Drop your crime-fighting Catholics:

I stand with Paddington, whatever might happen.

Artemis II Is Competency Porn and We Are Starving For It girls will be like i needed this and it's just four nerds in space.

(h/t Elizabetta)

I had to read this three times to catch that comma; I just thought Paddington got wayyyy more interesting than I imagined and wondered what the problem was.

“i hope you meet jd vance” is about to become an actionable threat

Spreadsheet of base specs: Model Dell Pro Max 16 Plus MB16250 Processor Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX Chipset Intel WM880 Memory Module Type CSoDIMM Slots 2 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) Type DDR5 6400 MTs M.2 Storage 1 NVMe 2280 Gen5 x4, up to 128 Gbps SK Hynix 1TB PC811 Gen4x4 2 NVMe 2280 Gen4 x4, up to 64 Gbps NVMe 2230 Gen4 x4, up to 64 Gbps Wireless/Bluetooth 1 NVME 2230 Intel® Wi-Fi 7 BE200 USB Thunderbolt 5 Type C 2 80 Gbps Power Delivery and DisplayPort Thunderbolt 4 Type C 1 40 Gbps Power Delivery and DisplayPort USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A 2 5 Gbps Power Share Graphics Integrated Arc Xe-LPG Graphics 64EU Discrete NVIDIA RTX PRO 3000 Blackwell Display Size 16 inch Type UHD+ 3840 x 2400 Touch Yes Camera HDR RGB+IR USB Synapctics Camera Audio Controller Cirrus Logic CS42L43 Speakers 2 Headphone Port Yes Microphone Yes Video HDMI 2.1 Media Card Reader Smart card reading slot SD-card slot SD Express 7.0 (PCIe Gen3 x 1) LAN RJ-45 2.5 Gbps Intel Ethernet Controller I226-LM Power Adapter 280 W AC adapter Battery 6-cell litium-ion (96 Wh) ExpressCharge and ExpressChargeBoost, Standard

...a lot of promise.

Here's the base specs, still putting it together.

...when you look at it wrong, which Ildico was prone to starting at nine months after purchase. (I love Ildico, she lives forever in my heart). TBH, since my Alienware a decade ago, all of them seemed like a downgrade (I miss all those lights, omg), but this one so far is definitely showing...

...my data drive in, I did a quick look-around, and sure, it's efficient, but it's not the nightmare material of my last two where the longest part of the process was putting it back together even for simple stuff like cleaning out a fan. This girl has SPACE well-used, and possibly won't overheat..

I get the drive for thinner and thinner in consumer laptops, but sweet baby Gilgamesh did it fuck with both performance and maintenance. This baby is a murder weapon; I can bludgeon a burglar and still finish my assignment on time after wiping off the blood. Even opening it up to put....

In other news....switching to a business class (ish?) laptop actually..was a good idea, fine, you fuckers (you know who you are) who told me to get away from consumer grade so I'd stop bitching about the problems. This is much thicker, much heavier, doesn't feel nearly as fragile and ridiculous...

Right now I am typing in a fragile state with my laptop hanging over the side of the laptop cooler VERY AWARE I AM NOT CENTERED but if I don't, half this would be typed two keys to the left. Is there a program that can just fix the shift? EVEN NOW IF MY FINGERS LEAVE THE KEYS THEY FALL TO H & L.

...three or four laptops since I had a ten key on the right side of my keyboard. This problem doesn't show up with PCs; I just move the keyboard over while the monitor stays centered.

This has been a PSA from me freaked out by my own typing.

Now I feel like I'm tipping over and push back to the right. Now my pinkie keeps landing on the fucking 4.

In general, my body likes being centered, but I can deal with not. But I can't not be centered and also type. Before you ask; yes, I can adapt, I did it for years, but it's been....

So anything--and I do mean anything--that fucks with where my body is in space...I don't take it well. And hoo-boy this is throwing me. I need to be centered in front of the laptop but my hands have to be to the left now. My body shifts left so my hands are in the right position: terrible.

*DOES have a ten key, sory about that.

This is dramatically throwing off my typing to hilarous levels, but it's also...I'm ADHD. I feel like I am chaos, but that usually means I just adapt my tested routines fairly easily. Except for anything related to body memory. I am already fuck all clumsy.

Interesting note: my XPS 17 did not have a ten key though fuck them, it was big enough for one. Keyboard was very centered. My Pro Plus is a sixteen inch and DOES.

And my entire body is confused when typing. I'm two keys off by body memory: for reference, my first fingers are landing on H & L.

I haven’t said anything because I’m superstitious but now I can: hi other challenger trauma kids who also ended up working their whole lives to be like Ronald McNair. Unclench your jaw.

I wonder what the first thing I break will be.

Note: why the hell didn't I get Pro before? This is so much easier than hunting sketchy bat files and rewriting them to edit the registry.

What really annoys me is that I used to like it, and I still wouldn't mind using it IF IT LET ME DECIDE HOW MUCH but noooo. It's not like I'm opposed to backups here.

Oh my God, I forgot I have Windows Pro now. I CAN FINALLY EDIT THINGS.

This almost makes up for being stalked by OneDrive and having to uninstall it three times, turn off the Resume Automatically function (for a program that is--again--not installed) because I found it connected to Word. Again.

Oh my GOD, that must have been terrifying! I don't think I would have survived.

But I'm backing up as much as I can right now.

Thank you. Truthfully it could have been so much worse. The data drive isn't corrupted, which is great since the prices doubled.

But yes, I'll be feeling this for a while.

For the life of me, I can't work out how that one folder--among them all--not only vanished into the ether, but after running two recovery programs immediately (as in five minutes) every file in those folders was overwritten entirely.

The ironic part is that I was doing a backup to an external.

So new laptop arrived as my old one was literally collapsing. There was drama, and so far, it looks like I lost all my school folders but this semester aka the last five years of classes and all my documentation and planning.

Yes, I'm enraged...but I'm also deeply weirded out.

these are the stupidest people to ever live

The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV’s Ambassador With the Avignon Papacy The Free Press has documented a closed-door Pentagon meeting in which a senior Trump official lectured Pope Leo XIV’s ambassador on American military supremacy.

UPDATE: Letters from Leo can now independently confirm that the meeting took place — and that the Vatican was so alarmed by the Pentagon’s tactics that Leo shelved plans to visit America.

Some officials saw their reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.

I made a joke about the Cadaver Synod on here and frankly it vastly outperformed my usual stupid jokes about obscure historical events, so those universities clearly don't appreciate there's an audience.

all these universities kept axing medieval history departments as if they thought tyrants beefing with the Pope was going to stop being relevant