• 6 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • One problem

    Batteries.

    I’ve used old devices as many things: security cameras, a form of intercom, digital picture frames, etc. The real problem is that the batteries eventually go bad, and become dangerous.

    For the few devices that have realistically replaceable batteries, that’s no big deal, but how many of those are left now?

    No thanks to the potential fire, I’ll pass. The few devices I have left that I can swap batteries out are becoming harder to find new batteries for as well, so that’s an issue beyond their anemic hardware (I’m talking really old tablets at this point)



  • I can’t wait to develop my natural immunity to polio! Or smallpox!

    The flu, why, without the vaccine you can develop a natural immunity every year, twice a year if you really want to!

    Legit dude, what the fuck do you think “natural” immunity is? It’s catching whatever it is, being sick, and surviving it. You specifically chose colds and the flu as examples, and they’re the worst possible examples because they mutate so fast you never actually achieve immunity to anything; the version you have resistance to might come around again, or it might not, but you damn sure will eventually run across a strain that your body isn’t equipped for.

    Like, I get that vaccines are confusing to someone with little education, but this is the internet age, you can look up the terms you’re using and make sure you aren’t fucking up your entire point. Like, the time it took you to type the post up, you could have looked up what vaccines actually do, and why they are/were the single greatest achievement of the human species.

    You can go and get a shot of something stable enough and never get sick from it, ever in some cases. In others, you might get sick but it’ll be a few bad days instead of a week or more of misery (as is sometimes how the flu vaccines end up because of the aforementioned mutations, but other viruses are just a bit harder to stop entirely).

    So, nah, fuck your natural “immunity”, that’s just a recipe for lost health and time better spent on something like reading up on why vaccines are fucking awesome, even in the rare cases of allergies or bad reactions.










  • Nothing, as long as everyone involved is aware and agrees.

    Negotiate everything ahead of time, be prepared to also have to enforce the agreements periodically since anyone making that kind of transactional merger of lives is going to be prone to wanting to renegotiate when life throws the unexpected at the couple.

    Just be aware that marrying into wealth means you’re going to have to bring more to the table than just being a stay at home wife. Even upper middle class folks that are willing to take a trophy wife damn well expect them to be a trophy, not just a random asshole off the street. The higher the income bracket, the more you’ll need to offer for a transactional relationship.

    Think about it. With enough money, a random woman or man can adopt on their own, so they don’t need a spouse for kids. They can hire a surrogate as far as that goes if it just has to be bio kids; then hire nannies. They can throw money around for sex, for housekeeping, even conversation. So you’d have to be damn good at a lot of things to make it more beneficial than just spending directly.

    If someone has the kind of income to fully support a partner, and it isn’t a love match, they’re going to expect you to hold up your end of the bargain. If that’s head twice a day every day, and you have allergies that make it impossible during the summer, shit ain’t gonna go well. And there is almost certainly going to be a minimum amount of sexual activity expected. Might not be much, but unless your rich partner is asexual, or otherwise eschews sex, it’s going to be part of the transaction, and it’s just a fact that customers expect prostitutes to perform for the money.

    You gotta work that out, what happens if one or both of you get sick, become disabled, change significantly on a physical level, etc. Hammer that shit out before there’s a legal binding.


  • Sync on my main tablet, because it has the best 2 column layout for my needs.

    Connect on my phone where 2 column isn’t really a big factor, with summit as an alternative on there because I never have decided which of the two I prefer.

    I don’t use lemmy on laptop/desktop because I dislike the experience via browser. It would be fine for passive scrolling I guess, but even with the various front end options, I run into more hassles than it’s worth when even the meh apps handle lemmy better and I just don’t need anything that could be gained via browser.


  • Kinda. Twice, depending on how you look at it. I did one of those “you can’t fire me, I already quit” things. The boss was just clueless and didn’t comprehend that when someone walks out at end of shift and says they’re not coming back, that’s quitting.

    The other time was due to a switch in managers at a fast food joint when I was a kid.

    One manager took a vacation, the fill in didn’t like long haired guys and looked for any excuse. He kinda got one, when I was late for a shift. Took the opportunity to say i was fired. Didn’t actually have the authority to do it, so it wouldn’t have counted even if the actual manager hadn’t come back and reversed it, though I didn’t know that at the time.


  • Ngl, that would likely be me.

    Not just because I like chickens, though that’s a factor.

