Yeah, security updates are a big sticking point for me too.

That’s another reason I’m not rushing out to buy one. If they actually stick to their 5 year plan, that’s pretty solid, but that’s a big unknown right now.

And with almost anything there’s some 1st generation bugs that will probably need to be worked out. If they stick around for a couple years and keep up with their updates I’ll give them a little more consideration.

Also we’re now starting to see some brands come out with color e-ink devices, I wouldn’t mind one of these with a color e-ink screen.

So maybe I’ll be getting a minimal phone 2 or 3.

I haven’t personally played around with rooting and custom ROMs and such in honestly probably a decade, but an unlockable bootloader would be nice, even if I don’t necessarily see myself using that feature at this point in my life.

And not for nothing, since a flagship smartphone can pretty easily cost $1000+ these days, $500-ish for this phone sounds oddly reasonable. Not that it’s got flagship specs, but for something that’s filling a specific niche with some (for many) desirable features, that’s not a bad price IMO.

My thoughts on kangaroo are, kind of unsurprisingly, that it tastes exactly like it evolved on a different continent than any other meat you’ve ever eaten.

It’s still definitely in the red meat family, but it’s different and it’s hard to explain how. I’d say it’s maybe more like venison or maybe lamb than beef, but it’s definitely its own thing.

There’s a lot of cases where depending on how you prepared and seasoned it, I don’t know if I could necessarily tell you with 100% confidence if I was eating venison or beef, and maybe even a couple things you could probably pull that with lamb or goat vs beef. I’m pretty sure I could reliably pick out a kangaroo dish from a lineup 100% of the time.

It was good though, I would absolutely eat kangaroo again if it was more readily available around me. It’s kind of a stronger flavor that some people might have an issue with.

Tasted like fishy dirt meat

I’m not a fish-eater in general, but I am an avid fisherman (I just catch them, the wife eats them,) so I’ve heard a lot of stories from my fellow anglers (which should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt, there’s a reason they’re called “fish stories”)

There is a persistent rumor I’ve heard that some people will take catfish and other bottom-feeders like carp home alive to let them swim around in a bathtub of clean water for a day or two to sort of flush all of the mud and everything out of their system before cleaning and cooking them

Allegedly it’s more of a southern thing.

I have yet to find seafood that I like.

Irony of ironies is that I love fishing. Luckily anything I catch worth keeping my wife is more than happy to eat.

People always tell me that good fish shouldn’t taste/smell fishy. I retort that I suppose good beef shouldn’t be beefy either.

I’m willing to hear people out, try different fish prepared in different ways, still haven’t found one that I liked, at best they’re mostly tolerable.

I’ve figured out that I generally tend to enjoy freshwater fish over saltwater. If I catch a couple nice trout I’ll eat that for dinner with my wife instead of having to make a separate dish for myself, I won’t hate it, but I won’t like it either and I’d probably rather have a hot dog.

And I like raw fish better than cooked.

I might actually kind of like raw oysters, but they are in no way worth the cost.

Lox isn’t bad, but I’d prefer just about anything else over it.

There are a couple fish-based products out there that are so far removed from fish that they’re hardly worth mentioning for the purposes of this comment that I do enjoy, like Worcestershire sauce and Asian fish sauces, katsuobushi, Caesar dressing, Crab Rangoon (let’s be real, you could probably leave the crab or “krab” out of most takeout rangoons and it wouldn’t change much) some Japanese fish cakes, etc.

The absolute worst is shrimp though. Nothing about shrimp is appealing to me, the taste, smell and especially the texture are all pretty repulsive.

I’m not otherwise a guy with a lot of food hangups and consider myself a pretty adventurous eater. Weird tastes, textures, bizarre fermented stuff, strange meats, etc. are all generally OK in my book, there’s not many other foods out there that I don’t enjoy. In my house right now I have some double salt salmiak licorice, a bottle of Malört, a wide selection of hot sauces going up to around 1 million scoville, I’m pretty sure I have both Vegemite and marmite somewhere in my fridge, some very peaty scotches, and plenty of other very divisive foodstuffs that I enjoy.

I have tentative plans to visit Iceland next year, so I’ll probably end up torturing myself with some hákarl at some point. And I don’t intend to seek it out, but if it happens to be offered to me for free somewhere I may consider trying whale, which I suppose is technically seafood.

Or, you know, the device we’re discussing

E readers don’t generally make calls, texts, do navigation, or fit comfortably in the zippered hip pockets of my hiking pack

I’m kind of considering getting one, probably as a second phone to swap my sim card into for occasional use

The e ink is a big draw for me, as is the physical keyboard, not to mention the headphone jack and expandable storage.

