-Neutral name (sorry SJW)

Boo this person! (I kid, don’t boo them, they’re doing good work and I understand if not everyone wants to be a sh.it.head)

I’d ask how you define evil in this case. To me, an act is evil when the net detriment to the planet and its contents (including humans) is greater than the net benefit it creates, and the actor pursues said act knowing this. I’d argue it scales with the nature and context of the act. It’s hard to say this isn’t real. But yes, we all have the capacity for evil, and also can be complicit in other evils by dint of normalized behaviours (without necessarily being ‘evil’ ourselves)

I do agree that an absolute Evil doesn’t exist, the same way an absolute Good doesn’t exist. But we’re a pile of writhing meat puppets on a moist, moldy rock - we don’t exist on that level in the first place.

MSN was for your friends and friends of friends, ICQ was gamers and pre-MSN friends, IRC was for pretending you were a 17 year old girl from California.

In an age of LLM, Seaman needs a remake.

Used to love it, had too many weird promptless experiences, unplugged it and now it’s gathering dust on a shelf.

Though it was nice to say “Hey google, tell me today’s news” and get a few different news updates while making coffee.

Edit: Out of sheer curiosity, have you tried factory resetting it?

Here is a random list of songs I like, in my opinion under the umbrella of country in one way or another (though some stretch that a little. Or a lot. Don’t @ me, die-hard country fans).

Some may, indeed, involve beer, trucks, and American Christian propaganda - but pleasant sounding at least. I’m also confirmed to be pretty lame, and that may be reflected in my choices here.

I also never said you needed to dig deep - some/most of this is like, a fingernail scratch. But if you find something here you dig, strongly recommend diving deeper into the artist.

Merle Haggard - Mama Tried
George Jones - White Lightning
The Highwaymen - Highwayman
Dick Curless - The Heartline Special
Eddy Arnold - Cowpoke
Conway Twitty - Hello Darlin’
Townes Van Zandt - Waiting Around to Die
Sons of the Pioneers - Empty Saddles
Marty Robbins - Running Gun
Willie Nelson - Bubbles in my Beer
Hank Thompson - A Six Pack to Go
Johnny Cash - Sunday Morning Coming Down
Sonny James - Baltimore
Del Reeves - A Dime at A Time
Dale Hawkins - Everglades
Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West - Blue Bonnet Rag
Tim Carroll - I Think Hank Woulda Done It This Way
Buddy Emmons - Orange Blossom Special
Tommy Collins - You Better Not Do That
The Louvin Brothers - Satan is Real [here’s that propaganda I told you about - still love this song]
Eddie Noack - Psycho
Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed - Jerry’s Breakdown
Tom T. Hall - That’s How I Got to Memphis
Roger Miller - Dang Me

There is, in fact, good country music that isn’t just about trucks, beer, flags, and right-wing U.S. propaganda.

People have a lot of hate for the genre due to the mass appeal, common denominator examples. But like with all music, dig a little deeper beyond what gets radio play and you can find some good shit.

For me, it’s sheer laziness. Can’t be arsed to shave more than once every 6 to 10 months.

Do always find it funny when folks react strongly when I do shave. It’s hair growth, not a personality.

For a long time, I’d say accept that nothing was going to happen with this girl I fell for at the time, and focus on my writing (what I was in college for at the time, with an eye to getting into a great program at the uni down the road for slighty less total cost than just going there).

I’ve since learned it’s important not to focus on what you could’ve done differently in the past. It’s done, and it lead to wherever you are today. But boy, did that person - more accurately, the situation I found myself in re: that person - cause a series of events that included some pretty dark times.

But who’s to say life right now would be better for it?

Don’t downvote this guy, ‘bruhhhh’ is right.

One Christmas, my mother-in-law gave me an unopened bottle of whisky they had in their cabinet for a while. It was some of the best whisky I’ve ever had. About halfway through the bottle on Boxing Day, I took a moment to look up the cost (it’s since gone up in price, but you’ll get the idea)

https://dekanta.com/store/suntory-hibiki-30-years-old/

I. Was. Horrified. I have exactly two ounces left, that I will probably consume with my wife on my deathbed.

I would love to see someone discuss any enshitification trends with EHR software, as well as any initiatives to bolster FOSS stuff like OSCAR for hospital use cases (far as I know, it’s pretty much just used at the clinic level, with more and more uptake of proprietary solutions for that use case as well here in Canada [obligatory Fuck Telus]).

https://fammed.mcmaster.ca/oscar-emr/

Probably just poor writing.

I had an interaction a while back that made me start thinking about payphones, and since you can call toll-free numbers from payphones here without depositing any coins (checked to make sure this is still a thing last week), this seemed like an interesting idea.

I have some artsy-fartsy thoughts about it, too: creative uses of dying infrastructure; ‘true’ anonymity - the info I’m getting from people is basically the number they’re calling from, as a product of that their location during the call, and whatever audio they want to shove down the pipe - that’s it; ideas about locality and physicality in an age where mass communication has erased borders in many senses, but people feel disconnected from their local communities more than ever, etc.

If you have some time to kill, I wrote a long-winded comment about it earlier and put it on a pastebin clone here (due to length limitations for comments here): https://pastes.io/paoqsezsjn

Basically, I like the idea of this weird number you can only reach from payphones someone slapped a sticker on in 2024, that doesn’t ask for money (even the .50 to connect), doesn’t try to sell you anything, and primarily just offers a box to leave some audio in. Could yield nothing, could yield something neat.

One of the following ideas, in order of how likely I could get it running (given I wouldn’t have the foggiest what I’m doing):

1. Forward the 1-800 calls to a free VoIP voicemail service, inviting callers to leave to leave the date, their location, and a message. Print stickers with the number, slap them on however many payphones I can find, and see what happens. I could do this tomorrow if I wanted.

2. Same idea, but routing to a FreePBX set up with whitelisting. While slapping up stickers, dial an echo number (don’t think that’s the right term - one that just reads back the number you’re calling from, not one that echos what you’re saying to test latency), add number to whitelist. That payphone is now activated. Activated payphones get to leave a message, anyone else gets ‘Good bye’ and disconnected. Some reading suggests this is possible, but with many, many things to learn between now and then (especially whitelisting). I’d be starting from 0 knowledge.

3. The above, but when you hit # to end your message, you get access to some automated menus with some fun/weird stuff (qotd, show times for upcoming bands I find interesting, a party line would be cool, etc.). See all comments demonstrating ignorance.

Why? It’s pretty dumb, but seems like it’d kill some time and could garner some interesting/weird audio. I do like the idea of whitelisting payphones only, both to cut down on bot call vectors and to push the like 3 interested people to use the disappearing comms anachronisms around town.

I can’t believe it took me two days to ask the obvious - as someone toying with some goofy project ideas themselves, what was yours?

One, anything else is pure decadence (unless you have a neck issue or something).

Assume you are given a 1-800 number for your own use - people can call it and reach whatever you set up (you directly, a voicemail box, a phone menu set up, a dialup connection, whatever). The number is free and your minutes are unlimited.

Would you use it? If so, what for?

Magically permanent if you want it to be/give some “Yes I’m still using it” feedback to the shadowy organization giving it to you. Otherwise it’s active for one year.

And yes, 100% free in this magical scenario, no paying for the number, minutes etc.

Let’s say you have a 50/50 chance of getting your choice of a vanity number or a randomly assigned 800 number - what do you do in either outcome?