The unlicensed suppressor will get you into just as much trouble as destroying the camera. Plus, suppressors don’t eliminate sound. It’s not like in the movies where you get a quiet “thwip” noise. The suppressor simply takes the gun from “almost guaranteed hearing damage without proper PPE” to “was that a firecracker? Or someone hammering a nail?” Sure, there can be quiet shots with the proper suppressor and ammo. But if you’re bootlegging it to avoid licensing requirements, you’re probably not using the optimal setup.

And this is why calling them “license plate readers” is hugely disingenuous, to the point of being straight up propaganda. The term vastly downplays what they can do. They don’t just scan license plates. They scan nearby devices’ Bluetooth and WiFi signals. They scan faces. They scan gait to determine specific limb proportions. They scan tattoos and birthmarks. They scan bumper stickers, dings/dents, etc… If you walk in front of a camera, it will use every trick in the book to try and figure out who you are specifically.

People also shouldn’t pair those masks with infrared-blocking sunglasses or goggles. Because the cameras can see in infrared, and will see straight through regular darkened lenses.

Only the most dastardly vandals would leave their phone (and all other Bluetooth devices) at home, plugged in charging, auto-lock fully disabled, on their home WiFi, with YouTube set to auto-play a playlist. That would create a watch history that the vandal could later use to prove that they were active at home at the time of the crime. Again, you definitely shouldn’t do that.

It’s largely because the “tens of thousands” is usually a result of being uninsured. And if you’re uninsured, it’s usually because you’re unemployed. And lenders tend to get squirmy at the idea of giving a loan to anyone who hasn’t been fully employed since the day they were born.

There was actually a rule implemented by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau shortly after the pandemic, to prevent medical debt from impacting your credit history. Because lots of Americans were suddenly finding themselves in an awful job market with tons of medical debt from being sick. But last year, the fifth circuit court of appeals (the one that presides over Texas and Louisiana, and which is stacked with conservative judges as part of the Southern Strategy) voided the rule and allowed medical debt to appear on credit reports again. The ruling from the conservative court also prohibited the CFPB from implementing similar rules in the future.

It depends on the situation. Emergency rooms are required by law to stabilize emergency medical issues, regardless of the patient’s potential ability to pay. This is because there used to be a big issue with ERs dumping non-paying patients. If the hospital didn’t think a patient could pay, security would literally wheel them across the street, then just leave them there to figure their own shit out.

ERs run on triage, (and lots of people go to the ER for things which could be handled by an urgent care or family doctor instead), which means wait times entirely depend on your specific situation. Mildly upset stomach? You’ll probably be waiting at least a few hours, especially if it’s a busy night with lots of more urgent patients. Chest pains with a history of heart disease? You’ll have EKG leads stuck to you before you’re even finished telling the intake nurse what your issue is.

And the big key thing is that ERs are required to stabilize an emergency medical issue. They aren’t required to provide follow-up care, long-term support, etc… If you show up with a cut that needs stitches, they’ll stitch you up. But they’ll tell you to follow up with your regular doctor to make sure it’s healing properly, and to remove the stitches in a few weeks. Don’t have a regular doctor because you’re uninsured? Good luck, hope it doesn’t get infected, then maybe chew some Tylenol and remove the stitches in your bathroom.

As someone who used to do projection mapping professionally: I agree

Also worth noting that Costco doesn’t require a membership for their fresh food, pharmacy, or (depending on where you live, and your local liquor laws) liquor store. You can just tell the greeter that you’re there for the pizza, and they’ll wave you through.

Their pharmacy is often one of the cheapest, and the pharmacy techs at my local Costco are all super helpful. Apparently working in pharmacies is pretty soul-sucking, but my local employees always seem to be in a good (and not just artificial “retail smile” good) mood.

And yes, the Costco brand vodka is every bit as good as Grey Goose.

It can be, yes. One of the largest complaints with Docker is that you often end up running the same dependencies a dozen times, because each of your dozen containers uses them. But the trade-off is that you can run a dozen different versions of those dependencies, because each image shipped with the specific version they needed.

Of course, the big issue with running a dozen different versions of dependencies is that it makes security a nightmare. You’re not just tracking exploits for the most recent version of what you have installed. Many images end up shipping with out-of-date dependencies, which can absolutely be a security risk under certain circumstances. In most cases the risk is mitigated by the fact that the services are isolated and don’t really interact with the rest of the computer. But it’s at least something to keep in mind.

Or just get into CB radio. You can get a unit for like $100. No license required, and it makes road trips much more interesting, because it’s still used by a lot of truckers. Channel 17 for north/south travel, and 19 for east/west.

