It actually wasn’t a joke. I went from SGN20U back to a Pixel for a few years, before getting my current Fold6. My prior experience with Samsung was that you could not disable updates and you couldn’t even delay updates because it’ll only let you snooze it for a day or two before it forces the update down your throat no matter what. Had it happen once while I was driving in unfamiliar territory and lost navigation for 15 minutes. Had it happen overnight once and my alarm didn’t go off in the morning. Infuriating.

I did go ahead and turn off auto download just now - if it actually works without constant nagging, I’ll be thrilled. Cheers.

I filled up my storage and now I just get download failed notifications every morning. Happy accident, but now I won’t ever empty my storage again.

Doesn’t really feel like an apples to apples comparison because nobody is going there for vacation excited to see a major sports event. And certainly nobody would want to go there knowing full well that they’d be at risk of death (or in the case of the USA, permanent imprisonment) for daring to enter the country.

My point was that the world potentially wasn’t fully aware of the environment they were entering personally to attend the Olympic Games in Nazi Germany, but everything happening in the US today is broadcast digitally and the world is very well aware of the environment in the United States today.

That’s an interesting point. However, my understanding is that the world did not understand the full extent of atrocities being committed in 1930s Germany until after the war was over. I think in the age of the internet and social media, this certainly could be the first.

I wonder if the IOC will be using the World Cup as a test bed. This certainly will not go well - there will be horrific stories coming from the few athletes and tourists that DO come for some reason, and attendance will be otherwise annihilated. What are the chances that the 2028 Summer Olympics in LA get moved? They’ll have 2 full years to ramp up in another city elsewhere in the world, probably one that has had the Olympics in the recent past and has the infrastructure built out already.

Wow this really got me. Top tier shit post my dude.

Already Arkansas has been denied FEMA funds for tornadoes a few weeks back. The south doesn’t have a chance. Florida about to become uninhabitable.

Oh definitely not - he has been attacking the Clean Air act.

Model 3 was my next car for years. Now it’s the Ioniq 6. I’m just so grateful that we are only now able to plan a car purchase this year, and not in the last 2 or 3 years where we would now be stuck in a Tesla.

An expensive, scattershot-style experiment I guess. It’s certainly… a choice. But you’re right I’m sure.

I’m glad to see Mandalorian getting a film for sure. And in the course of this discussion, I have discovered Skeleton Crew and if it’s a Mando spinoff, I’ll certainly have to watch that now.

Yeah, precisely. That’s what this would be, built into your headphone case. You never have one without the other.

I mean, this wouldn’t be all that stupid imo. Add some Apple watch functionality like fitness detection and easy syncing between phone and iPod Nano Buds, this would be a solid addition to a runner’s arsenal leaving no need to carry your $1000 phone on a run. Suppose you could use your watch for that and leave the case at home though. But more options aren’t a bad thing, not everyone has or wants a watch.

I could swear that Disney had learned a lesson about flooding the market with MCU content - and they’ve cut back substantially to focus on quality over quantity. But given this, I guess it was Marvel Studios that took the lesson, and Lucas Film decided to take the opposite approach. 😶‍🌫️

I certainly agree with you here - all of the fascists of history were HIGHLY effective leaders that actually got shit done. The people lived with it because they did what they said they would do. Instead, this disfunctional band of morons can’t seem to get a single thing done without a cavalcade of unforced errors and fuck ups.

Oops, we deported the wrong guy. Oops, we fired the folks managing our nuclear arsenal. Oops, we fired ATC during a preexisting ATC shortage. Oops, we sent a letter to Harvard earlier than we meant to, and forced our own hand. Oops, tariffs tanked the world economy, they’re paused! No wait, they’re back on now! Paused again! Well, we’ll make an exception for semiconductors though. Except we never said that? No exception! And now oops, someone caught us exfiltrating all government secrets and data to Russia.

This is the source of my own hope. They’re so incompetent and so stupid, execute every plan so poorly… that I find it hard to believe that the American people can ignore it for much longer. Even his racist, Nazi base can’t ignore him ruining their lives too.

There’s also the claim that it was sent too early, so regardless of what the error was, these were going to be the demands all along. They were just moving much slower in the discussion prior to the letter being sent. A wise attempt to boil the frog, and then somebody moved the pot over a rocket engine.

It looks stupid on the surface, but I’m concerned it’ll be used as a fake justification to drop nukes on China.

I love your optimism here, but it’s naive to believe that after everything that the president has done to date that is blatantly illegal and he has no authority to do that he will not somehow coopt the National Guard under some bullshit 200 year old law that was never meant to give him this power. Or fuck laws - he has shown his entire career a complete disregard for them and thinks he is completely unbound by the law - and he just does it anyways. Republicans in congress have proven over the last 3 months that they’ll happily cede the power their constituents entrusted them with to their dictator. What makes you think he won’t make the governors bend to his will? Republican first, then by force for the rest.

I think the one thing you’re missing is the American lies. The dehumanization of the opposition. The propaganda. I don’t think that the whole country will fall for it like they did with Bush, and it’s not like we have a MORE charismatic leader to sell it this time. But AI generated content and bots selling the lies are unfortunately going to convince a lot of people, we’re already seeing it. With a leader that is trying to litigate what higher institutions teach and destroying the public education system, the longer that this wears on, the dumber and dumber the electorate becomes. Military leaders not kissing the leader’s ring are already being removed from their posts to be replaced with sycophants.

I hope you’re right that there would be rebellion from within the military, and without. Otherwise, we have no friends left and every country on the planet has is justified in rising to the challenge to crush our new axis powers.

It won’t hit all at once for a lot of different reasons. Retailers’ back stock is not subject to tariff because it has already been imported. Raw material lead times for products assembled in the US will be longer than products imported ready for store shelves. Apple recently made the news for importing planefuls of iPhones the weekend before the tariff was applied. Smaller businesses won’t be able to do stuff like that, but big corporations will have likely done similar things to soften/slow price increases. And, until additional duties go into effect worldwide, lots of companies had already diversified their manufacturing out of China for US-bound products because of the already existing tariffs from Trump’s first term.

But once the companies have to pay the higher price, so will we all.

Definitely, at least with this Dell laptop circa 2007 - I didn’t want to cause a fire and iirc, the battery was already trashed at its EOL. Pulling the battery at least let me power on the laptop without any risk from having the battery inserted.