8 character personalized plate is allowed in North Carolina.

I feel so validated

yes.

definitely worth it

gay is so passé, pan is what’s in, man.

Alfred E. Neuman is the original vintage meme.

It’s worthwhile you mention Sarajevo, and in reference to that I will post this tidbit posted by a MetaFilter user in 2009 regarding their experience in the siege of Sarajevo. I have it bookmarked and post it from time to time where it seems appropriate. The reality is though, you’re correct, Americans by and large don’t know what they’re asking for.

Well, unlike the majority of you (I assume), I actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions.

Of those who couldn’t leave my city, Sarajevo:

Some people (very few) were prepared for what they thought would be the “long haul” - this tended to be a couple of months. These people were widely seen as lunatics and dangerously pessimistic ones at that.

Most people were not at all prepared. This included my family. Many of those - like my family - considered the idea of “preparation” to be an affront to the decency we felt most people possessed. Were we wrong? Well, I don’t know. We suffered greatly; my parents were killed. But speaking only for myself, I never felt I cheapened my soul by betting on calamity. Today, that still feels like it’s worth something.

But here’s the main point: “Preparing” for the disaster really didn’t do anyone much good. Those who “prepared” ate a little better for a while. They stayed warmer for a few extra days. They enjoyed the radio for a while longer (via batteries.) But in the end, they ended up hungry, cold and bored too, just like the rest of us. Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces. The worst parts of war were psychological - the fear, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, paranoia, bad dreams. Respite from those things came with sharing food with a neighbor, finding a piece of clothing that would fit someone you knew, commiserating with others in your position, figuring out how to make make-up from brick or french fries from wheat paste and spreading this newly-acquired war knowledge around the mahala.

We knew who had extra food and supplies. For the most part, they weren’t attacked or hassled or bothered. Contrary to what these survivalists say, those in dire times generally hold on to their personal sense of pride even more than they do in normal times. I’d take a bite of a friend’s salad without bothering to ask in normal times. I’d never have done that in wartime, no matter how hungry I was.

Within the domain of those trapped in the city, civility greatly increased.

You often hear how Holocaust survivors felt guilt at surviving. Well, during war, that was a feeling everyone was aware of - people started dying right away (my parents were killed near the start of the siege, for instance) - and there was a palpable enough common sense of karma to make everyone into good Samaritans. None of us understood why we survived while others didn’t. I shared food when I had it, even though I often knew I wouldn’t have a crumb the next day. Which was no big achievement, because nearly everyone did the same.

Those who’d prepared, well, the majority of them shared their food and whatever else they had as soon as someone else was clearly in need. I can’t swear it, but I think they felt a little foolish to have been so self-obsessed, and giving away that stuff might have lessened that feeling. There were a few people who hoarded things until they ran out of stuff - eventually everybody ran out of anything worth hoarding - and they soon became wishful beggars like the rest of us. Again, I can’t swear it, but I hear stories, and it seems that these people suffer from post-war trauma, guilt and nightmares more than the rest of us.

Those survivalists, I feel sorry for them. It’s no way to live.

posted by Dee Xtrovert at 9:33 PM on January 28, 2009

“I calls it a blunderbuster”

Marrying someone you met in the psych ward is maybe a bad idea mm’kay.

So why not just not subscribe to news focused (especially US news focused) communities?

I don’t understand why people have such trouble with this. I have curated my own feed of subscribed communities and I already only see stuff I want to see. Is this really that difficult? Don’t want US news? Don’t sub to US-centric news communities (whether in name or not). Don’t want furries? Don’t subscribe to furry communities? Don’t want anime? Don’t subscribe to anime communities. Don’t want politics? Don’t subscribe to political communities. Don’t want memes? Don’t subscribe to meme communities. I genuinely don’t understand why that’s not enough for people.

Never heard of Veloren. Looks like everyting CubeWorld was supposed to be but never delivered on.

Only downside I see is no server download to run your own.

Most corporate servers in general run Linux, let alone webservers. Intel literally used Minix without attribution in their Intel Management Engine, so technically every Intel chipset motherboard with an IME runs Linux. That’s basically every Intel motherboard since 2008.

boom, roasted

Chris Hughes sucks almost as much as Zuckerberg. He fucked up his tenure as owner of The New Republic. He’s just as much of a worthlessn rich dickbag.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new-republic

He also literally killed a story on Apple’s tax dodging calling the story tone deaf in response to Tim Cook coming out as gay as though those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.

You’re welcome, I’m glad I was able to help prove it existed!

Take you upvote and get out.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765798/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tugs_(TV_series)

Perhaps Tugs is the show you’re thinking of? Makes sense that it was reminiscent of Thomas the Tank Engine because it was created by some of the people behind the original Thomas series.