Here is the answer on the Polish instance directly from @ernest, kbin's creator. For reference, he was being accused of being a gun lover based on the name of the Polish instance "karab.in" and "magazines," as well as his Monty Python profile pic with a gun in it.

https://karab.in/m/fediverse/p/217281/The-reason-for-the-strange-naming-and-uncomfortable-images-on#post-comment-311421

Here are the relevant sections from Ernest on the origins of both kbin and magazine:

Hey, I'm the admin of kbin.social. The name "kbin" comes from the Linux "/sbin" directory - I've mentioned it multiple times before. The name of the Polish instance - karab.in - does indeed reference a rifle, but it's just a play on words, and it was actually chosen through a survey among other domains. It's simply easy to remember and sounds nice in Polish. There's no place for nazi bullshit on my instances.

On the other hand, the name "magazyn" refers to the virtual edition of a late 90s gaming newspaper :D

Tesla is only the second product we have ever reviewed to receive all of our privacy “dings.” (The first was an AI chatbot we reviewed earlier this year.) What set them apart was earning the “untrustworthy AI” ding. The brand’s AI-powered autopilot was reportedly involved in 17 deaths and 736 crashes and is currently the subject of multiple government investigations.

How utterly unsurprising. Also,

"Consent” is an illusion
Many people have lifestyles that require driving. So unlike a smart faucet or voice assistant, you don’t have the same freedom to opt out of the whole thing and not drive a car.

This is the kicker, many people need cars for unrelated reasons and the fact that ALL car brands abuse our data means there is no alternative.

I think this headline sounds sensationalist. It’s not untrue, but transiting the Taiwan Strait is something the US, Canada, and several other countries do pretty regularly to ensure they are still treated as international waters.

This headline makes it sound like an escalation when actually it’s pretty normal operating procedure.

God it’s so fucking frustrating that this shit is happening because Rep. Tricia Cotham (was D now R) flipped. And you’d think she’d be like a moderate semi-independent vote considering she ran as a dyed in the wool dem. No. Full on culture wars, full on conservative authoritarianism. I can’t imagine how angry the people who voted for her must be.

“Oh no fans might demand good games at release! The horror!”

While it’s possible that Reddit could be rigging the scales, I think the simplest answer is that the people most critical of Reddit have already left Reddit. Vice versa, everyone here is clearly in favor of boycotting Reddit because well… we’re here now.

As I understand it, knowing that throwing him in jail in contempt of court would likely set off riots, her threat to him for interfering in the process was to speed up the trial. Considering his only real defense is pushing conviction until after the election, I think Trump will soon learn the meaning of “the right to a speedy trial.”

EDIT: Source

Hmm so it’s a choice between the guy whose son didn’t pay his taxes on time and bought a gun when he wasn’t supposed to vs. the guy who is currently indicted in 3 soon to be 4 instances of among other things compromising classified documents and working to overthrow the government he happened to be leading at the time.

Going to be a real tough choice.

It really is crazy that under the COVID relief bills we saw direct payments to citizens, the child tax credits, and no cost healthcare at point of service for ONE disease. And then poof it was gone.

Especially on that last one, I’m surprised I don’t see it wrapped into the Medicare for All movement more often as an example of a dramatic expansion of the government’s role in healthcare for all Americans, however temporary and limited.

It is now mandatory to have a watch history on YouTube if you want to keep getting video recommendations.

Me, who hates the recommendations and YouTube storing my watch history: I see this as an absolute win

Grover Norquist, who heads the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, said the IRS’ plan to pursue high wealth individuals does not preclude the IRS from eventually pursuing middle-income Americans for audits down the road.

Lol love the complete lack of evidence with just a big ol dose of non sequiter fear-mongering, they MIGHT come for you next!!

For anyone doing academic writing, I use a combination of Logseq, Zotero, and Zettlr. All open source. Collect articles in Zotero. Annotate and take notes on those articles in Logseq with absolutely amazing PDF annotation tools. Write draft in Zettlr which allows me to enter Zotero citations and reference Logseq notes.

Bonus shoutout to LibreOffice for exporting and formatting the final draft. And that’s your recipe for one all-natural, organic, FOSS thesis!

