I miss my old phone and my old PC, with their limited memory. Every so often, my browser would crash under the weight of the tabs, and refuse to re-open unless I agreed to discard them all …

Make a mental commitment to spend at least 30 minutes going through tabs.

Scroll through all of them. If any are news articles and that news has been moved on from or it just makes me angry, close the tab. If it’s a news article but it’s more of an “interesting read” thing and I’m still interested, keep it.

Keep scrolling. If you find several tabs relating to the same or similar concepts, move them next to each other; that gives more weight to following through on that group.

If it was a “yes, I’d like to buy this but my card isn’t convenient” tab, if I’m still interested in it, get my card and order it. (I deliberately don’t store my card, to impede impulse buying.)

If it’s something I was researching (usually something I’m interested in buying) and I have the energy, keep researching. Once I’ve completed research, either buy the item immediately, or add it to my “things to buy” bookmark folder. I go through the folder a couple times a year and decide if the item still interests me. If it doesn’t, I delete the bookmark. If it does, I may or may not buy it then.

If it’s a video, download it and put it into my ‘watch these’ folder for later.

If it’s something I was thinking of for a friend (a meme, news article, something to buy), I’ll send them a text about it. If it’s after hours, I’ll prep a text, save it as a draft, then send it the next day.

If it’s a piece of fiction, I’ll group those together as well, then leave them for the moment: I’m interested in clearing tabs right now, not getting distracted.

If it’s a piece of reference material, I’ll either bookmark it or add it to a collection so I can come back to it later.

If it’s a recipe, I’ll copy it to Word, format it to my tastes, print it out and move it to the kitchen.

If it’s a thread that I wanted to read through, I’ll stop and read through it, then either discard it or bookmark it if I may need to reference it again.

If it’s a quick curiosity thing, I’ll give it a quick read to satisfy my curiosity and close the tab.

Eventually I run out of energy and browse the internet, opening up a few new tabs in the process.

But if you leave A blank, it becomes a unifying feature and means that this is something that transcends flags and cultures.

Oh hey - thanks for that!

Not sure “hidden” is the right word, but whatever. The link to the map is here.

MPox: infection numbers in the US are generally low in the US - the weekly average is generally between 3 and 18 cases per week. I haven’t tracked transmission vectors in a couple years - I think the last time I checked was around 2022-23. From memory, at that time, the main vector was men who had sex with men, and then people who had sex with infected people. The CDC’s recommendation list for who should get vaccinated still seems to focus on those groups, as well as travelers to areas where MPox is endemic.

Measles: in the US, this mostly depends on when you were born/vaccinated. If you were born before 1957, you are presumed to be immune because measles is so contagious and it was so prevalent back then. If you were vaccinated before 1967, you should get a booster shot: the vaccine they used back then was less effective than the later vaccine. If you were vaccinated after 1967 and before 1989, you should consider getting another shot: up until 1989, they believed that a single dose gave lifetime immunity, but then they realized a second dose was needed. People who received two doses of vaccine after 1989 are presumed immune.

That Blake’s 7 fandom was materially better before the show aired in the States. They had gone through the painful sorting out of characters and characteristics and relationships and were developing these really interesting themes of psychological trauma and manipulation that they were beginning to explore - it was really interesting and the themes were fascinating. Them the show aired in the States, they went wild over Avon and all the stories and themes starting revolving around him. I don’t mind him as a character; I do mind his character taking over all of fandom. It’s sort of like if all the Harry Potter stories suddenly and inexplicably became Ron-centric; it’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s weird and people who liked other characters got left out in the cold, and some of us still resent that.

As an aside, when Blake’s 7 fandom split up, that too was fascinating. As was usual in those days, there was a pro-slash contingent and an anti-slash contingent. When B7 fandom split up, all of the pro-slash fans went into Robin of Sherwood fandom, and all the anti-slash fans went into The Professionals fandom. The problem being that RoS was almost exclusively gen and Pros was almost exclusively slash. It was very weird.

What else? That the second season of War of the Worlds should’ve been an entirely different series: the people who loved season 1 were never going to like season 2; and people who had tuned in and disliked the series during season 1 weren’t going to Even try season 2.

That Krycek became such a big character on The X-Files due to one woman who saw his potential and kept talking about it to her friends, many of whom were popular/prolific fannish authors and artists. She convinced some of them (there was incredulity and resistance at first) but it gathered steam, Chris Carter was flummoxed but rolled with it, and here we are.

That the main follow-on series for Highlander: the Series should’ve been The Methos Chronicles and that one’s not even up for debate.

That the final episode of Miami Vice is a masterpiece, particularly with the echoes and parallels to the first episode - and that the show itself took a major downturn the moment they decided to kill off their comic relief characters. That having God in the final episode of Quantum Leap (the original) being played by an actor who was also in the first episode of the series made it much more interesting. That if you were ever interested in Space: 1999, the “Message from Moonbase Alpha” short has some really interesting implications.

That Space Rangers and Moon Over Miami were cut off entirely too early. That Quark is funny as hell for a science fiction fan of my generation, even if it’s extremely dated now. Similarly, The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne was hella fun and should’ve lasted much longer (though Michael Praed’s Shatner-esque line deliveries were exceptionally annoying at times!). That the Sonny Steel grave arc is majorly under-represented in Wiseguy fiction.

Almost certainly others, but those are the ones that came to mind.

Whatever you spend it on, may I make a suggestion, if you have a little extra money yourself? Spend the gift card money, yes: buy something you’ll enjoy, share that joy with the people who got it for you, let them see how happy they’ve made you.

Then take the card that the giftcard came in, put in $75 cash, and put it in a special place. Do that every time someone gives you money or a giftcard. As I’ve gotten older, a lot of the people in my life have died, gotten ill, or moved away. Sometimes, when I’m feeling sad or depressed, I’ll go to my little drawer of cards and pull one out at random. I’ll re-read the message, and think about the person and the love that we shared at that time, and I’ll take the money and do something special for myself, to cheer myself up a bit.

Then sometime in the next few days, I’ll get the same amount of cash from the bank, put it in the envelope, and replace it in my stash: the caring we felt for each other at that time was true (regardless of how things eventually turned out), so the cards give me a little emotional boost and the cash lets me do something for myself that I’d normally not spend money on. It helps me feel better, even if only for a little time.

[I’ll also be honest and say that sometimes I’ve run out of money, and something will twinge and I’ll remember I have this little stash of cash, and having that has helped me get through some slightly tough times. But I always put the money back in the cards when I can afford it.]

Could you tell me what you like about Vivaldi over Firefox? Or what advantages it has? Genuinely curious.

I’m so sorry for everyone involved here :(

That’s the one.

You can pause Stardew by bringing up the menu.

Make the data centers build their own power plants. Then they get all the risk and all the reward.

Make them put the power plant right next to the data center, that way they’re not stressing out the rest of the grid. And that way the exact same community that gets the benefits of hosting the data center also gets the environmental costs of the power plant.

I beg to differ: spez has ruined reddit for everyone.

You don’t have not-have an opinion on the US healthcare system, you just have to claim that your opinion on the healthcare system won’t affect your ability to reach an impartial verdict.

The nice thing with reddit was that popular would surface communities I didn’t know about, and if it was something I hated, I could block it from my feed :(

They voted against support for Sandy too.

If anyone has an article with more technical details on what the solar radiation did, and how they’re going to patch it, I’d like to read about it :)

Not a direct answer to your question, but: the sun (like the earth) has areas that are more “geologically” active; those areas tend to throw out solar flares. As the sun rotates, the area that throws out these solar flares slowly faces toward the earth (solar maximum) then slowly rotates to face away from the earth (solar minimum). The solar cycle is roughly eleven years long.

Currently, we’re just slightly past solar maximum. For the past year or so, the “more active” part of the sun has been roughly facing earth and intermittently spitting out solar flares. When these flares hit the earth’s atmosphere, they cause auroras (which is why we’ve had so many auroras these past couple years) and can interfere with electronic and electrical equipment (see: the Carrington event).

I have no details on what l the exact damage that was caused by the interference the plane suffered, nor any knowledge of how they plan to address the issue. But whatever they come up with is going to take some time to develop - and we’re moving away from solar maximum so being hit with a massive flare is increasingly less likely - at least for another decade. My suspicion is that they’ll come up with a “solution” that actually may not work very well, but it works well enough to give the impression that they’re doing something - and it’ll look like it’s working to some extent, simply because the active side of the sun is rotating away from us.

“No offense, but I speak to God all the time and he’s never mentioned you!”

This is called industrial symbiosis and it’s a lovely thing. Another great example is the Kalundborg Eco-Industrial Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalundborg_Eco-industrial_Park).