You might check around with your friends and relatives, to see if any of them digitize stuff; I’ve done it on a casual basis for some of my friends and relatives.

Alternatively, you can probably get an old VHS machine at Goodwill, give it a quick cleaning, and pick up various digitizers (standalone recorder or computer-input) and convert your own tapes. If you do it yourself, I would strongly suggest checking your setup with old commercial tapes first, so that you iron out any setup issues on something you don’t care about, before sending your irreplaceable tapes through whatever process you have.

[Note on commercial tapes: some of them have copyright protection on them, which will make the video fine when you send it to a tv, but just make it erratic when you send the video through another device. Very very occasionally, for undetermined reasons, an entirely home-recorded tape will also exhibit this behavior. If this happens to you, there are two main options: (1) if the device you’re recording onto has front input jacks, switch your setup to record through those jacks, as many of the front inputs lack the monitoring needed to screw up your recordings. (2) Check eBay or other online shopping places for a “video stabilizer”, which is old-timey code for “copyright buster”. Look at the listing for some indication that it’s used for VHS or VCR.]

If you think there might be issues with the tape quality (for example, dropouts or the magnetized bits sticking to the back of the previous strip on the reel), you might want to go professional - but only after seeing what steps they take to minimize this, and what that might cost.

Edit: when I did this for family and friends, I’d monitor the first five minutes or so of each recording, simply to make sure that the tape wasn’t crinkling (more likely to happen at the start of a tape, or some midpoint that was heavily used (repeatedly rewatching a single scene) of where someone had left the tape sitting. And then I’d check in periodically, to see if the tracking needed to be adjusted. I’d also try to at least stay in the same room, so that I could react quickly if I heard the tape crinkling.

Also, in an attempt to minimize problems with the tape having become slack over the years (even if properly stored on their spines), before I started any new tape, I would: if it was stopped partway or at the end of the reel, I would rewind the tape to the start, fastforward it to the end, then rewind it again, to try to reset the tension on the tape. If the tape was stopped at the start of the reel, I’d fastforward and then rewind, to reset the tension.

Also, if you do this yourself, it’s good to have some old tapes lying about that you don’t care about, either old commercial tapes or home-recorded tapes with content you don’t care about. This is because every so often, a tape will jam inside it’s cassette, at which point you need to open it up and unjam it. But sometimes the cassette itself (but not the tape) has developed problems, and you need to re-shell the tape into the shell of a different cassette.

What’s this “we”, white man?

Unfortunately, they’ve only established that the 1974 emergency powers act is not a legal way to establish tariffs; all other tariffs established by justifying them through other means are still (potentially) legal.

The government never announces that it is becoming fascist. They announce that anti-fascists are the enemy.

I’m so happy for you that she got cleared!

I beg to differ:

There will be no punishment and no investigation after two Army military helicopters were flown by Kid Rock’s house over the weekend, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday. The Army had suspended the aircrew in Saturday’s incident, a U.S. official said earlier Tuesday, but Hegseth announced Tuesday evening that no suspension or punishment would be forthcoming.

Remember the last shutdown, when we had the Republicans over a barrel and almost every Democrat in the nation was like, “Finally! This is the line and we’re not backing down!” - and then Schumer backed down in return for a measly promise that Democratic issues would be ‘considered’ [completely ignored] the next month?

He’s 75, he thinks the government still works like it used to (and actually still works, lol), and we desperately need a change of leadership away from the Schumer’s and the Pelosi’s.

Retribution for what? Not immediately kowtowing to the wounded narcissist?

No. ICE was already plenty funded from last summer’s bill, which is why they’re still on the streets and in the airports. The Democrats were (supposedly) fighting for restrictions on ICE: no masks, warrants required, limits on use of force, etc. Once again, they got absolutely none of the things that they were supposedly fighting for.

The Republicans, however, get to claim they’ve “ended” the shutdown, and have also gotten pretty much everything they wanted.

It’s going to be even worse with the war with Iran. Here is a wonderful, detailed article on the various impacts the war is going to or is likely to have on various food supplies.

Aside from what everyone else’s already mentioned, there’s the whole hassle of setting up a new device - debloating, tweaking the settings, etc. Why go through the pain of adjusting to a new device when the old one works just fine?

Malone claimed on social media that [HHS] had disbanded [the vaccine advisory board] and planned to completely reconstitute it. But soon after, Malone retracted his claim, saying it was a miscommunication and that disbanding ACIP was merely one of the “options being considered.” [A] HHS spokesperson […] then released a statement to media pointing to Malone’s retraction and adding, “Unless officially announced by us, any assertions about what we are doing next is baseless speculation.” Malone [said] that Nixon’s response was what led to his departure. “After Andrew trashing me with the press, I am done with the CDC and ACIP,” Malone said in a text message Tuesday morning. “That was the last straw.”

Sounds like he thought he could say anything and that it would magically happen, and he didn’t like being called out on his bullshit.

“Suffice to say I do not like drama, and have better things to do,” he added. […] “Hundreds of hours of uncompensated labor, incredible hate from many quarters, hostile press, internal bickering, weaponized leaking, sabotage—I have better things to do,” he said.

I’m delighted that he should go off and pursue these “better things”, lol.

Nowhere near as infuriating as when they finally speak up … after they’ve left office :(

You seem to be incapable of understanding how organizations work, and I don’t have time for that kind of determined idiocy or trolling. Blocked.

I particularly liked the underlying assumption throughout the article that Trump absolutely has to have Iran capitulate and therefore the only thing they can do is to continue to escalate. That “declare victory and leave” isn’t something they’ve even considered.

He’s only retiring because he’s hit mandatory retirement age.

He already tried to declare it’s over. I think he was a bit shocked that reality isn’t listening to him.

The way they pushed through the “renovation” (aka destruction) plans was by secretly voting beforehand that anyone who was non-Trumpian wasn’t allowed to vote (that’s why they were all muted on the call). I fully expect this to go a similar way: she’ll get access to the plans, but not be allowed to vote. Or perhaps she’ll be the only non-Trumpian allowed to vote.

I’d rather the Chinese still owned TikTok than a bunch of corrupt Techbro billionaires who have already admitted they want America entirely owned by themselves and their friends and the rest of us as slaves - if that. All the forced sale of TikTok stuff was to give them another tool to pacify and brainwash the masses while they consolidate their control.

Trump may be unable to end the war he started with Iran, even if he wanted to

Yeah, we know. It’s one of the (many) reasons we didn’t want this.