A previously beautiful city, now ruined by train tracks everywhere?
You’re 140 years too late.
Readit Newsmadaxe_again commented on What if every city had a London Overground? dwell.com/article/what-if... · Posted by u/edward
Can they afford a middle class lifestyle with just 100k? My understanding of costs of living in California puts people in that range in the working class with a very low rate of savings (no hope to escape into middle class even with compounding) or they could afford a small family and no savings.
Outside of the Bay Area, sure - California is a pretty big place, and trades are in demand all over.
I wouldn't put it past them, they've already ran tv news pieces (or maybe it was an ad, I don't watch tv, let alone British tv) basically saying that if you use a VPN, that you're not thinking of the children.
You wouldn’t steal a car…
madaxe_again commented on The electric fence stopped working years ago soonly.com/electric-fence... · Posted by u/stroz
For most of us, certainly including me, a lot of those electric fences are alive and well.
They are powered by thoughts associated with pain. Anything that triggers those thoughts, triggers that pain. We are not even aware of how our thinking has been constrained. We just avoid the possibility of triggering the thought.
A person constrained by such a fence is very obvious from the outside. We see the irrational rationalizations that they can't. Because our thinking isn't constrained by the pain that shapes their thinking. But it takes work to accept the pain of your own painful ideas.
You only have to be zapped a few times to be shy of it.
I tried reaching out to a bunch of folks from where I used to live a few years back, and got unanimously ghosted, until eventually someone responded telling me I was a vile piece of shit for what I did to X, who it transpired in my absence had brewed up a full on horror story about me, involving battery acid and violence - entirely fictitious, but apparently people thought little enough of me to believe it.
Now, I’m content enough to not go lick the fence voluntarily.
madaxe_again commented on When the CIA got away with building a heart attack gun wisewolfmedia.substack.co... · Posted by u/douchecoded
This article is about the Church Committee, if you're interested in the heart attack gun see: https://allthatsinteresting.com/heart-attack-gun
Also it's interesting to note how Russia doesn't use a gun like this, they spike drinks/food or spray it on surfaces like doorknobs.
Or underpants, as they did with navalny.
madaxe_again commented on Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act bbc.com/news/articles/cjr... · Posted by u/phlummox
If Wiki had the guts it'd leave the UK. Nothing will happen unless there's a backlash from the citizenry.
The way this works is that the backlash would be directed at Wikipedia.
Your average citizen neither knows nor cares about the legislative landscape - they just know that the daily mail says Wikipedia hates the U.K. and is staffed by communists.
madaxe_again commented on AOL to discontinue dial-up internet nytimes.com/2025/08/11/bu... · Posted by u/situationista
Heh, some great memories using the T1 line at the school. In the wild west days we Napster'ed at extreme speeds before someone narked us out 8-)
We intercepted the unencrypted microwave link between campuses, and basked in full ISDN glory.
They never did figure out where all their bandwidth was going, although the boarding house festooned with cat4 was suspicious. They came and snipped some more conspicuous cables, which were of course immediately spliced back together.
They tried to shut the internet down overnight in response, but their DNS level block was a mere roadbump, and in the end they got another ISDN line… which was immediately put to use in the downstairs kitchen VCD factory. Put the Hong Kong kids out of business, as with them you’d have to wait until next term, with us you got your warez tomorrow, with a fried breakfast.
madaxe_again commented on AOL to discontinue dial-up internet nytimes.com/2025/08/11/bu... · Posted by u/situationista
I remember connecting at 56K. I couldn't afford real 56K modem, but there were cheaper ones that offloaded communication to the CPU. When parents weren't home I was rewiring the socket to connect my modem. So not ideal, but worked.
Explaining high bills was fun.
Winmodems. Bane of the Linux user’s existence at the time.
madaxe_again commented on AOL to discontinue dial-up internet nytimes.com/2025/08/11/bu... · Posted by u/situationista
I remember spending ONE WEEK downloading windows 98. Younger generations will never know the fun of click-and-wait and the thrill of jpgs slowly loading.
Yeah well I got a hernia installing office ‘97 oh no read error on disc 37 of 44.
I remember when the pilot had Ridley Scott’s name attached to it in some way and I couldn’t help but wonder: What is it with that man and pregnancy in space?
2001: A Space Odyssey. He’s cited it as being profoundly influential on his thinking and film making. The Star Child is the dream, Scott creates the nightmares.