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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: February 15th, 2024

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  • 
    #WhenTaken #787 (24.04.2026)
    
    I scored 905/1000👑
    
    1️⃣📍597 km - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥇181/200
    2️⃣📍2.2 km - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇197/200
    3️⃣📍3.1 km - 🗓️4 yrs - 🥇196/200
    4️⃣📍2.1K km - 🗓️7 yrs - 🥈140/200
    5️⃣📍4.5 km - 🗓️7 yrs - 🥇191/200
    
    
    Tap for spoiler

    Lots of text and flags to parse today, and lots of stuff, cars in particular, to place decades, but Portugal got me. I said Malta. Also guessed Frankfurt instead of Vienna.







  • I managed to get Debian with XFCE running permanently on a 6 year old Lenovo ChromeTab. It mostly works, but “touchscreen as a mouse” is clunky and the onscreen keyboard I use, “Onboard,” is utilitarian at best. As a low-distraction writing device paired with a mechanical keyboard and FocusWriter, it’s pretty cool. If anything, it’s a bit too decent a setup for that purpose, as the browser is usable and I left Wifi working.

    Now to actually start using it… 🤣


  • Is it the same basic concept as its friend between the next set of rafters? If so, I might be more concerned about the piano hinge than the rest of it, as those are usually used to support lids versus gravity rather than loaded up carcases. I also might go for some metal strapping on your joist to reinforce the pocket holes. I’m not all that familiar with how awning gear boxes work, though. What holds the cable in place when the box is stowed?

    All in all, I am not too terrified of this one, which may say more about me than about your handiwork (LOL), but some lag-screw hooks and some rope or chain (and a stick if they’re too high to reach) might be a good accessibility compromise to keep anybody from getting clocked if something does fail.






  • I haven’t “been Mormon” in decades, and the internet was likely a game changer, but there is a reason they get called a cult from time to time.

    There is a powerful taboo against even reading, much less investigating, secular sources of history about the early church. If your friends seem to be true believing, then they likely do believe that Josiah Smith was a prophet, the same way mainstream Christians (and Mormons too, lol) believe a Judean rabble rouser came back to life after he got executed because he was divine.

    If they’re intellectually honest, they would probably acknowledge that the “facts” exist but would say they’re incomplete or intentionally shaded, and that their faith is not dependent on contemporary non-Mormon accounts. They will roll out quotes from the leadership among the lines of “doubt your doubts” or that faith does not require perfect knowledge.

    Then, factor in that the social aspects of church life are pretty all encompassing and that church discipline is very real within the top-down organization they have, and there are powerful psychological motivations not to dig too deeply.


  • They do, or at least they are very much supposed to. It’s the interplay between their 7th and 9th articles of faith. To follow on that, they (are supposed to) believe that literally every president of the LDS church is/was a prophet.

    The direct line to God is super helpful when, for instance, the whole operation is gonna be shut down due to the feds finally having enough presence in the region to enforce polygamy laws, or when they’re going to exclude your flagship university from the student loan program because you said that black men couldn’t hold any leadership positions due to being descended from the wrong dudes in Old Testament times.





  • Having attended several red state universities, I chose to take it as a statement that alongside the ubiquitous plaza preachers, who are never affiliated with the school and are generally no one’s favorite campus characters, there’s also plenty of standard college silliness and shenanigans. Apart from the big blue cities, the college towns of the south are generally the most educated and forward thinking enclaves of their red states, hence the huge pressure campaigns from their governors to being the schools themselves to heel.


  • In addition to FecEx and Dominos, there’s other restaurants, Amazon, UPS, newer Chinese-owned final-mile carriers, Uber including Eats/Pets/Courier/etc., Lyft, Doordash, medical couriers, legal couriers, etc. etc. It’s tougher outside the cities, and it’s all kind of a neo-Victorian dystopia of poor wages and no support, but if what’s you actually want to do, “driving places cuz other people can’t or won’t” is a very doable job-description in the US. Just make sure you’re factoring in car expenses if you do the gig-based ones.