Also they were HORRIFICALLY unreliable, to the point where my mechanic’s actual quote was “Folks, I’m not in the habit of talking myself out of a $10,000 paycheck, but this car is not worth it.” 30 minutes before we walked in his door it was working fine, by the time he went to drive it to the bay it wouldn’t start, and never did again.

It wasn’t even paid off yet.

To say nothing of the fact that one had to drop the engine to get to the alternator, the electrical blew itself out twice in the 4 years we owned it, very few of the features worked with any competence, and we just got our 3rd or 4th safety recall for it (or whatever is left of the parts at the scrapyard).

Consumer Reports rated its reliability as a six - not out of ten, but out of ONE HUNDRED.

Absolute lemons.

needing to ask people what 3rd party chat service they prefer

Yeah Signal’s great and all, but my spouse’s family refuses to use anything but WhatsApp, half my family uses FB Messenger while the other half use Discord (and they are feuding about it), the older folks in my hobby group refuse to learn anything but the default text on their phone (that group chat is an unmanageable NIGHTMARE), and anything from work uses teams…except the US folks who use slack, and now my friends want to get me on Signal, too? Relevant XKCD.

The solution to my problem is not yet another messaging app. I just want ONE inbox!

I’ve been pretty happy with Beeper so far. There are some features that aren’t quite as good as using each app natively, yet, but I think they’re off to a great start considering the sheer scale and variety of interfaces they’re working with. It even gives me tools to deal with the hobby chat anarchy, and now I can send default SMS messages from my computer!

Ah yes, forbidden snacks

Parent company doesn’t want ANYONE to have direct read access to the database - only the scant few heavily formatted reports the user-facing software will allow. Data analysis still needs to get done though, so…

Yeah. PQ -> Data Model saves my ass and my co-workers think I’m a wizard.

That, and learning how to quietly exploit minor vulnerabilities in the software to get raw tables I “shouldn’t” have and telling not one soul has been a winning combo!

I’m literally saying this as a visa holder / residence permit holder in my country of residence right now. When it was issued me, it was made very clear that my status in the country was a privilege that could be revoked at any time for a myriad of reasons. Now, “repeated wars of aggression by your home country with the specific excuse of controlling territory occupied by you” wasn’t EXPLICITLY listed, but I’d be shocked to retain my status in those circumstances.

I’m not their citizen - as of yet I haven’t started attempting to be one. Describing myself even as “from” here would be misleading. "Once a _____ always a ______” doesn’t even apply - I’ve never tried to be anything BUT a ______??

If article was “Lithuania strips citizenship and rights from Russian born naturalized residents” I’d be concerned. Instead, article is “Lithuania deports small fraction of its Russian and Belarusian expats identified as active threat during wartime”. Which is actually surprisingly restrained.

There’s a small difference between saying

“due to repeated wars by our neighbor explicitly using the presence of their citizens in foreign soil to justify annexation, we’re revoking temporary residency of their foreign nationals and deporting them. Return to your home country or go elsewhere.” And “Citizen or not, once a jap always a jap, due to our beef over Pacific imperialism we’re taking your property and imprisoning you in this concentration camp”

It was my understanding that defederation was a one way thing? So if instance A defederates instance B, A will not see anything from B but B could still see things from A?

Ok that’s actually hilarious.