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2 yr. ago

  • My wife stayed in a rural town near Shichigahama for a week. Nobody spoke English except a few students. But the citizens did speak Japanese louder and slower, showing that's a universal trait. It actually helped, as my wife knew SOME Japanese.

  • I got burned too many times. Often they did substitutes that were anything but. For example, I am diabetic, and ordered diet soda, and often got regular. I ordered kosher hot dogs, got chicken franks. Salted butter when I asked for unsalted, wrong type of rice, and after a few of those, I gave up.

  • I knew a few survivalists who walked the Appalachian trail. The first hurdle is... humans are not meant to be solitary. We do best in groups, with division of labor, which multiply force. But that's not the question. As many already said: calorie-dense food is really hard to come by in the wild. You have to know what to eat, when to eat it, how to prepare it, and how to avoid depleting it. You also compete with other forces of nature: not just wild animals, but bacteria and insects. You have to know when to rest (most of the time), and how to plan ahead, and plan ahead flexibly.

    Me, personally, I know a LOT about how to survive. Enough to know I'd be dead in a week at most. Part of the problem is I am dependent on insulin and other medications to live. But even if that wasn't an issue, I don't know enough to survive alone. I know enough to know that. "Hiding in the woods" means "I am prepared to die in the woods very soon, but was too cowardly to jump off a precipice or something for a quicker end."

  • Just in case people actually think this is a good idea: do not. Plastic, uncontrolled spray, and blowback is just really shooting uncontrolled fire in all directions. It works in your cartoon world head, but I know someone who tried and suddenly the failure (like escaping fumes around the holder, gasoline versus rubber gaskets meant for water) make you go, "Oh. Right." Thankfully, they only got first degree burns on their face, head, hands, and arms, a weird balding patterns, and missing eyebrows. Thankfully, someone had an ABC fire extinguisher nearby. Yes, alcohol was involved.

    The ones I have seen that work involve metal tubing and a secondary mixing of forced air along with a special fuel. https://www.recoilweb.com/flamethrowers-once-tools-of-war-now-toys-67763.html

  • Eminent Domain, I think it's called. I know around the DC area, a lot of people lost houses, businesses, and properties to make way for more highways in the last 50 years.

  • Larry Niven covered this in 1974's, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" which discusses the impracticality of Superman/Clark Kent having sex.

    The problem is this. Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual intercourse show that orgasm resembles "a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack." One loses control over one's muscles.

    Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he do to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit?

    Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to achieve greater and greater penetration. Remember also that we are dealing with kryptonian muscles.

    Superman would literally crush LL's body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.

    https://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html

  • I am not a gamer so my fans only spin up when the vents clog with dust or I am doing some high end rendering. I'd never do water cooling because a leak could kill everything. I have lived through floods.

  • Having worked for both, I would say that most government offices are eternal, whereas private companies can vanish quickly. Sometimes without warning. Its really hard to kill a government office.

    Makes me wonder, how did a necessary office survive during a junta or an overthrow? For example, how did the office of a postal clerk change from 1925 to 1955 in, say, Berlin? How does the average Salvadoran DMV worker view the changes in El Salvador since 1980?

    How was a tax office run in ancient Babylon versus a modern one today?

    I bet there's some weird insights into human civilization to be found in those stories.

  • Usually about 10-30. It depends. I have a minimum of 6010 tabs open for stuff I check several times a day, like mail, news feeds, and such. Then I have a few working projects, like Google docs. Then some "temporary tabs" that expand from 10 to 30, as a reminder of tasks I have to complete or get back to someone on, only to shrink them down later in the day.

  • It's great for podcasts or morning news, I would imagine. Like pop in the shower while you listen to NPR or the local news stuff. I remember as a kid, listening to morning radio with traffic reports, weather, and current news to talk about during your workday.

  • The ironic thing is that they because successful because of civilization and pack mentality, but are so conceited, they think all that infrastructure (public roads, doctors, restaurants, etc) exists simply because they exist. It's weirdly how toddlers see the universe, and why tantrums between the two groups are so similar.

  • Moe (萌え, Japanese pronunciation: [mo.e] ⓘ), sometimes romanized as moé, is a Japanese word that refers to feelings of strong affection mainly towards characters in anime, manga, video games, and other media directed at the otaku market. Moe, however, has also gained usage to refer to feelings of affection towards any subject.

