WTF-Beta

@Daniel said:

The Shower Glyde looks well engineered.

+1

Mission Accomplished

@wtg said:
Costco is anywhere from a dime to a quarter a gallon cheaper than other stations.

Then you factor in the 5% cash back for using Costco's credit card to buy gasoline from Costco (vs. the more typical 2% cash back using other credit cards); of course don't forget to amortize your annual Costco membership fee.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/us/politics/trump-jews-penn-list-judge.html

Federal Judge Approves Trump Effort to Obtain List of Jews From Penn
...
“Though ineptly worded, the request had an understandable purpose — to obtain in a narrowly tailored way, as opposed to seeking information on all university employees, information on individuals in Penn’s Jewish community who could have experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the workplace,” he wrote.

The judge, however, said that the university would not have to reveal any employee’s connection to “a specific Jewish-related organization.”

Maybe it’s all part of an elaborate scheme?

Somehow this thread reminds me of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's bit about all the dolphins having left Earth just before Earth's demolition.

https://imaginationlibrary.com/about-us/

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free, high-quality books to children from birth to age five, ...

Not available in my area, but what a nice idea!

Its latest funding challenge (this part is political): https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/03/28/dolly-parton-imagination-library-literacy-republicans/89318742007/

In some states, the Republicans have complained and said some of the books are not age appropriate. In Kentucky, they went from griping that some of the books aren’t printed in the United States to not explaining exactly what their trouble is.
They just cut the budget and didn't say why.

@jon-nyc said:

I saw some excerpts describing the damage some have taken, and many of the troops were evacuated before the war, knowing these would be targets. But they’re all (or almost all) still being used for aircraft sorties, which means they’re nowhere near obliterated. It’s not hard to disable a runway with a bomb.

"Obliterated" in the same sense that Trump has obliterated Iran's nuclear capabilities last year.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w3e467ewqo

OpenAI has shut down Sora, its video generation service.

Since the platform's launch, Sora made $1.4m in global net in-app revenues, compared to $1.9bn over the same period for ChatGPT, ...

... it was "a resource black hole" with "limited monetisation".

"The platform struggled to prevent the creation of non-consensual imagery and realistic misinformation, not to mention major copyright infringement," ...

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/ex-rapper-shah-sworn-nepal-prime-minister-after-sweeping-election-win-2026-03-27/

Ex-rapper Shah sworn in as Nepal prime minister after sweeping election win ...

This is one of his rap video from 3 years ago:

Looks like I will have to hang on to my ... let's see ... 14 year old Wi-Fi routers even longer.

It's now a Crusade.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/us/politics/hegseth-christianity-military.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UlA.cliC.iP-qaWLA9BHi

Hegseth Invokes Divine Purpose to Justify Military Might
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has imbued U.S. military actions with a Christian moral underpinning that suggests they are divinely sanctioned.

There used to be very different implementations for Wi-Fi extenders/mesh in the old days, but if you buy Wi-Fi extenders/mesh today, they would all be based on the same set of technical standards. If you call up Comcast/Xfinity today and tell them you want to order "Wi-Fi extenders" or "Wi-Fi mesh," regardless of which terminology you use, you will get the same thing.

Eero (an Amazon product) is fine, Plume Wi-Fi is fine (see plume.com), Google's Wi-Fi is fine, if you currently use a router provided by your ISP, your ISP may also have a mesh Wi-Fi product that's already integrated in your existing router, so it wouldn't hurt to check if your ISP has such an offering (e.g., Comcast/Xfinity has Plume's Wi-Fi mesh technology already integrated).

In all cases, put some time into understanding the subscription requirements/limitations. Mesh systems are harder to configure/maintain, so most offerings do it through some phone app and drive the config and controls through the Cloud. You want to understand what functionalities/features you can retain if, one day, you decide to not pay the subscription fee anymore.

For those who feel comfortable pulling Ethernet cables in the house themselves, my recommendation is to pull your own Ethernet cables and install multiple Wi-Fi access points of your choice in different parts of your house -- just configure them all to use the same network name (SSID) and password and they will act like a mesh to your devices (will likely perform better too, with no subscription to worry about).

BTS took an hiatus so its members could fulfill their military obligations. Four years later, BTS is coming back.

During their absence, history has shown that no other K-Pop groups has managed to fill the opening -- none has gotten close to BTS' level of commercial profitability, global popularity, or cultural influence. Now we're not even sure if the returning BTS will reclaim the heights reached by the old younger BTS.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/arts/music/bts-k-pop-industry-demon-hunters.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UlA.EW_P.pmKc0d8v1l8y

... And I know a lot of people are not happy about that ...

Opinion polls show 9 in 10 MAGA adherents support the Iran war regime change military excursion.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maga-overwhelmingly-supports-war-iran-232140993.html

Gambling by another psuedo-intellectual name is still gambling. Regulate accordingly.