What? Mary was allegedly a virgin when she became pregnant with Jesus, but that's not what immaculate conception is about.

Yeah, I rarely use an accelerant when I start a fire. It's a crutch for a bad foundation.

Oh, I know. Fire was my hobby as a preteen/young teen, to the point that my mom let me bury a grill so I could burn stuff in it. I was also in the scouts, and won every "start a fire with a single match" competition I was part of.

Last month she had me over to burn a burn pile for her, and she had a 5 gallon canister of diesel that she expected to use all of to start it. I walked around the pile, took 4oz of it, poured it in one spot, then lit a match. The pile was ablaze in about 15 seconds flat and burned out within 2 hours. The diesel wasn't even necessary, I just used it because she had already poured it.

Building fires is my specialty, and there has never been a fire that I've built that would have benefited from the log cabin method. Even the teepee method is unnecessarily complicated.

You don't need structural stability for a fire. In fact, it's usually a hindrance. You want it to collapse in a specific way and be able to stir it up.

That's why you start with a pile of shavings, then add a pile of twigs, then a pile of increasingly bigger sticks up until about 1in in diameter. You don't put anything heavier on until the base fire is caught and has coals.

This is an oversimplification, of course, because you have to account for airflow.

The teepee shape actually gets the fire going more efficiently, though.

I'm not extremely familiar with the USB-C handshake, but isn't it between the device and power supply?

I will always recommend one when sailing the high seas. Even if the ISP doesn't catch you, the government might.

But you're right, my VPN is mostly for if the system has to use torrents because my newsgroup doesn't have a specific release.

Yeah, I forgot to mention that most colleges will have an auction site too.

My college doesn't actually resell computers, but that's because a local prison has a program where the inmates refurbish old equipment to send out to low income schools. But, considering most of this equipment won't be usable, I expect us to start selling it.

Based on the prices we sell other technology for, probably somewhere under $50. My guess would be $20.

That image isn't a good look for them now

Setup sonarr and use NZB instead of torrents. And a VPN, of course.

If you have a local college, get on their surplus mailing list.

It's not a failure to default to a safe level if it can't negotiate properly. That's a feature.

I felt like this when I was bulking and eating healthy. Eating 5k Calories of healthy food a day is a fucking chore.

There's also a reason a very large portion of developers are neurodivergent.

She also didn't promise everyone a pony.

I thought they had the opportunity to apply for a $1m grant, but they'd have to put up $72k and they decided not to.

It would take hundreds of billions of dollars and a decade of so.

I'm pretty sure this is just a way of utilizing abandoned rail lines that aren't fit for full size trains.

I think you answered your own question.