aramis87

What is/are these tv series?

CBP intercepted egg products on 3,254 occasions this January and February, compared to 1,508 occasions in the first two months of 2024.

TIL that people were “smuggling” eggs across the border last year as well. I wonder what the earlier historical numbers have been - there had to be some historical number of border residents doing it in their periodic cross-border visits, and unknowing vacationers who bought a dozen or two to cook while they’re camping and just brought the remainder home.

Maybe 4? I was on kbin, then signed up on two mbin instances when Ernest had to leave. And I have one account on a random instance because I needed to PM someone over there and it was the only way to do so.

Just think of it as a mood ring for rich people. The rich people aren’t feeling any pain and they’re happy to pick up stuff that they want when others want to/are forced to sell.

There are a massive number of fake books on Amazon, though. There are AI-generated books, designed to be easily mistaken for books by real authors, or about recent high-news events, or popular series. There are people who steal an author’s legitimate work and “publish” it as their own work, sometimes changing a small amount, sometimes changing nothing at all. There are people who watch upcoming book releases by popular authors and release fake books around the same time, hoping to pinch some of the sales. I’d rather have sparse but reliable data than give any authenticity to the scammers and thieves.

I’ve been getting begging letters, and I’m sending increasingly irate letters telling them to get me off all their contact lists.

Yeah, they’ve reoriented to be fascist enablers :(

Good!

[I am now on a list.]

Thank you - I appreciate the help!

Additional question, if I may? I joined kbin and was told to use boost instead of upvote (though both buttons were there). I’m now on mbin [fedia and melroy, RIP kbin] and have the same boost and upvote buttons available. Am I supposed to boost or upvote on mbin?

I’d suggest that, if there’s a topic over on reddit that has topics you’re interested in, try starting a thread over here on that topic, even if the community here is “dead”. Because “dead” communities can be resurrected, they just need activity. Asking a question on a topic is activity; posting an answer to the question (even if it’s your own question and you had to go to reddit for the answer) is activity and provides a resource here for other people to use. And if it’s something you found out on your own but it’s not new, try posting a YSK or TIL in the appropriate local community. You may not get replies, but we’re not going to become a fully viable alternative unless people contribute little bits where they can.

At least part of the historical removal of pubic hair is to avoid/get rid of pubic lice.

Wasn’t it in theaters last summer too?

The thing is, do you want to talk to people, or understand the answers? Because learning a few phrases is great but if you can’t understand the answers :shrug:

My standard basic phrases are Please; Thank you; Excuse me; I’m sorry; Where’s the bathroom?; and I’m a vegetarian. It’s not elegant, but it covers my most basic needs.

For places I want to go, I have a list in the local language that I can point to, and I learn the basics of written language so I can navigate (maps, store signs, menus, etc). I also watch TV in whatever the language is before I leave, preferably with English subtitles (sometimes that’s a local program, othertimes it’s a US or UK show dubbed into the local language).

They have options to add in like birdsong and wind chimes to your personalized mix. The idea isn’t necessarily to drown out the noise you’re hearing, it’s too make the noise more acceptable.

Like loud diesel trucks drive me nuts. But I toss on a thunderstorm, maybe a bit of purring cat, and I can ignore them.

Have you tried a white noise generator for your sleeping issues? There are several early available, I happen to use TMSoft’s White Noise. It has a lot of options for sound. I use a mix of pink noise for overall masking, heavy rain to make the pink noise more palatable than a plain hum, and an extreme thunderstorm - adding the extra thunder helps me sleep through bass sounds like vacuum cleaners and garbage trucks.

Pics or it didn’t happen!

Internationally, the wars continue. The US military stockpile is structured so that if there’s a full US commitment to a war, the stockpile will last a couple of years while the US transitions to a wartime footing, building and renovating munitions factories to continue the war effort. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the US and the EU started sending their stockpiles to Ukraine, and they ramped up munitions production - but neither power pivoted ro full wartime production. Hell, the European NATO countries were still debating whether to dedicate 2% of their GDP to defence.

With Trump fully in Putin’s pocket, the US is going to drastically scale back the supply of arms to Ukraine, and the EU isn’t in a position to make up the entire shortfall. Even now, they’re talking about giving money and supplying some arms, but I’m not seeing any reports of building new factories or scaling up production at existing ones (it takes a couple years to fully scale up production, so extra arms available now needed to be started 2 years ago, and extra production now won’t make a noticable difference until two years from now). So Ukraine is going to be struggling for arms.

The good news for Ukraine is that Russia has also been struggling with both manpower and munitions. Putin is relying on literal cannon fodder from other countries and his own prisoners to make the war palatable to his people. But I think it’s possible he may decide to push harder, annex a bunch of Ukraine, then declare that the war is over and spend some time consolidating his gains.

In the meantime, I’d expect the US to be increasingly focused on the war in Israel, both as a distraction from Ukraine and because Trump really wants ‘wins’ there - in this case, he likely wants to build some hotels, and he’d really like to be able to proclaim that he “brought peace to the Middle East” [the genocide of the Palestinian people being a mere technicality to Trump].

With the US being increasingly unreliable, Europe will focus more on their own affairs (including Russia and Ukraine). The US will go their own way on things, increasingly alone and alienated. It will never be fully trusted again (nor should it be), so accomplishing foreign policy goals is going to be increasingly hard, and accomplishing domestic goals isn’t going to be much easier.

The US economy will eventually collapse and the weight of the national debt will come crashing down. That’s going to affect other countries as well, though I don’t know enough to be able to predict how badly. The US will end up the big loser and Russia can probably chalk up some wins in Ukraine. The Arabic countries will make noises about Israel, but I don’t think full-scale war will happen there, just long-simmering tensions with both sides encouraging terrorism.

I think China and India are poised to be the big winners: they’re both staying publicly out of things, biding their time, waiting for America to fall and Europe to be more internally-focused. And at some point, human civilization collapses, because we couldn’t agree that maybe we should just buy less stuff and all the infrastructure and farmland is swallowed by rising sea levels, extreme drought, floods, wildfires, hurricanes and whatever else is waiting for us.

Gotta pull out that list of doxxed neo-Nazis again …

People born after 1957 and vaxxed before 1967 (vax was less effective), people who only got a single shot until the mid-70’s (accidentally under-vaxxed), immune compromised/suppressed …