I’ve seen so much “that’s not what a sith would do” and “that’s nothing like a true Jedi” complaining
I did not dislike the show, but I’m confused who it was for. My wife is not as deep into Star wars as I am and thought it was boring and could not connect with the sisters at all. I thought a lot of the lore stuff was interesting, but everything I’m seeing online and on YouTube is complaining that the lore does not match their expectations from Legends. I mean Legends doesn’t count, but you can’t pitch a show for people who are super into deep Star wars lore and not figure that you have to be consistent with legends or else you’re going to make them mad. I guess I’m just not sure who this show was for?
I mean this is the world he wants, you can’t dog whistle people to take up arms against tyranny without a comfortable acceptance of the irony pool you are filling. Everyone will try to spin this to their political advantage but the truth is this is the level of political discourse the right has been driving towards.
His denial of climate change evidenced by his holding of a snowball on the congressional floor in winter was the moment I realized that memes are now more important than facts.
My mom had Crohn’s so she was on the toilet a lot, and my dad got her a toto washlet, the fanciest one possible. It uses the seat as a warm water reservoir (never a cold toilet seat), has a light, and has a heated air dryer. When I grew up and we redid a bathroom, that was my single ask…and outlet next to the toilet and that device. It’s absolutely key, we put an unpowered bidet in the other bathroom and no one will use it.
Part of the free-market attitude though is that you should be allowed to buy policy, so in that regard it’s consistent, you just have to account for corruption in the cost of doing business.
If people are ok with that then I guess it will stand, but it’s insane and anti-consumer in my book. A product costs what it costs, based on supply and demand, and if you can’t afford it you don’t buy it. This flimsy premise of “It lowers the bar to entry so users can upgrade later without having to replace!” will never come to fruition, and it’s too slippery of a slope to “put in a quarter to turn on your A/C”.
That is insane. If it costs the same to make, then lower range isn’t a reasonable area to pitch a lower cost vehicle. Wanting to lower the cost is fine. Putting in cheaper/smaller components to get there is fine. If you are using the same components and just software locking them to nickle and dime the users later, that’s anti-consumer and should not be tolerated. I can’t believe how people look at micro-transactions in games and think “wouldn’t this be cool with IRL stuff?”
Universities have huge endowments and investment portfolios. These are generally broad and in support of keeping the financial backing of the school stable; this is extremely prevalent in the large older universities like Harvard or Columbia (but almost all universities have one in some form or another). They support both students and ongoing academic research.
While many of these portfolios consist of wider funds, many have specific investments in specific companies and industries. That means that the university is invested in, and taking benefit from, areas of industry. The main request is to divest the investment portfolios from companies owned by or supporting entities connected with Israel’s war on Gaza. In some cases this may be possible (move a ton of stock from a defense contractor making weapons sold to Israel to an energy company) and in some cases it may not (they’re invested in a wide market fund that itself invests in specific funds, but you can’t easily cherry-pick which stocks are actually in it). It’s also possible that there are research grants funded through companies who the students want to apply negative pressure to; cancelling a grant sends a message to the company, but also leaves entire teams and time-dependent science without funding, potentially ending it outright unless alternate funding can be found. There also may be contracts involved for specific research and engagements, and breaking a contract is more complicated than just ripping it up (especially if there are early termination policies outlined).
Realistically, the best students can hope for is a commitment to investigate and divest where possible, which is frustrating but also makes sense. I’ve worked in higher education for 20 years and have seen this on a smaller scale around defense contractors during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The endowment is a slow moving leviathan, but I think it’s a good place for the students to apply pressure.
Well, and Rogue One
Big picture, I really think Star Wars animation is peaking. The wide cinematic shots of ships crossing in front of the camera have really captured OT vibes. I think this was a good closure to this story, while leaving a lot of space for spinoff stories. Echo, as the focus of an anthology series about different rebel groups, could be great (I’m thinking “Tales of the Rebels”). I think Rex is getting over-saturated and I’m ok with just knowing he was off doing things.
Potential opportunities for spinoffs/appearances:
My setup is a bit extreme, but here are my guardrails:
I built my kids potato computers from the time they were 3-5, which was during covid. They need computer skills nowadays, and it put them at an advantage for covid school. We got them on java Minecraft which was huge for reading, typing, and some basic math skills (they figured out multiplication for crafting things like doors). I made a chart which had icons of things they want, with the word next to it, so they could search and type in creative.
We used Ubuntu Mate. It’s simple, stable, and familiar. They do NOT have sudo on these boxes. As we’ve advanced, they now have firefox (behind a pihole which upstreams to opendns’ family protect), gimp (with a wacom tablet!), inkscape, calculators, tenacity, libre office, and they’re starting to get into some cad to make things to 3d print. You have to come to terms with doing a LOT of patient hand holding, but it has paid off dividends.
To be clear, this is a subset of the lunchables brand specifically manufactured and sent to schools for lunches, which has a higher sodium content than the retail variety you can buy. They don’t want to ban all lunchables
Huge bummer that they’re all 5+ years old. We’ve been moving to libreelec with Disney+, Jellycon, Netflix, Youtube, and amazon prime plugins. It’s not the same, but it’s workable. If Amazon keeps MatterCast open and open source implementations get made, that’s where I’m focusing my attention. A raspberry pi with libreelec that can be a casting target feels, to me, like the holy grail:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/9/24030324/amazon-matter-casting-echo-show-fire-tv-prime-video
No joke can you share those results? I’m holding out for matter cast
We tried to host it ourselves to save cost, and it’s a beast but it mostly works. It certainly lags behind in features and uses a lot of resources, but when you compare with the cost it’s certainly passable.
The headline does not do justice…like this is tied to the cult that the former prime minister of Japan was assassinated over.
It’s a lot for the homeland, but I love zabbix
It’s a different device. Already, the existing google tv workflow is different than the chromecast, which was phone control first. Now, it brings up an app which favors navigation with the remote. If I want a set top box, I’ll put a kodi box in…I wanted a dumb dongle which could be controlled from a phone. It’s fundamentally a different product.
My hope is that casting decouples as a concept from being a google protocol. Even though Amazon is backing it now, I hope MatterCast can become an open casting standard. My vision is having MatterCast be an installable add-on to Kodi, and then an ultra-light image can be made for super low-end devices supporting audio and video (or both).