Someology

Desperation is often the cause of stupidity. Walking into an invading army while unarmed is never a wise survival strategy. Show me one single time in History where this went well for most of the people involved.

Buy DRM free music instead of streaming it.

"‘I’m going to Gaza City. It’s enough. We need to go back to our homes and lands. We are tired of displacement… we heard people saying we can go back, but no one official told us. We’ll leave it to God,’ Majd El-Aqqad said. "

That was a phenomenally stupid thing to decide to just walk into an invading army based on gossip. Predictably horrible outcome.

Convenience.

It makes no sense to say a government censored it. It makes the Historical British Empire look evil. The UK is certainly not controlling the Hugos. It criticizes the Chinese CCP zero, because they are not mentioned. It shows great evils that were done TO China in the past by colonial powers, which should be a positive from the CCP perspective. The Hugos certainly have not been snubbing Chinese authors (see award winner Liu Cixin), and therefore the USA has not stopped them. I mean, Liu Cixin shows us that the revolution in China could have traumatized some people, yet it won.

EDIT to add: Now, I’ve just seen a post over on Reddit that actually explains what people think are going on with the Hugos this year. This post didn’t explain that at all. I still can’t see any logic behind this supposed censorship, but it’s nice to have context. For anyone else who doesn’t follow World Con Politics: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/19ctcmn/im_a_bit_surprised_by_the_relatively_subdued/

Gotta say that it boosts my confidence in the Hugo Awards to see Babel NOT get nominated. This has zero to do with the author’s nationality and ethnicity and everything to do with Babel being a poorly written novel (with the ending obvious a long way off) and horrific character development. It would be shameful to award a novel where all characters are stand in caricatures of their cultures of origin instead of actual individuals. It just comes across as racist in itself, promoting stereotypes, instead of merely showing the reader that racism existed.

Check the first one out of a library, perhaps, to see if you like it.

Some jerk company (like Google) cannot suddenly discontinue my entire reader with all my feeds, because its mine, on my server. But because it’s a web app, I can use it from any device, unlike a local app. After Google killed reader, That was just too annoying. Self hosted since.

You probably have-at construction sites or something, with giant beds meant for towing huge digging equipment, and so never noticed them at all.

I promise, you’re unlikely to see an “everyday American” driving an F650. There might be a literal handful of exceptions out there somewhere, but most people will only ever see this in industrial applications. Most often you’ll see a 650 outfitted with a cargo bed or a (extra large, for towing big rigs) wrecker setup, or something large, robust, and industrial like that. This is just a publicity/marketing stunt. 99% of Ford F350 and larger trucks you will ever see will be industrial/cargo/heavy equipment moving/etc. industrial job vehicles. It’s even relatively common to buy the truck, and buy the bed you need for your industrial application, custom. This is not something you’ll see set up like a pickup truck in very many American driveways. The handful of those exceptions are the same sort of enthusiast niche that will hot rod customize to a ridiculous impractical degree a regular car, just to say they can. Very small group.

Reacting as if this is real is just as insane as thinking it’s really common for somebody to trick out their excavator and drive it to McDonald’s.

Freshrss is pretty great.

I am glad you like it, but the acting was most not good enough, and the writing generally not good enough to deliver. There are a couple of exceptions, but they do not outweigh the giant mountain of Meh that must be waded through.

And, no, the boxy CRTs took more money than the flat plastic slabs used in Star Trek shows from the Era (which they just pretended were flat screens and tablets most of the time). Trek only imposed graphics on those screens a minority of the time. Using CRT screens doesn’t make it relatable. These people have interstellar space ships and giant space stations. CRT screen are just a stupid choice that do not make the setting relatable. The times it becomes relatable are due to the exceptions, like the character development with Londo. Not because they inexplicably use this one type of actually ancient technology.

It is much more like an old school daytime TV Soap Opera in acting style and overall production style than like other SF shows. This is really jarring. Acting very inconsistent. Crappy production values. Like, huge CRT screens being used everywhere? Really? At this same time, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine knew that hundreds of years in the future, nobody would use huge boxy CRT screens. They depicted thin tablets and terminals even though 1990s tech wasn’t able to do that yet. There are so many things like this that jarred me out of the story.

The development of a few characters was cool, but it was like suffering through a mountain of junk to get the good crumbs. The plot had a lot of “I can see it coming a mile away”.

Not worth it IMHO, if you already tried it and didn’t like it.

The best lines are mostly Carl Sagan quotes, which I appreciated, but that isn’t enough.

A huge percentage comes down to this. Don’t treat women as objects or aliens. They’re people.

Lucky you, to live where there is a passenger train.

1. Treat them like a human person.
2. Let them know you like them without being pushy.
3. Refer to item 1.

You should include what country you are talking about. I know nobody in the USA who had an arranged marriage in the 1950s. They met partners at school, church, and neighborhood/extended family picnics and parties for the most part. They met in stores, libraries, and cafes. We have to maintain public casual community spaces. To paraprhase a Sociology professor I once had: you can’t marry someone you never meet. It requires talking to other humans to make even casual friends.

Thank you for sharing the information!

Thanks for the info!

If you connect your phone to the car, can it spy on your Signal messages? I mean, they have to decrypt on your end for you to see them, right? Or has Signal taken specific steps to stop this?