ChickenLadyLovesLife
@ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
- Comment on i just think they're neat 9 hours ago:
Why would ancient humans have bothered growing bong gourds when they could have just punched holes in empty beer cans instead?
- Comment on i just think they're neat 9 hours ago:
Some fun facts: Grover Krantz, the originator of the concept of human persistence hunting (which Wikipedia labels “conjecture”), was better-known as a staunch advocate for the existence of Bigfoot (there is of course no such thing as Bigfoot - it’s obviously a Yeti in a gorilla suit). Interestingly, he didn’t propose it as an explanation for bipedality, one of the unique characteristics of the human lineage, but rather as an explanation for our big brains, speculating that bigger brains would allow persistence hunters to survive a large fraction of their brain neurons dying from the heat stress that would result from long-distance running during the day.
For apparently no reason, Krantz’ skeleton and that of his favorite dog are on display at the Smithsonian.
- Comment on "I know the lyrics I promise" 1 day ago:
Did you know: Deee-Lite used a sample from the Green Acres theme song in their eponymous 1990 club hit “Groove Is In the Heart”?
- Comment on sorry lenin, the look has been gentrified 1 day ago:
Fun fact: After Lenin died in 1924, he was mummified because of the worldwide popularity of Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in Egypt - not because of any tradition in Russia of preserving the bodies of Tsars or other leaders. The “preservation” job was utterly and completely amateurish, because nobody involved had any idea how to do anything like that.
- Comment on Well that didn't work out as planned 3 days ago:
School bus driver here. Depending on the district you drive for, it can be stable. At mine, we make over $30/hr and get benefits like health insurance and a small pension (after ten years on the job). However, you don’t get a lot of hours (typically 4-5 a day, although the most senior drivers can get 8+ hours a day) and generally no (or very little) work in the summers - for me, this is part of the job’s appeal. We are a union shop, which is pretty important to the situation.
The lack of stability comes from the fact that there’s a strong tendency for school districts to privatize and hand over transportation responsibilities to private bus companies, which generally use older poorly-maintained buses, and hire any creatures that seem to be alive and have CDLs to drive while not doing criminal background checks on them or testing for drugs and alcohol and paying them a lot less with no benefits. The advantage of privatization is that it ends up costing school districts more because of the much higher accident rates.
- Comment on Truly a 1984 moment 4 days ago:
It’s kind of funny how all the British Pythons have stories about Graham Chapman claiming that none of them even knew what gay was before they met him. They were all like “uh, we went to public school in England - how would we not have known anything about that?”
- Comment on this is exactly what copper would say 4 days ago:
Copper-nabbers are opportunistic, and won’t take the time to forge an original invoice.
I dunno, it’s kind of hard to spell “Ea-nāṣir” correctly.
- Comment on Forget Netflix, Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription 5 days ago:
we have a bunch of buses running around burning more fuel and polluting more
An even worse factor is that EPA regulations governing diesel engine emissions specify allowed emissions in terms of horsepower-miles, which means that more powerful engines are allowed to emit more pollutants per mile. This has led to school buses becoming over-engined compared to what they used to be a few decades ago. This is good for lead-footed bus drivers and the people behind the buses (I guess), but not so good for the air. And of course EPA diesel regulations specify nothing about greenhouse gas emissions.
At least school buses have the intrinsic efficiencies of mass-transportation behind them. If parents were driving all these kids to school instead, the net emissions would be vastly worse. Of course most of these kids could walk or bicycle instead …
- Comment on Forget Netflix, Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription 5 days ago:
A long time ago my '76 VW Rabbit passed its emissions test in New Mexico. Granted, this was because the mechanic stuck the sensor up the tailpipe of his own car, but it was impressive accomplishment nonetheless.
- Comment on Forget Netflix, Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription 5 days ago:
Even the transmissions in school buses have worked this way for more than two decades now. The Allison 2500-series is built with 6 gears (plus one reverse) but usually 6th gear is disabled in the software as users buy the 5-gear variant. The 6-gear variant is more expensive and 5-gear buyers can upgrade to that down the road if they want to - or you can crack it with widely-available software, something that many people in the skoolie community take advantage of.
At least 6th gear isn’t a subscription service … yet.
- Comment on All I Want 5 days ago:
I see ^235\ U and I relate an obscure fun fact: separating the isotopes of Uranium is an extremely difficult task because they behave identically in the chemical sense. One of the techniques developed by the Manhattan Project during WWII was electromagnetic separation. When a charged particle (or ion) moves through a magnetic field, it experiences a displacing force that is perpendicular to the direction of motion (which is pretty fucking strange in and of itself - imagine pushing an object on the floor and having the force of friction move it sideways instead of resisting your push).
This force perpendicular to the direction of motion causes the ion to travel a slightly curved path. The electromagnet separation technique involves creating a stream of ionized atoms of unrefined Uranium and firing it through a strong electromagnetic field; because the particles of U^238 and U^235 experience the same force during this, the U^235 ions, being slightly less massive, are displaced a bit more and so follow a slightly more curved path. By placing collectors at different positions, you end up with a small amount of U^235 and a large amount of U^238.
These giant electromagnets would normally have used copper wire for their windings, but copper was a strategically critical material for the war effort and was in very short supply. So the Manhattan Project basically checked out the United States’ silver reserves and used that for the windings instead (silver is not quite as good as copper for this purpose but is obviously better than nothing).
