I never realized it was her, either, until I read it while looking for the release year on Wikipedia. Now that I know it’s her, I can’t un-hear it, and it’s clearly her.

She also appears in Ricky

Didn’t know that, either. Man, I really hope MacNeille and Yankvoic are friends IRL because that would be cool.

My dyslexia initially read that as “plump and dumb” which is also accurate.

Don’t forget AI is now the term for anything a computer does.

That’s one of my biggest pet peeves when I’m interviewing new hires. They’ll say things like “In my previous position, I wrote bots for [business purpose]”.

Bot? No, you wrote a script. I realize it’s a matter of semantics, lol, but words have meaning.

It really was. I was excited about new tech back then, and what it could do for me.

Now? Everything has to be “smart” and tied to the cloud, pointlessly tied to a subscription, has to harvest data about me, and is generally working against me on all fronts.

At some point between the mid 2000’s and today, I went from a hardcore tech enthusiast to a quasi-Luddite.

Right, that’s…what they all say. But if you’re blocking the ramps and I have to heave-ho my cart over the curb and/or walk around a parade of other parked cars, it gets annoying.

It’s better than that lol. The last time I heard that announcement at the airport (been several years), it was “The loading zone is for immediate loading and unloading only”. These people park in the fire lane for 15-20 minutes while their passenger “just goes in for a few things”.

True enough; selfishness, entitledness, and laziness are not strictly a generational things, but I’ve seen this for over 25 years (worked retail from high school and through college), and it always seems like it’s the Boomers who get it going, and other people go “me too” and line up behind them.

Ugh. This old argument again.

If you’ll remember, that’s how social media used to work. If you are old enough to remember OG Facebook, back when it required a .edu email address to sign up (and for a brief while after it was opened to the public), you only saw posts, and other people only saw your posts, if you both accepted friend requests. No randos were spewing nonsense in your feed; if Becky or Brandon started spewing conspiracy theories, you just un-friend them and they’re gone from your digital life.

It was just a place for people you already know to connect online and maybe meet some friends-of-friends in the process. The feed (“wall” I think it was called?) was reverse chronological and nothing was boosted or demoted; likes only indicated you liked it.

That model seemed to work pretty damn well by not allowing toxic people, bad actors, conspiracy nuts (unless your friends were all conspiracy nuts), and dis-/misinformation to permeate every freaking interaction.

That sounds like the job a contestant on one of those HGTV home makeover shows would have:

“My husband is a stay at home dog dad, and I spend 30 minutes a month creating 2 or sometimes 3 social media posts. Our budget is $400,000.”

Curious if this going to affect google results in Searx. Not sure how it works (scraping page, API, etc)

Rectenna

It’s the basis for the receiving end of “beaming” power (long distance; not the induction kind used in wireless chargers).

Literally never, lol, except if I catch an episode of Married…with Children and the Larry Storch School of Acting / Heating and Air Conditioner Repair is mentioned.

Not that, specifically, though it might be indirectly?

I’m basing it off of one of Gyles Brandreth’s yarns where he described how he dealt with abusive constituents when he was a MP.

Dear sir or madam:

Some crackpot has written me an abusive letter, and they’ve signed your name at the bottom. […]

Whether he came up with that or adapted it from something prior, I don’t know.

Standard reply:

Dear sir or madam:

Some crackpot has written me an abusive message, and it seems they used your account to send it. I’m replying to you as a courtesy in case you wish to take action against this lunatic.

Yeah, but he’s mean in Continuum lol. In Dark Matter he was probably the nicest of the 6 main characters.

Wool socks if it’s winter and/or you live in a cold climate.

+1 for referencing Continuum. “Canadian Sci-Fi starring Roger Cross” is probably one of my favorite sub-genres of it, and Continuum is at the top of that list (Dark Matter is a close second).

Thanks. I’m planning to add at least the two Jen wanted but prob also scale all of them down and add them to give a variety. I’ll be re-uploading/hosting them here so it won’t depend on your instance (or stealing its bandwidth, etc).