Fondots

@Fondots@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨iFixit says the Switch 2 is even harder to repair than the original⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  You could use pliers, you could very carefully hit the corners of the head in a clockwise direction with a hammer, you could spend a lot of time training the strength in your hand and arm to tighten it by hand, you could use a dremel, saw, or file to cut a slot into it and tighten it with a screwdriver

  But it’s a lot easier to use a wrench.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨iFixit says the Switch 2 is even harder to repair than the original⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Is it easier or harder to tighten a bolt without a wrench?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨iFixit says the Switch 2 is even harder to repair than the original⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  The more difficult it is to repair something, the less possible it becomes to repair it.

  Damn-near anything is possible to repair with the right training and equipment but there is a very wide spectrum between what an average person can do with tools they can easily pick up at any hardware store for cheap and a little common sense and some YouTube videos to guide them, and repairs that require specialist knowledge and equipment.

  When something is made more difficult to repair, it slips further into that specialist end of the spectrum, so it’s possible for less people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I have/had a good friend who is a devout Muslim, was born in Egypt but moved to the US when he was very young. His father was from there, his mother was American, white, and I’m not totally clear whether or not she converted but was definitely not Muslim when they met. From what I understand his father got a lot of shit from his family over that.

  Over the years, my friend butted heads with dad a lot. At one point his dad wanted to move the family to Egypt, basically because he never fully adjusted to life in the US. My friend stood up to him, because all of his younger siblings had only ever lived here, they had friends and lives here and it would be kind of shitty to uproot all of that, so he kicked my friend out of the house, and wouldn’t let him see his siblings for probably over a year.

  So that was always a threat he kept dangling over my friends head- Fall in line or I’ll move the family back to Egypt and cut you off from your siblings.

  He also disapproved of any sort of american style dating, and forced my friend to break up with several girlfriends, even if they were Muslim.

  One day my friend just totally ghosted all of us. Unfriended everyone on Facebook, leaving pretty much only people with middle Eastern names, stopped replying to calls or texts, etc. a couple of us went to his house to check on him, and did actually make contact with him there but he refused to answer any questions, basically just leaving it at her wasn’t going to be friends with any of us anymore.

  We know at that point he’d been seeing a girl he’d been keeping secret from his dad, she later reached out to us because he also ghosted her.

  We’re pretty sure what happened is that his father found out that he was dating her and had another blow-up, threatening to kick him out and cut him off from his siblings for good.

  Not every Muslim family is the same of course, some wouldn’t have any issues with this sort of situation, in some it will cause varying degrees of family drama, in some it can even get physically abusive, and in a small handful of cases we might even be talking about honor killings.

  Where you have different cultures and religions coming into play, this kind of thing can get complicated, it’s not always so simple as “it’s a free country” although it should be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My mom tells me I should cut dad off for cheating on her, am I a bad person for not wanting to do so?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Mist people cheat,

  Assuming that’s supposed to be “most people”

  There have been a lot of studies on this over the years, and the data is of course easy to skew because a lot of people are going to be reluctant to admit to their cheating, or people having different ideas about what constitutes “cheating” but every study I can find that seems credible, it seems to hover at more like 25% of people cheat, give or take maybe about 10%

  Even when you look for people who have experienced a partner cheating on them most of the studies I can find have it at below 50%

  You can get into the weeds and probably find some cases where most people in certain demographics cheat if you want to cherry-pick your data a bit.

  So no, most people don’t cheat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can deliberate noise harassment still be a crime if it's done every day from 7:30 AM till 10:30-11:30 PM?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  And I do want to just reiterate that the harassment angle is really what you want to play up with the police.

  I don’t know the specifics of how policing and such works in your area, but there’s a pretty big difference between “my neighborhood is an inconsiderate jerk who plays his music too loud” and “my neighbor is intentionally targeting me with loud music and sirens to disturb our sleep”

  The first one is a noise complaint, that’s low priority for the police and depending on where you are maybe not even a police issue but something like code enforcement.

