jasondj @ jasondj @ttrpg.network

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2 yr. ago

I used to have a radio that would use the leftover battery from a Polaroid 600 cassette.

Iirc that was some sort of a lipo and it handled the flash and motors, but had more than enough power after the paltry 10 pictures were taken to power an AM/FM radio.

Originally they were going to make it 418mL but they just ended up with cans of spiked tea.

From a matter of convenience I could actually appreciate what they are trying to do.

Binge watching TV on disc, especially DVD, is frustrating. If you aren’t using the extra content (such as commentary), streaming is much better, as you can binge more episodes at a time or watch certain episodes without having to switch discs.

If I was unaware this was available on a streaming service I had, I’d appreciate the reminder. But I’d appreciate it more at or before the main menu, not during the content, and certainly not more than once (or reset when the disc is removed).

You mean to tell me we can have better healthcare and more guns, and save money doing it?

Are you running for president?

I swear people who talk about waiting have never visited an ER for something mundane because it’s the only option opened after 6, or who never had to meet with a specialist, or get a procedure that requires one.

Story time. January 2019. I have a 6 month old baby with mysterious rash. Pediatrician has us cut out common allergens and he clears up. Tells us to book with a pediatric allergist.

Now, I don’t live in BFE. I live in Southeastern MA. By no means an area underserved by doctors. The doctor refers us to Boston Children’s Hospital. It’s an hour and a half away without traffic, or 2 hours and 3 transfers on public transit.

The first appointment available was in October. Kids 7 months old at this point and already getting appointments for longer than that out.

We get put on a cancellation list and around March we get a call for him to be seen and get a scratch test. We take it, we are going on vacation 3 days after that and we’d love to know exactly what to avoid.

Kid lights up like a damn Christmas tree, but only one food allergy (peanuts) and it comes in like 1.5x the diameter of positive control.

Next, because of his age, they want to get him into an exposure therapy study, but he needs a good challenge first and they would call us when we got back from vacation.

Well, we came back from vacation the first week of March, 2019. BCH was now not scheduling any challenges due to the pandemic. Try again after Easter when the whole thing blows over. Then a month later. And another month.

Eventually they are booking again and after getting through the backlog of people that were cancelled due to the pandemic , the next appointment is 14 months out. By that point he’s too old for the study and we neeed to wait till he’s 4.

Well, now he’s 4. We book an appointment for his food challenge. The old scratch test is no longer good. He needs another one. Next booking for that is 10 months out, again. As luck would have it, though, we called back over and over again and eventually got a booking for his scratch test.

That was back in August. We booked his food challenge while we were in the office. It will be next October, barring any more global catastrophes or blind luck on the cancellation list. He will be five.

It’s amazing to me that there’s a person who can beat me at Smash Bros who has been waiting for a doctors appointment for nearly his entire life. And people tell me healthcare in America is fine. Those motherfuckers don’t know about this. They don’t know how much it costs every time he’s out of school for a couple of days with a fever and the school wants a doctor’s note. They don’t know that after wages, the single biggest part of their compensation package is their employers portion of their health insurance. In fact, depending on their job, it may even be more than their wages.

That last bit is important. People don’t realize how much their healthcare actually costs. They see the pre-tax line item for their share of premiums, never their employers. They see that as separate from the Medicare pre-tax item, and the vision and dental, all of which they don’t see the employers portion. They might see the bills if they got the high deductible plan, but they’re somewhat expected because “they got the ‘cheap’ plan”.

Imagine not having to choose between taking your kid to the doctor for $300 and a sick note for sniffles or letting him tough it out and get marked truant.

That’s the last time I go over the Lecter house for Shepherd Pie.

IME the more focussed/narrow/niche the subject is, the longer the channel will remain quality.

More importantly I think is if the channel owner is someone who truly enjoys their content, or someone who’s just enjoying celebrity and found a way to do it.

This is like Green brothers vs Fein Brothers.

8 bit guy, Nostalgia Nerd, Modern Vintage Gamers…great channels by people who are passionate about their content, still giving out great videos year after year.

AVGN? Ass. Shit. Ass covered in diarrhea shit. He made his fame off being an edgelord and that only works so long. Still check in every now and then but when he had guest appearances by Gilbert Gottfried and Macaulay Cullen he really jumped the shark.

Lots of people made pyramids. There are indigenous pyramids in New England.

Turns out if you want to stack bricks high, the easiest way to do it is to make triangles.

Based on the order in which bits of his brother were removed from him, I’d assume not.

Yeah climate control is where he lost me. My wife’s Honda odyssey has that.

I’m okay with the soft-buttons for memory, or to toggle input, since they are always in fixed locations. In fact soft-buttons are slightly better because they are labeled with the station….though my 2013 Passat has the better compromise of a physical button with the station printed above it.

But HVAC is where I draw the line. I guess the trade off would be that a thermostatically controlled digital systems are probably more simplistic, in their operation and maintenance, than the vacuum-and-linkage systems of yore, and this gives way to multi-zone climate systems in mass market cars. But I still hate that I have to utilize the touchscreen to change which blowers are on or to change the temperature in the rear zone, which blocks GPS if you’re using CarPlay/Android Auto/Nav (I’d assume, I don’t have nav).

