Yeah, security updates are a big sticking point for me too.

That’s another reason I’m not rushing out to buy one. If they actually stick to their 5 year plan, that’s pretty solid, but that’s a big unknown right now.

And with almost anything there’s some 1st generation bugs that will probably need to be worked out. If they stick around for a couple years and keep up with their updates I’ll give them a little more consideration.

Also we’re now starting to see some brands come out with color e-ink devices, I wouldn’t mind one of these with a color e-ink screen.

So maybe I’ll be getting a minimal phone 2 or 3.

I haven’t personally played around with rooting and custom ROMs and such in honestly probably a decade, but an unlockable bootloader would be nice, even if I don’t necessarily see myself using that feature at this point in my life.

And not for nothing, since a flagship smartphone can pretty easily cost $1000+ these days, $500-ish for this phone sounds oddly reasonable. Not that it’s got flagship specs, but for something that’s filling a specific niche with some (for many) desirable features, that’s not a bad price IMO.

Or, you know, the device we’re discussing

E readers don’t generally make calls, texts, do navigation, or fit comfortably in the zippered hip pockets of my hiking pack

I’m kind of considering getting one, probably as a second phone to swap my sim card into for occasional use

The e ink is a big draw for me, as is the physical keyboard, not to mention the headphone jack and expandable storage.

With the e-ink comes good battery life, they’re claiming potentially 4 days from what I can see. I like the idea of that for travel, where I might be spending long hours on a bus, train, plane, car, walking around town all day, maybe even camping somewhere where it may not always be convenient to charge my phone.

E-ink is also easier to read in direct sunlight without a glare, as someone with a lot of outdoor hobbies that appeals to me. (Although for the same reason I do also wish it had a higher IP rating, and maybe an impact resistance rating as well)

I dont tend to play a lot of games or watch movies on my phone to begin with, so I’m not so much interested in that aspect of it encouraging mindfulness, but for people who do struggle with that temptation to spend too much time on tiktok forget hooked on stupid games, I can see this helping them to kick that habit since e ink isn’t really great for those kinds of uses, while not needing to totally unplug from the more utilitarian uses for a smartphone like navigation, different messaging apps, email, 2 factor authenticator apps, etc.

I’m not rushing out to buy one, but I might consider grabbing one if I get a good deal somewhere, or if it has some staying power I might consider picking up the next gen version of it.

It’s not something I’ve personally played around with so I can’t really comment on the technical details, but AFAIK the main way of transmitting video over ham radio is basically the same as over the air TV. If you wanted to do a deeper dive into that, look up Amateur Television (ATV)

There’s also various methods of sending digital data over ham- D-STAR, APRS, etc. I don’t know that any of them are particularly well-suited to sending video, but they’re things that exist and I’m sure some dedicated ham has figured out a way to do it somewhere.

I was recently reading some Wikipedia article on my phone and when I was scrolling I accidentally hit a button to edit it and was greeted by a message that my IP was banned from editing for the next 10 months.

I haven’t even attempted to edit Wikipedia in probably 20 years. Admittedly last time I did I was probably about 14 years old, and it may have been some juvenile vandalism, but somehow I don’t think that they managed to trace me from a computer in my high school library to my current cell phone, or that anything I did warranted a 21 year ban

So obviously it’s because phones using cellular Internet go through IP addresses only slightly less often than most people breathe.

It feels like that sort of IP ban really isn’t particularly useful. The vandals probably aren’t usually on that address and most of the time it’s getting used by random people who probably don’t even think about editing Wikipedia.

I dabble in ham radio stuff, you can (and many people do) send data, video, etc. using ham radio equipment. It’s a bit more specialized than just sending voice or Morse code, but it’s absolutely doable.

Not amateur radio, but back in about the 80s there were even a couple countries that experimented with distributing computer programs over regular FM radio. They’d play some electronic buzzing noises that you’d record to a tape then to run it as a program. I know the BBC did it, and I believe Finland also had a radio station doing it for a bit.

In a world where the internet as we know it never came together, I could definitely imagine those sorts of technologies evolving into something that still looks a hell of a lot like the internet.

