melchar | Reading

Last night – Tuesday night – Gamers Nexus posted a three hour deep dive on how Trump’s tariff regime is completely fucking one segment of the computer industry: custom computers and components including gaming PCs.

I have now watched all of it.

IT IS WORTH YOUR TIME.

I never say that shit about a video this long but it is a documentary of goddamn note. I haven’t seen anything else close to this, showing not just numbers, but how those numbers compound – 145% isn’t a limit, some of the tariffs are additive on top of each other – and most of all how stupidly complicated they’ve made it.

Let’s say you’ve got a power supply. Let’s say it’s at 145% as a base unit, ’cause right now it probably is. That’s not the only tariff – that’s just one of them. Percentage aluminium by weight? You’ve got to figure that out, and you need to know where it came from, because that’s an additional tariff. Sometimes. Percentage steel by weight? Same question, same fluctuating situation.

How the fuck do you figure out where the aluminium legs on a resistor came from?

The transparency from Hyte in particular – it’s stunning. They’re just dumping pricing and strategy trade secrets in this video because they literally can’t do business in the US as things stood at time of shooting. They’ve cancelled all shipments to the US and once they’re out of stock already in country, they’re out of stock.

As they say, most people won’t really notice until shelves go empty.

And this is just one industry.

$600 for a PC case, anyone?

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

seawasp

Stephanie doesn't know there's plotting and scheming...

( ... but she has problems of her own... )

That's certainly the way to bet...

solarbird

Indivisible reports that these Democratic senators in particular need to hear from their constituents right now to oppose HR22, a bill which would disinfranchise millions of people, mostly women, from voting.

Again, urge these Senators in particular to reject the GOP’s voter suppression bill and protect our freedom to vote:

KELLY (AZ)
WARNOCK (GA)
PETERS (MI)
SHAHEEN (NH)
HASSAN (NH)
CORTEZ MASTO (NV)
ROSEN (NV)

If they aren’t your Senators, give your own a call anyway. You can call directly, or you can use Indivisible’s tool to help you call if you prefer.

HR22 is intentionally a voter suppression bill, and it’s intentionally suppressing votes of married women in particular. You need a birth certificate in person or a passport in person to register, and if you’ve changed your name (by, say, getting married) and haven’t changed your birth certificate to match, and you don’t have a passport (as most people don’t), then last I heard you’re just kinda fucked. You have to get one or the other done, and then get registered to vote, a process which will take months.

This is not an accident. Also, it eliminates registering to vote by mail or online, which is something else they want in order to, again, make it harder to vote.

This lines up with what the far-right openly say that they want, which is either eliminating votes for women entirely or assigning one vote per household, which would be executed by a man (presumably where such exists).

Also, they know that men vote Republican far more than women do, and it’s about making sure they can’t ever lose another election. This is what they’ve done in state after state where they have power, and it’s what they want to do across the country.

This can’t pass. It absolutely cannot pass. Make sure your senators know. Today.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

andrewducker

In the future all zoo trips will look like this.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

the_gneech

Whenever I get deep into my writing projects, I get an itch to return to Michael Macbeth. Originally conceived thirty years ago (yikes), Michael took a lot of (undisguised) inspiration from Dirk Gently, and to this day is a character I greatly enjoy—but for whom I have a very rough time coming up with ideas. I did manage to write one short novel featuring him, as a NaNoWriMo project, but it was… thin? There was some genuinely good stuff in it, but the whole was definitely lesser than the sum of its parts.

On a related note, the topic of the Brigid and Greg Fictionlets comes up in conversation periodically; Multiclass Geek recently pondered what a story about that dynamic duo now would look like, compared to their heyday of the early 2000s, but that idea would by necessity take the story places I wouldn’t really want to go (Isadora’s age being just one example). Like Jeeves and Wooster before them, Brigid and Greg are inhabitants of a particular moment, and letting time pass for them would force them to change into something else.

