Adderbox76

Yeah. Chin definitely has a lot to do with it. And the skinny goatee he usually wears with it. Makes him look like Jafar from the animated Alladin. With the fuller moustache and beard from the photo above, It's already less jarring to me.

His ego didn't fit through the door.

I have no idea why, but something about his face has always bothered me. To the point where I can't even focus on his performances.

Its almost like the proportions are all wrong. Like an upside down triangle or something.

And I know that's unfair; dude is probably a good guy. Haven't heard of an scandals or anything. I just have an irrational hatred of his face.

Every time you think this timeline can't get any more nonsensical and inane, it throws a "Steven Seagal is a gun runner for Russia" curve ball at you.

True about the pay.

In general I just feel like our representatives are too far removed from the people they're supposed to serve.

Here in Canada, we've had a couple of floor-crossers from the Conservatives to the Liberals, and social media is up in arms about how that shouldn't be allowed. "We voted Conservative, not Liberal". Whenever someone points out (and rightly so) that in the parliamentary system you're voting for an individual, not a party, they freak out and say that's not how it works.

They fundamentally have no idea how a representative democracy is supposed to work.

A part of that comes from an American culture bleeding up into Canada a bit, with people thinking they vote directly for the Prime Minister the same was Americans directly vote for their president. But a bigger part of it is that those representatives spend more time in Ottawa than in their own ridings. And if a representative loses their seat in an election, they can just pick a different riding where they don't even live and run again. It's ridiculous.

Basically democratic socialism but with a few rules:

1. No billionaires. After 500 million, it's taxed at 100%
2. No Corporations. Private business ownership only. No Shareholders or Hedge Funds. Basically no wall street.
3. Lobbying on behalf of an industry is banned.
4. No party "whips" that exist to make a representative vote the party line even if they're personally disagree with the party on that particular issue. Representatives need to truly represent their constituents, not their party. In fact, fuck the entire concept of "party politics". Ditch it.
5. By law, a representative has to have actually lived in their riding for 5 years or more.
6. Representatives are required to spend at least 80% of their time in their constituency, in their office. It's a 9-5 job. No more of this showing up to vote bullshit and then fucking off to Mexico. You serve your constituents, and your job is to be in your office to listen to them tell you what they want 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. Otherwise, what do they pay you for?
7. With the exception of meeting twice a year in person, most bills in congress/parliament are able to be done completely virtually. The representative studies the issue, consults with his constituents and votes accordingly. They do so without any input from their so-called peers. The only input they are allowed is from their constituents and legitimate experts in whatever field they are looking into.
8. Representatives have a strict two term limit and an age limit.
9. At any point, your constituents (and ONLY your constituents) can trigger a recall election due to no-confidence.
10. You're a "servant of the people"; not the other way around. You get a working man's salary; enough to live and a small dispensation for travel expenses, office staff, etc... But using your position to enrich your own personal wealth is grounds for an immediate arrest.

My desktop that was powerful enough to do most things died a few months ago at the worst possible time; it came on the heels of emptying a lot of my savings on vets to find out that my girl had advanced bone cancer, and then even more on sending her over the rainbow bridge and getting her cremated.

So both as a way to save some money and a way to keep my mind off of her, I've been putting together a new computer using a few spare parts that I have had laying around. Truth is, my old computer, though old, had been upgraded up the wazoo through the years to the point where most of that stuff could just transfer over (750 watt powersupply, Nvidia 3060 12gb card, max amount of RAM that it could take, etc...)

All I really needed was a new mainboard and processor. As long as I bought a used one that used DDR4 instead of 5, I already had everything I needed.

The "Project" is adapting my second-to-last PC case to accept newer components. (upgrading the front USB ports, things like that) Because it's an OEM Acer case, I can't simply order in an upgraded swappable unit, so I'm having to get creative with soldering.

It'll probably fail and I'll have to buy a new case too, but oh well. It's fun to try. I have so many old computer parts laying around, let's see how Dr. Frankenstein I can go.

Wrath of Khan directors cut.

Lost my soul-dog to bone cancer at the end of February.

R.I.P. Ripley. Love you, baby-girl.

Corporations are not your friend. Ethics plays no part in it. It's economics. If they price themselves out of the competition, that's their problem, not yours.

Can anyone make out what the piece of paper says?

I vote the Fediverse just invents it's own fake language, like Esperanto, or French.