  The second one is a police issue, it’s harassment. This will vary from one jurisdiction to another, but where I work depending on some of the details I might enter that as “suspicious activity” or even a “disturbance” (basically a fight) which should get police there with some urgency.

  And some of the other things you’ve said, like him walking around outside with a frying pan, I could definitely make an argument for putting in those calls as a “wellbeing check” or “suspicious person,” and if he’s acting particularly threatening maybe even “armed subject,” or possibly as a psych emergency to also send EMS to hopefully get him taken to a hospital for a psych eval.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to get to Santa Claus beard status⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a long, bushy beard (and curly handlebar moustache)

  First of all, the hard truth is that not everyone can grow a decent beard. Vitamins, diet, etc. certainly won’t hurt, but at a certain point you’re up against genetics, and if your DNA says your beard is going to be thin and patchy, there’s not much you can do about that except maybe hair transplants.

  Age plays a factor, I have a friend who couldn’t grow a decent beard until he was about 30.

  Now assuming you’ve actually got enough hair growing in the right places

  Most important is keeping it trimmed and neat-looking.

  Until you’ve got a couple inches of beard going, I think it’s best to keep your neck shaved, pick a point maybe an inch or two above your Adams apple, and keep everything below that shaved. Once you’ve got some beard going you can stop doing that, no one can see it anyway and at some point the neckbeard just becomes more beard.

  Similarly, clean up your cheeks. You probably have a few scraggly hairs growing up above the rest of your beard, shave those off.

  If you’re a little brave, a straight razor is pretty nice for making some clean lines, you can be really precise with them. They make ones that use a disposable Blade if you’re not into all the sharpening and stopping that goes with a traditional straight razor, I have one that uses a double edge blade snapped in half (they break very cleanly) but most of the time I just use a regular safety razor, or a disposable or cartridge razor would do the trick just fine

  Especially when you’re starting off, a beard trimmer or hair clippers are gonna be your best friend so you can trim it all down to an even length.

  Figure out what you’re doing with your sideburns. I shave my head, and ideally I like to have them fade into that, but I’m cheap and lazy so I only go to my barber to have that done a couple times a year when I need to look good for a wedding or whatever. Most of the time I just take my clippers to them and try to make them shorter up top and longer towards the bottom, it takes some practice and playing with the guards and such, and I’ve actually gotten pretty good at freehanding it, but it’s not the fancy fade my barber can manage.

  Once you’ve got some length, things get kind of easy, I tend to go for a longer, sort rectangular shape to my beard, I brush it out, and basically just cut off anything that isn’t where I want it to be and any split ends d notice.

  For soap/shampoo/conditioner/beard oil/balm, etc. you kind of need to figure out what works for you and your hair/skin type. My hair and skin are pretty forgiving, I could probably just about shower in acetone and be none the worse for it. I shower with doctor bronners for no particular reason other than I find their peppermint to be refreshing and I can buy it in a gallon jug, and since it’s pretty concentrated a little goes a long way and I don’t have to buy soap for a couple years, and I don’t personally find any need to use any conditioner or beard balm/oil, etc. Other people find that Dr Bronners it really dries out their skin/hair so YMMV. I also find that it’s pretty good at stripping the wax out of my moustache.

  I do sometimes use beard balm/oil for special occasions to help tame my beard and give it a little extra shine. I rarely buy it for myself, I find that once you have a beard it tends to be one of those things people gift you at Christmas or whatever.

  I use Firehouse Moustache Wax (specifically their Wacky Tacky) to curl my moustache. That’s a very stiff wax if you don’t intend to curl it. I haven’t tried their other waxes but I’m sure they work fine for general styling. It’s the second wax I’ve tried, I find it works well, and I haven’t felt the need to experiment further. The first one I tried because it was readily available at CVS at the time was Clubman, that stuff is garbage. Doesn’t hold well, and if you get even the slightest bit wet or sweaty it washes right out. I also remember it having some sort of scent, which I’m not particularly a fan of for something that lives right below my nose.

