And the whole chat censoring thing, and Microsoft doubling down on banning players on all servers for chat content in their own private servers.

That’s the neat part: I don’t.

Not anymore. I scaled back my fast food consumption quite a bit in previous years, but when the prices of everything skyrocketed to absurd levels during COVID I just quit going to fast food places and never looked back. I get Taco Bell or something like, maybe two or three times a year now and that’s usually when I’m on a road trip or something. Otherwise they can get bent as far as I’m concerned.

If I want slop it’s cheaper and honestly also easier to just buy a TV dinner from any of the selection of general goods stores within walking distance of my house and pop it in the microwave. And these days probably faster, too, because I don’t have to deal with the McAttitude or inevitably discover that the fast food place is trying to run with half the staff it’s supposed to have because its franchise owner is a greedy prick, nor have to worry about getting sucked into the thrice-weekly fistfight in the parking lot, nor getting caught in the crossfire because some fuckmuch is salty about not getting enough ketchup packets and decides to shoot up the joint.

It’s satire, but it’s also very, very realistic.

1. He is not a sitting president yet.

2. He was not a sitting president when the offenses occurred in 2016, either, when he had yet to be elected. Even if the “presidential immunity” ruling could somehow be twisted to apply to this as if it were an official act, he was in no way shape or form president at that time.

I found some additional articles on what he said about this, and he did indeed flat out say he expects the “other countries” to pay the tariffs. For instance, this.

A sweeping tariff policy will kill two birds with one stone, Trump says: It could find a new source of revenue for the U.S. government, which could offset losses from lowering or eliminating certain forms of income tax, while extracting money from rival governments.

That’s not how tariffs have worked at any point in history.

They all thought the foreign company paid the tariff.

This is probably what Trump thinks, too. I can easily believe he is that stupid.

I’m also wondering just what the fuck Trump and co. are going to do with all the money obtained from these tariffs. Just, like, spend it all on hookers and blow or what? Remember how you all believed this was the party of “low taxes?” Yeah, guess what a tariff is, fuckers.

Some people are apparently incapable of learning anything except by rote. To them, every problem or situation has one solution, and they have no answer for any situation that has not previously been explicitly spelled out to them and the solution memorized, and failing that they not only won’t know what to do but they flat out won’t even try. There is no such thing as figuring out a new solution to anything based on logic or deduction. In any process, they will refuse to understand how the result is actually derived from the actions taken, nor what each step does or why it is done.

I’ve had to work with several people like this over the years and it’s both exhausting and infuriating.

In my line of work I have also been forced to interact with people, mostly clients, who cannot understand hypotheticals. Any abstract or non-concrete concept is completely lost on them and worse, usually exposing them to one will make them irrationally angry in response – which they will immediately direct at you, you nerd.

These people are not only allowed to vote, but also drive cars, own firearms, and have children. It’s shocking.

Here’s the problem with that, though. It’s not going to be like there will be roving goon squads going from door to door snatching away your wives and daughters or anything. Even the MAGA-heads are just barely clever enough not to form themselves into any kind of entity that you could physically fight.

Instead, they’re going to chip away at everybody with asinine laws and legislation, selective enforcement and remote harassment, by filing mountains of frivolous lawsuits, etc. They’ll seize property. They’ll get you fired from your job. They’ll kick you off of your health insurance and freeze your bank accounts. Those responsible are never going to actually expose themselves in any capacity in which they can get got, because they’re cowards; they’re going to hide behind their desks and layers of security and fences and metal detectors and cops and the secret service. If it turns to outright violence vis-a-vis war in our own cities, it would be monumentally stupid for them to send troops marching down the street, and they won’t. They’ll just remotely bombard an entire city block and blame all the collateral damage on “leftists” or “wokeism” or whatever. And idiots will believe it, and then blame the victims.

“That’s ridiculous,” you say. “The government would never bomb anyone on US soil.”

You want to bet?

Given that I’ve consistently pirated Windows since I was tall enough to reach the keyboard, I am positive have never been in compliance with the Microsoft ToS. Somehow, I’m not too worried about it.

Sure, but it’s up from just a couple of years ago when Linux was sub 2%, and was hovering around only 1.5% in, say, 2020.

Y’all need to point me towards one of those tiny Linux systems. I have an old no-longer-bricked Toshiba Satellite that somebody gave me and I got it to boot again, so I slapped Mint on it to see how I liked it since I’ve never messed with that distro before. The only problem is this sucker is a dog, it’s only got 2 gigs of RAM and a pokey 5400 RPM platter drive in it. The thing sits there and thrashes swap constantly even when it’s doing nothing, and when Mint is creating one of its automated system image rollback things it’s completely unusable. I’m surprised the laptop platters don’t escape their casing and bore into the Earth like a drill bit.

I found that it will… eventually… load and run the latest FreeCAD build and once it’s going it’s actually not bad (awful screen resolution and single touch only trackpad notwithstanding). But getting there when taken altogether takes about 20 minutes…

When an eel lunges out and takes a bite from your snout, it’s a moray.

Seems like someone spent a little too much time studying the blade.

doesn’t have Microsoft store

That is not a drawback.

I once heard it also involves a miserable little pile of secrets.

…And emissions valves, vacuum hoses, evap canisters, fuel cap/seals, possibly a valve cover gasket, serpentine belt, tensioner, and idlers, fuel filter, possibly the fuel pump. 500,000 kilometers is 310,685 miles for all the Yanks and Brits in the audience, and if you manage to drive a combustion car that far without needing all of those things, let alone any selection of them, I will eat my distributor cap.

Uh.

Does anyone currently know James May’s whereabouts now that Andy Wilman is presumably no longer keeping tabs on him?

Knives are prohibited

Tru fax, I am never working where you do, ever, so long as I live. I’d melt like the Wicked Witch of the West, I’m sure.

You can just send 'em back and buy something else. Amazon will take any damn fool thing back.

We could only hope.