They are a lot safer now that we have LKAS and ACC and FCW systems. But that’s moreso in spite of the touchscreens.

I mean, the President-elect must take the Oath of Office as stated in Article II, Section I , Clause 8 of the Constitution:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: – “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”.

So it is on there. But it’s really just a pinky promise between you and a higher power. Whether that be a deity, the government, society/the social contract, or whatever.

There are two problems with this:

1, president Trump did not believe in a higher power than himself. He may present as Christian or even a twice-a-year Christian, but make no doubts, he saw himself as the highest power, answerable to no one

2, the president shouldn’t be answerable to no one. But the system of checks and balances is broken by a party-before-country half of Congress and a stacked and obviously biased and hyper-political Supreme Court (that has at least one seat stolen depending on how consistent you are in your beliefs. More if you think back to Bush v Gore…which is also why I hate people spouting for third parties. If half of the Florida Nader voters held their nose and voted for Gore, there wouldn’t have even been a question. Were their virtues worth the result that came of them? I say the same for the Bernie Bros who couldn’t hold their nose for HRC).

Many of them were either abolitionists or manumissionists. It’s hard to believe we had always been so conflicted since our founding (as many of the northern states had already abolished slavery before ratifying the constitution), yet still managed to have a reasonably functional government essentially made up entirely of rich white dudes who openly hated each others guts.

Also it’s easy to sit here and poo-poo the whole slavery thing now, 300 something years later. Washington got his first slaves from inheritance. When he was 11. That’s not me dismissing it, that’s just me demonstrating how normalized it was.

Having recently replaced my laptop (with a used Lenovo T495) and set it up to dual boot Win11 and Endeavor…Windows 11 was by far the most difficult and time consuming to get from “boot off installation media” to “open functional web browser”. Would have been even easier had I asked Endeavor to just use up all of the partition I left free from installing Windows.

So when I got the T495, I went through the Win 11 OOBE to check it out. Turned it off until I got the Ram upgrade for it in the mail. That was my first problem, because “turn off” doesn’t mean what you think it does in Windows. If you want to get to the Lenovo system settings/boot order/diagnostics, turns out you have to “restart”. Go figure.

Then I did the switcheroo with NVMes in my old T470s and the 495. Took my 1TB out of the 470 into the 495, and took the 256 that came with the 495 and put it in the 470.

Then go to start the 470 and it boots fine to Win 11 but I can’t login with my PIN because my PIN is now expired. I’d enter a password but it never even let me do that. I tried to connect to my wifi and it wouldn’t connect.

Obviously this is because the host system changed and the TPM isn’t there anymore, but still frustrating to not be able to use the laptop offline just the same. I ended up just formatting and installing Endeavor on that, too. This was just where I finally realized that “reboot” means “give me the option to change boot order this time”, because I couldn’t get back into BIOS after it booted to windows.

That’s cool. I imagine I’m a billionaire.

All the states offshore the blood poisoning to China.

I think you miss the actual point.

The actual point is to expose religious hypocrisy. Not only does forcing the states hand to put the statue there the first place achieve that goal, but in a rare and very much anticipated double-dip maneuver, they also get to expose the hypocrisy in its vandalism.

TST does this through a lot of expert-level trolling. You may not see it as such but it really is.

That’s not a bad thing. Honestly their approach is fucking amazing and it works. Trolling isn’t itself a bad thing. It’s a tool that can be used. It can be used poorly or well. And for good or bad. TST is using it well, for good. Good for them.

ETA, maybe “expected” isn’t the best word. But it’s certainly an opportunity that they can and will take advantage of. I don’t think TST sees the vandalism as an expressly negative thing, but rather a real thick silver lining. If anything, it actually helps their message.

I thought the sarcasm of my first two paragraphs was heavily laid on, but I suppose not.

I don’t disagree with you, however the majority of electoral college and senate voters agree with my first two paragraphs.

We are insistent that we must do things differently. This American Exceptionalism, as if there’s something fundamentally different between humans born inside its walls than the ones born out.

If we must be insistent that we’re different, we should at least be consistent in its application. The preamble basically implies that the ideal is exactly what you and the rest of my post is saying.

In the modern world a countries greatest strength is its ability to utilize its economies of scale. If for no other reason we should at least realize that the existing systems are unsustainably wasteful.

That’s communism and we are a capitalist country.

The right thing to do under a capitalist economy is to buy the government and give yourself a monopoly.

This isn’t a natural monopoly, it’s protected by legislature and cronyism.

A proper capitalist approach to utilities, then the pipes and wires need to be considered no different then the road they are installed on. Recoup money by selling metered wholesale access to the carriers and utilities.

But we don’t have proper capitalism. We have this bastardized American version that sucks.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

We settled it before the damn constitution even started. How these nitwits in DC don’t see how publicly run infrastructure doesn’t provide for the common defense or promote general welfare is beyond me. But I guess running water, heat, affordable healthcare, and an ability to communicate with each other and the rest of the world doesn’t count under that, somehow.

Maybe if the courts took the founders intent from the Prologue instead of the secret letters to their mistresses, we’d have a functional system. But that’s just my opinion.