Serious question, but I think the whole 'flat earth' thing is a distraction from real stuff

I was at a public talk in Austin about space stuff, and this guy started yelling about how NASA faked the moon landings. I mean, I get being skeptical of governments, but I stood up and said maybe we should focus on real things like who gets to go to space now. It got quiet, then a few people actually agreed with me. Has anyone else felt like some theories just stop us from talking about bigger problems?

Vent: My local credit union in Portland just killed their free checking

Last week I got a letter saying my free checking account now needs a $500 minimum balance or a $10 monthly fee. Three years ago I switched from a big bank to them specifically for no fees (and better local service, honestly). Now I'm looking at moving my direct deposit again, which is a huge pain. Has anyone else's small bank pulled this recently?

I finally realized our game nights got way better when we stopped trying to win every time.

Question about my sourdough crust going from tough to perfect

My starter is about 4 months old now. First loaves had a crust like shoe leather, honestly. Started using a Dutch oven and spraying water inside before baking. Crust went from rock hard to crisp and crackly in maybe 6 weeks. Debate is, was it the tool or the technique that fixed it? Some friends say the pot is the only way. Others say it's all in the steam timing. What's your biggest crust fix?

I finally gave up on that cheap post hole digger from the hardware store

Honestly, it snapped on the third post trying to get through some clay in Springfield. That was $60 down the drain and half a morning wasted. What manual digger do you guys actually trust for tough soil?

My smart fridge's facial recognition for family members totally glitched and gave my neighbor access to our grocery list.

It happened yesterday when he was helping me move a couch, and now I'm wondering if we should even have this kind of tech in our homes without clearer rules about data ownership and failsafes.

I was sure hoof boots were just a fad until a client's horse proved me wrong

A regular client in Springfield asked me to try EasyCare Gloves on her rehab gelding about eight months ago. I thought they'd slip or rub, but we put them on for light trail rides twice a week. After three months, his heel bulbs looked better and his stride was more confident on hard ground. Has anyone else had a horse change their mind about a specific type of boot or pad?

TIL a huge number of AI training images came from one site without clear permission

Read a report from the University of Amsterdam. They found LAION-5B, a massive dataset, used over 5 billion images from Common Crawl. Many were personal photos from Flickr, taken without asking the photographers. Makes you wonder who really owns the data behind these models. Has anyone else seen stats on where their training data actually comes from?

The day my grandma's photo album fell apart in my hands

I was helping clean out her old house in Toledo last spring, and this big leather book just came apart when I picked it up. The pages were stuck together from damp, and a bunch of pictures from the 50s were ruined. I mean, I knew she had them, but I guess I always thought they'd just be there. Now I scan every old photo I find right away onto a hard drive. Does anyone else have a good way to save really fragile old pictures before they're gone?

My friend pointed out my Instagram feed was just showing me sad news stories and it made me delete the app for a week.