Even though it didn’t come out until the later part of the 2000s, the Portal cake is probably the official cake of that decade.

The Antoine Dufour cover of Dracula and Friends.

Critical thinking. Religion and our education system beat curiosity out of people

And now AI is here to run cleanup on any critical thinking those two haven’t already destroyed.

and don’t bother signaling when changing lanes slowly

I always love playing the road trip game of “Are they changing lanes slowly without signaling, or are they fucking with their phone and just drifting?” 😠

It’s like we live in a floating point world, and too many people are only capable of dealing with integers lol.

Is nuance a skill?

Like, the world isn’t black and white, left and right, right and wrong, etc, but too many people want to simplify complex issues down into binary choices and leave out any trace of nuance.

People using speakerphone in public be like:

The bulk of my driving is short trips with many stops, so I generally don’t even bother putting on any music. For longer (routine) drives, I like to throw on audiobooks.

Haven’t been on a road trip (longer, non-routine, pleasure drive) in forever, but those usually get their own playlist (formerly series of CDs) that depend on the nature of the trip/destination.

That’s literally what we did, lol, and advanced math. Plus, I think we got to go on several field trips each year. Those were nice.

But yeah, I came to the same conclusion far too late in life.

Probably the same reason the quack science “free energy” videos on YouTube get so many views.

But also, it’s likely an evolution of the roofer scams from ye olden days.

Dogs chew on bones which are much harder, and other than potential for bone fragments/splinters, they’re fine (such was my logic, anyway lol). But for good measure, I asked their vet a good while back, and was given the green light.

I would print out the code and Rube Goldbergian series of database triggers that run some of our internal apps; to the untrained mind, it would probably have an effect similar to looking into Medusa’s eyes.

Oh, I absolutely love my ice maker. Didn’t think I needed one until I replaced the fridge in my old house with one that had one. Now I can’t live without one (except in the dead of winter when I clean it and just turn it off for ~2 months)

Dogs love chewing on ice cubes, especially in the summer. Between keeping bowls of ice cubes out for the dogs and me making margaritas and slushy cocktails all summer, I’d never be able to get by with ice trays.

Lol, if only. It’s not a “smart” fridge, but it does have a lot of, frankly, unnecessary electronics for what it does. Electronic components that, as any internet search for Samsung appliances will confirm, can and do go bad and are a pain to repair.

“It all started back in elementary school when they told me I was ‘gifted’…”

Samsung Fridge (don’t judge me, it came with the house).

I knew it was a “when” and not and “if” it would start having issues, and it finally showed its colors last month.

Front panel buttons either refused to work at all or would cycle through every option continuously and randomly.

Want water? Sorry, only crushed ice today. Want ice? Sorry, just water today. Oh, I actually did want water (starts dispensing). PSYCH! Now I’m going to shoot ice at you and splash water everywhere.

Was about to just toss the thing and get something dumber and more reliable, but decided to roll the dice with a replacement control board from ebay. Thankfully, that worked and I’m only out $80.

Then you really should list all of the secondary functions you plan to add to it, make sure they understand what those are, and agree to each of them: full disclosure.

If you do something on it that could get them in trouble, it’s their ass on the line, not yours.

Are you friends okay with you doing that? I would not be, especially if my so-called friend didn’t disclose the secondary operations of the device that’s in my home, on my internet connection, under my name.

Disagree. 2025’s motto is basically “But wait! It gets worse” so I’ll take “no change” as a “win”.

We’re getting a heavy dose of “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.

It’s become apparent to even people that normally don’t pay attention that, despite being less than we want, a lot of our tax money actually does go toward things that help the citizens.

Other than that, I got nothing. These policies, decisions, and the people making them are all a disaster that are going to take decades to repair.