You’re right! That gives a clue as to who the perps were…

Big Balls (the DOGE kid musk hired) got beat up in DC while supposedly saving a woman from being carjacked or something by 10 people. Somehow that’s an adequate reason to take over the city.

We’re living in a joke.

I’m not being defeatist. I’m saying in a straight up open confrontation, civilians would lose without the military fracturing with them.

The Troubles is asymmetrical guerrilla warfare, which is sustainable, but very costly and certainly something to avoid if possible.

Appreciate it :)

The only other option is civil war, which relies on the militarily joining the rebellion, otherwise it would be a massacre if done openly, or simply become similar to The Troubles if done underground.

We’re hoping the non violent general strike works instead.

The next step is a general strike. If you currently work in an non union job, consider contacting the IWW. They’ll train you to become an effective organizer to unionize your workplace, so that the general strike is more effective.

The protests are not to convince the fascists to stop, they won’t. It’s to help show to others that there are millions against this out in the open public ally defying the new regime, so that others aren’t afraid to stand up as well.

It helps shape public opinion, especially if the police brutalize peaceful protesters.

It’s a place to build connections for future resistance as well.

It’s one piece of a larger puzzle, in addition to unionizing in preparation for a general strike, and building local community for prefiguration and to be better able to resist.

The exact effect of these chemicals is still not known. Microplastics seem capable of limiting crop yields, so that’s certainly a horrific issue combined with reduced yields from climate change as well. But chemicals in general, as horrific as they are, are not quite an existential threat capable of completely destroying our ability to grow food.

Current farming practices depleting topsoil is a bigger threat to food production than chemicals, generally, except for pesticides likely causing the collapse of the bee population, which is an existential threat.

PFAS is a massive problem certainly worth tackling, but as bad as it is, I don’t think it’s an existential threat with a very short time window to prevent devastation of the species like climate change is.

Theoretically there’s no reason we can’t tackle both problems at once, but personally I would advocate pumping as much resources as humanly possible into preventing climate change first, if that’s the only way politicians will deal with it.

I don’t think it’s comparable. Climate change is far more dire and time sensitive.

Update! So the new Crisco uses Intersterified fat, which this study suggests promotes weight gain, increases blood sugar levels, and stresses the liver.

It also is now mostly made of Palm oil, which means buying it inadvertently supports the burning of rainforest for palm oil plantations.

From the studies I’d read on the new formulation, the thing they’re doing to it to keep it solid at room temperature seems to also be very unhealthy, even if it no longer has trans fats.

It’s been quite a while since I read them, so I can’t recall the name of chemical or process that’s harmful (agh!)

I’ll see if I can find it.

This has not been my experience, at least on a 4G device. My internet/data still work fine on a 5 year old device.

As an owner of a 4a, I can tell you with confidence that my device has not received an update in any form for many, many months now. It is effectively unsupported, and certainly is insecure in comparison to a Pixel 6 or newer.

The GrapheneOS developers themselves have stated in their forum that they will no longer provide extended support beyond the Pixel 5a, and that the extended support it has is already effectively insecure:

You should already be treating it as if it’s not receiving updates anymore, since that’s largely the case already.

Providing extended support doesn’t fit with the way we do things at all and is ending after the Pixel 5a. It’s a temporary compromise for harm reduction through existing users at least getting some of the patches despite not moving to a secure device. When this topic comes up in this way, it hints to us that we may be doing more harm than good through people continuing to use an insecure devices. We’ll certainly stop doing it with the 5 and 7 year support devices.

A day ago, a GrapheneOS dev said of the Pixel 4a:

It’s unsafe to continue using the Pixel 4a. It lacks basic security updates. Pixel 4a was launched August 2020 so it’s at the 5 year point. It was a budget device, not a flagship. It was launched with 3 years of support, unlike 8th/9th gen Pixels with 7 years of support from launch or the prior 6th/7th gen Pixels with 5 years of support from launch.

So for the Pixel 4, it effectively received about an extra year and half of tenuous support. The Pixel 5 will receive a few more months of tenuous extended support, then there will be no extended support for any future devices, meaning users will have to upgrade at the end of Google’s official support cycle for each device.

From the link:

GrapheneOS aims to provide harm reduction releases for devices which only have a minimum of 3 years support. Extended support updates at minimum will be done until the next Android version.

Emphasis mine. That quote does not imply they will provide an additional 3 years of support, only that they will offer the harm reduction updates from the end of official OEM support until the next version of Android is released.

I have personal experience with this, as my quite old Pixel 4a received harm-reduction updates from GrapheneOS for an additional few months into 2024 until the next version of Android was released, but that did not result in years of support. It is now completely unsupported, and has a warning on every bootup that says as much.

Further along they then say:

It is likely that we will make a decision around harm reduction releases for other devices with longer lifetimes in Q4 2024.

This implies they may actually stop doing post-support harm reduction updates for the newer devices that have longer support lifetimes from Google.

Most vintage cast iron pans were ground flat, they only stopped doing that as a cost saving measure later on.

My vintage flat cast iron pan from the 30’s keeps its seasoning just as well as my modern one, and is a bit more non-stick compared to the modern ones.

What determines if a seasoning will flake off is mostly due to the type of oil used to create the seasoning. Flax seed oil will create a much harder seasoning, but it is the most prone to being chipped or flaking off.

Most other types of fat, like Crisco (don’t cook with it!) or canola oil, will produce a perfectly good and resilient seasoning on smooth or bumpy cast iron.

There’s nothing in that link to indicate 15 years. OEM support means Google’s support, not graphene’s. GrapheneOS does usually offer a few harm reduction releases beyond the official support timeline, but that’s a few months of extra time, not years.

GrapheneOS supports a phone model for as long as Google officially does. You can see the support lifetime of each model here: https://endoflife.date/pixel

If you want to keep an updated phone constantly, you’d have to upgrade every 7 years.

I do think there’s a balance to be struck where at some point, a larger swath of people need to use that software even if it’s not 100% ready, as then it creates more ‘pressure’ to actually address those final roadblocks. Wayland did seem to improve at a faster rate since it was introduced by default on some distros.

And at least in the Linux world, we have many options to avoid being on that bleeding edge. I’m pretty happy just sticking with Debian as opposed to getting the new stuff, and while I was annoyed I couldn’t use my preferred DE on Fedora, I’ve learned that Debian is actually pretty slick in its own way, which removed the slight sense of FOMO I once had.

Until other countries begin accepting asylum claims from U.S. Citizens, that simply isn’t an option available to most of us, except for the wealthy or those who already have the desired jobs that would allow them to emigrate.