With the e-ink comes good battery life, they’re claiming potentially 4 days from what I can see. I like the idea of that for travel, where I might be spending long hours on a bus, train, plane, car, walking around town all day, maybe even camping somewhere where it may not always be convenient to charge my phone.

E-ink is also easier to read in direct sunlight without a glare, as someone with a lot of outdoor hobbies that appeals to me. (Although for the same reason I do also wish it had a higher IP rating, and maybe an impact resistance rating as well)

I dont tend to play a lot of games or watch movies on my phone to begin with, so I’m not so much interested in that aspect of it encouraging mindfulness, but for people who do struggle with that temptation to spend too much time on tiktok forget hooked on stupid games, I can see this helping them to kick that habit since e ink isn’t really great for those kinds of uses, while not needing to totally unplug from the more utilitarian uses for a smartphone like navigation, different messaging apps, email, 2 factor authenticator apps, etc.

I’m not rushing out to buy one, but I might consider grabbing one if I get a good deal somewhere, or if it has some staying power I might consider picking up the next gen version of it.

Interestingly enough, the US doesn’t seem to regard the Taliban (at least not the main branch that’s currently running Afghanistan) as a terrorist organization.

When you said that I thought they might, I was actually pretty sure it was the case, but on looking into it that doesn’t seem like they do, at least not officially.

Some other countries do, and there are a couple other Taliban splinter groups and such that do make the cut.

And of course, the entire history of Afghanistan since the Cold war can probably be of best summed up as “an absolute fucking mess” full of different factions, shifting allegiances, and all of that geopolitical nonsense, but you can make a pretty compelling argument that the US sort of put the Taliban in charge there in the first place. The us backed the Mujahideen against Russia back in the day, and while they’re not exactly the same organization, there was a whole lot of overlap between former members of the Mujahideen and the people who formed the Taliban. So from one angle slapping the terrorist label on them would be kind of like admitting “we backed the terrorists”

You know, I’ve read your comment a couple times, and I can’t quite wrap my head around what you’re trying to say, I can kind of parse it in a few different ways, and none of them quite seem like they’re really a direct response to what I said either agreeing with me or disagreeing.

It’s certainly possible that I’ve got a case of the dumb tonight, but would you mind rephrasing and expanding on your thoughts a little bit?

I’m admittedly a little better read on the subject than most Americans

Off the top of my head, I’d probably be able to rattle off Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Krakow, and Treblinka off the top of my head.

Small side rant, my mom’s side of the family is Polish. Most of my mom’s grandparents (my great grandparents) were off-the-boat from Poland, I know at least one of them never became a US citizen. We have some family still in Poland, we’re not exactly in regular contact but we know more or less how to track each other down when we want to.

Years ago, well-before I was born, my mom’s family went to visit those relatives. There is honestly probably enough material from that trip (and from when a relative from Poland was able to visit the US back then) to write a pretty decent short book, or at least a couple solid blog posts. Lots of interesting comparisons between the state of things in the US and Poland during the Cold War to be made.

One of the things they did was visit Auschwitz. Seeing that was something that definitely shaped my mom’s worldview from there on out. To her credit, my mom already had her head screwed on pretty straight before that when it came to racial tolerance and such.

She would occasionally tell us little bits about it when we were growing up, not like she purposely sat us down and gave us a Holocaust talk or anything, it was just something that came up occasionally when appropriate

I don’t know if this was ever an intentional choice by her, but she never really said who built and ran the camps, who was sent there, why, etc. she pretty much just left it at they were places that existed, and that people did various kinds of horrible things to other people there.

As far as I knew, it was all Polish people (not unlike myself) doing horrible things to other Poles, for reasons I couldn’t really wrap my head around. It wasn’t until we started learning about WWII and the Holocaust in school that the details of who and my started falling into place.

But by that point, I think the key message about people being capable of immense cruelty towards other people had really been firmly planted in my mind. The fact that one side or the other are Jews, Poles, Germans, LGBT people, Romani, black, white, Hispanic, Christian, Muslim, Palestinian, Hutu, Tutsi, Armenian , Uyghur, etc. isn’t really important compared to the idea that this is something that people like me could do to other people who are also just like me, and I need to be vigilant to make sure that doesn’t happen.

It’s not something I’ve personally played around with so I can’t really comment on the technical details, but AFAIK the main way of transmitting video over ham radio is basically the same as over the air TV. If you wanted to do a deeper dive into that, look up Amateur Television (ATV)

There’s also various methods of sending digital data over ham- D-STAR, APRS, etc. I don’t know that any of them are particularly well-suited to sending video, but they’re things that exist and I’m sure some dedicated ham has figured out a way to do it somewhere.

Fuck Russia, fuck the Taliban

That said, all the other countries that haven’t recognized them just have their head in the sand.

