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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • There’s a bunch of electric garbage trucks in my city. My kid is obsessed with any heavy machinery these days so we were watching one and I got to talking to the driver. He told me that he absolutely loves them. They are easy to operate, they accelerate fast, they seem to break down less.
    I have seen them accelerate, they go hard. And it’s just so fucking cool to have a big dump truck be silent?! I cannot get over how happy it makes me that they’re just chilling silently when they’re stopped. Makes my mornings more peaceful.



  • Libertarian Police™ Department

    I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.

    “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”

    “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”

    “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”

    The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”

    “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”

    “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”

    He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”

    “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”

    I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.

    “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.

    “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.

    “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”

    It didn’t seem like they did.

    “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”

    Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.

    I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.

    “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.

    Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.

    “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.

    I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”

    He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.

    “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”

    “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.

    “Because I was afraid.”

    “Afraid?”

    “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”

    I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.

    “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”

    He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.

















  • Thank you! I thought was going nuts. It’s been such a long time since I had think about whether something is synced or a way to set it up. With OneDrive I could just grab the files I needed from the cloud and push them off the drive if I needed space. It really took away any hassle about sync.

    It really feels like moving to Linux is a step back 10 years when it comes to cloud storage.
    I also tried nextcloud but the smart / on-demand/ virtual file system is experimental in the Linux client and doesn’t work as seemlesly as OneDrive. Besides being turned off every time I restart.