I’m also pretty sure that somewhere in OoT someone says that bomb flowers are the raw material for bombs

My guess, and I’m just kind of spitballing here, is that it fermented

Lollipops are basically just sugar and sugar is hygroscopic - it readily pulls moisture from the air. Eventually if it’s humid enough it could pull enough moisture from the air and start dissolving, so the goo is basically sugar-water

There’s a lot of natural yeast and bacteria and such all around you in the air and on just about every surface you could imagine, some was in the jar and found the sugar and started doing it’s thing fermenting the sugars

Fermentation takes sugars and turns them into alcohol and carbon dioxide (bit of a simplification)

Carbon dioxide is a gas, so there’s the bubbling, and the whistling noise was probably gas escaping from the jar as the pressure built up too high for the seal on the container to handle. The bubbling may have also picked up a bit when the gas started escaping too because under pressure some of it probably dissolved into the sugar goo, like it does into a can of soda, then when you crack the can open the pressure drops and the gas comes out of solution and bubbles.

And of course hand sanitizer is alcohol, so there’s the smell.

I think my current pixel 7 pro is probably the nicest looking smartphone I’ve owned. Prior to this it was the LG G3.

Back in the day I had some Motorola TracFone that looked a lot like a razr that I also thought looked pretty cool.

When my family switched from TracFone I got a Samsung Rogue which I also really liked, but I also remember wishing that my parents had waited a couple months so that I could have gotten my personal pick for the sexiest smartphone of all time instead- the original Motorola Droid. I eventually ended up getting the droid 2, which was, IMO, a fine successor to the droid, but just not as sexy.

Best is one of two

First was a couple who are more like friends-of-friends. I like them, they’re cool people, but I’ve never really hung out with them except when we’re part of a group of mutual friends, so I was actually a little surprised to get an invite to their wedding.

But anyway, I booked a hotel room with a couple of those mutual friends. Did a little light pre gaming, and hopped on the shuttle bus to the venue. The ceremony was nice and short and it was a nice venue.

Then we head into the area to have dinner, and find our assigned seats, and we’re a little shocked when the bride and groom joined us at the table instead of being off at their own private table somewhere. They said they wanted to sit with their friends, so they did, they were of course off talking to various friends and relatives a lot, but they definitely carved out a nice chunk of the night to eat and sit down and eat and enjoy their wedding. I’ve heard a lot of stories from people getting married where they say they never even had time during their reception to actually eat, that’s always sounded terrible to me and I think they felt the same way. Food was amazing as well, I had just about the biggest slab of prime rib I’ve ever seen and it was cooked to absolute perfection. They even came around offering seconds if anyone wanted them.

A big part of how I knew them was because we were all part of a large group that regularly went to a music festival together, and as you do at a festival, we all tended to get belligerently drunk. Apparently part of the reason I got an invite was because of that, in their words they paid for an open bar and wanted to make sure they got their money’s worth, and they knew the whole music festival crew would be up to the task.

We were all on our best behavior, but we were all definitely pretty hammered when we boarded the bus back to the hotel to continue our party at the hotel bar.

We slept in way too late to grab breakfast at the hotel, so most of us made our way to a nearby diner to grab breakfast.

All in all just a really fun day with good friends, good food, plenty of booze, and a nice casual wedding.

The second contender for best wedding is actually one I officiated. Years ago I got ordained online from the universal life church, and never really did anything with that. I’m not religious, it’s just a fun little thing to be able to say that I’m a minister.

My buddy apparently remembered that. We were in scouts together, he was a couple years younger than me and sort of looked up to me as a mentor and we’ve stayed good friends. So time comes for him to get married and he immediately says he wants me to do the ceremony, and I of course agreed.

This dude has a way of finding really cool stuff, and somewhere in his adventures he finds a cave. It’s open for tourism by appointment and the entrance is through the owners’ basement. He gets to talking to the owner, and apparently it had always been her grandmother’s (who originally owned the house/cave) to have a wedding there, but no one had ever approached them about that. Since he was looking for a wedding venue he jumped at the opportunity. They also charged a ridiculously low price for it (I think they initially said like $50, he gave them like $500 and even that is fucking peanuts to pay for a wedding venue)

The wedding ceremony itself was pretty small, there’s only so many people you can cram into a cave at once, but more people were invited for the reception. I came up with what everyone seems to think was a really good script for the ceremony, even if it was a little hard to read in the dim light of a cave.

