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In Anchorage, Alaska we’ve had less than an inch of rain in the last 41 days. We had a 13-acre wildfire in a park in town yesterday that they estimate they can’t fully extinguish for a few days. Statewide, over one million acres have burned so far this season. It is crazy dry and hot.

I agree, sorry to be tangential, but school buses even have a whole community around converting them into rvs/homes, skoolies. The advice thrown around most often within this community trends toward picking diesel over gas, because diesel ones are very reliable when maintained. I always read it's better to get a pre-2004 diesel bus, because they have simpler, more mechanical parts. Diesel engines are really hyped among skoolie enthusiasts, though of course that is not to say that in e.g. fb groups, you don't hear horror stories of people stranded with a broke-down rig, it's usually lack of maintenance though. When maintained, they do last well past when school districts retire them--maybe survivorship bias, the ones that lasted to the end were more likely to keep lasting. My boyfriend has one such bus that was made the same year he was born (1989) and it took us on a 10-state roadtrip and was our home for over a year.

As far as I know the SE doesn't/didn't do 5G? I was looking into getting one but the lack of 5G is why I remember thinking it wouldn't be a good choice.

I still use a 6S and was wanting to get an SE, but was worried about the 5G thing. This is such welcome news. My mom has an SE (not sure what year) and it is really nice.

My 6S has held up really well. My boyfriend and I lived at campgrounds for the spring/summer of 2021 and during all this, I would use my phone's hotspot as a mobile router for my laptop/ps4, and had it plugged into a portable power bank all day, and that really killed my battery. Not a good idea. A bit of a non-standard use. While my battery life is quite terrible, it never ceases to amaze me that it is still so usable, that it still gets updates, and it's not terribly laggy (it is better compared to my boyfriend's LG Stylo 4 which he got in 2020 and is kind of a mess despite being a beast; tbf he's lost that thing 3x and it's survived things no phone should). I carry a small battery bank with me if I will be out for more than a couple hours so I am not without a phone, but I know it is a bit silly. I've considered switching to android because of cheaper options, but the longevity thing really has me thinking I want to stay with apple. I will miss the headphone jack, though.

There is not much I can say to any of that, but I do find it interesting. Unfortunate, but interesting. I would still say I am Aleut and that the Aleutian Islands are our original, true home. There has been evidence of people for thousands of years, no it’s not necessarily one singular bloodline, but I still stand by the sense of how much history there is, and I feel I have ties to it. Too often, Native claims to land are argued with, invalidated, or dismissed as far as “we’re all from somewhere else.” I am distrustful of genetic testing/results for the second to last paragraph there—we’ve really been nearly wiped out compared to e.g. Inupiat who still have a fair number of full blooded individuals. Aleuts were enslaved and carted across the coast of Alaska by Russians and our genetic history — to say little of oral history, traditions, and culture — is not perfectly clear as a result.

Edit: I am not trying to sound arguing or anything—just am apprehensive for this kind of thing, I always hesitate to comment on Native-related things because it is a near and dear issue for me. I’ve always thought Far East groups had similarities in boat design and such, it makes sense to me that there are such waves of flow.

Maps showing the flow of people into North America fill me with a swell of emotion deep in my heart. I’m Aleut, from Alaska, and it is very humbling to think of the thousands of years of continuous living here. To think of how related we are to other Native groups, and perhaps not so related the further off it goes, is endlessly fascinating to me. There is a sense of connectedness hard to quantify.

Along southern Alaska, the shockwaves were audible a few hours ago. I slept through it, but my feed has people complaining of having been woken up. Our local subreddits have posts from people being confused about potential thunder or military exercises. It is incredible to think of the energy involved in these events.

Yes, sorry, I don't mean to make out php as this scrappy underdog or that we are under constant attack or anything... I see it more like, ummm, a pumpkin spice latte of languages, something viewed as a lesser choice because or in spite of its popularity? There are all these other amazing options, why pick this? Of course, with programming languages, you have many objective criteria where a coffee drink is totally subjective. Languages are also a huge investment time-wise instead of being able to try different flavors each day. Not a perfect analogy, but maybe you still see a little what I was going for as far as lighthearted stigma. PHP is and has been doing so well for so long, but I couldn't argue a huge case for it personally besides... it was there. It clicked at the time. I grew up with it.

I am balancing my love for it with the public perception I have seen over the years (fortunately I think much of the vitriol has waned sorta), in terms of how bashful I feel whenever discussing anything coding-related as to not overstate what I know/do. Most people, I think, grow out of php, so I see myself as a bad stereotype in still using it. But it has done a lot for me in terms of confidence building, being able to make things, the creative process of turning nothing into something, even though admittedly if I'd picked a different language I could likely say the same. But as far as staying with it, I feel like I look lazy for it, it just does what I want it to do. I am grateful for it. I hope this made sense.

I learned to use php when I was like 14. I’m 27 now and still derive such joy when making my own little projects that will never see the light of day. I try to be humble as far as just being a php trash coder, but I don’t feel too ashamed honestly, as it is the most mainstream thing really. I will always be grateful to php for being accessible and yeah, I guess easy. I don’t know why php is the only one I really stuck with exactly, but it is weirdly dear to me. Nearly half my life I’ve never gone too far past being a lowly php coder, and not a great one at that, but I still like what I can make at the end of the day. It’s a side creative thing for me. Laravel was a revelation for me over the last few years, it just makes some things make sense that never did for me as a self-taught hobbyist.