https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

The Microsoft phone was decent, but, yea, their app store was lacking. Shoutout to the Zune, which was pretty good software & hardware from what I can remember.

How close to you was it? I always thought they were super timid around humans.

I’ve heard similar stories during my random travels around the world over the years. It’s unfortunate that people in Europe and elsewhere are subjected to these negative encounters. As you said, I don’t believe it’s every American, but from these consistently shared anecdotes, I learned early on in my travels that the USA is not always sending its best people. 

With that said, I would like to share some observations about this from the perspective of someone from the USA. Amongst my friends and other American travelers I have spoken with, there is a noticeable anti-American sentiment that we have felt from, for example, Europeans while we are traveling throughout Europe. It ranges anywhere from immediate, perceptible changes in demeanor upon hearing my accent, to unsolicited and overly judgmental comments on every aspect of American society, all the way to unprovoked anger. 

Many of the complaints I’ve heard from Europeans about Americans, I’ve ironically experienced myself from Europeans: arrogance, intolerance, racism, overt drunkenness and loudness, a lack of understanding about geography (Europeans don’t seem to understand how large the USA is), uninformed opinions they absorbed from sensationalized media sources, etc.

As a result of these experiences, we are sometimes hesitant to talk or discuss anything related to our country when forced into a conversation about these topics. The key word is forced. This is not to say we are afraid of admitting the issues that are prevalent throughout our society. In fact, I would say most Americans who are traveling would agree with you. It’s just that when we travel, it can be difficult to have a conversation with a European without being bombarded by unsolicited opinions on everything they believe is inherently wrong with me. While I have encountered this elsewhere, this tends to be a mostly European experience for me.

Having to hear that over and over can get tiresome, whether deserved or not. Especially since this isn’t something new, and has been going on for many years before the Trump and Bush eras. I’ve resorted to self-deprecating humor when any of those topics come up, which seems to assuage most people. I’ve noticed a lot of Americans do this online or in person, even some taking it to the point of self flagellation.  

All of this is to say that most of my travels and encounters with people around the world are positive. It’s a great way to experience other cultures and people different than our own self-contained society. It’s one of the reasons why I love to travel, and encourage most of my fellow Americans to do so. The more we learn about the world, the better we will be at being good neighbors. Until then, I’m sorry we keep sending shitty people to your countries.

I can’t remember the last time I had to install a plugin for any JetBrains IDE. You thinking of Visual Studio Code?!

Yea I definitely misread this meme and comment. Good to know I can’t read

Oh gotcha. Yea that definitely makes more sense than what I was imagining.

The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin. This is the 3rd book in the Broken Earth series, which have all been fun to read.

Looks good! Does this ever cause overheating? I don’t usually use covers for my kindle but I like the look of what you’ve made.

I seem to have missed reading about this Privacy Preserving Attribution API before this release. I’m still reading up on this now and might be misunderstanding, but how enticing is this really to advertisers if the user data is supposedly anonymized? Also, is there some type of monetary exchange between organizations? If not, then I’m failing to see why Firefox would need to send this data in the first place.

I can see the error eventually by clicking search and random a bunch, even without clicking or swiping back. Maybe the random functionality is pulling up a community with bad data or we’re getting rate limited. Not sure!

I completely forgot this project existed from years ago.

With lemm.ee shutting down due to a lack of admin volunteers, I just wanted to double-check you guys are all set with your search?

It’s kind of hard to find exactly how they are doing the filtering process, but I do know they are testing out a few ways right now. I don’t know if the filtering system will be onshore or be connected to the actual pool, but it will filter out any contaminants, pump the clean water into the pools, and then eventually pump it back into the river.

Here’s a video that briefly explains it: