American here - our FEC takes a very dim view of satirical and otherwise non-existent candidates who file the paperwork to run, which makes me curious… If the Count were to win, who would actually take the seat? Have we any idea who is behind the (highly effective) satire, and would they be able to seamlessly serve?

Not without un-federalising. Given that generally, red states are net receivers of cash and blue states are net payors, that seems unlikely - TX rhetoric be damned.

Not that I’d begrudge Texas taking Abbot and _Costello Paxton and kindly fucking right off, nor would I vote to spill one drop of American blood to keep them by force, of course

But I believe that die is long cast regardless.

After you spend down your allotted PTO, yes.

Mildly surprised that someone in a position at that level wouldn’t have at minimum short term disability coverage, at least as an option. It’s hardly expensive.

Yes I can. Deleted my last Google account yesterday. Got what I needed, and honestly once I liberated a couple phone numbers (too damn memorable to ever just give up), there wasn’t much left.

Been slowly migrating for awhile piece by piece, the timing just happened to work out well for the last piece, and the metaphoric peering in cabinets to make sure nothing got overlooked in the process.

I still have to deal with Win 11 for work, and having AI forced down my throat, but Google-free feels GOOD!

Central Illinois - basically everything within 50-75 miles of I-74 across the state. Doesn’t get bitter cold, not overrun with MAGA asshats (among the reasons we left another Midwest state), cost of living isn’t terrible, and easy access to Chicago, St Louis, and beyond.

Update: South Korea says it will send actual, meaningful numbers of troops into Pyongyang within thirty-one days, bringing a formal end to conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

/s but you know they’re thinking about it.

Just too easy to get over a barrel trying to DIY it, and the first time ya screw it up, you lose a ton of credibility with employees which also has a great deal of value.

If your needs are fairly low on the processing side, you can snag a cloud VPS on LowEndBox for five or six dollars a month. Quality is highly variable ofc, but I’m reasonably my happy with mine.

No AWS, etc (though I don’t know offhand where the actual box lives), SSH access defaults to a key, and the rest (firewall, reverse proxy if you like, and all the other best practices) are but an apt-get away and a quick searxng to find and dissect working configs.

Incidentally, searxng is a good place to start- dead easy to get rolling,and a big step towards degoogling your life. Stand it up, throw a pretty standard config at nginx, and do a certbot —nginx -d search.mydomain.com - that all there is to it.

YMMV with more complex apps,but there is plenty of help to be had.

Oh…. Decide early on if anonymity is a goal,or you’re ok tying real life identity to your server if someone cares to look. Register domains and make public facing choices accordingly.

Either choice is acceptable if it’s the right one for you, but it’s hard to change once you pick a path.

I’m a big fan of not hosting on prem simply because it’s one more set of cables to trip over, etc. But for a latte a month in hosting costs, it’s worth it to me.

I pay around 600 for myself and my wife, and that’s with my employer continuing to pick up a significant share of the cost of health insurance that I literally never see a deduction or bill for.

1,800 a year beats hell out of $7,200, a $5k deductible, 20% co ins, and $11k OOP max.

I’m forty-five minutes outside a medium sized pair of cities known for a decent state university, and glad to run into town for care as needed.

Landed in the hospital three months ago with something that got me a follow-up scheduled with neuro, in the practice associated with the hospital.

Three months to the day later, I’ve only just had the suggested test and the visit is still a month out…. With an NP. Not the MD who saw me in the hospital.

Honestly, at this point, I’m only keeping after that issue because I need their clearance to get surgery for my actual, pressing, immediate, and painful concern.

I’m just now unravelling the last of the truly important bits of my life that are in their clutches, for that and other reasons.

Two phone numbers, a handful of documents I’ve shared over the years that probably don’t matter anyway, and a couple email addresses that I’ve been actively monitoring for months for anything important, and searches my password mgr for….

I should be free by 1 July at the outside, possibly a few days early if I don’t delay the actual deletion process. Feels fuckin great.

Will take a look - I’ve been kicking around the possibility of writing something quick and dirty to track my rapidly growing fountain pen hobby, what ink is in which pen, grade/size of paper on hand, and the like.

I’d much prefer using something that exists already, less distraction with design choices and bugs = more time to enjoy the hobby itself.

I’ve used TimeTrex in the past. For my needs “, it was overly complex.

This is one of those areas where I’d think long and hard about self hosting, if you’re doing more than tracking your own hours.

Lots of compliance risk here, and transferring some of that risk to the payroll company is part of what one pays for with those services.

In my case, I just needed to substantiate invoices for a couple of clients I contracted for, and I was strictly paying myself and once in a blue moon my wife.

Presently, my Fediverse presence is mostly self-hosted by one definition or another. This Lemmy instance lives on my server, and my Masto is hosted by a company dedicated to exactly that because it’s dirty cheap and one fewer thing for me to worry about.

Looking to add to the list.