    Moe is related to neoteny and the feeling of "cuteness" a character can evoke. The word moe originated in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Japan and is of uncertain origin, although there are several theories on how it came into use. Moe characters have expanded through Japanese media, and the concept has been commercialised. Contests, both online and in the real world, exist for moe-styled things, including one run by one of the Japanese game rating boards. Various notable commentators such as Tamaki Saitō, Hiroki Azuma, and Kazuya Tsurumaki have also given their take on moe and its meaning.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_(slang)

  • I am not wild about any of them, but center left, bottom left are my least annoying. I'll just change it to something else when i go to Plasma 6 (which I started testing, and while overall it looks great, and is pretty snappy, the Neon Testing is seriously unstable in other areas -- but they warn you about that, so that's on me).

  • "They sure don't make slaves like they used to! Last batch of imports were dead on arrival from UPS. And the ones that we DO have want food. Like EVERY. DAY. I gave them food last Christmas, which I don't REALLY have to do, mind you, but I'm all Christian Holy and shit, and they still just bitch and whine that they need food daily. Bunch of entitled freeloaders."

    "But Bob, you lost you last batch due to dehydration. You need to give them water every day, too."

    "There is a MOTHERFUCKING OCEAN only a TWO HOUR DRIVE from here. They have EIGHT HOURS A DAY they don't work for me, but no, they just lie around napping."

    "But they are chained up and can't drive. Besides, once the flies are living in their wounds, that isn't napping anymore."

    "You sound like one of them liberals! Always spending brain power on an excuse instead of good, hard work."

  • Bank of America. I have dealt with them on a corporate level, multimillion dollar assets, mind you, and seen gross incompetence and negligence that scared me. I'm talking about constant insecure data practices, inconsistent rules, terrible record keeping, and asset mismanagement.

    The biggest weakness appeared to be how they treated their employees. Our "local branch" went through multiple managers in less than a year, and when we did business with the "employees du jour" in our quarterly meetings, they all acted like scared college students. Unprepared, inexperienced, and some cocksure with blatantly wrong information. And some downright unprofessional. For example, we had a meeting where they kept pronouncing our company name wrong, spelled our name wrong a different way, and kept adding parts to it. Like:

    "Okay, as president of Reginald Incorporated--"

    "Remington. Like the gun."

    "Regingun international - -

    "No no. REM MING TON. Remington."

    "Right. Remington International - -

    "Incorporated. There is no 'international' in our name."

    "But you're a Japanese company?"

    "No. We're American. We do business with the Japanese."

    "Oh. Huh. Okay, as president of Remington Incorporated of Japan - -"

    "NO. Just 'Remington Incorporated.' That's it."

    "Oh wow. Sorry. I'm going to have to fix that on this paperwork, then."

    "Yes. That's why we're here."

  • I had a boss who never gave me a raise, didn't believe in reviews, and had long rambling meetings where he just said whatever he was thinking. Sometimes it seemed he forgot we were there, and he'd start arguing with himself. He was more "the insecure nerd who got the CTO position because he was the only IT guy when the company started." His management was so incompetent, that they called him "Tallest," based on the Invader Zim joke.

  • Since time is motion, the atmosphere would freeze solid around you, suffocating you instantly.

  • Because in your world, mobile home trailer parks are free or even exist in urban areas. Come on. A studio apartment around here starts at $1600/mo. The average home sale price in this area in 2022 was $580k. At 10% down, 30 year fixed, at 6.5% interest, after taxes and fees, that's a mortgage payment of about $4000/mo. Plus about $300-600/mo if you have an HOA/COA. Plus repairs as needed.

    Your net take home pay at $150k, after taxes only, is about $9k, making your mortgage 45% of your income. That doesn't include health insurance, retirement, or any other paycheck deductions.

    It doesn't include transportation: payments, gas, repairs, tolls, or insurance.

    That doesn't include utilities: gas, electric, water, trash, phone, or internet.

    That doesn't include food, supplies, clothing, or personal care.

    And it sure as shit doesn't include medical issues. God help you if you're a diabetic.

    And kids? What are you, fucking Rockefeller? Daycare, schooling (yes, even public schools cost money because of all the extras they ask you to provide like supplies, lunch, etc), and all their needs. At at least 16 years before they might be able to pay rent, that's a long time for a free tenant sharing your resources.

    Plus all of life's extra costs.

    And looking at Zillow, I can't find any properties within 10 miles of me going for less than $600k. They got townhomes for 1.2 million just down the block. $580k for a house is gonna be hard to find, and probably not in the best condition. Doable, possibly, but not easy.

  • Yeah, while the movie had its flaws, notably pacing, my wife and sister lost it at "big blue penis," and I was like, "what? THAT was what you focused on?"

    I still felt the movie was pretty true to the message and had some memorable scenes and lines.

    “None of you seem to understand. I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me!”

  • Similar for me: when my hearing started to go in my 30s, the doctor said "you already know how to lip read." I didn't believe him until he showed me "am I saying 'top' or 'cup'?" and if he had his mouth covered, I couldn't tell which one he was saying.