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shalafi ,

This is a whole paradigm shift, and it's not new.

Got me confused. Are you saying these tactics are new or not? I vote for new, mostly, kinda, but both at once. Sorta.

shalafi ,

Watched Beetlejuice with the kids last night. Not as funny as I remember, and they weren't laughing either.

OTOH, we all thought The Lost Boys was still pretty cool.

Blazing Saddles next?

shalafi ,

Watched Beetlejuice with the kids last night. Not as funny as I remember, and they weren't laughing either.

OTOH, we all thought The Lost Boys was still pretty cool.

Blazing Saddles next?

shalafi ,

Everyone is fat, no one moves around. Hmmm... Chicken and egg problem? More on that.

In 70's elementary school, we started gym class with a 1-mile jog, twice around the track. I can't imagine the kids I see walking home from the middle school doing that. We also had 3 recess periods. Asked my step-son about his recess breaks. "What's recess?"

No, I'm not laying all the blame on my anecdotes, but it is interesting. As I get older, the harm becomes more and more obvious. Not something my young self thought of because A) hardly anyone was fat in school (nothing like today) and B) I was a scrawny kid, not my problem.

I see so much harm that I'd ignored, or it wasn't as prevalent. People at the store who can't walk normally, people with mobility gear, almost every person in my doctor's waiting room is obese, stuff like that. Ever notice that most everyone you see in an ankle brace or the like is well overweight?

It's sad seeing the things they're left out of. Met a big girl online, wasn't interested in dating, but she wanted to kayak. Only person I've ever met that actually fell out, repeatedly. Center of gravity far too high. Hiking to the local creek is a non-starter if you're too big, over a mile of deep, sandy trail. Tough for me to make the round trip and I'm only 145lbs.

I never see fat people on the trail or any kind of unpowered boat. OK, not fair, I see some on river where the kayak/canoe rentals places go, but it's clearly a rare lark for them. (I'd be an obvious noob if a regular jogger or regular beach goer saw me farting around.)

Back to the chicken and egg. Maybe some overweight people can chime in. Know the old saw about fat people being (physically) lazy? Do you get fat from not moving or not moving because it's too hard? As I age I see how easy it is to hit a downward spiral with health. Arthritis is eating my hands, but it gets worse if I don't use them.

Done skipping work. Going outside to work and see what I can manage.

shalafi ,

I've read that people in Colorado have far more blood carrying capacity from the high altitude. Seems something one can develop.

shalafi ,

Read what turned out to be a fairly racist article back in the day, about the differences in blacks and whites.

One thing that rang true was hair types. When wet, kinky hair sheds heat more easily and flat hair is insulating. Anyone know if this is true?

shalafi ,

I've tried to say that employee wages aren't anything close to what one sees on their paycheck. And been buried for it.

Unemployment insurance, worker's comp insurance, taxes, benefits (even if minor), all adds up to roughly double one's hourly rate.

Lemmy: "Fuck you! BILLIONAIRES!"

Fine smart ass. Go start and run a business. Be my guest.

shalafi ,

Bingo. I fixed or built clocks with these exact units.

And you made me realize I can do this with an antique General Electric clock! It's 120V and whines like mad, can't get it right.

shalafi ,

I was 5, don't remember, but my parents clued in asking me about a dog at the park. "Uh... doggy...?"

shalafi ,

Y'all liberals one the only ones listening to this man. Seriously. Nobody calls his hypocrisy but the left. And should such a call reach his followers, it's simply tuned out. His worshipers, much like Christians, just cut and paste the bits they like into memory, rest is just noise.

None of these people give two shits about Trump the man, and all his heinous behavior, past and present. He's merely a symbol, a brick thrown through the window of woke.

Apologies for the ramble, it's just that these stories are so very old after 8-years, pointless. When Trump said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue without repercussion, it was true. Those of that know, know. No one else is listening.

shalafi ,

Reminds me of Code of the Lifemaker, where mechanical life evolves on Titan. Seemed oddly plausible when I read it, but it's been 20+ years. LOL, maybe it was stupid.

shalafi ,

Love my Jellyfin server, but I have 2 gripes over just using VLC.

  • Can't use the scroll wheel for volume. It's a pain aiming for the volume from across the room on the couch.

  • JF won't boost volume past 100% like VLC.

