I tried Ubuntu again recently for the first time in years.

Between Snaps and having to create an account to get security updates, I quickly gave up on it.

The thing that I loved about Mass Effect was the characters.

Andromeda’s characters were straight up uninteresting or plain annoying.

ME3 was an amazing game up until the last ten minutes

Russia had the equipment (and a lot more) to lose. It’s quite realistic.

How you can consider a two year war where none of the original goals have been met a success is beyond me.

Russia has paid an enormous cost for very little in the way of gains. They haven’t even regained the land they retreated from in 2022.

But by all means. Keep cheering on Putin sending his people into a meat grinder in his pathetic 20th century war of conquest.

Visually confirming thousands of destroyed pieces of equipment while avoiding duplicates is hard and mistakes will be made. They’re corrected as they’re found.

You’re happily felching Kremlin propaganda.

Visually confirmed losses.

Two years, hundreds of thousands of casualties, tens of thousands of equipment losses and burning through Russia’s future generation and financial reserve

‘Winning’.

And helpfully, the social fabric is so strained at the moment with anti-vax nonsense that even the most basic advice like “stay home if you’re sick” or “try not to cough directly onto the face of anyone” would be meet with insane opposition.

It happily uses epub and not proprietary formats.

The only downside to my Kobo is Amazon’s walled garden exclusive books being unavailable.

This has all been in the last year…

On Twitter I’ve reported:

• Pictures of dead babies/toddlers
• Pictures of murdered people
• Death threats towards public figures
• Illegal videos of terrorist acts
• Ads for illegal weapons (tasers)
• So so much crypto spam

Things found by Twitter to go against their community standards? 0

You don’t have to like them, but explain to me how it’s a ‘deathtrap’ if it passes the same safety standards as a car produced anywhere else. A 5 star NCAP car doesn’t become less safe just because it’s Chinese.

6 of the top 10 safest cars tested in 2023 are from Chinese automakers.

They are producing and exporting safe and affordable electric vehicles and they’re seeing great success in Europe and Oceania. Tarrifs are the only thing protecting the US auto market from similar inroads.

That doesn’t stop them from existing, or being highly competitive. It’s up to western and Japanese car makers to compete rather than pretend it’s not happening.

The cars also pass NCAP/ANCAP testing with 5 stars.

The ending of 3. It still sucks.

Large car batteries can become second life static energy storage before being completely recycled .

This is one of those instances where capitalism helps us out - there’s money to be made in old batteries.

Single use vapes are pretty damn disgusting all around TBH.

I’m not sure on the global percentage, but they’re becoming far more common. Most of the top selling EVs where I live (Tesla Model Y/3, BYD Atto 3, BYD Dolphin, MG ZS EV) all use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.

There is zero cobalt in a lithium iron phosphate battery.

Ok so let’s drill into it further.

Lithium gets mined once and then enters a circular system where batteries can be recycled after 10+ years in service.

It doesn’t exist in isolation either. While lithium is mined, its competitors (oil, coal, gas) are too with significantly higher environmental costs. They’re also not reusable.

Zinc Bromide flow batteries look like a great idea for static energy storage but if you’re worried about mining, I have bad news.

Much of the lithium is mined in Australia or via salt brines in Chile.

It’s not worse environmentally than the other mined materials that go into a vehicle.

I don’t care as long as desktops remain modular.