Spyke

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So much love

Troy: “Lemme ask you something. People been clowning me about this jacket since I got here. But, if I take it off to make them happy, that just makes me weak, right?”

Jeff: “Listen, it doesn’t matter. You lose the jacket to please them, you keep it to piss them off. Either way, it’s for them. That’s what’s weak.”

Troy: “Whoa. You just wrinkled my brain, man.”

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A Judicial "Trolley Problem"

Let the people riot.

Condemning an innocent person to death would be the direct responsibility of the Judge, whereas the judge is not directly responsible for the actions of the protestors. Those protestors are behaving outside of the judicial system, and the judicial system may deal with them eventually, but their threat of violence should not be part of the decision-making process.

Caiaphas and his whole “it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not” thing shouldn’t really be seen as a role model for judges. Just sayin’.

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Michigan Republican unseated after losing to Democrat by 20 points

Holy shit. I’m not sure people understand how big a deal this is for Ottawa County.

Ottawa County contains the town that voted to close its library over LGBT books. Ottawa County is where Betsy DeVos lives. Ottawa County had their commission taken over by a far right group called Ottawa Impact that tried to oust the county health officer and replace her with someone completely unqualified because of mask requirements.

Ottawa County is home to a congressional district that hasn’t gone Democrat since the civil rights movement.

This is kind of huge.

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This may seem kind of stupid but I am kind of stupid, is there a list somewhere of phrases that are stupid or insensitive racially or gender biased?

cracking the whip

I think this is a fantastic example of what you’re talking about.

On its face, “cracking the whip” doesn’t need to be seen as offensive. Humans have collectively spent far more time using whip cracks to motivate animals than fellow humans, I suspect.

However, the determination of offensive speech is not in the hands of the speaker, but rather in the reception by the listener. That is to say, you can have the purest of intentions but if someone is offended by what you say, no amount of explaining takes away the initial offense. And generally you don’t GET to do that explaining. Damage is done, and that person may then avoid you or already have a shifted opinion of you.

I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way. And fortunately have had friends who were willing to tell me that I had offended them when I thought what I said was completely benign.

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Goodbye Youtube and thanks for all the fish

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I just pay for YouTube Premium. It gets me YouTube Music, so for slightly more than the cost of Spotify I get music streaming and ad-free YouTube, and the channels I watch on YouTube get more value out of my streaming than if I watched with ads. And far more than if I watched with an adblocker.

Google Play Music was so much better than YouTube Music, unfortunately, but YouTube Music is still usable.

I understand that everyone hates ads. I hate ads, too. But video streaming and content creation aren’t free. I want to support the platform and support the creators whose content I enjoy, and I don’t want ads. So YouTube Premium seems like the easy option.

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Nintendo Reportedly Plans to Release Next-Gen Console During Second Half of 2024

If it is still convertible between handheld and console, and is fully compatible with Switch titles, Nintendo might have finally gotten a transition to a new console right. I don’t need another TV-bound console, but I would gladly take a more capable Switch.

They usually got generational transitions correct with their handhelds, but always flubbed it with the consoles. Hopefully now that they’re one and the same there won’t be a problem.

news

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U.S. Air Force member who set himself on fire outside Israeli Embassy in D.C. has died

Next of kin notification is continuing, so the Air Force won’t release his name until 24 hours after the final notification is complete.

But he live-streamed it and said his name. He is Aaron Bushnell, a brave man who knew he wouldn’t survive the protest he felt he needed to carry out.

I cried when I watched the video. The man inhaling lungfuls of flame and smoke to chant “Free Palestine!” was painful. I hope his family may find some small comfort in the pride they should feel for his courage.

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Poop In A Box

That movie made me so mad.

The book I, Robot is a series of short stories presenting situations where it seems like robots didn’t follow the three laws of robotics and then explaining how they were caught up in loopholes, essentially. It’s great.

In the movie, the loophole is: “We put a second brain in the robots that doesn’t follow the three laws of robotics.”

(I might be wrong, it’s been a very long time since I’ve read the book or seen the movie. This is just what I remember.)

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was this not allowed before?

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Welcome to 2013, Apple fans! Maybe in 5 more years you'll get home screen widgets.

We actually do have home screen widgets, as of like 2020. They got it sometime before I had my iPhone. And an app drawer!

As a former Android user, my iPhone home screen looks wildly different from people who’ve had iPhones for many years. I have very few icons on my home screen, I have widgets taking up most of the top of the screen to push the icons I do have down near my fingers (because Springboard is still stupid as of iOS 17, as this gif is pointing out), I have more widgets to the left (“Today View,” Apple calls this, it’s basically just a scrolling widget section), and then the app drawer equivalent to the right (which Apple calls “App Library”). It’s clean and beautiful and reminiscent of my lovely Nova launcher setup I had on my beloved OnePlus 7T Pro (may it rest in peace).

Whereas most longtime iPhone users just have page after page after page of apps and folders. Every app they own is on there somewhere. Which is ridiculous since on iOS you can just swipe down, type the first few letters of the app, and there it is.