Many cats die every year from them actually, just like children. I am super vigilant about hiding mine out of the way so ours can’t see them to play with because I’m terrified of it happening. I really just need to replace them, but they’re the nice heavy wooden white ones and throwing them out seems like such a waste.

I live in suburban Kansas City and these are the distances to the things you mentioned -

• Convenience store - 1.2 miles (1.9km)
• Chain supermarket - 2.8 miles (4.5km)
• Bus stop - 1.2 miles (1.9km)
• Park - .4 miles (650m)
• Big supermarket - 5.5 miles (8.8km)
• Library - 1.9 miles (3km)
• Train station - 7.4 miles (11km) (trains are not really a viable transport option here)
• Airport - 29.1 miles (46.8km)

The closest publicly accessible business to me is a fast food restaurant about a mile away.

Basically if I need anything, it’s a 30 minute walk one way to get there. It just isn’t really viable as a regular thing to spend an hour walking to get to/from a convenience store, or 2 hours for a grocery store. Instead, I spend 10-20 minutes in my car for those errands, and save the extra time for walking my dog (since he couldn’t go into any of the places mentioned above either, so his walks would have to be in addition anyway.)

My neighbor used a leaf blower to dry his car after washing it at 7am on a Saturday. I don’t know that I will ever be able to like that man after this.

100% agree. I’ve been using Kagi for a bit over a month now and I love it. My one and only complaint is business hours can be harder to find - I have to actually click into their website for it. That’s it though! Everything else is dramatically less painful in my opinion. I don’t need business hours frequently enough for it to matter though, and if needed I can use Google for that one thing.

Kagi has been a breath of fresh air

I’m not fully de-Googling, however I have been migrating things that Google does badly over to other services. Kagi for search was the latest, and admittedly hardest mentally for me to do. Not because the search engine itself isn’t fantastic (it is), but I’ve been using Google since its inception when I stopped asking Jeeves or Hotbot. Just feels weird to jump ship, but I’m so tired of how bad and enshitified their search has become that I just can’t do it anymore.

I actually have a Proton acct already but only use the VPN. Sounds like it’s time to look further into the other offerings.

Absolutely this. There IS a scenario in which I would love a “smart” or “AI” fridge, but it’s gotta be damn impressive to even be worth my time.

It needs to know everything in my fridge, how long it’s been there and it’s expiration date, and I want it to build grocery lists for me based on what is low, and let me know ahead of time that I should use something up that’s going bad soon. Bonus points if it recommends some options for how to do that based on my tastes. And I want to do this without having to manually input or remove everything.

But we’re still SO far from being able to do this reliably, let alone at any kind of acceptable price point, and yet fridge makers keep shoving out dumb fridges with a screen on them and calling them “smart”. I hate it.

Not really. I haven’t looked into why it caused the issue it did. Presumably it is not actually intentional by MS, and there is some conflict going on that’s causing it. I’ll eventually get around to trying to let it install that update again, but life has been busy :)

I recently had to roll back a windows 10 update because as soon as I installed it all of my startup programs stopped starting up at launch. As soon as I removed it, the problem went away.

No Microsoft, you cannot ruin my Win 10 experience to coerce me into migrating. It’s gonna be a long annoying fight.

Who knows, by then Broadcom may drive VMware into the ground too, making the whole thing moot!

My company is based in CA, and employs me remotely from the Midwest. They pay me above average for my area, but less than they would have to if I lived in the Bay area where they are based. I feel like this works out for both of us! They even go so far as looking at the zip code of every employee when considering raises, and thus far (3 years) I have received an annual raise which is higher than the cost of living increase for my area.

In my situation at least, me working remotely benefits both myself and my company. I just can’t understand why so many larger companies are so adamant about return to office, especially ones in larger coastal cities.

Many of the libraries in my area have all kinds of rental things you can check out! Books, audiobooks, music, video games and movies of course. But they also have a whole tools and homegoods section. Need a weirdly shaped pan for a 1-time birthday cake? Check it out and return it when you’re done. Need a drill to hang shelves in your new apartment? Same thing. It’s pretty awesome. For me personally I love to bake, but I simply do not have room for every type of pan. I only make angelfood cake once a year or so, and those pans are huge. I just use the library one and then I don’t have to store the thing all year!

If you haven’t been to your local library in years, you should make a trip there. You might be surprised what they have these days!

I refuse to be part of that group. I’m a democrat living in KS and I vote in every single election I can. My candidate may not win, but damnit they will count my vote and know that I dissent.

I do actually. These are my favorite: https://www.tgertoggs.com/pages/cloaks_hats.shtml

As an avid cloak lover, I can attest that the reasons others state about practicality are pretty much spot on. That said, my 3/4 round wool cloak with a cotton liner is the warmest and coziest winter garment I have ever owned. I have three of them, and a lighter blue velvet one for dressy occasions in spring/fall.

Getting into a car with a big cloak though is tougher than with a normal coat. Once you get the hang of it, it’s not a problem, but it does take some practice! I do love my cloaks and I would love to see them make a comeback though!

Absolutely. My 2006 car is in the shop right now getting fixed and will ultimately end up costing me around $3.5k. They were a bit surprised I told them to fix it, but I don’t WANT a new car. I like my car, it has all the features I want, is a manual, doesn’t connect to the internet, and most importantly, has physical buttons and dials to control everything! Overall it’s in great condition as well.

I love my car, and like you will be keeping it until it becomes prohibitively expensive to repair vs buy something else, or I can no longer get parts. Hopefully by then something will be done about the privacy and touchscreen situations.