I think she did a poor job of saying what she brought to the table. I understand not wanting to throwJoe under the bus, but opening some daylight on policy would have given her a chance to deflect the affordability problems the last months of Biden had, for example.

Culver’s is… interesting.

I find I don’t like the paper-thin style burgers much (though the fish sandwich is probably the best fast-food fish sandwich on the market) but it always gives the impression they’re trying a little harder. The restaurant always seems clean and a bit of effort was done on the appearance, like they’re still in 1978 and taking the family for a sit-down meal there might be an option.

OTOH, the customer base seems to be people who have been going there since 1978, but that could be my location.

They’re opening a new one 3km from my house, next to a McDonalds that hasn’t made a single order correctly since it opened in ~2015, so it will be interesting to see how the market shakes out.

I think the choice of automatic-only may be less conspiratorial and more streamlining the product to broad tastes.

If only 10% of buyers choose the manual, it probably adds a fair amount of manufacturing and supply chain complexity to service them, which might drive up the cost for all models.

It’s like how most US carmakers don’t offer many diesel models.

Now, the ratchet of interior features… Plenty of people don’t want a huge monolith of an infotainment system with 14 speakers, but it’s standard and you can then be upsold the premium one with 25 speakers.

I’m pretty sure it’s actually those shoulder pads.

xbps-install -Su usually when a regular xbps-install <package> fails due to cert issues every few months

I will say there was a period around the turn of the century where everything got very “My This, My That, My Everything” branded. I think after e-Everything but before iEverything. It felt like living in a world designed by a three-year-old in the “My” phase.

During thr gold-standard era, 1GBP was around 5USD, but a halfpenny was 1/480 of a pound, so a little more than a cent. The large-format cents issued up to 1857 were similar in size to the halfpennies of the late 1700s.

I hate that Qt6 dropped the Motif theme. You can get a Kvantum theme that’s vaguely close, but it’s different enough that you can tell the difference (the old one had deeper bevels) and I tend to prioritize Qt5 if I can use it.

Minotaurs have some potential for badass imagery. Reverse Centaur sounds intentionally clunky.

They wouldn’t do the specific petty stuff that the masters of capital want.

People will try to cure the sick, advance science, or even empty the dustbins because they see a benefit in having a nicer world to live in, or even an ego boost.

They will not spend forty hours per week in a box trying to optimize some microscopic risk factor in a credit algorithm without the threat of starvation. There’s no bhy-in so they had to manufacture it.

What gives any arbitrary country a mandate to exist though? We recognize that plenty of other social institutions are transient. Nobody demanded a massive international intervention to continue the existence of the Whig Party or the Studebaker Corporation. Why are countries unique and special? Also, this seems like a very modern thing: nobody is demanding we bring back Tanganyika or unwind German unification.

I get the desire to preserve the Ukranian culture and community. But you don’t need a sovereign nation for that: compare the re-establishment of the Welsh language and culture, for example.

Would the population have been better off-- at least in the “not exploded” sense-- by backing down with a quick surrender in exchange for some “we’ll formally tolerate your cultural differences” legal concessions? I’m sure at this point, it’s impractical to negotiate to that, because there’s too much bloodshed and burnt bridges on both sides, but it seemed like it was never even on the table: the Western world decided an independent Ukraine had to exist even if everyone involved knew it was going to be a very painful and expensive endeavour to keep it.