  If you’re not going for a full Snidely Whiplash curl, some other lighter wax or maybe pomade is probably worth keeping around to help tame and style it a bit. I have a tin of Murray’s pomade I keep around for that purpose though rarely use it. A little goes a long way with that, otherwise your beard gets kind of greasy and sticky.

  I spend very little time on my beard. I brush it every day, wash it when I shower (usually every day, but I’ve been known to skip a day or two here and there,) clean up my cheeks when I shave my head (once or twice a week) and style my moustache mostly every day (it only takes a couple minutes, the Wacky Tacky is very stiff, I rub some into my 'stache, run a comb through it to help distribute it through a little better, and then pretty much just mold it into place with my fingers,) and do a little trimming maybe every couple weeks or when I notice it’s getting a bit wild looking.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can deliberate noise harassment still be a crime if it's done every day from 7:30 AM till 10:30-11:30 PM?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know the laws or systems in place in the UK for this, but I work in 911 dispatch in the US, and I can’t imagine that something like this is too radically different across the pond

  As long as the cops in your area are fairly responsive (I know a couple departments in my county will take their sweet-ass time responding to a noise complaints) call every time he does something.

  Yes, you’re going to get sick of it, but more importantly the cops are going to get sick of it too. They really don’t want to be out at your neighbors house over this every day/week/month/8moths, or however often he does it. Before too long he’s going to get hit with fines and other consequences. Once or twice they might issue a warning

  Speak to the officers every time. Make sure they’re seeing and hearing what you’re seeing and hearing, get it on video if you have to, don’t give them an opportunity to write it off because they drove by the house and “didn’t hear anything.”

  Tell them he’s schizophrenic, refusing to take his meds, tell them he’s harassing you, that last part is important, tell them you want to file a report for harassment, discuss what your options are- pressing changes, restraining orders, whatever they may be, and pursue them. You’ll probably have paperwork and court dates and such, it sucks, but that’s how the process works.

  Be prepared for retaliation from him in some form. Get security cameras, try to avoid any contact with him if you can avoid it. He already has delusions that you’re conspiring against him, and having the cops show up at his door repeatedly are going to feed right into that, it’s not out of the question that he might get violent, or start vandalizing your property.

  Continue to report anything he says and does to you, no matter how small, each incident you document builds a stronger case for more consequences. Every time he accuses your brother of making wolf noises, or hacking his phone, any weird interaction at all, make sure you’re documenting it with the police.

  Try to catch his niece when she’s over, explain the situation, explain that you’re going to have to take legal action if it doesn’t stop, see if she can possibly talk sense into him, or possibly if she or other family might be able to pursue some sort of involuntary commitment for him (read up on your local laws about that, I have no idea what they’re like in the UK except that I think it’s called “sectioning” over there, I suspect that you wouldn’t be able to start that process, it would probably need to be done by a relative, the police, or a medical/mental health professional)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you can't buy it, make it: EN25 corner that fits HDMI cables.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m no electrician, I don’t run a lot of cable, I’m just a maybe-slightly-more-competent-than-average DIY homeowner type

  Personally though, I like having cables run through conduits when possible for the ease of running them. I’m not particularly worried about water or mice or anything, it’s just a lot easier to just drop a cable down a pipe or suck a string through them with a plastic bag and shop vac than to try to fish them through the walls, especially anything I might want to upgrade at some point down the line when a new standard comes out like Ethernet or HDMI.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WTF is a rural town in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a few other weird situations that can come into play too, like mailing addresses, census designated places, neighborhoods, etc.

  My town doesn’t have its own post office, so my mail gets handled by the post office in a neighboring town, so my mailing address says that town instead of the municipality I actually live in, so more often than not if I have to give out my address that’s what I’m saying.

  I also live in a 'census designated place" basically an area that’s officially recognized as having its own identity. It’s basically just a fancy nickname for my neighborhood, so some people in this area will say that instead of the name of the municipality or the mailing address.