Whether you like them or not, they’re the ones in power there and despite being a bunch of bumbling, backwards, violent, religious fanatics, they’ve actually done a better job of holding onto that power than anyone else has over the last half century.

Pretending they’re not is really just denying reality.

I was recently reading some Wikipedia article on my phone and when I was scrolling I accidentally hit a button to edit it and was greeted by a message that my IP was banned from editing for the next 10 months.

I haven’t even attempted to edit Wikipedia in probably 20 years. Admittedly last time I did I was probably about 14 years old, and it may have been some juvenile vandalism, but somehow I don’t think that they managed to trace me from a computer in my high school library to my current cell phone, or that anything I did warranted a 21 year ban

So obviously it’s because phones using cellular Internet go through IP addresses only slightly less often than most people breathe.

It feels like that sort of IP ban really isn’t particularly useful. The vandals probably aren’t usually on that address and most of the time it’s getting used by random people who probably don’t even think about editing Wikipedia.

I dabble in ham radio stuff, you can (and many people do) send data, video, etc. using ham radio equipment. It’s a bit more specialized than just sending voice or Morse code, but it’s absolutely doable.

Not amateur radio, but back in about the 80s there were even a couple countries that experimented with distributing computer programs over regular FM radio. They’d play some electronic buzzing noises that you’d record to a tape then to run it as a program. I know the BBC did it, and I believe Finland also had a radio station doing it for a bit.

In a world where the internet as we know it never came together, I could definitely imagine those sorts of technologies evolving into something that still looks a hell of a lot like the internet.

I think there’s a fine line to be walked

Personally the only lights on my PC itself are the Ethernet ports on the back, and one little blue power indicator on the front

And since I built it in an HTPC case and stuffed it into my entertainment center, you kind of need to be looking at it from just the right angle to even see those. The case itself is a pretty unassuming black rectangle that looks pretty much like any other piece of AV equipment you might expect to see under a TV. About the size of a normal AV receiver, with a disc drive, a power and reset button, 2 USB ports, and a headphone and microphone jack.

My keyboard is a Keychron Q6 max with side-printed shine-through key caps, and my mouse is a Gameball Thumb (I like trackballs, and it’s nice since I’m gaming on the couch so not much convenient flat space to move a mouse around) which has single ring of LEDs around the trackball and a small indicator LED to show the DPI settings on the mouse. Both of those turn off when they’re idle, and when they’re in use I have them set to a pretty simple spinning color mode.

My setup is in a finished basement and the lights are usually down so it’s nice having them light up for the ease of seeing what I’m doing, and the simple color animations aren’t too distracting.

Where my lighting excess does come in though is with the Philips hue lights I have synced up to my TV the overhead lights, a light strip behind my tv, and a light tube underneath it. Between that and the surround sound I think it’s really immersive for movies and gaming. I think I’ve hit a good balance of it having some wow factor without being too distracting but opinions will of course vary on that.

I’m way out of my element, and I don’t feel like doing the math right now, but I think it may be worth considering that helium is very light, I think last time I saw it brought up someone said that 1g of helium is like 5 or 6 liters at standard temperature/pressure. Not a huge quantity by any means, but significantly more than you’d probably imagine picturing a gram of water or whatever. I have no idea what kinds of amounts, pressures, etc. are needed for helium to be used in any of the applications we want it for, but I suspect it’s a lot more than that.

Also as far as mining goes, except for the fact that it’s on the moon, it seems like harvesting regolith is probably a fairly straightforward operation, it’s just moon dust, the stuff that’s covering pretty much the entire surface a few meters deep. Seems like all that’s really needed would be some space bulldozers and dump trucks (though of course I’m sure there’s a whole lot more challenges that I’m not thinking of)

To say nothing about whatever is needed to process the regolith, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with that.

But helium also isn’t the only thing we’d be looking to harvest from regolith. Let’s say it takes us 50 years to harvest enough helium for whatever we need it for (no idea if that estimate is over, under, or about right) over those 50 years we’d also be harvesting all of the iron and silicon and whatever else we need to build out the infrastructure to use the helium.

And of course the cost/benefit analysis can be all over the place depending on if you’re thinking about this as some sort of capitalist profit-seeking venture or if it’s more of a “for the good of all mankind” or “scientific research for its own sake” kind of thing.

Lot of things to consider. I’m not saying that mining the moon necessarily makes sense, I also don’t know if it doesn’t there’s a lot of factors at play.

The whole article continues that

As of 2023, Williams is assigned to domestic violence cases

Yeah, sounds like a real stand-up, sensitive, emotionally-intelligent dude that I’d want handling those kinds of cases.

