I think it’s “wood”, as in “I would”, in reference to the lady in the picture.

What do you get if you blend the steak with a bit of water, then chill it with a bit of gelatin?

The cynic in me suspects it’s an attempt to sow division within pro-solar panel groups. Get them arguing amongst themselves over where to put them, rather than uniting to push for more panels.

What you’re describing as “alert” sounds more like hypervigilance. It’s a maladaption in modern life, but was probably really useful for keeping you and your group safe from predators in the stone-age. I’m no psychiatrist, but it may be down to some anxiety or trauma that’s left you extra wary. Figuring out the root cause might help you overcome it and be alert and calm at the same time.

Worse than only finding old posts about the issue is when you find an old post, then notice that it’s got your name as the author, and you realise you’ve been fighting the issue for so long you’ve forgotten where you posted about it.

Yup, don’t dump the database, just shuffle the primary keys on important tables. Systems keep running, so it takes longer to work out what’s wrong, and the data gets even more screwed up with every passing transaction. You very rapidly end up with a basically unrecoverable mess if you’re also talking to external systems, as none of their data will match yours anymore, even if you do try to recover from an older backup.

Uhhh… it helps lubricate the pulley to make it easier to raise and lower the flag. Yeah, that’s it, definitely nothing to do with this ligher. Nothing at all.

No, a repository is a place things can be kept for safekeeping, that’s a depository.

It doesn’t burn anywhere near as well as you’d hope, unless you soak it in oil, or similar, first sadly, and manmade fibres are even less likely to carry the flame than natual ones.

Nobel committee? Yes… that one right there… they’ve just solved the world’s energy problems forever, please give them all the medals!

A citizen would ask the court to declare the company bankrupt and to issue a winding up order in order to distribute the business’s remaining assets to those it owes money to.

First off, thank you for creating an excellent system, it’s been much appreciated. I’ve been one of those users with a feature request, and I was struck by both how fast and cheerfully you addressed it, but also by how much of a toll that level of responsiveness must have taken on you.

Well done for realising you need to step back a bit before it broke you completely, not all manage that. From experience, putting in proper channels for feature requests, issue reports, and even general communications, can make a huge difference to the stress of managing a big project, and give you a lot more control over how much you’re dealing with, rather than trying to drink from the firehose that the internet can be. I hope it works for you, and you can go on enjoying working on it.

As you step back from the front line a bit, could you allow others to help in both dealing with public interactions and even the development? I’ve noticed that Piefed seems to be a one-man project, and that shows through in some places. Bringing in a few more people might help ease the load, bring new perspectives, and even avoid some of the more contentious issues that have come up.

In a way they do. The courts can issue a winding up order against a company, typically, but not always, because it’s bankrupt, ending the company.

It’s not a very satisfying answer, but that’s how it goes. A better ask might be “If corporations are people, I want to see one jailed”.

It only becomes hard power when they lean on that influence coercively.

Yes, that is exactly what I am talking about. It was late when I posted before, and maybe I didn’t explain what I was saying clearly, but money, and the control of money, is absolutely used coersively. Whether it be “do as I say, or I stop funding you and fund your opponent instead”, or supporting vanity projects (where the funding is likely syphoned off to the politician, or used by them to buy favour with others) on the condition that the politician behaves in a specific way, the control is coersive and has clear detrimental consequences for the politician should they not do as they are told.

I very much doubt that there is any ambiguity in the threats, much like you’re illustration with China actively threatening to remove their shipping, as you would not want any risk of misunderstanding when those levels of money and power are on the table.

Geopolitically, yes, you’re correct, but as you say in another comment, they influence the military rather than control it. That influence comes from economic control of the nominal controller. From an economic angle, that level of control is hard power, as removing it, or worse, putting behind an opponent, can be as damaging, and coersive, to the target as military means would be. Perhaps it’s a different scale to sending in the army, but economic warfare, even a billionaire against a politician, has damaging and coersive effects.

They’re not interested in money, that’s just a convenient tool, they’re interested in power, and money buys both hard and soft power. Hard power might involve sponsoring a ballroom, or paying for an inaugeration to get the ear of a politician, soft power is more about being known for having inexhaustable wealth and having “useful” people seek you out to do deals with.

This is all obviously Biden’s fault somehow though, right?

The comment was made in response to a question about whether Western help to Ukraine went too far. The Russian leader said: “They started ratcheting up the confrontation with Russia, which continues to this day. I think it is heading to an end, but it’s still a serious matter.”

I’m not reading that as him saying Russia are going to stop, but that he thinks that the West will stop providing aid to Ukraine soon. Considering that his Washington puppet is doing their best to destabilise NATO, and Europe in general, he could easily be hoping for aid to be cut.

nobody is anywhere downrange

Reflections can also blind, so make sure no-one, including you, are uprange, or siderange (to stretch a wordform to breaking point) either.

I don’t think a license is going to help you if you’re found walking around with a 7 watt laser hooked up to the relevant drive circuitry. They’re still going to presume you’re up to no good, and, when they find a camera with a burned sensor, they’re going to assume it was you. I guess the moral of this is: don’t get caught.