    In my neighborhood, if you go the posted speed limit going one direction in the section that my house is on, you’d be going slow enough to be able to correct and not hit an animal. Going the other direction, as long as you don’t slam the pedal down, it’s the same.

    So anyone hitting any critter with the possible exception of squirrels is 99.9~% likely to be doing something they shouldn’t. I’ve gotten in altercations about it before because we have not just a lot of pets in the area, but kids. So some fucking moron is going to hear about out when they’re showing exactly how fucking stupid they are.

    But, I also happen to kinda know all the neighborhood chickens. Not necessarily on a first name, come her for petting basis, but I know which birds live where. Since I also have my own, and would gladly curb stomp any motherfucker that fucked with them, I would likely at least lay hands on a motherfucker for killing any of the neighborhood birds by being a moron. I’m old, but my tolerance for fuckery like that keeps getting lower as I age.

    Accidents do happen, but some jackass trying to be all badass by speeding in a residential area can fuck right off and die. And yes, I’m talking about you, Robert, you absolute prat. Jackass. Done told you once. Fuckwit.

    Anyway, yeah, chances are high the lady was justified as long as the dude is still alive


  • Our old pong console. I don’t know if it still works because it’s been boxed up for over a decade at this point.

    Oldest in use? Probably my old texas instruments graphing calculator, but it’s dying. I got it back in the early nineties for college, and my kid was using it last year with homework, but the screen is failing and it sometimes just freezes until you pull and replace the batteries. So only kinds in use, and barely hanging on.

    My VCR is newer and still sees use rarely, but was used daily for a few years in the early naughties.

    Wait! The phonograph! It’s still functional and my dad got it in the early eighties, so it’s older than the pong console, but I think calling it electronics is dubious, so I dunno if it counts. But it’s the oldest functional electric powered thing we have that I know of.


  • Brobdingnagian

    It’s a reference to the giants of Brobdingnag from Gulliver’s travels. It means that something is absurdly large. It is also a large word making it delightful in that way. It also rolls off the tongue musically.

    Coming in a close second is petrichor or petrichorian.

    Petrichor is the word for the smell of the earth right after a rain. Petrichorian obviously means that something smells similar, or can be used to reference petrichor. I love the word for multiple reasons. First that it just sounds wonderful. Second that there’s a word for describing this one specific smell that is a universal human experience to anyone not anosmic out of all other smells that are similarly universal.

    Third that it approaches onomatopoeia on that it sounds like the way the smell smells. The earthy petri combined with the grounded ring of chor (pronounced like core, and references that the smell is a core thing of rain and earth) is the verbal sound of the way the smell tickles the nose and makes many people walk around sniffing like hounds on a walk through the woods after weeks in the city.

    Petri chor. It’s like the tinging of raindrops off of a piece of granite or marble in the mountains while you shelter under a tree and revel in the scents of it all.

    I mean, it’s no Brobdingnagian, but as words go petrichor is a bit magical. It invokes and evokes almost as much as tintinnabulation, but does so for a smell, which is so much harder to do. That, btw, is an excellent word: tintinnabulation. Of the bells, bells, bells, which may be the most enjoyable poem to read aloud, ever.

    There’s some other words that have the ability to invoke phantoms of their related senses. Cadaverine and putrescine come to mind; both names of chemicals involved in the putrescent smells of decomposition of flesh. Knowing their meaning brings forth memories of their smells. Not quite as effective in that, because you do have to know what they mean for the incantation to work, but still quite wonderful words. Sulfurous is similarly scent summoning. Flinty works as well, but is less musical as it resonates in the oral cavity and echoes off the teeth.

    Look, I can do this all day. There’s a word for people like me: logophile. There’s a fancy word for people that are into words. How awesome is that?!

    Oh, that ?! Even has a word! The interrobang! Ain’t English awesome?!

    And yes, at this point, the entire comment is sigogglin’ (or sigoggly, or sigoggledy depending on where in the Appalachians you are), which is a twisty and crooked word for something that is twisty and crooked.

    Loquacious, no?


  • Believe in it?

    Nothing to believe in, it’s a word that describes an evaluation of events on a subjective level.

    Person does bad thing, bad thing happens, other people decide that the bad thing was good because it happened to the bad person.

    Secondary to that, they believe that the bad person’s actions led to the bad thing happening to them.

    Comeuppance isn’t the same thing as fate, karma, or doom, all of which do require abelief in external forces. It just means that people think any bad things that happened are appropriate