The biggest obstacle with both Michael Macbeth and B&G, I think, is that they are both about “a vibe.” Michael Macbeth is “creepy and kooky on a rainy afternoon in a college town.” B&G is “what if Jeeves and Wooster were Gen-Xers?” But a vibe is not a story, a vibe is just… a vibe. When I go to write about these characters, I get hung up on trying to think of things to actually happen, because part of the requirement is that it shouldn’t significantly change their status quo. A Michael Macbeth that doesn’t live in his shabby little apartment always just a few dollars away from broke, isn’t Michael Macbeth any more. The goal for Brigid and Greg in any long narrative would be “get out of whatever is going on and go home.”

In writing The Sky Pirate’s Prisoner, I had the freedom of characters who could end up anywhere as long as the journey was interesting—if anything the whole premise of that story is that the status quo is untenable and must be destroyed. How do you send heroes on a journey where the goal is to remain mostly unchanged by the end?

Obviously it can and has been done, many times over. Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, just about any superhero you can name, all have long and serialized careers that consist of resetting back to starting point at the end of each story. And those work by focusing on the plot, the series of events, rather than on character development. As somebody whose strength is primarily in character development, I suppose it’s no surprise that I flounder there.

But I keep trying! And I will probably continue to keep trying, as long as I can put words together.

seawasp

York was bemoaning the lack of trouble...

( ... and far be it from me to disappoint my characters... )

Can you SMELL what that chef is cooking?

solarbird

Pretty good turnout in Bothell, counter had over 600 which is a good number given the rain in the morning and the unavoidable timing against Easter. It’s not what we had two weeks ago, but again, conflicts and worse conditions. Still a bit larger than the 2018-era protests, so I’d call that another win.

There were still people on the far downtown bridge, too. There were just gaps in the crowd between us and them.

I’d post pics but I totally forgot my phone, oops. And I actually did, not “lol no phone oops” did.

There was one (1) counter-protestor/heckler on the ground; he didn’t like my “NO KINGS” signs at all and started ranting about how Biden was the real “king” they got rid of. He didn’t have a sign himself and stayed pretty far back; I came across him accidentally while walking around testing our FRS radio range.

(As an aside: FRS handheld radios are f’real, team. Consider getting some and getting practice with them. No license needed, they’re channelised so can’t be used against you as “police scanners,” the range is shockingly good, and even with prices going up they’re super affordable. Ignore the only review on that Best Buy link; those are the exact model we bought. If you want to spend a little more you can get the T30 version, which has a headset and I think is rechargeable, but is otherwise pretty much the same radio and only comes in black. We specifically wanted replaceable batteries for extended-blackout reasons. Just remember: they are NOT private. Just relatively obscure.)

As with every other protest here, we had overwhelming support from the vehicle crowd. Hundreds to one in favour, easily, just like in person. I even got support from a presumably embarrassed Tesla driver.

I don’t know if there were more Bothell PD out this time, or if it just felt like there were. Might’ve been a difference in crowd to cop ratio, might’ve just been the escalating situation, might’ve just been where they were standing. But I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Keep on your toes. Even here, the cops are Trump’s friends.

Anyway, that’s it for this week’s report, I hope your protests went well. Remember to save the date for May 1st, and to turn out at your local Tesla Takedown or similar before then, too. Momentum is everything, and we need to keep it.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

andrewducker

Pop stars in the making.

(Pretty sure the one on the right has been up for three nights in a row and the drugs are now wearing off.)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

$mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)$

mdlbear

For once, I seem to be mostly okay today, and on the whole I think it was a pretty good week, modulo worry about what's going on in the US. I noticed after the household seder last night that I wasn't shivering, which supports the theory that it's psychological rather than thermal. (Does not rule out something else, like iron deficiency.)

