Staying busy and avoiding news. It’s highly likely that it won’t be decisive, and we don’t need to feed the relentless hysterical coverage machine of media corporations.

As an outside observer, it seems perfectly clear that he has no intent to see any more hostages returned alive.

XKCD

I don’t know about apps, but they ultimately all get it from the National Weather Service. Since it’s a government service, the website is totally free of ads and other garbage. Just use that. Weather.gov. You can search for your home, and since it uses absolute URLs, you can then bookmark the results page and just go straight to that every time.

Project 2025 wants to disband NOAA and give its functions to Accuweather instead, directing taxpayer funding to a private company while also locking all weather data behind a paywall, so they get paid twice to provide the same info NOAA currently provides with a single payment (taxpayer funding). The Accuweather founder, Joel Myers, and his brother, Billy Lee Myers (unsuccessfully nominated by Trump to be the head of NOAA), are major Republican donors, but I’m sure that is completely coincidental.

Ok, hear me out. The hull number is for the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), which was deactivated in 2012. After that, instead of decommissioning, Elon Musk decides he needs a private military and hires Erik Prince to set it up. He buys the still-intact Enterprise, gets it modified the way he wants it, and sends it to Brazil to force X/Twitter back into service there. Full of Blackwater/Xe mercenaries, meth and coke are distributed to all personnel as daily rations. Fueled by the success of their first mission (and lots of drugs and alcohol), the bastard craft took to the high seas. It resembled a mobile party now, but a heavily-armed party. They looted, they raided, they held whole cities to ransom for fresh supplies of cheese, crackers, guacamole, spare ribs and wine and spirits that now get piped aboard from floating tankers.

I feel like a broken record reminding people that the TAO (Tailored Access Operations, now Computer Network Operations), part of the NSA, has been doing this for 20 years. Except they implant spyware instead of explosives. Probably.

Hey, yeah, Skinny Pete did warn us over two decades ago…

They going to tear open the battery while they are at it? It’s not like there’s going to be a small lump labeled “RDX” with wires sticking out of it.

While they’re at it, why not incorporate the explosive into the body of the device? Has no one else seen Up in Smoke?

Only took 8 years.

I used to work for General Atomics; started as a division of General Dynamics to figure out nuclear power plants, then, after a few oil company owners, landed in private hands. They bought a small company working on drones back in the 1980s, and now the Predator and Reaper are the biggest part of the company.

SteamOS.

“hmmm” indeed…

Chaotic neutral salad.

Thiccmurdermoe

“Zaslav’ing” lol

Nothing obvious; no game breaking bugs or unplayability. Just too little, too late. If it came out 5 years ago, it would have a chance, but that space is too crowded now with F2P offerings to tolerate a bland entry with high upfront cost. It sounds like they’ll retool it into F2P, hopefully add something unique, and relaunch.

Shit, I better get cracking.

Yes, all true, and don’t forget the mild climate that allows us to spend significantly less on heating and cooling. On a typical day, or over a month in summer, California uses only about half the electricity that Texas does, even with the larger population and bigger economy.

But don’t get the wrong impression. Colder northern states can be just as good, or better, equipped to deploy solar. Solar panels work best when it’s sunny and cold. Heat drops their efficiency. Also, all those midwestern states are going with wind power in a big way, and with their established drilling industries are uniquely positioned to move to deep geothermal rather than extracting oil and gas.

This is that year for California. Except for January, renewables produced more than fossil fuels. We’ll probably end with renewables producing more than fossil fuels for the whole year.