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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: July 28th, 2023

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  • (Art. I, 9, cl. 8): "[NJo Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State’

    Unfortunately this doesn’t sufficiently cover things like 'Random Russian Billionaire Oligarch" so long as there is the slightest modicum of a veil of separation from “any King, Prince or State”.

    So for example, as long as Putin secretly tells his billionaire buddy to go pay off Trump and to keep it hush hush, this clause is even more toothless than it already is in practice.






  • Yes and no. For the clouds that we did have, yes, the eclipse was enough to affect those.

    However, for the clouds that we had earlier in the day, and that had been predicted that we might have, would have been far too heavy for eclipse to effect. Unfortunately my sister up in New York ended up in that situation, where it was far too heavy a cloud cover so they didn’t get to see anything. We had been predicted that we might have that, but that’s the manner in which we got lucky.




  • Y’all must be doing something wrong because HW raid has been hot garbage for at least 20years. I’ve been using software raid (mdadm, ZFS) since before 2000 and have never had a problem that could be attributed to the software raid itself, while I’ve had all kinds of horrible things go wrong with HW raid. And that holds true not just at home but professionally with enterprise level systems as a SysAdmin.

    With the exception of the (now rare) bare metal windows server, or the most basic boot drive mirroring for VMware (with important datastores on NAS/SAN which are using software raid underneath, with at most some limited HW assisted accelerators) , hardly anyone has trusted hardware raid for decades.




  • What qualifies as “basic necessities”?

    I’m not sure minimum wage has ever been enough for most people to afford an apartment on their own.

    Certainly in the early 90s, even in a low cost of living area, I was working 2 jobs (one part time but a bit over minimum wage) in order to share a 500sqft, 1br apartment with a friend.

    And part of the problem with trying to set a level of basic necessities (or a ‘living wage’) is that you have to account for a TON of external factors.

    For example, nobody is building affordable, reasonably sized apartments or houses any more. They only want to build 2000sqft+ houses, or 1000+sqft apartments with all the trimmings and amenities. That certainly raises the cost of living.

    By way of comparison, my grandparents raised 3 kids in a 998sqft 2-story duplex. It’s wasn’t large but it was a good family neighborhood with a park across the street. And they had 1 smallish (for the era) car. So why does everyone need a bajillion square feet and 2 cars, including a massive SUV to raise their 1 or 2 kids these days? (2 cars I get with both parents working these days, but the trucks and SUVs I see many low income families driving is ridiculous).

    And is it fair for the minimum wage to have to be set to a rate that subsidizes the builders who choose to only build that bigger, more expensive housing.

    We definitely need changes in the way this is all handled, but it’s not a simple thing. To truly solve the issue will require significant changes in our social structure and philosophy.


  • Well, like it or not, that’s the system we have right now, and so long as it is, by the time the main election comes around, the only options are a) violent overthrow, b) abstain from voting, or c) vote for the least bad option presented.

    I don’t think we’re quite to the point yet where violent overthrow is necessary or justified.

    Abstaining just means you accept whatever the outcome is, and thus have no leg to stand on when you don’t like the outcome.

    In my mind that leaves option c as the only valid option, with the added requirement of working in between elections towards pushing for changes in the voting system.

    I don’t pretend to be a fan of Biden. But despite his shortcomings, he’s still a damn sight better than Trump or RFK Jr. And nobody else running has a snowball’s chance in hell, and most of them are crackpots anyway. So until such a time as we have better options, I will continue to vote for the least bad option.