snorkbubs

the Unitarian Universalists

What? No! How? Those poor bastards, I thought they were unscathed. Well, at least their heart’s in the right place these days.

Cost of Attendance, Undergraduate, Brown University: Full Time Off-Campus. $71,412

Yet, they have billions in investment funds.

I’m 110% in favor of higher education, but not at schools that are run like an exploitation racket. Even state schools, that receive loads of Federal funding, are exploiting students financially. It’s insane that it has gotten this bad. Soon, the upper class will be the only ones who will be able to afford an education. In light of everything else, that almost feels intentional.

Apologies for the slight digression here, but institutes of higher education that are overflowing with cash make me see red. You’re a school, that’s not how any of this is supposed to work.

I believe it was you, and the Irish.

Oh shit, I just realized why they’re mentioned. Yield, for they have the high ground, and cannot be sieged.

Strike, and strike again, deep into the heart of Mordor. Ignore the cries of those who only wish to keep their coffers full.

Slava Ukraini

Apologies for the confusion, and the late reply. I see what you mean; my comment could have been worded far better.

Exactly because of stuff like the above, I’m just returning from a long break from social media. I’ll do better. Thanks for highlighting the issue, take care.

I don’t think it would be fun to be a serf, and I haven’t idealized it. I made a dumb joke, based on a trope, and a couple of you guys just can’t accept that, and have to leave a smug reply.

I worked in manual labor for decades, in worse conditions than any serf ever experienced, right up until my body fell apart. 20 years ago, I would have traded my life with nearly any serf, in a heartbeat, and I’d be far better off now.

But, I’m sure you could show little old me what hard living really is. If only I knew!

Also, what bugs me about this is that your text editor is not “fedora/gnome/whatever” or “FUCKING LINUX” it’s just a text editor. Often, they don’t even install with a spell check dictionary. I guess it would fall under “whatever” but, eh, not in that context.

ETA: Just noticed they’re root. I predict their next post will be FUCKING LINUX ISN’T SECURE!!!1

You can tell they’re Russian uniforms because they each have a little pouch sewn into the crotch, to hold a bottle of clean urine.

It was meant as a joke. Capitalism isn’t feudalism in new cloths, either, but that gets a pass. I think you just hate ducks.

Besides, serfdom went on for centuries, under hundreds of different lords and rulers, in just as many environments. Your description covers one type, not all types. It’s disingenuous to paint it black and white, just because you have a problem with ducks.

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Serfs in Gucci belts.

Ah, who am I kidding? Serfs had a far better work/life balance than most people in the developed world today. They had to use regular belts, though, which is embarrassing.

Netflix seems to hold on to content for as long as possible, but HBO is going the route of removing content to avoid paying residuals to cast and crew. Frankly, because of that terrible decision, I’m relieved to see people leaving. That’s right; I subscribed and they removed West World right as I started it. I’m bitter, but mostly, that’s just a nasty thing to do to the cast and crew of shows that people love.

Also, side tangent. What the hell is with modern marketing firms getting into the brains of c-suites and talking them into destroying their brand? I mean, “Max”? WTF? HBO has been a household name since the 80s; everyone knows it, there was no need for a change. You know what Max is to most people? Cinemax, another household name from the 80s. Just stupid.

Every time I go to buy cat food I have to hunt down the bag, because some asshole talked them into a logo/design/name change. They’re changing something their customers look for, because some marketer is rattling around in their heads. It’s maddening.

People ask me where my wife works, and I can’t remember the name, because some marketer talks them into a revamp every 2 years.

Did everyone just graduate from the Elon Musk School of Dumb Marketing Decisions? PLEASE STOP, DAMMIT!

I strongly disagree. How does one even acquire knowledge of military history without language skills? Youtube videos, TV shows, and movies are not “advanced level education” (their words), but writing research papers is. Even if they somehow soak up the knowledge without reading, if they can’t write at a higher level than what I’m expecting here, they’re going to fail their classes. Hell, they won’t even make it to college.

