Southwestern Germany
Joined November 2023
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Learn how to fight fair. A lot of people never learn this.
Don't bring up past events. Don't call each other names. Don't tell either set of parents about arguments. Stick strictly to the disagreement at hand. Apologize sincerely and grant forgiveness generously.
I've never stayed in an Airbnb in the US.
In 2013 I stayed in one in Switzerland, in a small town between Fribourg and Bern. The host was gracious and welcoming, and one day she and her husband drove us to a lake to walk around and enjoy Switzerland's beautiful scenery.
In 2016 when moving to Germany, my son and I stayed in an Airbnb in Germany not far from Basel, Switzerland. My son's birthday was a few days after we arrived, and they made him a cake! During that visit I dislocated my collarbone and had to get surgery. They were helpful above and beyond the duties of an Airbnb host, looking after my son when I had to go in for surgery.
Then in 2017 we went to Świnoujście, Poland (formerly Swinemünde, Germany) to an apartment near the Baltic Sea.
The host didn't speak any language well except Polish, which she didn't mention in the listing. If she had anything complicated to say, she'd retreat to her apartment and then send us a poor Google-Translate rendition.
She griped at us for not following rules she hadn't set, such as airing out the place during the day.
We washed our dishes and set them on a towel on the counter to dry. (She had a dish-rack cabinet but hadn't told us about it.) She told us we'd warped her counter and tried to charge us €150 for it. She kept harassing us after we left and tried to get us to send her our personal contact info so she could report us to the German police(!). I mentioned this in the review, and Airbnb tried to remove the review, only restoring it after I talked to three or four different reps.
In 2023 our family of 4 stayed with our friends, a family of 8, at a large cabin in France. Several bedrooms, lots of space; this is what Airbnb excels at. But there were weird gotchas, such as linens or towels left around the cabin in plastic bags which triggered extra charges if opened. We did at least get the choice between chores or an extra cleaning charge, and we opted for the cleaning charge to avoid hassle on the last day. We still had to wash all the dishes.
So I would say Airbnb has declined.
I've seen several stories about this guy, and every story calls him a great guy and this situation a terrible mistake.
But not one story explains why it's a terrible mistake and how he actually has legal status to reside in the US.
As my teenage daughter would put it:
Sus.
Earlier this week, our dear brother Samuel Sey @SlowToWrite was en route to appear on our podcast when he got detained by ICE. Samuel is from Canada, and has been living here as a legal resident of the United States. We are confident this clerical mistake will be fixed, but this has been a terrible experience for his family.
Please consider supporting his lovely wife Annie and their three small children as they deal with the legal and living expenses of this terrible ordeal.
If you know Samuel, you know what a good man of character he is. So many of us have been blessed by his writing and ministry. Please help! givesendgo.com/support-for-s…
How about the age of "a few months before birth"? Does consent matter at that age, before killing an inconvenient child?
Today I had to go through rigmarole to confirm that I'm human. To do this I had to access X on my phone (which I'd uninstalled, but apparently this is not allowed now).
At some point this platform will be only bots, because all the humans will be banned by X's anti-bot code.
So lately, until just now, I've been composing X posts by voice. ChatGPT's transcription mode is really good, so I'll have it transcribe my spoken words, then post it.
But apparently to X this is indistinguishable from bot-posting or copy/paste-posting, so now X has made all my replies on any post completely vanish.
If I were disabled and unable to type, this would be a discrimination case.
We have AI.
And now we have turbo boost.
At this point, what's still missing to make K.I.T.T. a reality?
Not quite inbox zero, but I'd call that a pretty sizeable reduction, thanks to @OpenAI Codex's great collating skills.
I had it take about ten e-mails at a time, grouped by subject, number them on an HTML/CSS page, and highlight things like expiration dates. Then I gave it instructions by number: Delete, archive, label, whatever.
It still took a while to go through them all, but compared to doing it one-by-one myself, it was a breeze. Having Codex group them cut way down on decision fatigue. Highly recommended.
Just saw the telltale grayed-out post/quote buttons on a guy. Looked at his profile. He's blocked me. Why? Never talked to the guy, as far as I can tell. Never had any interaction with him.
However, he has "he/him" in his bio, so I guess that's the type that'd block me.