  It’s actually pretty rare for anyone to give the name of my municipality when asked for what town they live in unless we’re talking about local politics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WTF is a rural town in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of this is going to be subjective and depend on your personal frame of reference, as well as local laws and customs that can vary a lot around the country

  In general, in normal casual conversation, most Americans are going to refer to a municipality as a “town” unless they’re in a big city. Legally, that municipality might be considered a city, town, township, borough, home rule municipality, village, etc. but unless it’s a big city we’re probably going to refer to it as a town most of the time

  There’s also, in some areas, unincorporated communities that don’t have an actual municipal government, but if there’s a relatively dense area, we might go ahead and refer to that area as a town.

  Some parts of the US do have some sort of legal definition for “village,” in others it might be used informally to refer to a small “quaint” town, or part of the town.

  There’s also the distinction of, for example, being “in a town” vs “in town” or “downtown”

  Most of us who don’t live in a big city would say that we live in a town, meaning the municipality we live in. Somewhat less of us live “in town” meaning something more like the denser, more “urban” parts of town, probably resembling what you think of as a village, and “downtown” would refer to something like the area around the main street or main commercial area where you might find stores, restaurants, bars, etc.

  So a “rural town” is basically any sort of town in a rural area. I’m not sure if there’s any sort of a legal definition for a rural town, but in general I’d say that if a town is surrounded by woods and/or farmland and you can’t trace an unbroken path of suburban sprawl from it back to a major city it’s rural.

  Some of those rural towns can actually be fairly big and urbanized, but they’re otherwise in a rural area in their own little bubble so we’d still consider it to be a rural town.

  As far as town vs “small town” that’s kind of subjective.

  The town I grew up in is often referred to as a small town, largely because it’s physically pretty small, almost exactly 1 square mile, but that 1 mile is pretty densely populated, I think the population is around 9-10k people currently, it’s just a couple miles outside of the nearest major city, and pretty well-urbanized itself, connected to several major highways, was once a big manufacturing town but is now pretty gentrified, with a solid handful of 10+ floor office buildings. People from more rural areas probably wouldn’t agree that it’s a “small town” but people from a bit city probably would think so, and for those of us “townies” whose families have lived here for a few generations still feel like it has a small town feel, even if the newer transplants don’t all share that feeling.

  The town I currently live in isn’t quite rural, but it’s getting there. I’m towards the edge of the suburbs now, maybe even into the exurbs. The town is physically much larger, but only has about half the population. That small, less dense population makes it still feel kind of small-towny.

  Also worth noting, my town doesn’t really have any sort of a “downtown” area, no real main street to go walking around or anything. We have a few businesses and stores and such roughly clustered in the same area, but it’s not a cohesive thing that feels like a “town” or what you might recognize as a “village.” I would normally may this, but if I said I was going “into town” for something, most people around me would probably understand that I’m going to one of our neighboring towns that are a bit more built-up

  So some combination of physical size, population, population density, and a curtain je ne sais quoi are what makes a town a small town.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where does technology come from in Star Wars?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In the Lord of the Rings, what is the explanation for swords and other metal goods?

  At some point in the past, the arts of smelting, smithing, casting were discovered, refined over the centuries, different races and cultures advanced them in different ways, and eventually led to swords, within shirts, magic rings, etc.

  Same thing with star wars, in-universe they have tens of thousands of years of history, I think canonically the old Republic was founded 25-or-so thousand years ago, if you go back that far in real earth human history and you’re pretty much at the point where a handful of weird wolves are starting to get comfortable enough with humans to let us start domesticating them.

  And at that point in the star wars timeline, space travel and other advanced technology is already pretty well-established, so there’s probably at least that long again of incremental technological advancements leading up to that point.

  Basically they just got a massive head-start on us

  As far as how and where the technology is made, we get little glimpses of it here and there, droid factories on Geonosis, corelian shipyards, various mechanics, scrapyards, tinkerers, etc.

