that are important to you. If you don’t know how to use spreadsheets, online MOOCs have courses for a tiny amount of dollars relative to what you learn.

I have run my own PiHole previously. Then I wanted Ad blocking on my phone, so I also setup OpenVPN that ran alongside my PiHole so I could get ad blocking anywhere. I travel often, and then we moved, so I never got it set up again, at the same time I discovered AdGuard could be configured on both home networks for network-level blocking, but they also have device profiles for iOS.

I haven’t had to fuss with PiHole now in years.

If you are happy to do the administration of a PiHole, and the scope it provides, it’s good. I didn’t want to have to fuss with it anymore.

These are called hypnic jerks.

I’m not a bot. You’re a bot!

Philippines, for the curious.