One particular spite house in Boston: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinny_House_(Boston)#History

According to local legend, the structure was built as a “spite house” shortly after the Civil War:

… two brothers inherited land from their deceased father. While one brother was away serving in the military, the other built a large home, leaving the soldier only a shred of property that he felt certain was too tiny to build on. When the soldier returned, he found his inheritance depleted and built the narrow house to spite his brother by blocking the sunlight and ruining his view.

Another source states:

Not much is known about the city’s narrowest house. Legend has it that … its unnamed builder erected it to shut off air and light from the home of a hostile neighbor (also nameless) with whom he had a dispute. … Believed to have been built after 1874

Sadly never came up.

I used to work with a guy who was a dead ringer for Bill Bailey both in appearance and personality.

Weird. Other than how it used to choke when there were conflicts (and all uploads stopped until that was fixed) I haven’t had any issues like that. Guess I’m just lucky.

I’ve had pretty good experience with Nextcloud’s instant upload. The only time I’ve had it shit the bed was ages ago when it would occasionally get stuck on a conflict, but that hasn’t happened in a long time. Pretty much all of my image folders (camera/DCIM, Screenshots, Downloads) get synced. The only annoying thing was when apps would suddenly change where they download to and I’d have to reconfigure yet another sync folder, but I can’t really fault NC for that.

Mine is set to upload and keep a local copy and only do a one way sync (phone to NC). Not sure if that causes less issues than a 2 way sync or deleting the local copy after upload?

They Might Be Giants - Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

Pretty much same as you listed, actually, but with a few additions:

Upvote:

• Mark reply as read as long as it’s not something under the no-vote/downvote criteria
• Pity (i.e. if I don’t think a post/comment deserves the downvotes it’s getting)
• I’ll usually give posts to the communities I mod an upvote b/c I appreciate the contribution

No-Vote:

• Something I disagree with but doesn’t merit a downvote
• A post I don’t like that is in a community I’m not subscribed to (i.e. when browsing /all)

Downvote:

• Violates the community rule where it’s posted
• Is part of some bandwagon nonsense (e.g. the moths that have polluted the feed in the last several days, beans, etc)
• Absolutist statements/positions, especially ones that paint the world in overly broad strokes.

Not blocked, but my instance is fully de-federated from lemmit.online.

And yes, I consider all the re-post instances/bots to be spam.

Yeah, some are. It’s just unfortunate that you frequently have to pre-order, fund a kickstarter, or roll the dice with some unknown Chinese brand that may or may not ever see a software update/3rd party ROM support. That, or they’re more expensive because of the smaller production runs.

I really like the PlanetCom ones, but they’re a bit pricey and have some quirks that would probably make them not a good fit for me as a daily driver. Not sure I’d want to pay those prices for a secondary device.

I did order a Minimal Phone the other day (July batch), so hopefully should have that toward the end of July/early August.

Until then, I’ll keep using my Cat S22 Flip which I have grown to actually love.

Both of my last two laptops have internal batteries. Both of them are also fairly easy to replace. The Thinkpad is the easiest (as is usually the case), but my old Zenbook is almost as easy (just requires a very tiny torx screwdriver which I already had from my cell phone repair days).

As long as they’re not glued in and otherwise a huge PITA to replace (like phones), I’m okay with internal batteries.

The only one I saw I kind of liked was the Titan, but it seemed a bit out of date (not sure if it gets updates, and I didn’t see it listed as supported for LineageOS).

50:1 aspect ratios!

My genuine hope is that this puts an end of the stupid “thinness wars” and we actually see innovation in devices again. I’m beyond sick of the “tall, skinny, razor-thin rectangle” form factor.

My solution to this is:

1. Use a UI or app that badges or otherwise indicates new accounts (or accounts newer than 30 days or so)
2. Refuse to interact with those accounts in the various “ask” communities. Maybe even throw it a downvote if it seems like it’s coming from the same person that keeps doing this.
3. If no one engages with them, maybe they’ll knock this “hit it and quit it” bullshit off.

Sorry legit new accounts, but it’s these selfish assholes that are ruining things for you and everyone else.

Nothing, really, though it took a good bit of detox to get to that point. I’m only using a pseudo dumb phone, though (it runs Android 11 in a flip phone form factor).

Last August, I did a 30 day challenge and used it like a true dumb phone. No email, no chat, just the same things a comparable KaiOS true dumb phone would do. That was…limiting but I quickly got used to it. After that, I decided to un-dumb it a bit and am still daily-driving it almost a year later.

The only apps it runs now:

• Thunderbird Mobile for email
• Aegis for TOTP
• Bank app (a necessary evil since I bank remotely and nearest branch is 50 miles away)
• Organic Maps
• SchildiChat (Matrix group chat)
• Meshtastic
• Fennec (though mostly only for looking up business phone numbers/addresses while I’m out)

So it’s not a true dumb phone now, but it’s pretty bare bones. I think even true dumb phones have mobile browsers (KaiOS is basically Firefox OS, afterall) as well as some kind of mapping, email, and even TOTP apps. All the rest of the “smart” stuff it does is just annoying enough that I don’t spend all day on it, but works well when I need it.

I don’t know if I could go to a Light Phone III since I need my bank app, but something like the Minimal Phone with its eink display and QWERTY keyboard is probably my upgrade path.

I’d have probably thought the same thing except a group of girls played/sang it during the high school talent show, so I already knew it was a real song.

FWIW, they did a kickass cover of it.

LOL, please tell me there’s a “let’s play” of that

• One Thousand Miles: Lip Sync Battle
• White Chicks: One Thousand Miles

I worked at a Walmart in college, so…yes.

I guess my favorite one (meaning it was more funny than aggravating) was this lady trying to return a Nintendo Wii. She said it was broken and wanted to exchange it (so far, so good). She said she lost the receipt (later claiming it was a gift), but for an exchange, that’s usually not an issue (we record the serial numbers for things like video game consoles, computers, etc and those are tied to the transaction which lets us pull up the sale info).

So, we scan the serial number, and it’s not in our system. This could mean one of two things:

1. It’s stolen
2. It didn’t come from our store

So, to rule out #1, we sent the serial number to the loss prevention people to see if it was on their report. (It wasn’t.)

But we didn’t even have to wait for them to respond because I took a look at the box, and it clearly came from GameStop (had their stickers on the opposite side).

So I tell her that this console wasn’t purchased here, and she needs to take it back to Game Stop for service.

She did not like that. At all.

She demanded the manger, who, thankfully, was nearby. Manager took one look at her, got on the radio, and seconds later all three loss-prevention people came out of their little security room and escorted her out (with her yelling obscenities / threatening lawsuits the whole way).

Apparently she was a frequent-flier who had already been banned from the store (and neighboring stores) for return fraud.