  But that’s all just kind of backdrop. Star wars is a space opera adventure thing, not a mockumentary about the history of lightsabers and hyperspace drives, or a how-its-made for blaster pistols and gonk droids. It wouldn’t make sense for most star wars media to really go into depth about that kind of stuff and probably would piss people off if they did (not that most star wars fans don’t exist in a perpetual state of being angry at star wars about something anyway)

  You wouldn’t go into a Fast and Furious movie expecting a whole history and mechanics lesson on automobiles, the movies are focusing on a handful of people who (race cars? Fight terrorists with cars? I really don’t know I’ve actually never seen any of them) there’s a whole in-universe world around them where all of those things happened/are happening out of sight and out of mind but it’s not directly relevant to the plot so it gets kind of glossed over, you can just assume most of the history and engineering stuff has been handled by people somewhere off-screen at some point in time.

  Same with star wars, there’s untold trillions or more people scattered across millions of inhabited planets working dead-end jobs making widgets that have built on millennia of science and technology, but the stories focus on a handful of freedom fighters, smugglers, soldiers, warrior monks, etc. who mostly just use those things and probably don’t have much more idea how their hyperdrive works than you do about the alternator in your car.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The fact that some dogs are used to the groomers and some aren't is wild.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My dog is very aggressive/reactive to other dogs.

  We got her when she was just a few weeks shy of a year old, from a family friend who rescued her from some random guy on Facebook who basically said “someone come take this dog or I’m gonna put her down”

  I don’t know much about that first guy except that he was obviously a piece of shit. He was also at least pretty neglectful, she has a pretty low maintenance coat, occasional brushing is about all she needs, but apparently she was filthy and her fur was even a little matted when they rescued her. I also suspect he was kind of abusive, because for a while she was kind of afraid of people holding broomsticks, fishing rods, etc. and I can’t think of any good reason for that except that he hit her with something.

  Again, she was still a puppy, less than a year old.

  So needless to say she probably didn’t get any kind of socialization with him.

  The people we got her from kind of suspect that he got her as payment for a drug deal or something along those lines.

  She’s a very high-energy and intelligent breed (a malinois, she’s actually pretty lazy for her breed, but that still makes her more energetic than just about any other dog I’ve ever met) very driven, incredibly mouthy (we’ve long since trained it out of her, but I can tell that she still sometimes wants to bite me in a playful way)

  The people we got her from are very nice, but already had 2 kids, 2 dogs, and a couple cats, not a very big house, and no experience with this sort of high-energy breed, and I am certain that she was an absolute terror.

  But things went pretty much fine for a while, she got along with their dogs and even their cats, they thought about keeping her for themselves

  But then she started getting into fights with their one other dog. She was getting into sort of her adolescent phase, pushing boundaries, trying to assert dominance, and probably just being a crazy little crackhead.

  So she ended up getting bitten pretty badly by their other dog (and maybe kind of deserved it)

  And since then she just hasn’t been good with other dogs. We’ve gotten her to a point where she can more-or-less ignore a couple familiar dogs around the neighborhood, but I doubt she’ll ever be at a point where she’ll ever be friendly with other dogs.

  She’s been bitten, she doesn’t want to get bitten again, and her breed is pretty much all-fight no-flight (as in fleeing, watch a couple videos of military/police malinois jumping out of helicopters and shit and you’ll see they clearly don’t have a problem with flying, and their jumping game is probably about as close to flight as any dog can manage on their own,) so in her mind the way to stay safe is basically to go on the offensive and get the other dogs before they can get her.

  Better early socialization and more experienced owners who knew how to manage her energy and instincts better in that first year or so of her life probably would have made a huge difference for her.

  It also doesn’t help that she was a covid puppy, not easy to get proper socialization when your humans are stuck quarantining at home.