Know of any fixes?

shalafi ,

Windows PC. I'm wired from my 50" TV monitor to a 55" on the wall.

shalafi ,

I am streaming to my TV. 50" TV on my desktop for a daily driver, 55" (wired) on the wall for media.

shalafi ,

I'm using a wall-mounted TV as a 2nd monitor.

shalafi ,

I only have two ideas:

They're seeing what they can get away with. Or, and more likely, normalizing more and more aggression in pursuit of seeing what they can get away with.

shalafi ,

Casinos creep me out. Last time I played Black Jack, the entire table was obsessed. No one speaking, joking, looking around, just pure concentration.

I made a mathematically unsound play several times, gotta risk it for the biscuit! Table looked at me like I was bug fuck nuts.

And then you got the people cranking away on slots. It's like watching zombies.

shalafi ,

I'd pump out the MAGA merchandise. I'm talking grift of biblical proportions.

Would you like a cherry on top? After becoming America's #1 purveyor, I'd go all out telling the world that I got rich suckering rubes.

shalafi ,

Mine take as well. And pretty damned clever for filthy Russians. Surprised they've seen a laptop, let alone have fine screwdrivers.

shalafi ,

So why can't Israel support itself after decades of the US pumping weapons and money?

I'm 100% done with Israel, and that's coming from a middle-aged guy who was always a supporter. At this point, I honestly don't care if the Arab world stomps them flat. Who could I possibly give a shit any longer?!

So thanks for bringing the plight of the Palestinians into my worldview and trashing the country's reputation. I get it now. Clearly.

shalafi ,

OK, then I choose not to rent. You can go buy a house or rent or live on the street.

Now what?

willaful , to Romance Books
@willaful@romancelandia.club avatar

Came across an odd sentence in the Harlequin Presents I'm reading for the . It says the heroine's dress makes her look "very feminine, but hid none of her curves."

Might just be a careless way of writing but it implies that the "femininity" of the dress comes from an air of modesty and that demonstrating you have curves is generally considered unfeminine. Unless you do it just right.

Weird.

@romancebooks

shalafi ,

I think the author means in imply she had a classy look, not just hanging it all there like a TikTok thot. I'm seeing Rachael from Blade Runner.

Or for you Discworld nerds, Adora Belle Dearheart.

shalafi ,

We tech support folks used to be able to discern a legit US Robotics 56K over a software modem. By listening to our customers connect.

shalafi , (edited )

LMAO at the hate on this comment.

We can talk about immigration drivers, all night long, but the fact is that the host country is always resentful of immigrants. It doesn't matter if that resentment is fair or true or justified, it exists.

Buncha children in here crying, "Racism bad!" Yeah. We know. Some of us grew up on Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. That doesn't change countries seeing a bunch of poor people flooding in and taking their resources. And whether they're actually sucking resources doesn't fucking matter. It looks like they are.

And for all the whiners, how about you take in a poor immigrant family and take care of them yourself? Put your money where your mouth is?

"Uh no. The government should do that for free, somehow, and I don't want to actually see or deal with it. Or I'll leave a stern downvote!"

(And for the inbound haters, my wife is a brown immigrant, not even a citizen. Trying to get her youngest moved here.)

shalafi ,

Dated a Jamaican woman with a bit of vitiligo. She was wildly attractive to me without being "pretty" in any conventional sense.

5'10", 110lbs. Kinky hair, but not a fro. Dark and light skin, and not just the lighter areas, all at once.

LOL, I could go on. She was a beautiful, smart and interesting woman. With spots.

shalafi ,

I was gonna say, these places are 1/40th of a pixel on the map, but those are some sizeable acreages! Pleasant surprise.

And think of the cost savings on maintaining all that land.

shalafi ,

Got my kids back for the summer, first time since they got phones (9 and 11-yo). They're hooked through the fucking bag. And that's with their mom having severely limiting their screen time.

If I so much as threaten to take their phones, they act exactly like an addict having their stash stolen. If a literal demon jumped out the phone, grabbed them by the neck and punched them in face, they'd go right back on the screen.

I listen in, and it's all high-pitched chatter at 100mph, randomly switching topics and formats. If the internet has fried my brain at 53, god knows what it's doing to them.

Why do people throw out old motors, bicycles, anything metal into rivers and lakes instead of a junk yard or the trash system?

I have been watching magnet fishing and people love to toss stuff over bridges without a second thought on the environmental impact. Hiding evidence I can almost understand but not lawnmowers, car batteries, etc....

shalafi ,

Around here you can leave it on the curb and someone will take it for metal. At worst you can find a guy on FB marketplace, Thrifty Nickel or some such that will pick up stuff for free.

shalafi ,

The Crow turned me off as well. The original had basically normal people in it, not fucking models. I already can't relate to the protagonist or his gf.