I got quite a lot done, including backing/ordering a Roamate Mobility Device (a combination rollator and powered! wheelchair), going to an initial appointment at the local hospital (mostly for bloodwork; I have another this week to discuss it, and another next month with the oncology team), helping N and N" clean up the living room (prep for Saturday's seder), filing my income tax extension, and singing at Eurofilk on Thursday (only one song, because I still suck at deciding what to sing),

And I completely forgot to include the fact that we have tulips blooming in the planters on our back deck in this week's Thankful Thursday post. I still sometimes have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that I live in Nederland now, but I have to admit that tulips next to a canal are very convincing.

In case it gets omitted from wherever you get your news, yesterday Protesters gather[ed] for 'day of action' against Trump administration, Anti-Trump protests build momentum in WA: ‘We’re just getting louder’ | The Seattle Times. There have been a couple of promising court victories, but we all know how much respect the current administration has for the courts. On this side of the pond, Thousands of trans rights protesters on Edinburgh streets following court ruling.

A few nice things in the links: there's a Capybara Cafe in Florida, and last month was the first on record when fossil fuels drop below 50% of US power mix,

( Notes & links, as usual )

Current Mood: worried but otherwise mostly okay
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: household seder last night

andrewducker

1. In Gaza, we are seeing the normalisation of evil: (tags:gaza Israel Palestine )
2. On language and trans people, some tips: (tags:transgender language )
3. Life before the Equalities Act 2010: (tags:transgender gender equality rights UK law history )
4. The lead civil servant on drafting the Equality Act says the aim was to include trans people.: (tags:equality lgbt transgender OhForFucksSake law uk )
5. The Minister who introduced the Gender Recognition Bill in the House of Lords in 2003 made it clear that "a transsexual person would have protection under the Sex Discrimination Act [the predecessor to the Equality Act] as a person of the acquired sex or: (tags:transgender lgbt law uk history )
6. Settlers of Catan - Globe Edition: (tags:3dprinting boardgames SettlersOfCatan )
7. Thousands of trans rights protesters on Edinburgh streets following court ruling: (tags:Edinburgh transgender protests )
8. Musk to Force Pentagon to Build and Then Pay Him to Use Network of Killer Satellites: (tags:ElonMusk corruption space )
9. Hungary's Orbán urges Hungarians to vote against Ukraine's membership of EU: (tags:Hungary Ukraine Europe OhForFucksSake )
10. The UK is going to have to start making choices about Europe and the USA: (tags:UK USA Europe )
11. Fusion power plants would require titanic amounts of lithium.: (tags:materials fusion )
12. "Masking Is Life": Experiences of Masking in Autistic and Nonautistic Adults: (tags:autism society psychology )

arlie

I've spent the day installing Proton Mail on 2 computers and one cell phone, importing my mail, calendar, and contacts from gmail, setting my gmail account to forward everything to my new protonmail account, learning to use the email client, configuring what I can, and designing and beginning to implement a new email organization that I expect to work well with these tools.

Advantages:
- Essentially the same UI on the web, on MacOS, on Linux, and on Android.
- Available on Windows, iOS and iPadOS when/if I ever need them
- Open source. If something makes me crazy, I can fix it.
- I like the UI, at least by comparison with other current offerings. It has keyboard shortcuts, ability to use typing a partial name in place of selecting e.g. a folder from a huge scrollable list, and similar nerd (power user) advantages
- Best of all, a built-in, though less general Procmail equivalent. I can apply rules automatically to incoming records, filing them where I want them, including in the spam bucket.
- Built in support for masked email addresses
- Much better privacy than anything Google or even Apple can snoop on.
- Servers in Switzerland; Swiss laws apply.
- Run by a non-profit rather than a profit-maximizing corporation. I expect notably less bad behavior than from any FAANG company, or even most for-profit corporations.
- No more of the damn ads google inflicts on me when I use their interface.
- Should be able to use this to regain control of my previous email address, associated with a domain I now have hosted on DigitalOcean. (My server got blackholed, presumably because of the offenses of a prior user of the same IP address.)