I’m also pretty sure that somewhere in OoT someone says that bomb flowers are the raw material for bombs

I have a friend who used to work in a pet food warehouse. They had some massive blast doors and fire suppression systems

Sounds like overkill for a bunch of dog and cat food, but when you think about it food is absolutely packed full of energy, caloric content is kind of the main point of food. Most of it is dry kibble, so it’s not like you can count it having a hgligh moisture content to keep it from watching fire, and I can absolutely imagine a situation there where the right conditions might exist for a dust explosion like you hear about in grain silos and such.

I would assume that fireworks warehouses probably have about 1000X the fire safety measures than dog food does. Maybe I’m giving the powers that be too much credit though, because it does seem like every year I hear about some fireworks warehouse or factory somewhere blowing up.

I don’t know if I can pick just one favorite hot dog, so instead I’m just gonna wax philosphical about hot dogs at whoever cares enough to read this.

Most importantly is to start with a quality hotdog, something with a natural casing, that snap is critical I like all-beef personally but I’m not outright opposed to some frankenweenies either.

I’m told that in Iceland hot dogs generally contain at least some lamb, that sounds delicious to me, I like lamb. I’ve actually made and smoked my own hot dogs before so that may be something I experiment with in the future. I actually have a trip planned to Iceland next year so that may be something I try to recreate after I come back (I swear I’m not actually going for the hot dogs, just a happy accident, but I figured I might as well do some recon while I’m there)

A good bun is also important, something well-sized to the dogs, soft but structurally sound that’s not going to fall apart and get gross and soggy. When I made my own dogs I decided to go all-in and make my own buns as well. Pretty sure I used whatever recipe was the first Google result was for “sourdough hot dog buns” (because of course the crazy foodie who’s making his own hot dogs is also maintaining a sourdough starter) and I was very happy with how they came out. Barring that, get any decent brand of bun, there’s not that much variation. I like potato buns, but a regular ol’ white bun is fine. I also decided at some point that I like top-split as opposed to side-split buns, but that’s more of a nice thing to have than something I’m going to agonize over if I can’t find them.

Grill your dogs, or roll them around on a hot pan or griddle, don’t boil them. If you’re really fancy (even I’m not this nuts) get yourself one of those hot dog roller machines you see at gas stations and sports stadiums, I think those are the perfect hot dogs.

Now onto the real meat of the question - toppings

I don’t know that I have any one favorite dog, it all depends on my mood.

I hail from the philly area, so when in doubt when I’m presented with any cheap food item in need of a sauce or condiments, my answer is Cheez Whiz (keep that shit off of my cheesesteak though, that’s for tourists, I’m provolone all the way)

Closely-related, you have the chili cheese dog or plain old chili dog. These are all options where you really need to make sure to have a bun that’s going to hold up to some heavy, wet toppings. I think mustard is not unwelcome on a chili cheese dog, along with chopped onions and maybe some jalapenos. I’m normally a fan of beans in my chilli, but I don’t think they have any place in a chili intended to be a hot dog topping.

I’ve been to Cincinnati and sampled skyline chili from the source. If you expect chili you’re going to be disappointed and confused, but if you go in expecting a spiced meat sauce, you might really enjoy it. I think it makes for a damn good hot dog topping.

Outside of the situations where you’re going to have chili available for your hot dogs though

I’m also fan of sauerkraut. For the love of God though, don’t rinse and squeeze all of the sauer out of your kraut. Let it be sour and funky. Serve it rwith or without heating it up onto your dogs just as it came out of the can, jar, plastic bag, or crock.

For your typical backyard BBQ where you’re grabbing the usual condiments off the shelf to have out on a picnic table for the 4th of July or whatever- ketchup has no place on a hot dog. I’ll always go mustard, and often relish (I prefer dill relish over sweet if available) and chopped onions are a welcome addition. I think you’d do well to serve them with some baked beans on the side.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the Texas Tommy, allegedly another Philly-area invention, possibly originating in nearby Pottstown (though that’s a big " ^[1]^" IMO)

I was recently at IKEA and on the way out the door before a fun night of assembling flat-pack furniture, I grabbed a hot dog with some red cabbage and crispy fried onions, and I also thought that was a great combination (the hot dog itself was nothing special)

For a quick & easy weeknight dinner, I don’t think it gets much better than a hot dog or two or three prepared in any of the above styles, accompanied with some boxed Mac & Cheese, and some stewed tomatoes.

For a couple local ish places to me that I’ve felt like I’ve always gotten a stand-out hotdog, there’s Yoccos in Allentown, Jimmy John’s near West Chester PA, and of all places, the gift shop behind the chapel in Valley Forge National Historic Park

And of course, honorable mention goes to Costco for being one of the best deals going.