Diatomaceous Earth (DE) ravages them too. Apply outside/don’t breathe it in. Once it’s in the soil, it will stay there for quite awhile and offers long lasting protection.

It cuts up the bugs!

If the index cost $1000 without a battery, storage, memory and a SoC in 2019, I can’t imagine the frame is going to be anything below $1,500 with 2026 pricing.

If you have 100k saved in liquid cash, you definitely need to be investing that in broad scale index funds. Keeping it liquid means inflation is going to be eating away at your money over time, which is really not good. The whole market is pretty out of balance due to AI, but it’s better to get in now rather than trying to wait and see. You have time to recover from market crashes, just don’t panic sell if the market crashes.

If financial stuff isn’t your thing, you can also save for retirement in prefabbed vehicles called Target-Date Funds. These are kinda annoying as they have a decent amount of fees, but you basically set a retirement goal date, and they will automatically rebalance more and more conservatively over time. However, you are at a bit of a disadvantage if you start at 43. I’d recommend saving aggressively if you can afford to.

Renting vs buying is always a thing, and it highly depends where you live. Having money for a down payment is good, but I’d consider what 100k invested right now would do for you until you are 80 vs what a house would do for you instead. 40 years of interest could be better than a significant debt load, even with several market crashes.

Fwiw, if you don’t have a spouse or kids, I don’t really see much value in a house. Rent a cheap one bed and laugh all the way to the bank when a water pipe breaks and you don’t have to cover 75k in water damage.

I got a Motorola Stylus 5g 2024 for $250. There’s probably newer now, but it’s a decent device with a headphone jack, large battery, SD card slot, and a stylus. It feels similarly decent to my Z fold 4, which was surprising. I thought it would be laggy.

Looks cool! I hope they release a slider, someday. I miss my 00s era slider.

Does Europe have fabs? Or are they purely reliant on Asia and the US fabs?

For me, it wasn’t that, but the ribbon cable inside. A 20 cent part broke, but Samsung won’t allow techs to fix that. Their “fix” is to replace the hinge, inner, and outer screens, a $600 part. Maddening, considering the cable can be fixed.

I always vote, local, state, and federal. I would never vote for candidates who specifically are out to destroy things, or do austerity measures. I also don’t vote by party, but by values.

Because few people vote in my area, my votes have enormous impacts on society at large, which feels uniquely powerful.

I love the woods a lot, so I voted for a candidate that wanted to preserve them. My singular vote alone counted as 2% of the entire state, and the pro-Muir candidate won. And that was me alone, I also talked to friends and family about voting, which they did.

It’s cool, but $2,000 is way too expensive, especially if it has issues and can’t last 5-6 years at least. My Samsung Z fold broke a few years in, and the cost to repair exceeded buying a replacement phone.

RIP birdwatchers and photographers, haha.

I’d much rather have a cutting edge nuclear plant nearby rather than a data center. Especially since the nuclear plant probably wouldn’t have much in the way of emissions, unlike gas turbines at AI data centers.

Woohoo!! So excited to see new extensions :)

It really depends on where these get implemented. If you want to live in a city, you don’t really need a car as much. Washington apparently built the world’s first floating train and appears to be leading the US in transportation infrastructure with trains and bikes. If anyone can pull it off in the US, it’s probably them.

You probably can, but that might actually be a trailing cactus. Some of them do that by default!

English ivy and bishop’s weed are the bane of my existence.

Diatomaceous earth also shreds fungus gnats, and tends to persist in houseplant soil for quite some time Just apply it to soil outside and water it before bringing it in, it’s hazardous to breathe in.

I still miss WP daily. It was a fantastic OS. Way ahead of its time, too.

Different person, but yes, even after watching the TC video. I preheat the water too. And it’s a fairly recent Miele dishwasher.

Rinsing the dishes definitely helps cut down on this, though. And occasionally checking the filter at the bottom. A little rinsing goes a long way, I’ve found.

Tax filing companies. Individual taxes are pretty straightforward in most cases. Our tax laws are just completely screwed up.

Health insurance and tax information can easily be handled by the government.

Sync, until it dies.