I can’t not think of Star Wars storm troopers when I see white parts on AR’s.

“Okay, I’ll be honest with you: our dating years, our marriage, the house and kids, all of it… I did it all for the nookie.”

Maybe people just aren’t familiar with the saga of Killdozer? I have to believe that Marvin Heemeyer would have preordered a Tesla SS if he had the opportunity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer

Killdozer 2.0 has arrived for the masses!

Microsoft’s store is broken. I have had a similar problem with Minecraft.

1. Want to buy DLC for my kid in Minecraft.

2. Get forwarded to the Microsoft Store to process the transaction.

3. For some reason the money goes into my Microsoft account balance rather than going toward the DLC I wanted to buy.

4. Cash balance in a Microsoft account cannot be used to buy Minecraft DLC, and cannot be transferred to a Minecraft account. (Why tf not? Minecraft is a Microsoft property.)

5. I now have money stuck in the Microsoft account that cannot be refunded, and I can’t get the DLC I wanted.

This sucks.

Man that takes me back. Trout slapping was a huge thing on IRC in the 90’s. I never understood why.

Edit: Apparently from Monty Python. Of course.

Fat fingers. Thank you for catching that.

They had their phone with them.

TheDude did some server maintenance on the 9th, but other than that I’m not aware of any issues. Everything works fine on my machine, so obviously there aren’t any problems (j/k).

Did you have issues at a particular time? Maybe we can find something in the logs and trace down the issue.

Edit: you can also catch us on our Matrix channel for more timely tech support.

What a sweet kid. I hope the parent has a sense of humor about it and tells the kid he was good for trying to do something nice for a neighbor even though there was a misunderstanding.

Apparently Ukraine has gay super soldiers. Does anyone know where I can find one? Asking for a friend.

Here’s a zoomed-out version:

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/the-picture-show/2025/01/09/g-s1-41784/los-angeles-fire-photos

The British were so focused on whether they could, they didn’t stop to think about whether they should.

Joke’s on them, this whole thing was a clever ruse to get rid of LA and make it France’s fault. Operation Ænema is going exactly as planned!

Also possibly bad lighting, loud noise, or staring at a screen too long. Getting old is awesome!

This article led me to another about the Whiskey War border dispute on this island, which is interesting:

In 1984, Canadian soldiers visited the island and planted a Canadian flag, also leaving a bottle of Canadian whisky. The Danish Minister of Greenland Affairs came to the island himself later the same year with the Danish flag, a bottle of Schnapps, and a letter stating “Welcome to the Danish Island” (Velkommen til den danske ø). The two countries proceeded to take turns planting their flags on the island and exchanging alcoholic beverages. In 2005 a Canadian man and an unknown source on the Danish side also posted advertisements on Google to “promote their claims”.

The minor border dispute was often considered humorous between the two nations, with diplomats displaying good humour. Despite the serious official nature of the matter, the manner in which the conflict was prosecuted was light-hearted, demonstrated by the length of time taken to settle the dispute, if nothing else. Both nations are on friendly terms, and are also founding members of NATO.

You mean items that should be generic commodities, but which companies customize in order to lock you into their ecosystem, or otherwise restrict what you can do? Like printer ink cartridges or Keurig pods with ID chips, as you mentioned.

• DVD region codes

• Camera lenses back in the manual SLR days. I don’t think there’s any reason old manual-focus Nikon/Olympus/Pentax/etc. lenses needed to be brand-exclusive. The companies could have all used the same bayonet mount and all lenses would be interchangeable.

Don’t forget half of them get jungle duty retaking the Panama Canal from * checks notes * a peaceful ally who has been doing a fine job of operating it.

God, every day feels less like reality and more like a fever dream.

Yes, each generation dies off and passes its wealth to the next. But the boomers are an unusual case because they hold a lot more wealth relative to their size. Boomers and millennials each account for about 20% of the US population. But boomers hold 50% of the wealth in America, while millennials only hold 8%. The wealth transfer as the boomer generation dies off is going to be massive. And most of that Boomer wealth is tied up in real estate, which will have a big impact on the housing market when it becomes available.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/more-than-half-of-us-wealth-belongs-to-baby-boomers:-will-other-generations-catch-up

https://www.statista.com/statistics/296974/us-population-share-by-generation/

(Gen X is somewhere in the middle and I’m skipping over them, as is tradition. They wouldn’t want it any other way.)

Edit: meant Gen X, not Gen Z.

Thanks. Corrected. I want to give some excuse about my memory not being what it used to be, but I should have gotten that one right.