Late teens, maybe early 20s.

How close am I?

Because they’re arguing in bad faith.

Oh, is it because decades of incompetence and corruption weakened their already crumbling military? Their lack of a strong economy to support the war effort? Is it because they’re relying on Soviet leftovers instead of modern equipment? The fact their enemy is a motivated, supplied with actually decent munitions by modern/rich countries, and has a competent chain of command?

What do I win?

They’re not insane: everything they’ve done are things they sincerely thought they could get away with, and up until Ukraine Putin has been correct in that regard.

Pretending to be crazy is an effective strategy: ironically Nixon popularized it during the cold war.

Attacking targets in NATO countries (even if “justified”) is going to drastically increase the odds NATO gets directly involved in Ukraine – something Putin absolutely doesn’t want.

They almost certainly have in house legal teams and those lawyers are salaried.

That saying holds more truth if you’re using the “non-political” definitions of conservative – i.e. moderate, cautious, or resistant to change.

Moreso “set in your ways” as the world changes around you.

Lemmy has a fair number of loud, toxic instances, communities, and users. On the other hand, it’s easy to block all of them, and it’s practically a requirement to enjoy lemmy.

So block with zero hesitation – the only people that will give you crap about it are the people that are the problem in the first place.

old.reddit.com still works … for now. I deleted my account, but there’s still a few writers on reddit I follow.

I’m running a Venstar Colortouch thermostat. They’re not cheap, but they have a local API and there’s a Homeassistant integration.

A singer 29k53 treadle sewing machine from the 1930s. Nearly identical to this one:

It was originally made for sewing leather shoes and boots – hence the boot shaped tray. I use it for heavy duty sewing and leather working.

I considered adding a motor, but the hand wheel and treadle give a massive amount of control. On repairs I can usually put each stitch through the existing holes in the material without the machine getting away from me.

Oh, I thought it was because those instances are home to communities of obnoxious assholes.

If not wanting to interact with those idiots means I’m “in an echo chamber” … ok.

The latest lemmy update allows users to block entire instances.

My lemmy experience has been 100 times better with hexbear and lemmygrad blocked.

If you’re a millennial, some already are.

I’m not saying this to encourage complacency – too much is at risk. Everyone needs to go out and vote.

But on the other hand: look at how those polls are conducted. The vast majority are cold calls, and what are the demographics of “people who answer calls from unknown numbers in an era of rampant phone scams” these days?

I view the term “social media” as a continuum and not a box. There are degrees of “social media” with the extreme being sites built around using people’s “real-life” identities.

Ah, my mistake

Aren’t morse characters are 1 to 3 taps long?

It is a NSFW instance, so as long as it stays contained there I don’t see the problem.

Considering the project that led to the Abrams was approved in 1973, it’s pretty clear who it was designed to fight.

Are you trying to make you home servers accessible to the wider public, or just accessible to yourself/family/friends?

If it’s the later, running a wireguard VPN server on a publically accessible, cheap VPS with your home servers and connecting devices as “clients” works well. I’m in a similar situation as you and did so to access my home automation and media servers from “the outside”.