The problem a lot of people have with it is in Steps 1 and 2.

Step 1: download an app. There are so many now, it’s hard to tell them apart and decide which one is better or worse. The official mobile one is OK for most, but there are half a dozen others and no easy way to pick one over the other.

Step 2: Create an account. Turns out that decision is where people get stuck the most. Which server should they choose? One based on their interests, their location, where other exiles from their previous social network went, or go for a big one like mastodon.social? And since you can create more than one on a different server, should you create more than one before you get going? So many decisions.

Finally, let’s say you’ve gone through both steps and are finally on. How do you get followers, or decide who to follow?

Itt’s all good once you’ve jumped in, gone through a week of confusion, missed all the people you used to follow because they’re too scared to leave and FOMO. Then you realize following a hashtag is a good thing, but it brings in a lot of people spamming it (try following #press to get news) so now you have to start muting accounts.

Now put yourself in the shoes of an old auntie fed up with the crap on other sites and how they can navigate all this.

Until the onboarding experience – from zero to where you’re enjoying the experience and not feeling like every step is a potential cowpie – is streamlined, people will keep saying it’s hard.

I’m a big fan, btw, and have pretty much cut out all other social networks, but I don’t think my auntie would enjoy it quite as much.

Good writeup on this from Techdirt: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/31/court-says-texas-adult-content-age-verification-law-clearly-violates-the-1st-amendment/

I’m confused. The article has a picture of a big crowd at Citi field watching a T20 game it says was one of a three game series. But there is no other mention of just using Citi field for the international tournament.

It’s possible there are scheduling conflicts with other sports or contract reasons. But it seems wanting to expand and broaden the sport with a big pro contest would be served better in an existing professional sports venue instead of taking over community fields.

We had a Samsung TV that did something similar. Fortunately, I had bought extended 5-year warranty for it with a third party. Called them up. They sent a repair person who opened the TV. It’s amazingly compact. All the electronics were in a couple of low profile circuit boards. He pulled the connectors, popped off the boards and snapped new ones in. It was surprisingly easy. You can take the whole thing apart with a screwdriver.

The whole thing is integrated. There’s no way to fix an individual feature. It may be the power supply is not functioning right, but you have to replace the whole motherboard with the power circuitry. You can find spare parts on ebay or through authorized repair people.

In our case, they swapped all the PCBs twice and it didn’t fix the problem. The insurance offered to swap the TV with a newer one but the specs were much worse. They ended up refunding the purchase price. Got an LG. Much better color quality IMO and hasn’t failed yet.

My kid would ask me to sing him this for bedtime.

Years later, went in for surgery. According to the nurses, I woke up in the recovery room singing this out loud.

“GODDAMN THEM ALL…”

Asked a vacuum repair person after the Hoover died which one was the best. He recommended Miele. First one (canary yellow canister) lasted 18 years. Second one (green canister) is 5 years old and still going strong. Both with HEPA filters. Damn near pulls up the floorboards.

Shocked nobody’s mentioned ‘Mars Attacks.’

Reaction to it: https://youtu.be/ZS7AF2mgEYQ?si=7gBxoYeIOs131pTq

Why stop there? ROYGBIV is your friend.

Wonder what that does to his trade prospects next year?

(Teams breathing heavily)