I’m no expert but I think it’s the same reason ads are full of hot people: association. If you see an ad for a Baconator enough times next to a neo-Nazi spewing hate speech you’re going to start to link the two in your mind.

True but including their addresses and reposting those along with misinformation about their politics to a board known for violent rhetoric is a major escalation intended to threaten the jurors

Unironically a fantastic example of speciation.

In case you want any more proof Republicans are just manufacturing outrage for the sake of outrage.

“The undersigned request that you provide U.S. Attorney Weiss the full protections and authorities of a special counsel.”

— Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on September 16, 2022.

“There may be others who would be a worse pick than U.S. Attorney Weiss to be special counsel, but based on the prosecution of Hunter Biden to date, he has got to be close to the worst pick. This is unbelievable.”

— Johnson, in a tweet today.

Source from Political Wire

COVID response is wild because for like 2 years we had a robust expansion of both direct government aid and healthcare coverage and accessibility, and the poof most of it disappeared. Like we literally had free healthcare at point of service for one disease which is crazy.

Great to see that at least some states responding to the demand for these heightened services. We should be pointing towards the example of COVID aid to show what the government can do if the public pressure is there. If we did it once we can do it again!

Someone else mentioned pawpaws but i just want to emphasize pawpaws are the shit. Plus if you live in the Eastern US especially the Midwest pawpaw season is HERE. You have no excuse not to leave your house this moment and find your nearest pawpaw grove.

Not convinced? Congrats you have subscribed to pawpaw facts:

• they are related to the custard apple and were brought this far north in the shit of prehistoric giant sloths
• they taste like somewhere between a mango and a banana, and so our ancestors in all their wisdom gave them names like Indiana banana, Ohio banana, \ banana
• they are a CAPITALIST NIGHTMARE as they have terrible shelf life so can really only be eaten fresh or bought from a farmers market
• foraging for pawpaws is super fun as they grow in groves, have super skinny trunks and branches with large long leaves and surprisingly big fruit. To harvest pawpaws you give the trees a gentle shake and ripe fruit will just fall off. Don’t shake too hard or you might knock down fruit that isn’t ripe! Not cool!
• to enjoy just shake em down, cut it open and eat the fresh fruit inside (not the skin). Do not eat the big ass seeds leave them where you found em so that out beautiful native pawpaw groves FLOURISH

All in all pawpaws are 10/10 if you want to feel like a literal Animal Crossing character shaking down trees for sustenance and having a great time eating fresh fruit outdoors

I had to look this up to make sure it wasn’t copypasta. It is so eloquently unhinged. Bravo.

IT IS SEEN. WITNESS HIM.

Trump admin: passes $1.5 trillion tax cut where 60% of savings go to the top 20% and slashes the corporate tax rate by 40%

Biden admin: passes $1 trillion infrastructure bill, $400 billion in climate funding, $1.9 trillion in COVID aid that temporarily boosted unemployment aid and child tax credit, and first major gun safety legislation in decades, seen here

Demand change. Demand more from the politicians that work for you. Take Biden and all elected officials to account for expiring temporary relief for the lower class. But on many important issues for the lower class there are big differences between red and blue.

I’m super into the idea of Beeper, but at the end of the day to get that level of interoperability you are trusting a third party with your login credentials to some very sensitive services that may also be tied to your financials (ie Apple ID). They state that it’s only saved once, and then encrypted so that they no longer have access, but still it’s a risk.

So far I’m not convinced it’s worth the trade off even though I really want it to be. Curious what others think?

This article doesn’t really say what the SAVE plan does so I’m reposting this here.

…the SAVE plan is coming in July 2024 to replace REPAYE, with some parts rolling out this summer and all the details here.

The department says that under the old plan, borrowers repaid $10,956 for every $10,000 they borrowed. Under the new plan, they would pay back just $6,121.

It’s more technical than direct forgiveness but will change income-based plans in the following ways according to this NPR article:

Starting Summer 2023:

• floor for protected income rising from 150% to 225% of poverty line
• no interest while payments are being made

Starting Summer 2024:

• payments now based on 5% rather than 10% of borrowers’ remaining income
• those who borrow $12,000 or less can gain full forgiveness in 10 years rather than 20 (with each additional $1000 adding another year so $13,000=11 years etc.)