  She loves people though, she rolls over for belly rubs from just about anyone, cuddles right up next to me in bed, and while she does get a bit uncomfortable in bigger crowds, she always wants to at least be near where the people are. I remember taking her on a camping trip with a few friends, some she knew, others she didn’t, and she wasn’t sure what to make of all of these people hanging out in the same place, so she didn’t really insert herself into the group, but she definitely sat nearby watching us, and anytime someone broke off to go to the bathroom, get something from their tent, grab a drink, etc. she was right there with them

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The stick also has the advantage of being easier to drop than the finglonger in case whatever you happen to be poking decides it wants to grab hold and pull you down

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Catholic dating culture often mistaken for incel-style pessimistic desperation?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think this is going to depend a lot on where in the world you are.

  I’m from the mid Atlantic/northeast US, and was raised catholic, overall I wouldn’t say that around me there was ever a separate “Catholic dating culture” it was just catholics dating other people who may or may not have also been Catholic. Not any more problematic than the rest of the general dating pool in any particular way

  In other parts of the country or world I suspect that may be different

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The first driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes | CNN Business⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, in that case it’s not even an inventory thing, just plan on ordering a couple days earlier and go for the longer slower shipping method so it ends up arriving on the same day. You don’t have to warehouse it any longer than if you ordered it later with faster shipping, and you save a decent chunk of cash.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bread is probably the oldest human invention⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Its definitely an old invention, but maybe not quite as old as you might imagine, we have evidence of a good handful of things from before then

  …wikipedia.org/…/Timeline_of_historic_inventions

  Two things on that list in particular kind of stand out to me as obvious precursors to bread

  Control of fire and cooking (2.3 million years ago) hard to bake without that unless maybe you live in a very volcanicaly active area or something where you can burry food in

  Mortar and pestle (37 thousand years ago) gotta have some way of grinding grains into flour

  Which leads us up to bread (14.5 thousand years ago)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chips aren’t improving like they used to, and it’s killing game console price cuts⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I just built a PC after not having a computer for about 5+ years.

  Built it for games, did not feel like I was missing out on anything in particular except games by not having a computer. There’s a lot of things I’d rather use a computer for but these days most of what I used to do on a computer can be done just fine from a phone or tablet.

  During those 5 or so years, I maybe needed to use a computer about a dozen times, and if my wife didn’t have a computer I could have just swung by a library for a bit to take care of it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The first driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes | CNN Business⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I used to be the shipping/receiving guy in a warehouse, it fell to me to arrange all of our freight pickups, which was annoying because I didn’t really have direct access to any information about pricing, deadlines, etc. so I was constantly going back to the office to show someone quotes to see whether the rates and transit times were acceptable.

  Most of our freight was LTL stuff (less than truckload, a couple pallets, not enough to fill a truck by itself) but a few times every month or two we’d get full truckload sized orders.

  When it came to them, often “intermodal” shipping had much better rates. Intermodal meaning at least 2 different forms of transportation were going to be used. Truck, train, boat, cargo plane, etc.

  As a US-based company with mostly US-based customers, that usually meant rail for us.

  However, almost none of our shipments went intermodal because it was too slow for our customers.

  It wasn’t usually a drastic difference, we’re talking maybe 1-3 extra days in most cases. Over the Road (OTR) there weren’t many places in the US that we couldn’t get freight to from our location in 5 days or less, and those 5 day locations were mostly real middle-of-nowhere customers on the other side of the country.

  It always blew my mind that we didn’t or couldn’t push our customers to just place orders 2 or 3 days earlier to save some pretty significant money on shipping.

  I don’t claim to know much about the industry, i was just some kid who needed a job and ended up the shipping guy because I knew how to use a computer and spoke English. But we a textile company that made things like work clothes (chef coats, scrubs, industrial work wear, etc) and restaurant table linens, and we sold mostly to bigger wholesalers, business service companies, etc. who would resell it or provide it to their customers as part some sort of contracted laundry service or something, so not really something I’d think of as being particularly time-sensitive or wildly unpredictable that they couldn’t anticipate their bigger orders a couple days ahead of time

  Guess it probably says something about how much we all love instant gratification.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I remember my 4th grade teacher having one of these and showing it off around 2000, it may have been the first digital camera I ever saw.

