Thanks :)

I didn’t think I could go back to not having a backup camera, heated side mirrors, and that feature that detects when your wheels are slipping and makes adjustments so you still go the way your steering wheel indicates.

Airbags and ABS are non-negotiable.

The other day I saw a mid-90s shitbox in the parking lot and it made me so hopeful for my 2008 car. Like, that’s a sign my car has at least 10 more years in it.

Agreed. My condo complex doesn’t allow flags or signs. We’re allowed holiday-appropriate door wreaths and that’s it. I’m wicked glad I don’t have to know my neighbors’ politics.

Yeah, I’m in the same boat. I’m crossing my fingers that it doesn’t suck. At least I have no contact.

I’m on Mint Mobile and they’ve not disappointed me yet. TBF, I have minimal expectations.

Same thing over on education. US government entities down to the local level have to comply with WCAG 2.1 by April 2026 iorc, with some exceptions for content created before the cutoff. The exceptions aren’t clearly defined which is causing me a bit of a headache.

I mean, I’d love for all of our legacy documents and images to magically get image descriptions and quality OCR, but the archives have a terabyte of images and PDFs. It doesn’t help that the ruling uses “archives” to mean “legacy stuff unlikely to be used” and we use “archives” to mean “stuff about the history of the college, which students are encouraged to consult”.

Anyways, I’m all for accessibility. It’s good. I’m just borrowing worries from tomorrow about implementation.

I just had the thought that some of our documents are handwritten in ye olde handwriting. That will be the biggest pain in the neck to transcribe. (Shout-out to Transkribus for making it suck less, but it’ll still need to be proofread). I worry that we’ll scan and post fewer of our documents going forward if we have to provide a transcription when we post them.

I, for one, am extremely inconvenienced by not toggling “blind” or “vision impaired” mode in my OS or browser. The existance of a high contrast mode also offends me. The thought that websites might be navigable using speech readers keeps me up at night.

That was me when I worked in an office with a fancy coffee maker. Current place I’m down to maybe 2 cups (well, they’re XL, but there’s only 2 of them!)

Adorbs, but can’t hold a candle to the garden eel. Mostly because they both live underwater.

It is hard to find onion-free chicken stock. My dog goes nuts for chicken but is a fussy eater otherwise, so we’re always on the lookout for dog-friendly stock to add to his kibble.

I don’t eat pig and Applebee’s adds bacon to their Mac and cheese. They list like 8 different cheeses in the description but don’t mention the bacon. Parents didn’t want me to make a fuss so I ate it. That was not fun. (This was years ago, ymmv, I don’t talk to those parents anymore because reasons.)

Me and mine have various food sensitivities (latex, nightshades, pork). I use an android app “fig” to check things at the grocery store–scan the barcode and Fig tells me who shouldn’t eat it and why. It does smart things like label “spices” as yellow because maybe it’s peppers maybe it’s not. The free version is sufficient for one person. The paid version lets you add more profiles.

That’s effectively what I had as an undergrad and it was lovely. Wednesdays were (mostly) reserved for labs, so if you weren’t taking chemistry or another class with a lab, you had Wednesdays to sleep in. I rather miss that.

One thing I know about violins is that they’re smaller than cellos. Cellos are what, 4 feet long? That tardigrade is like 1mm big or something, much smaller than a cello. Therefore, it’s holding a violin. Or maybe a bowed mountain dulcimer. /kidding

Don’t assume the best in people and you’ll less often be disappointed.

I don’t even assume this person has a daughter. For all we know, they have a non-binary child and wish them “happy daughter’s day” every year. Not that I have a mom like that or anything /projection

Oooh, shiny! Thank you.

TBF, the Ars Technica write-up was more favorable. Also, I was wicked curious.

OH! It also just focused on the gendered nature of everything in my paper in a way that I didn’t. The paper involved an 1860s divorce and a doctor who got her degree in the 1890s IIRC. Yeah, that’s cool and all, but the ‘podcast’ kept circling back to harp on the ‘trailblazing women’ plotline in a way that I did not care for.

I’ve tried it out with a paper I wrote and some of the references. The text-based summarizer is pretty handy. It provides links to the sources where it found what it regurgitates.

The podcast-creator… it’s full of fluff, gets details wrong, and I cannot recommend it to anyone other than the person that wrote the paper.

For me/the author, it was a way have parts of the paper highlighted, which may encourage me to go back and expand those sections. For people that don’t already know what the paper says… well, it made shit up. Not cool.

edit: if anyone’s interested in reading my paper, hit me up! I’m massaging it into the required format (grumble grumble word :( grumble grumble LaTeX :) ) for a local history journal and I’d love more eyes on it. It involves financial intrigue, family drama, mysterious women, and poetry about how awful someone’s inlaws are. Also, lots of lawsuits.

I used to have garlic chives in my herb garden, before I moved. It’s handy being able to just go outside and snip up some oniony goodness for soup or what-have-you.