Disadvantages:
- learning curve
- imported my gmail account with everything organized as labels rather than in folders. (Proton mail supports both. Mac Mail and Thunderbird had been presenting gmail's labels as folders, so that's what I'm used to seeing.)
- I lose MacMail's random signature feature, unless I use MacMail to connect to my proton mail account, which would mean using 2 UIs for email.
- Stupid about date formats. I'm stuck with "yesterday", and with "9 PM" - worse, it apparently ignores localization, and always uses US date formats. US date formats are not a problem for me, but it's a large ugly wart, particularly for something not based in the US.
- I'm paying an annual subscription for this. They have a free version, but I wanted some of the non-free features. Moreover, they deserve to be supported.

This is just the mail component of their package of tools. I expect others of their tools to solve other ongoing aggravations - notably I'll be cutting down from 3 password managers, none working on all my devices, to one which will work everywhere. This will make me very happy.

Current Mood: accomplished

seawasp

Let's talk about what we SHOULD do...

( Cut for length... )

andrewducker

The Gender Recognition Act was brought in in 2004 because the UK lost a court case at the ECHR in 2002.*

The court said:
"In the twenty first century the right of transsexuals to personal development and to physical and moral security in the full sense enjoyed by others in society cannot be regarded as a matter of controversy requiring the lapse of time to cast clearer light on the issues involved. In short, the unsatisfactory situation in which post-operative transsexuals live in an intermediate zone as not quite one gender or the other is no longer sustainable."

This is under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights - the right to a private life.

Placing "trans women" in a generally** different category than "women" is definitely putting them in an intermediate zone. And expecting them to make their assigned gender public is definitely taking the "private" out of "private life".

The UK is still a signatory to the convention. Cases can still be taken to its court. Leaving it would mean a *major* falling out with the EU. I suspect that if the UK tries to nudge things far at all that they will find the court takes a dim view.

*Fought, and lost, by Labour. Because they have never been onside in this area.
**It is possible to carve out exceptions in the current system. But they have to be justified on a case by case basis. A general finding that trans people are not of their legal gender is almost certainly not that.

solarbird

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.6 – 18 April 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 1.6.

Additions and changes since 1.5.1:

Large expansion north to Lynnwood City Centre and rail station across all of SW Snohomish County
Extension of Interurban Trail in Edmonds to 78th Place West reflecting new construction
Improved street labelling, mostly in SW Snohomish County
Route indicators at map edges describing past-map continuations to destinations such as UW and City of Snohomish

A screen-resolution preview of the newest megamap

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t. If you have an iPhone, please use the website interface and not the app, because Apple takes 30% if you use the app. I’ll keep doing this regardless, but you know. Thank you! ^_^

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

seawasp

Stephanie may have the easier job...

( ... the President's may be harder... )

Oh, come on, York, what's the chances of an author throwing in more complications just to make the characters have a hard time?

Profile

melchar

April 2025

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Page Summary

solarbird - Gamers Nexus out there casually providing the best coverage of tariffs
seawasp - FENRIR: Chapter 22
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 23-04-2025
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 22-04-2025
solarbird - Do This Today: Call Senators
andrewducker - Photo cross-post
the_gneech - Brigid and Greg and Michael Macbeth
seawasp - FENRIR: Chapter 21
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 21-04-2025
solarbird - Good turnout in Bothell for Saturday’s protest
andrewducker - Photo cross-post
mdlbear - Done Since 2025-04-13
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 20-04-2025
arlie - Goodbye Gmail, MacMail, Thunderbird; Hello Protonmail
seawasp - A More Positive Post, or Offering Solutions Not Objections!
andrewducker - A thought about the transgender court case - and the ECHR
solarbird - Maps Release: Greater Northshore Bike Connector, MEGAMAP 1.6
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 19-04-2025
seawasp - Fenrir: Chapter 20
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 18-04-2025

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