  Blew my mind back then.

  He was one of my favorite teachers, really into science, loved gadgets. He was an older guy who retired a few years later and I heard he wasn’t in the best of health, no idea if he’s still around, but I hope he at least lived long enough to appreciate how far digital cameras have come since then.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tub drain help⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s amazing how often that’s the solution.

  Once upon a time well before I was born my dad was a pipefitter, he still had most of his tools and so growing up we were sort of the first-line troubleshooters for everyone in my family when they had a plumbing issue. He had a pretty impressive collection of absurdly-large screwdrivers that you’d look at and go “when the hell would you ever need this?”

  Until you came across a giant screw like this, or you had the tank off a toilet and needed a 2ft long screwdriver to reach the tank bolts properly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What purpose do carbohydrates OTHER than sugars serve in the body?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  True, I did think about mentioning that but decided to skip over it to keep things simple.

  Animals like cows for example, can get by almost entirely on fiber. Stuff like grass doesn’t have much in the way of carbs we can use, but it contains a ton of fiber, and cows digestive systems are set up to actually do something with them.

  The extra “stomachs” they have allow for some extra fermentation and such to happen so they can break down that fiber into simpler carbs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What purpose do carbohydrates OTHER than sugars serve in the body?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Gonna try to give a very general ELI5 sort of answer

  There’s basically 3 main types of carbohydrates

  Simple carbs- basically sugars (mono- and di-saccharides)

  Complex carbs- starches, whole grains, etc. (polysaccharides)

  Fiber- arguably these are just really complex carbs that your body can’t really break down

  In general, sugars are the source of energy your body actually runs on, especially glucose.

  Your body can pretty much use simple sugars as-is or can easily break them down into a form it can use. There’s some variation just how quick and easy it is for your body to use different sugars, but in general your body will start to feel the effects of eating sugar in the space of a few minutes, and the effects will peak within about an hour or two.

  Complex carbs take a little more digesting to break down into a form your body can make use of. They’re basically being turned into simpler sugars, but that process takes a while. You might hear about athletes carbo-loading with a big spaghetti dinner or something the night before a big competition. The idea there is that the energy from that big, complex carb-heavy dinner won’t really hit them for a few hours or even until the next day, and it will keep providing that energy for a longer period of time.

  Fiber is, for the most part, indigestible, your body can’t really break it down into simpler sugars that it can make use of. It goes in your mouth, through your digestive tract, and out the other end relatively unchanged. That doesn’t mean it’s useless though, it still plays an important role in digestion. It takes up space in your stomach helping you feel more full. It absorbs water and helps keep your stool soft and helps waste move through your intestines, and it minds to things like bile acids and cholesterol so that they can be passed as waste.

  Again, this is meant to be a very general answer, there’s a lot of details I’m glossing over both just to keep things simple, and because I’m not a doctor or anything of the sort and I’m not 100% sure myself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tub drain help⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  When you say it won’t loosen when turned, do you mean it’s totally seized up or it spins but the part doesn’t come off?

  If it’s totally seized up, have you tried dousing it with some sort of penetrating oil? WD40 might do it a pinch, but a specialized penetrant like PB blaster or liquid wrench would probably be better.

  Soaking it with some CLR or something might also help to break up and rust, lime, or other crud that might be in there.

  Still won’t come loose? Get the beefiest screwdriver you can find that will fit the slot. Maybe give it a couple good love taps with a hammer and see if that helps bust it loose.

  If you can find a suitable bit, an impact driver/wrench may do the trick too.

  Get a big ol’ set of channel locks, vice grips, a pipe wrench, etc. that you can gray onto it with to give you some extra leverage, and go to town.

  Sometimes a little heat will do the trick, you can try hot tap water, boiling water, heat gun, and blowtorch if you’re willing to accept a bit of a risk.