The reception was at a brewery, and the food was mostly a buffet of fancy pizzas, all really good, excellent party food. Again, everything was really chill and low-key.

The worst was my brother in laws wedding. He’s a good dude, but if I hadn’t married his sister I don’t think we’d have anything in common with each other.

His (now) wife’s family is fairly well-off and have a really nice vacation house on a lake in upstate New York where they go a lot. So they had the wedding up there.

Even before the wedding, it rubbed me kind of the wrong way that neither my wife nor I were ever asked to be in the wedding party. Not that I had any particular burning desire to be in it, but that just kind of seems like a normal courtesy thing. Until that point I know that I had figured he’d be one of my groomsmen when my wife and I actually have a wedding (COVID threw a monkey wrench into our plans and we ended up doing the courthouse thing, so I think we’re planning to do a big 10 year anniversary in a couple years)

The place is about a 6 hour drive from where most of their friends and family live, and for the rest of them it’s even longer. It’s not convenient to any sort of a major city where you could easily take a flight or a train or something to save yourself some of the driving, and let’s be honest, no one really wants to take time off for a wedding so most people were driving up 6 hours on a Friday, doing wedding shit Saturday, then driving 6 hours home on Sunday. They didn’t seem to understand why some of their further-flung relatives RSVP’d that they weren’t coming.

The hotel they reserved a block of rooms at is what some people might call “charming” or “rustic,” but personally I’m more inclined to call it “a crappy old house where everything creeks, none of the doors seem to close quite right, and the bathroom fixtures haven’t been updated in about 50 years.”

It was also August, and it was an outdoor wedding. Fuck that shit, it’s too damn hot to be outside for a wedding.

And I’m pretty sure the reason we weren’t in the wedding party was because they needed someone to babysit his/my wife’s grandmother. She’s got a pretty bad case of dementia, and was just really lost and confused the whole time she was there. She lives with his/my wife’s mom, but if course she was going to be busy with wedding stuff all day.

My wife drove us up, so I didn’t have my own car there. The entirety of the town we were in was about 3 block long, and mostly touristy shops selling stupid knickknacks I had no interest in. We were in a nice wooded area, and I’m an outdoorsy dude, and I pretty much spent all day looking at the mountains surrounding us thinking how much I’d rather be hiking than wandering around this crappy town.

I also normally work night shift and had turned my schedule upside down for this. I think my wife assumed I was going to sleep in, so when I woke up at a pretty reasonable hour (9-ish) figuring we’d at least be able to grab breakfast together before we got stuck babysitting her grandmother, she was nowhere to be found. She’d gone off to get breakfast with her dad (who was really pretty much the only other person there I knew, and he’s a really cool dude, I was looking forward to spending some time with him, we don’t get to see him very often)

So that left me by myself with no way to really go anywhere, and no one around I wanted to hang out with. A pretty crappy start to my day which put me in kind of a bad mood.

No really good food options in that town either- a crappy pizza place, a bar that’s just like every other mediocre bar in a touristy town, and a little breakfast and sandwich shop that was trying really hard to be cool but had nothing particularly exciting on the menu. Your best option was to drive about 15 minutes to the next town and eat somewhere there.

And of course we still got roped into all of the wedding picture bullshit.

The wedding and reception were nice enough, aside from it being too damn hot, food was ok but forgettable (my brother in law and his wife have just about the most bland palates imaginable, no surprises there) if it had been somewhere closer where I could have just attended the wedding and went home that night I probably would have left with an overall fine impression of the wedding except for feeling a little snubbed about the wedding party.

But it was absolutely not worth 12 hours in the car, the cost of a hotel room, and spending most of the day either by myself or babysitting a senile old lady who had no idea what was going on.

But at least now I don’t have to feel obligated to have him in my wedding party and I can free up that spot for someone I actually like.

It was both best and worst since I’ve only lived in one apartment in my life

It was actually a pretty nice apartment, I might still happily be there if they hadn’t kept jacking up the rent every year.

But I had some complaints

The kitchen was ridiculously tiny, and one of the cabinets couldn’t open all the way because it hit an overhead light fixture. We actually pointed that out when we first viewed the apartment (it had recently had some light renovations and that was obviously an oversight) and to their credit they installed a smaller fixture before we moved it. It still got in the way and the cabinet didn’t open 100% but it opened wide enough to get anything you needed in and out.