Do companies store facial and voice recognition data from the thousands of hours of zoom/teams calls that their employees use?

I heard a person call into a show the other day, voice only, and talk about some poor working conditions at a factory. Made me think about how it would probably be so easy for nefarious bosses to be able to identify that person through voice recognition SW with all of the data that comes from us looking directly into cameras and...

shalafi ,

Pull that in my state without both parties consenting, that's a felony. Even if I call a 1-party "it's ok to record 'em" state, they still have to let me know because my state is 2-party. No sane company is fooling with this.

SOURCE: Zoom admin and sysadmin for 10 years.

shalafi ,

When the United States Secretary of State says words like these, they have real meaning. This is not you and I shooting the bull over policy, this is the highest level of diplomacy in America speaking.

You may not have heard it, but Russia got the message loud and clear.

shalafi ,

Poor guy had a permit and still had to spend the night in jail.

"Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish Prison..."

shalafi ,

Better article:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/09/unisuper_google_cloud_outage_caused/

They restored from another cloud service. Were I in charge, I'd still be leery of not having that data on my own drives. I have my Windows libraries mapped to my ghetto RAID 0, and those folders are in turn backed to Google. If all else fails, I have a local backup. And this story reminds me, I haven't installed VEEAM on this new PC...

shalafi ,

🤔 I water mine regular, and they're happy campers.

shalafi , (edited )

Chat GPT:

It sounds like you're describing a scene from the 1994 film "Clear and Present Danger." In the movie, there's a scene where soldiers are pinned down and use explosives rigged to a radio detonator. When the detonator malfunctions, one soldier sacrifices himself by walking towards the explosives with a walkie-talkie to manually trigger them. The film is set during the modern era with then-current military technology, and it features rocky/deserted terrain. The actor you're referring to might be Raymond Cruz, who played Domingo "Ding" Chavez in the film.

Can't find that scene...

2nd try, same prompt:

The movie you're describing sounds like "Courage Under Fire," a 1996 war film directed by Edward Zwick. In the movie, Denzel Washington plays Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Serling, investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Captain Karen Walden, played by Meg Ryan. One of the soldiers involved in the incident you described is portrayed by Matt Damon, who fits the description of a short, young soldier. The scene you mentioned occurs during a flashback sequence in the movie.

Can't find that scene either...

shalafi ,

"1791 was the year it happened. I was 24, younger than you are now, but times were different then. I was a man at that age: the master of a large plantation just south of New Orleans."

shalafi , (edited )

Could a reply be any more perfect?!

Louis: Hot as balls, forever young, immortal, never grow sick, never die, best friend is a literal rock star, has to eat a poodle now and again.

"Woe is me!"

I'm in the woods and swamps a lot. Always think of this line:

"Then on a diet of the blood of snakes, toads, and all the putrid life of the Mississippi..."

shalafi ,

It's easy to get up and march down the street. At the end of the hood are dozens of acres with natural sand trails and a creek.

Or, I throw a kayak or canoe on the truck on get on the water.

shalafi ,

Nah, read about this in the 90's (I think?). The article was about a specific Atlantic fish, I forget, been a long time. Scientists were puzzled as to why the fish were shrinking.

Fisherman are only allowed to keep the big ones, throw the little 'uns back. This creates evolutionary pressure for younger/smaller fish to come to maturity and start reproducing sooner.

shalafi ,

Nailed it. Exactly the answer I read in an article way back when. Commented on it above.

Remove the big fish, only the smaller ones that came to maturity faster get to reproduce.

shalafi ,

Same. And I still steal Prime videos. Why hassle?

shalafi ,

Say it out loud. We're both pirating content we've paid for. What a dumb system.

shalafi ,

Those were the good old days. ABC, NBC and CBS only reported facts. No one dared step out of line for fear of appearing biased. Journalists took great pride in being unbiased. Any whiff of opinion on the nightly news was a career ender.

Hell, a major broadcast metric back then was, "Which news anchor do you trust the most?" And that's with all of them basically saying the same thing.

The networks were powerful, as journalism is meant to be. Now our "facts" are splattered across hundreds of platforms and none give a shit about being seen as biased. Today it's pick your own truth.

shalafi ,

Fahrenheit makes more sense for gauging human comfort. Most people can sense the difference in 1°F. Celsius crams half the degrees between boiling and freezing into one scale.

A difference of 10°F is notable, 10°C is quite notable. 60's is cool, 80's is hot. Now do a 20° difference in C. 16 to 26 doesn't sound like a big difference.

Celsius works better for almost every other useful measurement. Go Kelvin if you must.

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