To me it tastes more like dry-rotting lawn clippings.

But in a good way.

Windows 11 LTSC

I’m using Window 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC; the biggest issue I’ve had was that I couldn’t get my video card installed. I had to wait until there was an updated driver, a few weeks after I assembled my computer. Every time I tried to install the driver that was supposed to be the correct one, I got a BSOD.

Honestly, I like 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC better than I liked the 10 Pro version that I had. And–compared to the only Linux distro I’ve used, Tails–it’s fairly straightforward. And yes, I know the Tails is kind of a pain in the ass, and it’s not fair to judge all of Linux against that. But i’m old, and cranky, and just want Win 3.11 back.

Arkansas black is one of my favorites, because it dries/dehydrates so very, very well. It tastes like apple-flavored candy when you’re done with it.

I haven’t been able to find it aside from once, three years ago. :(

There is a world of difference between the American Revolution and the US Civil War. For starters, the colonists had help from France. Secondly, Britain quit because it was both expensive and tedious to wage war across the Atlantic Ocean, and they had an entire empire to police, and native populations to exploit and massacre; unruly colonists that weren’t particularly profitable simply weren’t worth the effort. In contrast, the CAS and Union armies were largely fighting without help from other countries, and there was no ocean separating them. The result was that the US Civil War directly resulted in the deaths of 2.5% of the US population at the time; if that happened now, that would be 8.5M direct deaths.

The colonists won because Britain quit. The CAS lost to the Union decisively.

If we repeated the civil war today, I would anticipate that it would be far, far bloodier than it was in the 1860s, because it wouldn’t be rows of conscripts shooting at each other from point-blank range. It would be guerillas fighting on one side, and the other side bombing the shit out of cities and indiscriminately killing civilians.

You can absolutely do that, except that it would be amending the constitution, not changing the law. You might be able to get enough people and states to vote in favor of it, but I highly doubt it. Especially since California pays for a shitload of red states’ existence. Republicans don’t want CA to leave and take the CA money with it, they want CA to be forced to capitulate.

It was not legal and unconstitutional when the CAS seceded, and it will be illegal and unconstitutional if California attempts to do the same.

The laws for incitement of violence are supposed to be pretty narrow; see Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). OTOH, prosecutors tend to overreach frequently, and fighting it in court is expensive, even if you would otherwise prevail and have charges dismissed.

Just FYI, you can’t buy a firearm at a dealer outside of your home state without having it shipped to an FFL holder in your home state. E.g., I can’t drive to Family Firearms in Alabama from Georgia–where i live–to buy a gun. I have to order from them, and then have it shipped to an FFL near me, and then fill out the paperwork in my own state. In states that allow private, p2p sales (which is most of them), you could buy a firearm with cash from an individual, and they’d never do a background check or fill out a 4473.

That’s because nicotine–from whence neonicotinoids are derived–is an excellent insecticide. (Unfortunately neonicotinoids also kill beneficial insects, like pollinators, which is why their industrial usage is such a problem.)

I admit that I use Instagram to follow cat accounts and a few creators who I respect. I post very sporadically. In the rare instances where I post photos of myself, it’s only when I’m wearing a balaclava and/or after I’ve used Photoshop to blur my face to unrecognizability.

I would suggest that most people that aren’t earning money from IG should do the same.

It really depends on where you bury the body. Once you get out of developed areas, it gets very hard to track things down. Take this example; she was missing for two years, and her body was found in a tent, in a sleeping bag, just two miles off the Appalachian trail, which is one of the busiest hiking trails in the US. If someone was actually buried out there, the odds that they’d ever be found are very, very poor.

Admittedly, carrying a body off trails through fairly dense forests ain’t gonna be easy. If you were going to do it, I’d say start by getting an old car with no GPS, get some paper maps, make sure that you leave all of your electronics at home so that there’s no electronic trail of where you’ve been (especially your cell phone!), and only use cash for gas, etc. while you’re driving to your body dump site. Assuming that the body isn’t recovered for at least a year, you’re likely in the clear.

But what if I don’t want credit in the Play store? What if I want to use the Graphene OS, and side load everything?

I have considered getting a burner phone that I pay for in cash only, having it utterly unconnected from my real life, and turned off and stored in a Faraday wallet when not in use just so I can use the ‘digital coupons’ that food retailers keep pushing. I use a loyalty card because all they get from that is my buying habits–groceries–plus an address. But access to my phone? Absolutely not.

“Nowheresville” in England is very, very relative.

That’s not entirely accurate. Yes, it was more than the GDP of the entire planet at the time, but that’s not the value of the entire planet. Unless they meant the amount of physical currency that existed, in which case the amount was considerably less than the 62T that the article cites, since most money is never physical.

It’s still patently ridiculous though.

No Tails?

Not so much. Even in the 1800s, it was unusual for girls to get married before they were 18 or so, and the average age for a first marriage was more like 23.

The ‘14yo child getting married in the 1800s’ is the kind of thing that certain conservatives–esp. religious conservatives–like to claim in order to normalize creepy behavior. It happened then–and still happens now in some states!–but even at the time it was very abnormal.

The church has tended to tread very, very lightly on what they’re willing to declare to be doctrine, and what they aren’t, because they’re aware of how bad it looks when they have to walk doctrine back. The November policy, for instance, was explicitly called out as being revelation from god (via Russel Nelson, in 2016), but the church had to walk it back in 2019 because they were hemorrhaging members and getting incredibly bad press. (Plus, the whole article of faith thing about, “we believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression” is kind of undermined by not letting children with gay parents be baptized.)

As long as it’s dogma rather than doctrine, the church has the benefits of members conforming, without the same risk of blowback. That is, if/when it’s necessary to roll something back, it’s much easier to say that it was never doctrine in the first place, and that the mind of god hasn’t changed.

Hey, I clearly remember that there was only caffeine-free Coke at Ricks College (apparently now re-branded as BYU-Idaho), and it was a Big Fucking Deal when they started allowing Coca-Cola in the campus stores and dining hall. So even if it wasn’t “official”, it was a very clear cultural issue, to the point where I don’t think that most people could have drawn a line between what was official doctrine, and what was commonly accepted as doctrine.

There also wasn’t an internet at the time, so members couldn’t readily find some of the information about the nitty gritty.

That is the apologetic version, yeah. But it begs the question: if it’s okay to drink caffeine, why is it that an occasional cup of coffee will keep you out of the temple, but a case of Red Bull every day won’t? If it’s about avoiding addiction, then surely any addiction would make you unworthy to go to the temple. If it’s hot drinks, then why isn’t cold brew coffee okay? Why is yerba mate fine, and ice tea is not? One assumes that a god would be able to formulate a standard that can be applied cleanly, to everything, and communicate that clearly to his prophet.

Honestly, the when you look at the circumstances that existed contemporaneously when JS Jr. was formulating his theology, it’s clear that the Word of Wisdom is essentially a slightly reformulated version of the temperance movement. It’s also interesting to note that it wasn’t a requirement until, IIRC, the 1920s or so; JS Jr. and Brigham Young were both pretty big drinkers of hard liquor, for instance. It’s easy to point to tobacco and say, see?, it’s prophetic! But there was a pretty strong temperance movement against tobacco at the time as well. (Meanwhile, the evidence we have right now seems to indicate that coffee and tea are probably good for you, and evidence regarding alcohol is leaning towards it probably not being healthy even in very moderate drinkers.)