You want a commercial microwave, basically, except the wattage will often be higher. Try restaurant auctions for a cheap(er) one

Collective buying and building of such a project means that there is not universal standard or regulation and the project falls apart when there is disagreement. Given the scale this is inevitable

Look at lemmy for example: most servers play nicely but occasionally you get the server like exploding heads that cause the overwhelming majority to defederate

Amazon has 300 warehouses across the US and another 175 worldwide according to a quick web search. That’s a lot of sites that have to play nice with each other. If even one of them starts having poor practices, doing something offensive, something disruptive, etc. it may cause a lot of the others to not want to work with them. If you have one that is especially shit stirring then it may cause a huge portion of the network to cut ties.

But unlike lemmy now it’s not just some social media where you jump to a new server. Now companies have their products held hostage. Now people in that region potentially have services significantly disrupted. Now your whole system is undermined and a bezos type can swoop in to prove his is much better and more trustworthy.

A state controlling it (which would inherently happen with collective ownership if done correctly, a pseudo state would be created given the scale) would introduce regulation and enforcement to ensure consistency in operation. It is then the responsibility of the constituents to hold representatives accountable to ensure regulations and enforcement are meaningful

I worked at a psychiatric hospital with an operating budget of 75 million dollars that paid the ceo 750,000usd plus bonuses. She hired all of her children and their spouses for six figure executive positions plus bonuses.

We made $11/hr to work with patients that were often violent, we were regularly exposed to bodily fluids. I still have significant neck and back pain from 2 permanent cervical and thoracic spine injuries I got on the unit, 15+ years later

Our annual holiday bonus? $12. Same number, for four years. The fifth year they eliminated the bonus and replaced it with a hoodie. I quit soon after to go back to school. It was a gift card too, not even actual money.

the staffing numbers were always wildly different so it wasn’t like they did bonus money divided by number of people. I never figured out how they arrived at such an odd number. My best guess is the gift card store (a local grocer) donated the cards, which is the only reason we even got a bonus

amazons true strength is ultimately in their logistics. Amazon itself isn’t a bad idea in theory but the execution is poor because of cutthroat capitalism exploiting workers and privatization. Ultimately the idea of sellers being able to ship their goods to communal warehouses for fulfillment should be a service that is nationalized. The marketplace can be federated, sure

you might need to work on making peace with your mortality. it’s a bummer and a reallllll tough one

Another thing to consider is the idea of setting events in your life. We all generally understand the cause and effect relationship of triggers (though sometimes they can be tricky to identify). A setting event, or distant antecedent/trigger, is similar in that there is a cause and effect relationship but it is not always obvious to see the relationship because they can be spread out. As an example: you are in a long term relationship and get dumped. This is now a setting event. For the next few weeks (or maybe longer) your behavior is modified as a result. It is not a direct “trigger” in the traditional cause and effect understanding. It is an albatross around your neck that increases the likelihood of you being depressed, irritable, anxious, etc.

Consider this effect and then we can analyze: is there something like this present in your life at the moment? Existential dread is a common one for a lot of people I work with right now given the state of well, everything, and it increases things like this for some people. Addressing the setting event here is challenging because we are potentially right back at the same conundrum. Making peace with climate change, potential government being overtaken by right wing nuts, trans erasure, etc is up there with making peace with mortality in terms of difficulty. Unplugging from news and social media can help although that may just feel like escapism and denial (to be fair it is, a little bit, but that’s not necessarily bad. Sometimes you need to prioritize your functioning)

Also never a bad idea to get a physical check up when new mental health symptoms crop up. You’re probably fine, I cannot stress this enough, but it’s especially a good idea if you haven’t had a check up in a while (eg over a year) or if the issues come with a lot of physical discomfort that is new. I again cannot stress enough that you are probably fine and this is precautionary

Of course it could be a million other things too. Consider talking to a therapist if you are able to do so. If you don’t have insurance or have shitty insurance open path collective is a directory of therapists that offer counseling for $30-$70 per session. https://openpathcollective.org/

I wonder if this is a response to someone jailbreaking all kindles ever the other day

Fuck kindles, get a different brand of ereader that just runs stripped android

Interesting. I also wonder how it would fare across different models (eg user a uses chatgpt, user b uses gemini, user c uses deepseek, etc) as that may mimic real world use (such as what’s depicted in the comic) more closely

I remember when compression was popularized, like mp3 and jpg, people would run experiments where they would convert lossy to lossy to lossy to lossy over and over and then share the final image, which was this overcooked nightmare

I wonder if a similar dynamic applies to the scenario presented in the comic with AI summarization and expansion of topics. Start with a few bullet points have it expand that to a paragraph or so, have it summarize it back down to bullet points, repeat 4-5 times, then see how far off you get from the original point.