  If it’s spinning but you don’t seem to be making any progress

  Do you have access to the back of the tub? Often there’s an access panel so you can get at the plumbing. If all else fails you can try to take the drain apart from the back/underneath

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should naming your children stupid names be illegal?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I believe in Iceland’s case it has to do with how the Icelandic language works and certain names just kind of don’t work with the rest of the language. I’m far from an expert on the Icelandic language, but my understanding is that nouns, names included, sort of get “conjugated” (I’m not sure if “conjugation” is the correct term, I think that’s specifically a vowel thing, but it’s similar in that the word changes depending on how it’s used in a sentence and most of us are familiar with the concept of conjugation.)

  There’s a few random things in English that do it, like depending on the sentence, you might use I/me/my/mine/etc. when you refer to yourself refer to yourself, but in icelandic all nouns do that in a regular predictable way, so they have to be pronounceable with certain suffixes tacked onto them.

  I think they also do the old school patronymic/matronymic name thing instead of family names. So if you meet someone in Iceland whose name is something like “Steve Robertson” then “Robertson” isn’t his family name, his dad is literally named “Robert” and so he is “Steve, Robert’s Son” so names kind of have to work with that kind of naming convention as well.

  So it’s less of a “this name is stupid” and more of a “this name breaks our language”

  It also seems like they’ve eased up on some of the rules in recent years, first names are no longer gender restricted, and they’ve added a nonbinary suffix for the patronyms/matronyms so now you can be a -bur instead of just -son or -dóttir

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would the world look like if every worker got together and Unionized for a universale wage that helps everyone? Instead of one country trying to screw over another?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  In a sort of abstract sense, there are some parallels.

  In a system like the US, corporations and those with a lot of money hold a lot of power, and unionization is a way for everyone else to take some power for themselves to make sure that their voices are heard.

  In a system like China however, most of that power is instead concentrated with the government and upper echelons of party, so attempts at democratizing fill a similar role of giving regular people a voice.

  There’s a lot of nitty gritty details, cultural differences, etc. and I don’t really want to gloss over those, but the root in either case is common people trying to make sure their voices heard.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There's no such thing as a wrong number any more⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I work in 911 dispatch, a lot of the 10 digit non emergency lines also redirect to our center, we get a lot of wrong numbers calling into us

  One of those numbers is just one digit off from a pizza place, which is always fun because once in a while someone is a domestic calls in pretending to order pizza because they don’t want the person they’re with to know they’re calling police, so we kind of have to grill those calls with are you having an emergency/do you know you’re calling the police/are you safe to talk kind of questions

  Pro tip for anyone who finds themselves in a situation like that, most dispatch centers are aware of those types of calls, but some posts online will tell you that there’s a code that pepperoni = they have a gun or something like that. No such code exists, at least not in any way that’s universally recognized. Maybe some departments have that standardized but it certainly wasn’t part of my training.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Famous Antikythera Mechanism Was a Mechanical Disaster, New Research Suggests⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep, I actually mentioned his videos in another comment on here. I thoroughly enjoyed them (and all of his other videos for that matter)

  Definitely worth checking out for anyone who likes this kind of stuff.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think I already addressed your first paragraph pretty well in my comment.

  If you’re touting something as an alternative to the Global Positioning System, I think it’s reasonable to expect that it’s going to cover at least most of the globe.

  It also doesn’t really seem like it’s intended to be an alternative, more like an extension or backup to GPS. If I available you should still be using GPS, this is just something you’d fall back on if regular GPS goes offline. Sort of like how you wouldn’t want to run your house off a generator 24/7/365, but if a tree falls on the power lines by your house you at least have the generator to keep your fridge running.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It does sound a lot like LORAN-C, which I admit I forgot was a thing that once existed.

  I know that in areas it covered, LORAN was supposed to be pretty accurate for positioning. I don’t know exactly how well this would compare to that, things like what frequency they transmit on, how much power, digital vs analog, number of transmitter sites, etc. will all come into play, and I don’t feel like digging into exactly how the two systems would stack up against each other. Could absolutely be the BPS totally blows LORAN out of the water, they might be comparable, it might be markedly worse, we’re well outside of my pay grade now.