It’s a start, hopefully someone sees this and saves some money.

Also want to add that these changes are not subject to Congressional approval. They could be repealed (impossible with a Dem Senate + Presidential veto) or they could be struck down by SCOTUS, but this is all being performed via powers given by the Higher Education Act and are generally on much firmer legal ground than the loan forgiveness plan SCOTUS scuttled.

Slightly unrelated but I feel like there has been such a proliferation of -verses from the Metaverse to the MCU that I’ve developed a negative association with all -verses as a marketing ploy despite my love for the Fediverse specifically. While probably not a realistic replacement, I think it’s fun when people sometimes use “the Federation” as it makes us sound like a network of allied planets engaged in intergalactic combat in a pulpy sci-fi series.

Not looking for a new note-taking app but givin you a boost since it’s always great to have new projects in the mix. Keep up the good work!

Yup.

On the education side, Healey is proposing to use the surtax money to pay for $100 million in child care grants to providers, $140 million in higher education capital funding, the $20 million free community college program the governor outlined earlier Wednesday, a $93 million expansion of a state scholarship program, a $59 million effort to stabilize tuition and fees at UMass and other public higher education institutions, and more.

Came to say exactly this. Especially given the wave of anti-LGBTQ legal attacks sweeping states like Mississippi electing their first openly gay rep is a big deal.

I… love you too?

This blog and the Wikipedia are good starting points. I don’t speak Japanese, but I do speak Chinese and have a background in linguistics so am peripherally aware of what’s going on so take that with as much salt as you need.

It’s useful to note that there were multiple attempts to go the “Oops! All kana” route or use romaji, but for a variety of reasons cultural, political, and linguistic, those didn’t pan out. Writing systems are deeply informed by a specific historical and social context, and what at first seems like irregularity or unneeded complexity, are often actually the traces of that history marked on the language.

As for issues like why katakana is used for non-foreign words too, I thinks it’s best to think of language feature less as strict rule followers and more like a species in its ecological niche. Katakana is very good at rendering foreign words in Japanese, but if it finds some unfilled gap that isn’t being better filled by some other feature people will use it to to fill that gap too. When the semicolon was developed in English no one imagined at the time we’d use it to do this ;-) but here we are.

Ernest has actually said that the name "magazine" isn't gun related and that it's a reference "to the virtual edition of a late 90s gaming newspaper" (see this thread and my other comment for the full story)

Someone in that thread also explains that in Polish the names are different:

Polish word "magazyn" means storage or newspaper, but "magazynek " is a gun mag.

EDIT: Didn't word good.

Can’t wait for my ram to last 1000 years just for the hinge on my laptop screen to last 2 (guess what just broke on my laptop after 2 years)

Never talk to me or my Mastoson ever again.

Hmmm I wonder which is a greater threat to military readiness, holding up ALL the military promotions that need senate approval or poems on aircraft carriers?

Maybe someone with an in-depth knowledge of the printer industry can answer this but, why on earth doesn’t some other company show up and undercut this bullshit with this revolutionary sales pitch: “a printer that actually prints stuff.”

Like I feel like an overpriced decades-old relic of technology like a printer should have seen more competition given everyone is unsatisfied with the current situation.

“Oh my god quick come help there’s a fire at DisneyWorld!”
“Jeeeeez sure wish I could, but…”

Mentioned this elsewhere, but SCOTUS is the one who threw out the original map. AL is essentially defying SCOTUS here and so I doubt they’ll be friendly to the cause.

The Juliana plaintiffs’ fight will likely be buoyed by the recent landmark win in Montana, where a District Court judge ruled this week that the state Constitution guarantees youth plaintiffs the right to a “clean and healthful environment” — one without the ruinous effects of fossil fuels and the climate crisis.

Awesome to see the Montana case already having a positive effect. We’ll drag this government kicking and screaming out of its reliance on fossil fuels.

And I'm sure not a single one of them will say something easy to make fun of on the internet.

Trump: Haha jk jk… unless??

If you need chromium, your best option is probably ungoogled-chromium which is basically just bare bones chrome with as much telemetry and tracking taken out as possible.