I 100% agree.

The families apparently wanted The Onion to win the bid. The judge is the one standing in the way while claiming to be acting in the families’ best interests.

From the AP’s article on this topic:

[Judge] Lopez said the auction outcome “left a lot of money on the table” for families.
“You got to scratch and claw and get everything you can for them,” Lopez said.

Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families who sued Jones in Connecticut, said they were disappointed in the judge’s ruling.

“Germans?”

“Forget it, he’s rolling.”

The Reddit API exodus in 2023 brought hundreds of new instances and tens of thousands of new users to Lemmy. Unfortunately, many of those instances had open registrations, Lemmy’s moderation tools were very basic (they still are), and there were not enough mods/admins to provide 24-hour coverage on the larger instances. A handful of trolls took advantage of the situation by posting grotesque stuff for lulz: CSAM, scat porn, racist memes, etc. Sometimes it would stay up for hours until someone with the right permissions noticed and took it down.

The situation is better now. Though there is still plenty of room for improvement.

Lemmy is community-centric like Reddit, rather than user-centric like X/Twitter. If you want to follow specific users then look for a microblog platform like Mastodon. Or try mbin, which combines multiple platforms as another commenter mentioned.

Windsor, ON has entered the chat

Seattle’s situation may change once Amazon starts enforcing their full-time return-to-office policy in 2025. I expect other companies will follow suit. Though in the mean time there is more room for the office market to fall; another Seattle Times article from August mentioned:

Seattle’s downtown is now second only to San Francisco’s for risk of office loan foreclosures, according to a recent analysis by Kaplan Group, a debt collection firm, which warns that high-risk cities “could see a wave of loan defaults or even localized fire sales.”

I would love to see some of that empty office space convert to other uses. Every city’s office/retail core feels soulless if nobody lives there, or even has a reason to go there after 5pm.

I’m hoping for the faint smell of old cigarette smoke that’s permanently baked into every surface.

The wand is blurry because of its immense power, not because the stupid camera focused on the rocks.

Ah, gotcha. I misunderstood.

I immediately recognized that top pic from the Springfield Armory museum. It’s definitely worth a visit for anyone passing through central Massachusetts.

Andrew Jackson was also a bastard, especially for his treatment of natives. But I meant Johnson.

It is complicated because the rules are different in each state. Also, Trump was convicted in New York state but he resides and votes in Florida.

For out-of-state convictions, Florida defers to the other state’s rules. New York would allow Trump to vote if he resided there because he is not currently in prison, so Trump can vote in Florida legally.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-felony-conviction-can-he-vote-b95e7b4c9158d999e8bc89b00fbda911

While W. sucked in many ways, there is no way he is the worst. Off the top of my head I can easily think of four better contenders: Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan (both guilty of pro-slavery fuckery before the Civil War), Andrew Johnson (fought to let the Confederates off the hook after the war and opposed the 14th amendment), and Donald Trump (first president to be impeached twice, first to be convicted of a felony, and may be remembered by future historians as the spark that ignites the next Civil War).

Seems like the world has moved away from that

Assuming that the world was once just, and recently changed to become unjust, is completely flawed. History provides endless examples of people with power and money doing horrible things and facing little or no consequences.

Oh, I completely get it. It’s a battle of delayed gratification versus instant gratification. I can take care of business now and have stress-free fun later, or I can have fun now and let future-me deal with the consequences.

The composition and lighting sure draw the eye to certain… features.

The first space burial occurred in 1992 when the NASA Space Shuttle Columbia (mission STS-52) carried a sample of Gene Roddenberry’s cremated remains into space and returned them to Earth.

Excellent choice.

Smooth, predictable operation requires forethought, planning, and willingness to stick to a process. It’s not nearly as fun as living in the moment and improvising.

I really like the maps that also indicate population, like this dot density map: