Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@social.cleverlibre.org

@msquebanh Nice! Beautiful but difficult instrument. I'd be glad to accompany on piano or guitar, or join on sax or violin. ;-)

@thepoliticalcat Absolutely. If we were in Japan, NS executive would be committing suicide for dishonoring themselves. But, we're not in Japan and honor isn't a thing here.

Not only that. NS laid off all the electronics technicians that maintained the hotbox detectors. They have not technician. The train in question traveled for at least 20 miles with an undetected hotbox problem before the axle failed, causing the derailment.

@helenczerski I like it. I'd like it more if it included provolone, gorgonzola, edam, romano, limburger, brie, parmesan, and fontinella.

@briankrebs Good point. I've been in the fediverse for years and never thought about this specifically.

It seemed obvious since what is Mastodon or any of the others going to do with contacts? Mastodon isn't selling anything, isn't trying to build up a user base to make money off of. In fact, in the early days membership was by invitation only. "Walk in" users were not welcome. Nobody was trying to increase the user base. We wanted to keep it small, to a limited number of select people. Asking for someone's contact list doesn't even make sense in that context.

@Meyerweb Before you get too excited, edits are only visible on your instance. They don't propagate to other instances. I've never seen it work any other way and I recently did some tests to confirm. So I don't use the edit function because it could result in some very confusing threads.

@StillIRise1963 True.

@fatsam Bahahaha. Never mind is right.

@fatsam West (By God) Virginia. Originally from West LA.

@fatsam If I were near you, I'd pick up a 1.75 liter bottle of rum and we could finish it off in one evening. Tell stories while the world burns. :-(

@fatsam Nice. Not. I was born at 313.

@StillIRise1963 Yes, that's the U.S.A.

Around 1982 young me learned something interesting that I'd never considered before. I'm white and grew up very comfortable, upper middle class, Beverly Hills, West Los Angeles, Hollywood. Man, did I have a lot to learn.

I'm an engineer and in 1982 I was consulting and became friends with the owner of a company. This guy did quite well but I noticed he was ALWAYS focused on money and profit. It was all that mattered. I adopted a term from him and used it ever since: "net spendable". All that matters in the end of a deal is the net spendable.

So one day I straight out asked him why he was SO obsessed with making money. He immediately replied, "To buy my freedom." What? "In the United States, freedom is not free. You have to buy it and the more money you have the more freedom you can buy."

And I have to say that in the ensuing 40 years I saw what he said confirmed. It's true. It stinks, but it's true.