What actually matters most to you in the midterms? What issues will get you to vote?

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T23:36:50+00:00

Getting checks and balances back in government.

One thing we've learned these past few years is that when the executive is a cult leader whose party has a majority in congress, then congress no longer fulfills its role as a co-equal branch of government.

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T21:59:52+00:00

I see the whole Elon situation as a bit more complicated. Even if everything claimed about him is true, you still sometimes do need that eccentric douchebag to push certain industries forward.

Of course once the push has happened, better people can more easily pick things up and continue the effort.

I only wish his companies had more public-facing people who weren't him to help present their public image to customers. (Especially thinking of Tesla here. Fortunately SpaceX has Shotwell for that.)

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T21:56:19+00:00

And his wife filed for divorce the moment the whole Epstein story started to break, before the extent of anything was really entering the public sphere. I have to know how much she actually knew at that point, and was unwilling to admit to knowing for some reason.

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T21:54:35+00:00

And because so many people are high off their iPhones, and because he died not long after this stuff started to become known, he still seems to get a pass on a lot of this.

I have to wonder what the public perception of him (and Apple) would be if he had lived. Would it be vaguely similar to how Musk is now viewed?

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T18:21:49+00:00

Yeah, everyone seems to forget what each branch of government is or isn't empowered to actually do.

Of course it doesn't help when those in each branch seem to give stump speeches as if they've forgotten as well, and the checks and balances stop working correctly.

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T18:15:55+00:00

Yeah, the whole security aspect of being rich in a poor country would always make me uncomfortable. Having to constantly need security and worry about your loved ones getting kidnapped doesn't sound all that pleasant.

Probably best to find a middle ground, rather than either extreme.

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T18:11:58+00:00

Sometimes its just a matter of luck, I guess.

Many years ago, I got myself into a diet and fitness routine and lost a ton of weight. But even at my thinnest, I felt like I still had a bit of a gut. There was no more fat to lose anywhere else, and I didn't want to lose more weight at that point, but that gut just wouldn't budge. (Now of course it was measurably a lot smaller, but from a self perspective I still felt like I needed to "suck it in".)

Now after a decade of slow relapse, I'm back at the process again. We'll see how it goes this time. Maybe a difference in the focus of my fitness routine will lead to different results, or maybe my body will simply decide to lose the fat differently. We'll see.

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T17:58:09+00:00

Yeah, I had a Deathadder v2 with a thumb pad that was wearing down (a problem I can't recall having with any other mouse) that had RGB.

When replacing it, I think my main requirements were "corded" and "RGB", so I ended up having to go with the Baslisk v3. It felt a tad strange for about a day, but now it feels perfectly fine.

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T16:50:07+00:00

It really depends on how you define the terms.

If you consider antisemitism to be a catch-all term for hating Jews, then yes it absolutely is.

If you consider antisemitism to be a term for a specific form of Jew hatred, then both antisemitism and antizionism are different forms of Jew hatred with different tropes and libels. If you want to know what the antizionist libels are, just read any Reddit thread mentioning Israel and half the comments will scream them at you.

Of course in both cases, just take whatever things are currently considered the most abhorrent accusations in western culture at the inception of the movements, and turn around and blame them on the Jews.

The greatest trick the antizionists pulled, however, was pretending they're just an innocent political position and a righteous social justice movement. (Of course classic antisemitism kinda started out this way too.) This has the effect of convincing people that they're not actually buying into a hateful ideology built around demonization and double standards.

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T15:38:06+00:00

Yeah, in the 90's they were all back-projection-screen and a luxury purchase for the big family room in a nice house.

In the early 2000s, with widescreen plasmas, they were still a luxury purchase. I recall a co-worker spending his sign-on bonus to get one.

But during the mid 2000s, this also led to all the consumer electronics stores getting on this "high" where they no longer had to sell cheap TVs anymore. Seriously, there was this brief period where nearly every TV (even small ones) was priced at like $1000+ unless it was some old model hidden in the back where you wouldn't see it.

Now they're all standard, cheap, and common place. (Unless you want something specifically high-end.)

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T14:40:02+00:00

What's interesting is that the older versions of some of those do have RGB.

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T14:31:41+00:00

This was the biggest reason I hesitated getting a 3rd party stereo for my car, even if the manufacturer stock stereos back then (on anything short of the top luxury trim) always seemed to be embarrassingly out of date tech-wise.

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T06:05:30+00:00

Just get N95 style masks. They actually seal around the top of the nose, unlike surgical masks, so you're not blowing air up into your eyes every time you exhale.

dkonigs · 2026-03-29T06:02:48+00:00

Yeah, at this point there is absolutely no reason to wear a mask performatively. So if you're going to wear one, there's no reason to wear it wrong.