Summary from ChatGPT:
Jamaal Howard, 46, was executed in Texas on October 7, 2026, for the robbery and murder of Vickie Swartout, a 42-year-old convenience store clerk.
The crime occurred on May 12, 2000, in Silsbee, Texas.
According to court records:
* Howard, then 20, entered a Chevron convenience store carrying a handgun he had stolen from his grandfather.
* He went into the store's office and shot Swartout in the chest.
* He stole $114 from the cash register and cigarettes, reaching over the dying woman to take the cigarettes.
* The entire crime was captured on surveillance video.
* When initially questioned by police, Howard denied committing the crime until investigators informed him that it had been recorded.
Howard was convicted of capital murder in April 2001 and sentenced to death.
His attorneys subsequently challenged his sentence on grounds involving serious mental illness and alleged intellectual disability. Those challenges were unsuccessful.
Sources: [Texas Execution Information Center — Detailed case report](txexecutions.org/reports/603…) and [The Texas Tribune — October 7, 2026](texastribune.org/2026/10/07/…).
Texas executed a man with an IQ under 70. Who didn’t even understand the process that was going to happen to him. Who said if the execution was botched, the warden would just shoot him in the head. He asked his spiritual advisor why everyone was crying around him the day of his execution.
I’m not saying what he did was right. I am saying our values and ethics are fucked when it comes to govt sanctioned murders.
An extraordinary number of people seem to be completely unaware (or willfully ignorant) about why Nidal Hasan is in a wheelchair.
Here is an extract from Wikipedia that explains why:
On November 5, 2009, Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar!" and opened fire on unarmed forces in the Soldier Readiness Center of Fort Hood, located in Killeen, Texas, murdering thirteen people and wounding over thirty others in the worst shooting against armed forces on an American military base.
Department of the Army police officer Kimberly D. Munley encountered Hasan, who was leaving the building. Munley and Hasan exchanged shots before Munley was shot in the leg twice. Department of the Army police officer Mark Todd shot Hasan several times. Todd kicked the pistol out of Hasan's hand, then cuffed him. The attack lasted about ten minutes.
To save his life, Hasan was hospitalized in the intensive care unit at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. His condition was described as "stable." News reports on November 7, 2009, indicated he was in a coma. On November 9, hospital spokesperson Dewey Mitchell announced Hasan regained consciousness and was able to talk since he was removed from a ventilator on November 7. On November 13, Hasan's attorney, John Galligan, announced Hasan was paralyzed from the waist down from the bullet wounds to his spine and would likely never walk again. He currently uses a wheelchair. In mid-December, Galligan indicated Hasan was moved from intensive care to a private hospital room. Galligan said doctors indicated Hasan would need at least two months in the hospital to learn "to care for himself."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nidal_…
One thing I realized today is that there are a lot of people on this app who don't even know what Nidal Hasan did.
They were babies or toddlers when he attacked.
This is yet another reason to deliver capital punishment swiftly instead of seventeen years later.
When they want abortion on demand or euthanasia, we're a secular state in which religion has no place.
When they want clemency for mass murderers or a private, secret execution, suddenly we're a Christian nation.
The impending public execution of Nidal Hasan seems to have made everyone happy.
For those who support his execution, it's a chance to see justice done.
For those who don't, it's a chance to agonize, pearl-clutch, and virtue-signal.
Everyone wins.
I'll be watching the execution.
1. It won't be the first time I've seen someone die. From Sep 11 footage filmed by TV stations to Oct 7 footage filmed by Hamas and the Palestinians, people have died on camera before now.
2. It won't be the first time people have watched executions in US history. Hangings were public. Even in this day and age of legal executions, the families of the murderer's victims may watch if they wish.
3. If I believe the state has the right and the duty to exercise capital punishment, then how can I squeamishly shy away from it? Either I believe in it or I don't. I think any adult who believes the state should execute for some crimes should be willing to see that sentence carried out, not for entertainment or prurient interest, but to fully recognize the consequences of that belief and to affirm it in fact, not merely in theory.
The scam only works on developers. You're supposed to unzip the repo, switch branches, and a Git hook executes and does Bad Things.
- I'm pretty sure in my entire career, I've never had a company share their source code with me before hire. At most, maybe a glimpse on one of *their* PCs in *their* office. Certainly not as a freely-available download.