I feel the need to stress, even though it should go without saying, that the person who was kidnapped out of their car was not obstructing or interfering. They were doing nothing illegal, and nothing wrong. They were part of a caravan following ICE at a safe distance, driving legally, not even stopping their crimes, not even slowing them down — just making sure their crimes were recorded.
The mechanics sorted out filling the adblue tank.
The warnings have stopped beeping and the 10 l bottle that was in the back is gone, so presumably I can trust it's in the tank now.
Sounds like much of what I have paid for was for them doing what I did: Looking all around the car for an ad-blue tank hole and taking things apart trying to find it.
But none of that is the correct solution, which is to put it up on the ramp and clamber underneath to find the tank which has some sort of lowering mechanism, to then lower it and fill it and raise it again.
Not a job for me then. Next time it'll maybe be cheaper coz of them knowing what to do now and not spending half a day trying to figure it out.
Apparently there is a second emissions reduction mechanism which doesn't take a wattery bottle of urea, but instead needs a pouch of oily tar stuff.
This is more likely to empty and need replacing next, rather than the piss bottle.
And even for normal cars that haven't been screwed up for wheelchair access this is a mechanics job anyway. And the garage will have to order in the tar pouch especially.
Back in the 90s, my first car cost about 200 quid. Today I paid 200 quid to get someone to fill it up with purified piss for emissions reduction. Oh how things change. 😆
In the time I've been offline, I've been doing a lot and feeling a lot more mentally healthy. I've been exploring nomadnet a bit, looking at reticulum. I'm definitely going to go back to my break and being online much less regularly.
I actually totally forgot about the anniversary of the shooting, which is the first time that's happened since... uh... the shooting, I think.
I've definitely realized that, on some level, I've definitely used Mastodon (and formerly Twitter) as a coping mechanism, often in order to deal with the stressful things that I've found out about on Mastodon or Twitter.
But, again, none of those things really change our core job: build community. And that's part of what I've been neglecting, and what I can focus on more when I'm not spending as much time talking to people all over the world indirectly. Like, I can just chat directly with folks and talk about this shit.
Yeah, I do think there's value in this community. I don't think it's really screaming into the void (at least, not most of the time). But I know that I need the balance to be way farther on the side of direct engagement with comrades doing and building.
So that's what I'm gonna go back to. I feel as though it's a good sign that with all the writing about getting shot that I've been doing, and all the thinking about that, that the actual anniversary of the shooting I'm actually just thinking about bread.
And that seems like a good note to leave on. I'm gonna go back to some hacker shit.
Texans' DeMeco Ryans backs C.J. Stroud after four-INT outing in loss to Patriots https://www.nfl.com/news/texans-demeco-ryans-backs-c-j-stroud-after-four-int-outing-in-loss-to-patriots
Ukraine’s Air Force denies reports of foreign pilots flying F-16s over Kyiv: https://benborges.xyz/2026/02/17/ukraines-air-force-denies-reports.html
"Yet what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland."
#GiftArticle #USPolitics
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/trump-letter-to-norway/685676/?gift=E9o0y7Rlfcfv2OQ1sSVCEm2HqWTlvBG_uUPQ_7tcOpI&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
It’s possible that this is nothing at all, and they’ll be back in full force today. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has suggested that maybe the worst is over.
But we took the days of relative rest anyway. Hmm, “rest” is wrong: mutual aid, food distribution, school observers, people doing laundry for those who can’t go to a laundromat — that continues unabated. But there’s a definite feeling of catching our breath for a moment.
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