I disabled it as soon as they were launched. I also disabled the quick reply, reactions, and to text messages etc.

Yep I did it. There is still some annoying bits of it floating around that you can’t get rid of.

The phones in the midrange are getting to be better than the top end ones in my opinion. Decent enough build quality for the phone to last 3-4 years. Expensive enough that the bloatware is reduced. If the company does do a modified launcher it’s generally pretty clean.

I am liking the OnePlus 13R I picked up. Stable UI, decent battery life, and not a bad price. The stock launcher does a pretty decent job.

For my work phone I have a Pixel 8. I really regret buying it. I had to disable 30 different bloatware apps. Plus I have 4 apps that I have rejected all updates because they can’t be disabled. I also installed a launcher because the stock pixel UI is trash. The hardware is solid and works well once you clear out the buggy bloatware

Apple made a major fuckup with IOS26. I upgraded my iPad and felt nauseous from the blur effect almost instantly. I can’t completely get rid of it, just make it less horrific. Their “new” multitasking options I am not even bothering to turn on or try to use yet. This is like their 10th edition of multitasking. Let’s see if they get it right this time. Then I will bother to learn their “simple” process that usually involves having to read a manual and remember half a dozen new commands. Fuck it still takes me 2 or 3 attempts to get the the home screen without a button.

There’s a vast difference between advertising a good product that is useful to hyping trash.

Good products at a reasonable price usually require a brief introduction but quickly snowball into customer based word-of-mouth sales.

Hype is used to push an inferior or marginally useful product at a higher price.

Remember advertising is expensive. The money to pay for it has to come from somewhere. The more they push a product the higher the margin the company/investors expect to make on its sales.

This is why if I see more than one or two ads for a product it goes on my mental checklist of shit not to buy.

Assuming human intelligence naturally follows a normal distribution model plus add in confounding factors like: malnutrition, chemicals, abuse, etc. that are known to degrade human reasoning. Reasoning is further restricted by limiting access to education and extensive false propaganda. These factors flattens and shift the distribution curve to the left.

The millions of people who voted for him are morons what are easily manipulated by their ignorance and fear.

This has always been the Achilles heal of a democratic systems.

Once Pandora went in the shitter, I moved on to self-hosting. So I have never used Spotify. As long as you take a little time once in a while to discover some new bands and add them to you collection its great.

I have around 12,000 tracks, 70GB.

I have “purchased” thousands of books from Amazon, but never given them money for a book.

They run free specials all the time. FreeReadFeed scans for them. It’s a great way to discover authors to purchase their books at another site or use the library apps.

This one is extremely difficult to fix as well. Ad companies bribe politicians with reduced price advertising for political campaigns to prevent laws being passed to regulate them.

I started out with an Datsun pickup on the farm. Pulled a 40’ irrigation pipe trailer with aluminum hand lines on it. I also drove a little '86 Nissan during highschool/college. They were about perfect for most residential uses. I really liked how low the bed was. So much easier to get stuff in and out of.

Currently for work, I drive a 1/2 ton F150 and tow a 16’ 10K deck over trailer with it. It’s the maximum I can drive/tow without interstate DOT regulations kicking in. The 7,500lbs capacity is usually more than enough.

I got stuck with a 3/4 and 1 ton at a previous job and thosw damn things were horrible to drive, unstable on the road and beat the shit out of my back. Parking them sucked donkeys balls. It was just scary to drive in the snow/ice. Anyone who drives them for vanity sake is a fucking moron.

A huge pickup truck never makes any sense whether it’s lifted or not.

Huge semi-trucks or box trucks make sense to move lots of cargo.

Vans make sense if you want to move people/tools etc securely.

Smaller pickup trucks make sense for moving a few people and doing some dirty work.

A smaller lifted 4x4 pickup truck makes sense for driving off road. They are unstable at higher speeds and should stay off-road. All lifted vehicles should be banned on paved roads in my opinion.

A half-ton 4x4 truck makes sense if you move a moderate amount of cargo, drive on dirt roads/adverse conditions a lot, tow 90% of recreational vehicles/boats, up to 10K lbs. A van likely would also be a good choice.

What roll does an oversized pickup truck play that other formfactors don’t do better? An oversized pickup truck is always pure vanity.

Which of course I haven’t received yet.

They keep promising it will be delivered next week or so for the past 5 years.

Barely even a blimp on the profit & loss report.

Missed a big one.

The U.S. is mostly a net importer of beef. The herd size normally does not satisfy the market and it requires significant imports to make up the difference.

The U.S. herd size is cyclical and historically relatively easy to predict. So producers/exporters/importers had a good guess roughly a year or more in advanced when prices would climb or fall.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/sector-at-a-glance

Toss in some dumbass who fucks up trade with tariffs and the exporting counties can no longer predict the market. Then TACO happens or doesn’t happen at random. Uncertainty in the market trend means that producers are unwilling to increase their herd size to adapt, anywhere.

The safest bet is to sell down their herd size at the high prices to capture the margin now. Then maintain a smaller herd for the duration of the uncertainty.

Dairy farmers are pretty much the only ones that are doing quite well right now. Feed inputs are low, butcher prices for their cows is high and sexed semen means they can cross 1/2 their herd with beef breeds to maximize their profit. Day old 1/2 bred calf’s are selling for astronomical prices right now. Selling off their herd and retiring early is a viable option right now as well.

Notice the Iraq on the plate.

https://www.michigan.gov/sos/vehicle/license-plates/military-and-veteran-plate-options

Mentally ill veteran goes on a shooting rampage after massive cuts to the department of veterans affairs. Absolutely could not be related in any way…

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/25/politics/veterans-affairs-doctors-warning-letter

Mormons generally come in two flavors: wonderful people taken advantage of by a cult and absolute scum who utilize the cult to abuse others. So here’s hoping the shooter got some of the abusers.

The more likely target is of course kids because of Sunday School.

The “unofficial” streaming sites are better than the official ones at this point. A decent VPN costs less per month than any subscription to an official industry service.

Yep. It wasn’t cheap or easy back when they had the monopoly.

That’s back when ISP’s offered personal webpage hosting as part of your service. I setup my first webpage on my dialup ISP’s server. Family photos and such before the social media things got going.

I for many years after that for large file transfers. Just set up a landing index page and a folder for the file in FTP to activate it. Then share the http address to file.

Lol me either. Their services are not nearly as good as the unauthorized streaming sites.

I always tell people that a bonus is imaginary and should never be considered as part of a job offer.

If you do acheive a partial amount one year the next year the “calculations” to get one will change to fuck you over.