However, my extensive mermaid knowledge consists of: ariel,

I feel like the classic image the mermaid in my head is clamshells as a bra. However, my extensive mermaid knowledge consists of: ariel, the concept of the undine (which I have never seen depicted and I’m not sure is a mermaid actually, is this something that encompasses mermaids technically? Not really my forte), and decerto, who I have also never seen depicted

counselor/mental health

Sure.

I’m not sure what the rules are about recommendations of specific providers here as you’ve said but I can certainly write about my experiences with providers

Emu streams is my current provider and they’re decent. The EPG is complete for us channels but not for some of the foreign stuff or for 4k. They have a pretty extensive vod library but the quality ranges, sometimes it’s 4k but sometimes it’s 480p, mostly 1080p, almost none of it has subtitles (but the channels do). I think they just grabbed shows as they came out and never updated them. Buffering is uncommon but does happen sometimes. I don’t watch sports but my partner does; the Super Bowl 4k stream had lots of buffering but the 1080 stream was perfect and basketball games work fine. Pricing was about 70cad for 7 months when I got it and they accepted paypal and crypto

I also tried earl hickeys iptv, very similar experience but more issues with buffering and not as many channels. However pricing was extremely attractive, 35gbp for 12mo

And not via that forum but another provider I found via a private tracker called media solutions that is similar to emu. Less issues with buffering but pricing and most responsive to support via telegram but priciest. I don’t remember the pricing offhand but like $140usd a year or so?

So you definitely can’t go there easily but Gerald Hough is who does a lot of research on the abilities of homing pigeons and is available via email if you had specific questions

https://csm.rowan.edu/departments/psychology/research/aviancognition.html

Is his bio and email

if you’re really interested in pigeon behavior Rowan university in New Jersey has a pigeon lab for studying avian communication and cognition

I’ve tried 4 iptv providers for long term subs and evaluated a ton more. They’ve all been okay but none were amazing so I keep trying new ones when my sub runs out

My basic thing is this: if they don’t offer a trial I don’t fuck with them. If the epg is totally fucked or the buffering on channels I watch is atrocious during the trial I don’t bother. If that’s all good I buy a month and see how it goes. I do this because I’m pretty sure some have better servers for trials, or maybe I just got lucky during the trial period, because during the month service goes to shit sometimes. If the month is good I’ll extend it longer

I’ve never found one with a complete EPG. I’ve found ones with complete epgs for us channels (my current one has this) but international channels, raw 4k streams, etc? They always have no EPG

https://forum.iptvinsider.org/ is the best forum I’ve found for this but as you’ve said it’s a nightmare to browse and absolute garbage. It does at least have some user reviews but I ultimately don’t trust them too much and go with the above

Short links are bullshit anyway. Don’t obfuscate where you’re sending me, that’s sketch. That’s phishing email behavior. Just because you don’t want me to erase all the tracking bullshit from url. Soon I won’t be able to anyway because most sites are starting to embed it into the url anyway. Fuck you and fuck the internet

Dumb TVs aren’t subsidized by ads

I came here to say there are a lot of youtube videos of horses farting, this being the most notable. It’s nice when youtube shoves stuff like this in my feed instead of right wing garbage

A phantom taste perception is actually a lingering bad taste in your mouth and actually caused by multiple things like schizophrenia, diabetes, bad dental hygiene, head injuries, certain cancers, medications, etc

Olfactory aphantasia is the inability to imagine smells Phantosmia is detecting smells that aren’t there

Similarly there’s gustatory aphantasia for taste and phantom taste perception

Etc