@pre@boing.world2025-12-22 17:18:37
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. 😆
@ubuntourist@mastodon.social2026-02-23 12:25:51
15,000 people singing to call on ICE to leave their jobs!
🎵🎵🎵
Oh-h-h, It's okay to change your mind,
Show us your courage,
Leave this behind,
It's okay to change your mind,
And you can join us,
Join us here any time
🎵🎵🎵
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVEuV1hkvjG/
@inthehands@hachyderm.io2026-01-23 01:27:45
From that observer who was taken yesterday, shared here with permission, because we could all use a good laugh. (Note: Whipple is the fed bldg that’s ICE’s MSP HQ)
❝So here’s my story about returning to the world…
When they let you out of Whipple, they give you back your personal effects (minus your phone). And just send you out the front door with whatever you were wearing when you came in.
So I’m walking out the front door of Whipple, probably looking like an ice agent coming off shift, and pulling all of my random shit out of my bag/dropping it in the snowbank, etc.… And I can hear the protesters at the gate, taunting me… “oh did you drop your phone, you piece of shit?” “You’re TERRIBLE!” “Fucking Nazi!” And I was just loving it, actually. But when I got closer and used my big voice “You assholes are barking up the wrong tree…. These MF’ers just released me!” The crowd went absolutely crazy.❞
@fanf@mendeddrum.org2025-12-22 12:42:02
from my link log —
What to do once you admit that decentralizing everything never seems to work.
https://hackernoon.com/decentralizing-everything-never-seems-to-work-2bb0461bd168
saved 2019-08-31
What to do once you admit that decentralizing everything never seems to work | HackerNoon
Lots of tech projects these days, especially crypto-networks, aspire to decentralization. Or their evangelists say they do, because they feel they need to. Decentralization is the new disruption—the thing everything worth its salt (and a huge ICO) is supposed to be doing. Meanwhile, Internet progenitors like Vint Cerf, Brewster Kahle, and Tim Berners-Lee are trying to re-decentralize the Web. They respond to the rise…
@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-23 01:09:50
The Colorado River is on the verge of crisis.
No one has a solution.
Once again, the Colorado River is heading toward a crisis. This time, the way out appears murkier than ever.
For months, the seven states of the Colorado River basin have failed to reach an agreement on new rules to share the river’s dwindling supply of water.
The current rules that divvy up water among 40 million people in the West, including Los Angeles, Phoenix and farming regions that provide most o…
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-12-20 23:22:58
So in another dream I just woke up from, I was talking to someone about "the idea problem" (that it's becoming harder to monitize ideas, from a vox article written by an AI cooked reporter).
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-it-could-happen-here-30717896/episode/executive-disorder-white-house-weekly-46-313675864/
Basically, I was arguing that the majority of inventions target men because patriarchy puts economic control in men's hands. As men have started to help more with childcare, there have been more inventions related to childcare. (I don't have any idea if this is true. Seems legit, but I'm just relating my dream. I think I was also oversimplifying a bit to "men" and "women" because of my audience, but anyway it was a dream.) There's actually more low-hanging fruit, I pointed out, related to making care work easier.
So I argued that the real problem was a failure to invest in research into solving that problem. Today there are all these boondoggles built around killing people. What if, instead of all this government research into killing people, we dumped a ton of money into making it easier to support a household? That would be great for the economy. (Being asleep, I seem to have forgotten that working people need money.)
In the blur of being just awake I started thinking about how you could kickstart the US economy by taking the money from the AI boondoggle and other autonomous murder bots and create something like a program to build robots for housekeepers. You'd still be funding tech with government money, so the same horrible people get paid, but you're now actually solving real problems. It wouldn't even matter if it was a boondoggle, honestly. Just dumping money into something other than murdering people is good enough.
I imagined first if there was a program to fund a robot housecleaner, like robot dog with AI some laundry pickup, that would be provided, free of charge, to help people with children. It would work the same as the military boondoggle where a private company makes the government buy a piece of hardware from them and then also pay them to service it for some number of years. But instead of that hardware sitting around waiting to kill someone, it would be getting brought to people's houses to help them.
Then I thought, hey, you could even boost the economy more if you just had government funding for doulas and housecleaners and paid them a living wage. Hey, you could really kickstart the economy by nationalizing healthcare and including doula support as part of all births. Oh, and you could also just include the optional household help for families with children until the kids turn 18.
None of this is perfect (I don't actually think most of this is possible from any state), but the point is that it's actually wildly easy to figure out all kinds of ways to invest in the economy and monitize ideas as long as you aren't entirely focused on the same old "make money from spying on people and killing them." Funny that. Like they said in the podcast, maybe "finding ideas" isn't the problem.
Hope you enjoyed the weird semi-awake brain dump/rant.
@v_i_o_l_a@openbiblio.social2026-02-23 09:42:05
"Is Subscribe to Open Good for Libraries?" @ Katina Magazine:
https://katinamagazine.org/content/article/open-knowledge/2026/is-s20-good-for-libraries
"Three librarians explain the model’s appeal and explore the challenge…
@hikingdude@mastodon.social2026-01-23 18:25:53
Oh! There's quite an event happening here!
Dear participants,
we are very pleased to welcome you to the 64th #Ski Meeting #Interbancario Europeo in #Lenggries, the Bavarian mountain …
@UP8@mastodon.social2026-01-22 22:59:25
🔋 LG Energy Solution To Sell Ohio Battery Facility To Honda For $2.85 Billion
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/LG-Energy-Solution-To-Sell-Ohio-Battery-Facility-To-Honda-For-285-Billion.html
@Mediagazer@mstdn.social2026-01-23 18:55:42
Ohio's WBGU-TV becomes the fourth public TV station or network to end its PBS affiliation, citing 2025's rescission of federal funding (Julian Wyllie/Current)
https://current.org/2026/01/wbgu-to-end-pbs-affiliation-due-to-federal-funding-cuts/