According to .ml, anyone even slightly right of outright communism should be considered fascist. .ml is one of the more extreme hard left instances, so comments from the instance should be taken with that in mind. It is very heavily censored, so their users only ever see the “China and Russia did nothing wrong” type of rhetoric.

.world has issues, for sure. It’s the largest instance, and that comes with its own issues. But it’s definitely not fascist.

I mean, he switched to Linux and has advocated for gamers to do the same. So… Maybe?

It’ll be specific to the app you’re using. Tags aren’t natively supported by Lemmy, so they’re just something that the app makers add in. Sort of like RES on Reddit.

Something something “the best time to plant a tree…” Yeah, it was needed then, but it’s needed now too.

Yeah, I love my catch-all email domain. If I start getting spam addressed to “Target@{my domain}” then I know Target sold my data; I can burn the account by auto-spamming everything addressed to it, and move on.

Yeah, this can be an unpopular opinion on Lemmy, because there’s a giant Linux circlejerk. But the unfortunate reality is that changing to Linux does have some major stumbling blocks. The “switching is so easy, just do it” crowd totally glosses over it, but that’s kind of rhetoric doesn’t help long term adoption. Because if some new user has only heard “switching is so easy” and immediately runs into issues, they’ll be more likely to go “well if it’s super easy and I can’t figure it out, I guess it’s just not for me” and abandon things.

There’s also a very vocal (and toxic) part of the Linux community that basically just screams “RTFM” at every newbie question. New users shouldn’t be expected to dig into a 350 page technical document just to learn the basics of their new OS.

I installed a bidet like two weeks before that entire shortage started. I have never felt more smug about a decision.

Yup. Your new best friends are rice, beans, white sugar, molasses, (did you know that brown sugar is just white sugar plus molasses?), salt, all purpose flour, oatmeal, and lentils. Bought in bulk. And use your local ethnic markets for spices and bouillons; They’re often 3-5 times cheaper than your local grocery store.

You can just buy one or two things per paycheck, if you can’t afford all of them at the same time. Or hell, get some friends together and split a bulk bag. I have a 10 pound bucket of rice (split from a larger 25 pound bag) that I have been working on for literal months. A 20 pound bag of rice can keep you full for so fucking long, as long as you store it properly.

Then you just add extra things when you can. Maybe you have potatoes, an onion, a clove of garlic, and some pork this week. So you make a loaded baked potato soup. Also, learn to dress up instant ramen. A scoop out of a giant bag of diced frozen veggies will do a lot. If you can afford it, add a soft boiled egg too.

“Nobody has time for flour, cuz you need to wait for it to rise!” Use baking powder recipes, or flatbreads instead. Learn to make biscuits and scones, if you want to bake. Tortillas are stupid easy to make; They’re literally just flour and water, pressed flat (fucking use an empty wine or beer bottle if you don’t have a rolling pin) and cooked on a flat hot surface like a skillet. I could literally fit the entire tortilla cooking process, from raw flour to finished tortillas, into an uncut 5 minute TikTok tutorial if I wanted to. Congrats, now you have tortillas for 2¢ each, instead of a 10 pack for $5. And they’ll fucking taste better than the store-bought ones, because they’re fresh and hot.

“I don’t have a rice cooker so I can’t make rice!” Do you think people have been using electric rice cookers for thousands of years? My brother in Christ, people have been cooking rice using the “just put a fucking vessel over fire” method for over nine millennia now. Will you likely fuck it up the first time, and accidentally make porridge? Yeah. But that’s a learning opportunity, and you only spent like 5¢ making that mistake because the rice is so fucking cheap.

“I can’t afford fancy cookware!” Go hit your local thrift store. I guarantee they have an entire shelf full of cast iron cookware and baking sheets for like $1 each, that you’ll be able to hand down to your grandchildren.

It’s easy to say stuff like this, but the harsh reality is that disability (especially if it’s sudden disability later in life) is a massive stressor for everyone involved. Suddenly going blind is an instant and massive lifestyle change for everyone surrounding the victim.

There’s also all of the co-morbid stuff that follows a sudden disability. Depression, anxiety, resentment, PTSD, etc all have the capacity to drastically change a person’s attitude and outlook on life.

I seriously doubt the breakup was instant. My bet is that it was a slow wedge that got driven between them, as the husband also had to adjust to the new limited lifestyle and began to resent her disability for it. Plus with the associated depression and trauma that inherently follows situations like this, the relationship 100% has the potential to be slowly strangled.

Source: Am married to someone who was left disabled by a sudden disease. We’re still married, but that’s largely because we were both willing to do a lot of therapy and work to remain together. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss my social life before my partner’s disability.

That part wasn’t aimed directly at you; It was more to head off the inevitable responses that always happen any time the argument gets started. Sorry if it sounded snarky.