This person is either lazy, sloppy, ignorant, apathetic, or some combination of those. Why on Earth would I want them as a teacher, when there are millions of other educators who don’t have these issues? It’s a red flag is all; that’s my entire point. Of course, there are brilliant educators who cannot write, but the vast majority of people who have gone through higher education know how capitalization works in sentences. Again, just a red flag, not an absolute. There’s no need to gamble; we owe this person nothing.

Basic language skills aren’t an above-and-beyond expectation from someone calling themselves an educator, it’s baseline. When even that’s not met, it brings doubt to everything else they may say. Maybe you’re fine with that, I am not.

I believe they’re just responding to a statement in the article:

Hopefully, Microsoft won’t start injecting a poll at shutdown demanding to know why I’m turning my PC off for the day.

People don’t seem too upset about this, so I’ll go off in another direction! The Youtuber doesn’t understand basic capitalization, in titles or sentences, and even the channel name is botched. To add some irony, the channel has “Learn” in its name.

I’m not expecting English majors be consulted for every statement, but the most basic grammar, that small children learn, is certainly not too much to expect from an “educational” channel. That’s bottom-of-the-barrel, and they still can’t be bothered. Hell, there are dozens of websites that you can just drop text into, and the site will automatically fix your capitalization, instantly, for free.

They describe themselves as an “advanced level” education channel. You can’t even get away with that kind of sloppiness in junior high, so the actual channel “level” is likely below that. If they can’t be bothered with such a basic detail, we should not trust anything else they have to say.

Apologies for the digression, and the rant. This is mildly infuriating, but I feel better now.

Looks like you got a taste of the good life early on, and now you’re jaded. I tease (but not really).

Not sure if it’s still the case, but Dell used to assign a support tech/team to each business account, and you could call them any time, directly. They’ll dick around with home users, who’ll only purchase a handful of devices over a lifetime. But, businesses order hundreds of machines at a time, and Dell isn’t stupid.

Something else to consider is that home support has to do stuff like help aunt Bertha find the Facebook icon on her desktop (in the late 90s, I was one of the guys they’d send to her house, as a last-last-last resort, oh boy). Where, businesses will often have their own tech calling Dell, with real problems, that are costing money. Those are two vastly different skill sets, and it would be a waste to use the same support team for both sides.

The contrast between the two tiers really is striking though, and it seems you found that out early.

Everyone is suggesting Dell, and I agree, with one caveat:

Order from their business division. Those machines are designed not to be a hassle, because they want return business customers. Dell business machines have no bloat, and consumer-grade extras often come as standard features on business machines. Just better all-around, even the designs.

Only catch is, you need a business license to order this way, or a friend with one.

As another commenter hinted at, “Thinkpad” used to mean IBM laptop; Lenovo bought the name (and PC division of IBM) for that reason, and they don’t mind if people think they’re still IBM, because OG Thinkpads were the bomb. This is what I was getting at.

It’s bananas that the IBM association is just gone now, because the name was huge in the 90s. Sometimes a fella can really feel old.

PSA: Lenovo has gotten in trouble for hidden Chinese malware on their laptops, multiple times.

Careful with their hardware; it’s no longer the company that built the name.

My answer is probably boring, but it works, and I had fun with my own. Just set up Wordpress. At this point, you can find templates for any site design imaginable, and there are a million plugins for it. It’s an all-around solid platform, that has mountains of documentation. Wordpress was made for blogging, can’t go wrong there, but I’ve used it for all kinds of stuff, including ecommerce. It’s simple and effective enough that I have a hard time going any other direction.

I used to host Wordpress sites on a home LAMP server; it was a fun project that didn’t cause a bunch of headaches, mainly because of the amount of available documentation. Search “wordpress self-host” and you’ll find a whole lot of information.

Good luck with whatever you decide on!