The bathroom vent fans definitely shared ductwork with other units, and someone along that vent liked to sing in the shower. We also occasionally heard her yelling at her kids. We didn’t mind that so much, it’s kind of part of living in an apartment that sometimes you’re going to hear what your neighbors are doing, it was usually more funny than anything, but it was a little weird the first time we heard someone singing from our bathroom.

The people above us liked to vacuum at like 10am on a Sunday. Not too unreasonable I suppose, but I worked night shift and it could be a little annoying from time to time when I was trying to sleep

They also had some kind of water leak one time that fucked up our ceilings a bit, and it also leaked right into our circuit breaker causing some electrical issues. No serious damage done though, and again they were quick to repair it.

When we moved out, our roommate discovered that the window in his room was leaky, which had caused some mold and water damage in his room. He never noticed it until then because of how he had some furniture placed along that wall.

There really wasn’t any decent spot to have any sort of a proper dining table, at least not if you also wanted to have a couch and a TV, so we pretty much ate off the coffee table or folding tray tables the whole time we lived there. (The apartment was actually fairly spacious overall, it was just sort of laid out weirdly)

Read, watch TV/movies/YouTube, play video games, take the dog for a walk, work on one of my many hobbies that I’ve been neglecting, see if any of my friends wants to do something, take a nap, listen to music,

And if I get really bored, there’s probably something I’m supposed to be cleaning or some other chore that needs attention

I’ve given 2 strangers strangers a jumpstart in a parking lot at night over the last year or so. I suppose technically those people I helped know about it, but I haven’t been going around bragging about it to anyone (until now I guess)

My all accounts, I’m a heavy sleeper, there are basically only 3 things that will reliably wake me up

My alarm clock
Having to pee
My dog throwing up or whining to go out (usually an indication that she’s gonna have diarrhea)

I sleep through my wife’s alarm going off (usually several alarms, she like to hit snooze,) showering, turning lights on, listening to podcasts while she gets ready, the sun coming up (I work partially overnight, I’m usually in bed by about 4 or 5 AM,) landscapers mowing the lawn outside my window, kids screaming at the nearby playground and school, fireworks, thunderstorms, construction (although I was not able to sleep through the siding repair I had done with a guy hammering on the wall directly behind my bed)

One time my wife was able to get me out of bed and stand me up so she could fix the sheets without me being fully awake.

When I was a kid my mom could vacuum in my room without waking me up.

Currently, which US politician is serving as president?

Also if we want to split hairs, the presidential election was 7 months ago, but you specified “this last election”

Which for about half of US states means a 2025 primary election. Not to mention all of the non US lemmings who might have had more recent elections in their own countries.

And I sure hope none of them voted for Trump because he wouldn’t have been on any of those ballots.

Yes, but I work a weird schedule with more days off than most (but slightly more hours overall because I work 12 hour shifts) and I’m on night shift, so lots of time to myself after my wife goes to bed.

My work is also pretty chill about what we do with our down time, and there’s usually plenty of it on night shift so I’ve been known to bring my switch in with me and play it at work on occasion

No kids, and we’re both kind of homebodies (my wife moreso than me) so we’ve been known to game together on occasion too.

Streetlight Manifesto- 3 times

And I do want to just reiterate that the harassment angle is really what you want to play up with the police.

I don’t know the specifics of how policing and such works in your area, but there’s a pretty big difference between “my neighborhood is an inconsiderate jerk who plays his music too loud” and “my neighbor is intentionally targeting me with loud music and sirens to disturb our sleep”

The first one is a noise complaint, that’s low priority for the police and depending on where you are maybe not even a police issue but something like code enforcement.

The second one is a police issue, it’s harassment. This will vary from one jurisdiction to another, but where I work depending on some of the details I might enter that as “suspicious activity” or even a “disturbance” (basically a fight) which should get police there with some urgency.

And some of the other things you’ve said, like him walking around outside with a frying pan, I could definitely make an argument for putting in those calls as a “wellbeing check” or “suspicious person,” and if he’s acting particularly threatening maybe even “armed subject,” or possibly as a psych emergency to also send EMS to hopefully get him taken to a hospital for a psych eval.