The electromagnets also used a lot of electricity, and this is why the Uranium-refining facilities were located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. FDR’s WPA had built multiple dams around there during the 1930s, and their turbines were put to work generating electricity for the magnets (it was also used for the thermal and gaseous diffusion processes).
- Comment on Helpful me mateys! 5 days ago:
It was interesting to read that Blackbeard actually spent some time hanging out in Philadelphia. It’s not recorded whether he preferred Pat’s or Geno’s.
- Comment on Starlink tries to block Virginia’s plan to bring fiber Internet to residents 5 days ago:
Cybertrucks can’t handle rain either. I wonder if there’s some connection between them and Starlink?
- Comment on Starlink tries to block Virginia’s plan to bring fiber Internet to residents 5 days ago:
This is libelous. We would chuck differently-abled people into volcanoes.
- Comment on Starlink tries to block Virginia’s plan to bring fiber Internet to residents 5 days ago:
I was reading a (non-fiction) book about Gallipoli, a battle that was fought in Turkey in 1915-16 during WWI. At one point, an Australian journalist by the name of “Keith Murdoch” shows up and starts contributing to the Allies’ failures and eventual withdrawal. And I was like “wait, is that?” and the answer was “yep”. Keith Murdoch was born in 1885 and was Rupert Murdoch’s (full name Keith Rupert Murdoch) father. Aside from helping to fuck up Gallipoli, Papa Murdoch led a smear campaign against Australia’s greatest WWI general (who just happened to be Jewish) and got him removed from command. The Murdoch name has been a stain on humanity for a long time.
- Comment on Nice argument. 6 days ago:
Freud did invent (or popularize) the core principle of psychotherapy: “everything is your parents’ fault”.
- Comment on THIS is true wisdom 1 week ago:
Well, it is kinda bad when we can’t get a substitute for a driver. The day after the Eagles won the super bowl last year, more than a third of our drivers called in “sick” and we had to cancel a bunch of runs.
- Comment on THIS is true wisdom 1 week ago:
I’m a school bus driver, and when a driver quits or retires they get paid for any accrued sick leave. The idea, of course, is that you don’t want people pretending to be sick for their last week or two on the job and leaving us with unexpected absences we have to find substitutes for. However, this payoff is $7 less per hour than our regular rate - so of course, everybody that leaves pretends to be sick for their last week or two on the job in order to get their full pay. It’s just such a fucking braindead policy.
- Comment on THIS is true wisdom 1 week ago:
I’m a school bus driver. Our district has a policy that for paid holidays (e.g. Labor Day) you have to show up for the work day prior and the work day following, or you don’t get paid for that holiday. This is ostensibly to prevent people from stretching a three-day weekend into four or five consecutive days off by taking pretend sick leave. I was a white-collar worker (programmer) for my whole career before this and never encountered any kind of rule like this.
- Comment on Remember to 2FA your kidneys. 1 week ago:
Lol I thought “2FA” meant “Second Fucking Amendment” and I was supposed to shoot my own kidney.
- Comment on Lemmy be like 1 week ago:
Unfortunately, UBI is just a solution to unemployment. Another solution (and the one apparently preferred by the billionaire rulers of this planet) is letting the unemployed rot and die.
- Comment on Mozilla under fire for Firefox AI "bloat" that blows up CPU and drains battery 1 week ago:
Altogether Imbecilic
- Comment on off to learn themrodynamics and statistcial mechanics 1 week ago:
It’s likely that Ehrenfest’s suicidal depression was exacerbated by the rise of Fascism in his part of the world. Luckily, that won’t be a problem for … ah shit.
- Comment on YSK: US Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem publically bragged about killing her puppy 1 week ago:
still alive
Debatable.
- Comment on Imagine being a billionaire, running one the most powerful, corporations in the United States, and prostrating yourself to Donald Trump in this very public and embarrassing way. 1 week ago:
I’m sure this has been pointed out before, but it’s very appropriate that the video for “This is America” was shot in an abandoned factory building.
- Comment on "ok, imagine a gun." 1 week ago:
Fun fact: Joseph Stalin first became known to Lenin when he organized the successful robbery of a bank stagecoach in Russia. The stagecoaches were heavily protected by armed men riding on the outside of the coach as well as riding horses alongside, but Stalin observed that they tended to relax their guard upon reaching a densely-populated city, on the assumption that revolutionaries would not be willing to injure or kill innocent bystanders.
This assumption was very wrong in Stalin’s case. He had his people lob satchel bombs at the coach and riders after they reached the city, killing most of the guards as well as nearly 100 innocent bystanders in the vicinity. They made off with a huge amount of money, and Lenin congratulated Stalin although he had only planned the operation and not participated in it. The importance of delegation!
- Comment on Tucson City Council votes 7-0, unanimously to kill AI Data Center 1 week ago:
That is so thoughtless and shortsighted of them! If we run out of water, how will the poor Saudis grow alfalfa for their racehorses?
- Comment on Trump says he plans to put a 100% tariff on computer chips, likely pushing up cost of electronics 1 week ago:
It’s a brush for scrubbing barbecue grills, priced at an affordable $87.
- Comment on Trump says he plans to put a 100% tariff on computer chips, likely pushing up cost of electronics 1 week ago:
Excuse me? LeVar Burton is still alive.
- Comment on Trump says he plans to put a 100% tariff on computer chips, likely pushing up cost of electronics 1 week ago:
Nah, I think he’s much better suited to being a reality TV star. Oh wait, that’s what he is.