The Doctor didn’t consider that in “Phage” and I only recall VOY using the transporter buffer trick once when they had to hide the telepathic crew members when they’re traveling through Devore space.

the so-called “First Lady of Star Trek” recorded an entire library of phonetic sounds, allowing her voice to be used in future products outside of Star Trek and, quite possibly, as the computer voice in Star Trek: Discovery.

Source: https://nerdist.com/article/the-late-majel-barrett-may-voice-star-trek-discoverys-computer/

Alternatively…

Lizard babies, space cheese that makes the ship sick, yeah, I could see this going down in VOY.

Refurbishers on eBay

Ah, well, that limits things a bit then.

I have refined tastes when it comes to laptops, but I’m also cheap, so lightly used high end models are right up my alley. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any [brand new ones] I would stand behind that are in that price range other than maybe a Macbook Neo, but you specifically ruled out ARM (they’re also not supported by Ashai Linux yet, either).

Sorry.

Are you married to a new one?

I pretty much exclusively buy used ~3 year old Thinkpads which meet all of your specs and then some. My last two were X1 carbons (7th gen and now a 9th gen). Each cost me about $450.

No, but I will try that and report back.

Same. I’ll have to try it with pastrami sometime.

Interesting or useful?

I don’t think I have any really interesting ones, but the most useful one I have for people is “Always On”.

Basically when I see that tag, I can mentally prepare myself and roll my eyes before reading. Basically it’s for people who just do nothing but preach at you regardless of the topic being discussed. It’s…pretty useful.

Yum! I usually do similar with roast beef.

Linemen are some crazy hard workin’ people … I hope their off days are filled with good whiskey and agreeable women or men as needed.

Definitely. In modern society, they’re right up there with firemen, paramedics, etc as far as “thank you for your service” goes.

When they’re working near me, I always offer them cold drinks or snacks. That’s something I started doing during the earlier mentioned two week outage when they finally got to our area. The temps were in the mid 90s, the air was swampy, and I was roasting in shorts and a t-shirt. They’re out there working in heavy protective gear. I appreciate them as much as I do not envy them which is a LOT.

rained like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock,

I absolutely love this brand new sentence. Or, at least that’s one I’ve never heard before.

Sustained straight-line high winds scare the bejeezus out of me. There was a derecho in my area many years ago. Didn’t seem too awful at the time and in the midst of it, but when it was over, we were without power in a heatwave for almost two weeks. Fun times.

Glad your electric co is on the ball.

Ever lived in a small town? Drama and gossip is fun

Yes, I have, and no it’s not. It’s just all there is except for high school football, making more kids, and the same drama and gossip but on Facebook. IMO that’s why small towns are so toxic once you get past the thin veneer of “small town charm”. Couldn’t wait to leave the one I grew up in.

And after re-reading OP’s opinion, I starting to see the parallels.

That’s really cool. Must have missed that post.

I just run KOreader on my Minimal Phone (e-ink android phone). Wouldn’t necessarily recommend it just as an e-reader, though, unless you’re also trying to cut down on screen time or phone-based distractions. But since it’s my daily driver, it’s great for reading since that’s about the only time-waster it’s good at. That, and Sudoku.

I’ve been looking at the Boox Palma but may wait for the Picco I just saw today.

The nice thing about using these smaller devices is that when I pick up my Kobo, it’s like reading on an IMAX screen lol

Is that reading from a rain gauge or rain barrel or what?

I’ve got 4x55 gallon rain barrels and have wanted to add a sensor so I could check how full they were from Home Assistant. So curious where you’re getting your graph data and if that’s something that might help me with mine.

Hank Hill, apparently.

I don’t use Facebook and use all the ad blockers, but apparently I’m still tracked by IP.

When my SO and I started dating, he hooked to my wifi one day and immediately started getting ads on Facebook for various lawn care products. He’d never had those come up before, lived in an apartment all his adult life, and has never searched for any kind of gardening supplies.

I, on the other hand, do have a lawn that I take care of and frequently shop for various landscaping stuff. But he gets the ads for them.

Lol. We had ours set to 74 during the previous heat wave. Wasn’t sending any power back to the grid since we can’t do net metering, but we weren’t drawing any from it either.

Nice!

I don’t have an EV (yet!) but the last couple of days have been fairly cool for July and haven’t had to run the A/C much. The house batteries ended up charging fully by about 2 in the afternoon. Since we can’t do net metering here, any excess is just wasted right now.

When I do manage to get an EV in the next couple of years, I’d like to setup something similar to charge it when I’m producing an excess.

(Hopefully this is OK for this community. Not news, but could be a nice highlight/discussion. If not, glad to find another spot to share it.)

!solardiy@lemmy.world would probably love to hear about your setup.