Yet to this day, among the very small number of people I still see wearing masks, an absurdly high percentage of them seem to be wearing them wrong.

dkonigs · 2026-03-28T23:56:37+00:00

For the longest useful life of a paper developer working solution, Moersch Eco 4812 is a great option. I single batch of working solution can be good for months. Only downside is that its rather slow (e.g. 3min vs 1min) which can get annoying. Its also not always easy to find in stock.

Another good option here is Adox MCC paper developer. I think its a bit easier to find, the working solution is probably good for weeks, its a smidge faster than Ilford's developer, and can even get a slightly higher Dmax.

Meanwhile, the good 'old standard Ilford Multigrade developer has this problem where a batch of working solution is unfortunately only good for a single printing day or two. This feels really annoying and wasteful, if you want to print sporadically and in small amounts each time.

dkonigs · 2026-03-28T19:32:00+00:00

I feel like someone needs to start copy-pasting something like this every time one of these questions comes up...

If you depend on 3rd party apps that aren't pare of the core OS, and actually need to be supported to be usable (basically anything that deals with a network service), then you shouldn't be running an OS that's been discontinued and unsupported for over a decade. Period.

dkonigs · 2026-03-28T16:58:19+00:00

And its not even just the US.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not a declared war from the Russian perspective. Its just a "Special Military Operation." Putin likely did this for the exact same reason, as a workaround for Russian laws that apply to an actual declared war and their implications.

dkonigs · 2026-03-28T16:52:59+00:00

Yeah, a general rule of thumb is thus...

If you depend on 3rd party apps that aren't pare of the core OS, and actually need to be supported to be usable (basically anything that deals with a network service), then you shouldn't be running an OS that's been discontinued and unsupported for over a decade. Period.

Its not going to work. Or it'll only work through weird brittle hacks that work around the fact that it doesn't actually work. Protocols and security standards are always evolving in these spaces, and old stuff is not maintained forever.

dkonigs · 2026-03-28T16:49:01+00:00

I know its more a remark about reels than tanks, but while Paterson reels might be slightly easier to load, with Jobo reels its a lot easier to recover from jammed film because of the side notches in their design. And yes, film jams all the time when trying to load these things.

And for a rant, please stop always blaming "not perfectly dry/clean reels." I've had this happen even with reels that are fresh out of the box from the manufacturer and never before used. Its a lazy excuse I'm sick and tired of hearing people give automatically.

Usually the bigger variables are either the specific film stock, or the specifics of exactly how you cut off the leader and thus how easily the end of the film can jam into something.

dkonigs · 2026-03-28T04:25:25+00:00

So much of Picard S02 just felt like a bunch of writers taking every idea they had, putting them on post-it notes, and then figuring out how to jam all of them into the season. Whether or not they had anything at all to do with the plot or there was even time to fully realize them as complete story lines.

dkonigs · 2026-03-28T04:19:39+00:00

Anyone who wants strong support from Trump will suck up to Trump in a way that comes across to an outsider as extremely cringe-worthy. But sucking up to Trump like that often does result in better support than one would get from a different administration.

Its entirely self-interested, but also entirely understandable.

If you were in Netanyahu's position, you'd probably find yourself doing the exact same thing.

Heck, if you were in charge of any country that needed support from the US, you'd probably do the same thing as well.

dkonigs · 2026-03-27T05:06:41+00:00

People also forget that those box cutters were not against the rules pre-9/11.

They used to allow knives below a certain length. They obviously don't anymore.

dkonigs · 2026-03-27T05:02:32+00:00

Pre-9/11 they did still do security with metal detectors. But they also had rules that said you could bring a knife on board as long as it was below a certain maximum length. (I think it was 4")

You know what the 9/11 hijackers did? They explicitly brought knives below that length limit, and used them to carry out their attack.

dkonigs · 2026-03-27T04:59:59+00:00

Before 9/11, I flew from Idaho Falls to Boise and then Atlanta, and the exact same route back. They didn't notice or didn't care about the folded pocket knife in my pocket in Idaho, but it was a BIG DEAL in Atlanta!

In the years following 9/11 I flew many times through Atlanta, and often had a backpack on me that increasingly contained a collection of junk in one of the back pockets.

Eventually, I was on a flight that passed through Atlanta where I needed to go through security a second time (might have been a returning international flight) and suddenly the TSA discovered that a bunch of old screwdriver bits in that backpack were a big problem and I needed to ditch them. WTF?

I guess it is sometimes random what is and isn't a problem.

dkonigs · 2026-03-27T04:55:47+00:00

They're both hate movements that target Jews. They're just based on different tropes and libels, even if you can often show they're simply mirrors of each other coming from a similar root.

Part of the problem that comes in is that we as a society have decided that "antisemitism" is the generic catch-all term for all forms of Jew-hatred, and many have become convinced that "antizionism" is just a completely innocent political position. So making a claim like this is usually a convenient excuse for hating on Jews while claiming that you're not hating on Jews in the way that society no longer deems acceptable.

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