I have a long, bushy beard (and curly handlebar moustache)

First of all, the hard truth is that not everyone can grow a decent beard. Vitamins, diet, etc. certainly won’t hurt, but at a certain point you’re up against genetics, and if your DNA says your beard is going to be thin and patchy, there’s not much you can do about that except maybe hair transplants.

Age plays a factor, I have a friend who couldn’t grow a decent beard until he was about 30.

Now assuming you’ve actually got enough hair growing in the right places

Most important is keeping it trimmed and neat-looking.

Until you’ve got a couple inches of beard going, I think it’s best to keep your neck shaved, pick a point maybe an inch or two above your Adams apple, and keep everything below that shaved. Once you’ve got some beard going you can stop doing that, no one can see it anyway and at some point the neckbeard just becomes more beard.

Similarly, clean up your cheeks. You probably have a few scraggly hairs growing up above the rest of your beard, shave those off.

If you’re a little brave, a straight razor is pretty nice for making some clean lines, you can be really precise with them. They make ones that use a disposable Blade if you’re not into all the sharpening and stopping that goes with a traditional straight razor, I have one that uses a double edge blade snapped in half (they break very cleanly) but most of the time I just use a regular safety razor, or a disposable or cartridge razor would do the trick just fine

Especially when you’re starting off, a beard trimmer or hair clippers are gonna be your best friend so you can trim it all down to an even length.

Figure out what you’re doing with your sideburns. I shave my head, and ideally I like to have them fade into that, but I’m cheap and lazy so I only go to my barber to have that done a couple times a year when I need to look good for a wedding or whatever. Most of the time I just take my clippers to them and try to make them shorter up top and longer towards the bottom, it takes some practice and playing with the guards and such, and I’ve actually gotten pretty good at freehanding it, but it’s not the fancy fade my barber can manage.

Once you’ve got some length, things get kind of easy, I tend to go for a longer, sort rectangular shape to my beard, I brush it out, and basically just cut off anything that isn’t where I want it to be and any split ends d notice.

For soap/shampoo/conditioner/beard oil/balm, etc. you kind of need to figure out what works for you and your hair/skin type. My hair and skin are pretty forgiving, I could probably just about shower in acetone and be none the worse for it. I shower with doctor bronners for no particular reason other than I find their peppermint to be refreshing and I can buy it in a gallon jug, and since it’s pretty concentrated a little goes a long way and I don’t have to buy soap for a couple years, and I don’t personally find any need to use any conditioner or beard balm/oil, etc. Other people find that Dr Bronners it really dries out their skin/hair so YMMV. I also find that it’s pretty good at stripping the wax out of my moustache.

I do sometimes use beard balm/oil for special occasions to help tame my beard and give it a little extra shine. I rarely buy it for myself, I find that once you have a beard it tends to be one of those things people gift you at Christmas or whatever.

I use Firehouse Moustache Wax (specifically their Wacky Tacky) to curl my moustache. That’s a very stiff wax if you don’t intend to curl it. I haven’t tried their other waxes but I’m sure they work fine for general styling. It’s the second wax I’ve tried, I find it works well, and I haven’t felt the need to experiment further. The first one I tried because it was readily available at CVS at the time was Clubman, that stuff is garbage. Doesn’t hold well, and if you get even the slightest bit wet or sweaty it washes right out. I also remember it having some sort of scent, which I’m not particularly a fan of for something that lives right below my nose.

If you’re not going for a full Snidely Whiplash curl, some other lighter wax or maybe pomade is probably worth keeping around to help tame and style it a bit. I have a tin of Murray’s pomade I keep around for that purpose though rarely use it. A little goes a long way with that, otherwise your beard gets kind of greasy and sticky.

I spend very little time on my beard. I brush it every day, wash it when I shower (usually every day, but I’ve been known to skip a day or two here and there,) clean up my cheeks when I shave my head (once or twice a week) and style my moustache mostly every day (it only takes a couple minutes, the Wacky Tacky is very stiff, I rub some into my 'stache, run a comb through it to help distribute it through a little better, and then pretty much just mold it into place with my fingers,) and do a little trimming maybe every couple weeks or when I notice it’s getting a bit wild looking.