There are real limits to repairability in modern devices, some placed there just in order to force you to pay the manufacturer more money. But you’re right that there’s a lot we could do that we’re just not bothering to do.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/business/cpi-report-inflation-june.html?smtyp=cur

But if you hate your data there’s no quicker way to lose it than a single 36TB Seagate drive.

I like the understatement. Shame they spoiled it with the “game changing” claim at the beginning.

You’re no more likely to lose keys with KeePass or KeePassXC than with an online password manager, as long as you keep good backups, and maybe sync KeePass to cloud storage.

They also kidnapped the grandmother, who was traveling with them on a valid visa, and have her imprisoned elsewhere. Then they snatched the father separately. The mother and kids don’t know the father is imprisoned. They’ve been given no phone calls and no access to legal representation.

If Dexter’s office had not been told about the situation, it is unlikely Merlo’s friends and family would have been able to find her, said Mimi Lettunich, a friend of the Merlo family who has known Merlo for around 20 years. Lettunich attended Friday’s press conference remotely.

“When we talk about ‘What do we want in our community?’ — hard-working, of course. They go to church, and not just participating. Jackie is the worship director at the church,” Lettunich said. “(They) are collaborating with community outreach and things like The Salvation Army. … Their kids are in Christian school, and they are involved in all kinds of different activities and sports. They just won a music competition, just a few weeks ago, and a trip to Disney. I think about how their community is sending them to Disneyland, and our government is sending them to detention.”

As a member of Congress, Dexter has access to the CBP facility and was able to see the family through a window but was not given permission to speak with them.

“They have no idea who I was. I was not allowed to speak with them,” she said.

On July 3, five days after the family was detained at the U.S. and Canadian border, Merlos’ husband, Carlos, was detained by ICE agents in Portland. He has been detained by ICE. Because Merlo has not been able to talk with anyone outside the CBP facility, it is unlikely she is aware of her husband’s status, Dexter said.

Dexter’s office and Merlos’ attorney, Nedved, have access to Carlos in the Northwest Detention Center but still cannot speak with Merlos in Ferndale.

“We cannot connect the two of them to make sure that they understand the situation that the other is in,” Dexter said. “It is absolutely a travesty.” Because nobody has been able to speak with Merlo or her children since she has been taken, it is also possible Merlo doesn’t know she has legal representation, Nedved said.

“We have an issue here where CBP is taking a role where they have detained a family for a period of a couple of weeks when these detention facilities are really only designed for short term,” Nedved said. “They (the family) have not been provided access to contact loved ones, access to contact council or understand what their rights even are.” Nedved said Merlos is unlikely aware of her situation and is making a decision (whether to voluntarily deport) “potentially under duress.”

https://archive.is/gU5iu

Obama’s jibe came after years of Trump stirring up racist conspiracy theories against him. It’s not like Trump wasn’t asking for it.

It still astonishes me that a country with 340 million people can pick this guy to be its leader and public face.

And yet there was also this poll just the other day that showed a majority of Americans approve of what ICE are doing under Trump:

https://www.newsweek.com/hispanic-support-deportations-rises-sharply-ice-raids-donald-trump-2097163

Maybe it’s just that any would-be assassins figure they’ll probably get caught, and what self-respecting assassin would want to throw their life away over Donald Trump?

“At a moment of great global instability – with war raging in Ukraine, conflict between Israel and Iran, and authoritarian regimes testing the boundaries of international order – the United States has chosen to gut its frontline diplomatic workforce,” said a statement from the American Foreign Service Association, a professional group that represents US diplomats. “We oppose this decision in the strongest terms.”

Funny how Trump’s actions always head in the opposite direction to his “stated goal of putting America first.” Almost like the stated goal is BS.

It’s the world’s most punchable eyebrow.

Ah, didn’t notice that.

https://archive.is/O8ebO

Some of us grew up breathing in all the lead and still think guys like this are unbelievable idiots. Low-level lead poisoning may make you slightly stupider and more angry, but I really don’t think it explains MAGA idiocy. In fact, it gives MAGAs an excuse they don’t deserve. Their racist, reactionary, destructively macho attitudes are on them, not on lead.

The story that MAGAs are like this because of lead poisoning is just another version of the eternal hope that the next generation will see sense and fix things. It never works out that way. Each generation’s assholes get the upper hand under capitalism. The MAGA oldies are particularly nasty and stupid not because of lead but because of how they lived most of their lives during capitalism’s prosperous heyday of post-WW2 reconstruction, but the world is changing and they want to hang on to their privilege at everyone else’s expense, even if it means fascism. It’s their own selfishness, narrow-mindedness and wilful ignorance. We don’t need to divert the blame to lead.

This is exactly what these fascists believe in. Except then they muddy it with a belief that they are divinely ordained as the fittest ones who deserve to survive. And they have no understanding of actual evolutionary theory, nor any interest in it.

It can be that or it can be the satisfaction of doing useful work well. Venture capitalists don’t do useful work so they don’t know that satisfaction. And they don’t know what else to do but chase money because they lack the capacity to appreciate life as it is and are probably scared to just stop, in case they have to face the void in their heart. Hence their unstoppable, narrow-minded craving for more money.

Did Carney’s caving on the Digital Services Tax achieve anything? Or did it, as many predicted, just tell Trump that Canada is weak and can be pushed around?

In any case, Trump’s constant week-by-week improvisation of policy should tell everyone that there’s no point making “deals” with him when he’ll just tear them up after a few days or weeks.

This seems short-sighted. You want to hire enough people and give them what they need to grow their skills as they work. Invest in your employees a bit. Then you get the quality without the burnout and mental crises, plus you get a company that feels good to work for.