Must be related to the fishing line fairies. That stuff has a magical ability to tangle and knot.

Snakes expend energy to counteract entropy.

She’s about to break an ankle running in those heels.

You’re not wrong. There are cliffs exactly like that not far from this spot.

Just the opposite: this is a big, shallow gulley between wheat fields. I assume the ground is too rocky and uneven to bother cultivating. There’s a small, dried-up riverbed at the bottom, and the trails run along the rolling hills on either side. Some spots are bare volcanic rock, others are sagebrush and sparse grass like the picture. And in a few places, where the soil allows, there is thick, chest-high grass that almost completely hides the trail.

That was my first thought. Where are all the self-described Libertarians who should be losing their shit over this? They should be in the street screaming “posse comitatus!” at the tops of their lungs.

Panic bells, it’s red alert!
There’s something here from somewhere else!
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
When ninety-nine red balloons go by

Nina Nena and Goldfinger did good English versions, but we really need a weird alt-metal cover of this song. I’m thinking System of a Down would be perfect.

Also, I never realized how different the German and English lyrics are.

I’ll mention some dead projects, in case anyone gets an itch to pick them up…

lotide/hitide is a minimalist, text-only platform. It has been abandoned.
https://sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide/. https://lotide.fbxl.net/

Sublinks was in the works, but it is on indefinite hiatus. As I understand it, the main dev became too busy IRL to continue work.
https://github.com/sublinks

Same here. Paper ballots that can be machine scanned and stored for manual audits seem like the best possible method.

A surprising number of people who seem to have their shit together are either confidently incompetent or are flying by the seat of their pants. You can do at least as well, and probably better.

Not my language, but I like the Dutch word “peperduur” for “very expensive.” I like that the meaning has both historical and emotional aspects: pepper was once very expensive, and a high price can be considered spicy.

In English, “crestfallen” is a good one. When I read it I immediately imagine someone hanging their head in dismay.

Y

Dutch is not a language. The people who “speak” it are Germans who suffered severe head injuries. The place we call “the Netherlands” is a German hospital colony where those unfortunate people can live while they recover. That’s why it’s flat and everyone walks or rides bicycles; their head injuries make them unfit to drive cars or to manage difficult terrain.

/s, please don’t send the actual Dutch after me.

The trend toward subdued color palettes. Every new home is decorated in “millennial gray.” Most cars are black, white, gray, or silver. You have to go out of your way to find bright, colorful clothing or furniture. It’s incredibly boring and I can’t wait for the pendulum to swing back the other way.

often a really good option from a functional POV

This right here. Electronic devices are full of plastics because they are often the best, or only, way to make those devices function and remain safe. You’re not going to make a car that meets any modern crash safety standard without plastic materials. Your not going to replace medical tubing with paper or cloth. Etc., etc.

The world can certainly use less plastic, and should use less. But eliminating it completely will require either (a) developing some novel new replacement material, or (b) giving up a lot of useful things humans have developed in the past century.

I miss <marquee> myself.

I assume it’s an intentional trade-off by the devs to reduce the storage burden. If each instance is a complete mirror of all federated instances then hosting becomes that much more expensive.

90’s internet was awesomer. It was simple and chill and small. We hand-wrote our silly little HTML pages and freely published our email addresses. I once mailed some random person a check to pay for a piece of shareware. They were the true halcyon days of the internet.

And if that new cordless vacuum doesn’t work well it will be a significant disappointment that you and your partner discuss multiple times.

Texans will appreciate that you refer to them as Texans rather then American.