uriel238

@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨*your order is delivered*⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  💯

  Full Goblin Mode.

  In my defense, either I dress, or I turn out all the lights at night so no-one has to see my undressed form, except as a shadow.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨hygiene⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In the summer here (July and August during heatwaves) my office goes between 80°F - 90° so no, I don’t wear a thing, hence the towels.

  On my regular furniture, if I’m wandering around unclothed and need to sit down, I’ll drape something, often my briefs, before planting my butt.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨hygiene⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Personally I call shenanigans having executive and standard office chairs made of leather, pleather and nylon mesh.

  None of these are comfortable on the bare butt, and even will get sticky once you start sweating against them, so I’ve _always had to drape towels between me and the chair.

  Also do not get leather / pleather if you have cats.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨hygiene⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If you can’t afford one, or rent, or wander around, travel bidets are about $20-$30 and are a water bottle with a hook-shaped wand-spout and an air valve.

  My proctologist has a personal vendetta against wiping, and I messed up my piles from ages of wiping too hard. Bidet and dab to dry.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Great Advertise⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I had art I personally crafted accused of being slop (gen-AI free!). Dunno if it’s a compliment or a criticism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"ok, imagine a gun."⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Shotgun is an America thing, coming from the stagecoach era. The shotgun in question has a shortened barrel for reduced storage footprint.

  The BMW R12 has a sidecar mounted with an MG 42 light machine gun. But no-one calls sidecar gunner

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Florida ounces⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You can’t convert them. Fluid ounces are volume. Regular ounces are weight (which isn’t quite the same as mass, though they’re used interchangeably on earth).

  1 fl oz = 1 oz when the substance is water (at slightly above freezing). Any other substance would involve a specific mass factor.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tucson City Council votes 7-0, unanimously to kill AI Data Center⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Bezos has tens of billions, if not hundreds. He could support development of heat-resistant microchips, which would have countless applications.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meet the AI vegans: They are choosing to abstain from using artificial intelligence for environmental, ethical and personal reasons. Maybe they have a point⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve never used AI, even when wanting to give it a try. There was either a queue or a fee, or must click-wrap agree to terms and conditions for free two months and I wasn’t going to do those.

  I never did an NFT either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ICE agents pointed guns at a US citizen when she walked out on to her yard to ask why they were arresting her (legal immigrant) partner.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I am failing to find either a list of ICE abduction / detention victims or a list of ICE officer-involved homicide.

  In 2015 police officer-involved homicide (that’s a euphemism for when a law-enforcement officer kills someone) averaged four victims a day, and those are the ones uncovered by activist groups who tracked incidents through news and obituaries.

  So I cannot imagine a quota of 3000 abductions a day is going to proceed cleanly. Technically, they’re succeeding at about 1100 abductions a day on average. We’ve seen their violence discipline and deescalation skills are wanting.

  The only news I can find about ICE killing someone is from the Biden era, and only a few are reported.

  So if anyone knows how often ICE pulls the trigger and kills (or seriously hospitalizes) members of the public, and can find me sources, please let me know. We should be tracking them, and we should be saying their names.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Imagine not being able to shower, because AI slop generator machines need that water!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  How strong is Fair Maps Texas? Assuming it’s sincere in its effort to redistrict Texas fairly, Maybe they need more brickthrowers saboteurs sign wavers and clerical volunteers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Peter Thiel’s bestie going mask off⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh he’s retired now. He worked on CloudSat (and just retired it; it served a long time to scan storms and hurricanes even after it started malfunctioning). He also worked on OCO (Orbital Carbon Observatory), and its successor, but the faring on the rocket failed to disconnect both times and it fell into the South Atlantic. Launch vehicles don’t come with a warranty, I learned.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down, but Valve says payment processors 'specifically cited' a Mastercard rule about damaging the brand⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Fixed but still funny.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Imagine not being able to shower, because AI slop generator machines need that water!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  During the 1986-1992 California drought, we were informed in the San Francisco Bay Area region that water service prices were going to go up unless we conserved strictly.

  They said this to a bunch of California hippies, on account that we were in California.

  So we way got on board. We stopped flushing. Any water that was rendered non-potable we’d repurpose for watering plants or filter it for second use. Japanese naval baths (weird tiny bowl seats and a sponge, used in the Imperial Navy, WWII) got popular so people were keeping clean via a tenth of normal water usage.

  We conserved too much according to the water department and they raised prices anyway.

  This sparked some investigations (by journalists, since investigative journalism was still a thing then) and found that agriculture got water for much cheaper, and was still using it once before flushing it (now laced with pesticides) out into the sea. Needless to say, we conservationist hippies were livid.

  It’s still a problem, as the utility companies routinely lobby our congress and governor (and Newsom may know how to be a California liberal, but he’s still a Dianne-Feinstein-style ( / Nancy-Pelosi style) money-grubbing neoliberal. He just has game, especially when opposed to far right idiots. The setup in Monster’s Inc (power crisis in a city where scream is the principal power source) was inspired by the Enron fraud affair leading to rolling blackouts and Texas siphoning off California’s general fund. And our governments from Schwarzenegger (who I will never forgive) to Newsom are in the pocket of PG&E. (I’m on SMUD now and my bill is conspicuously less.)

  Also, according to Climate Town, the Sauds own a lot of California farmland, where they grow alfalfa to import to the mid-east to feed their cows. Alfalfa crops are one of the most water hungry, and is one of the big ways beef is driving the climate crisis (and towards a massive food shortage and global famine!) and the water tables, to which they have access and first-tap rights, gets lower every year. 🕙

  So I suspect that the Texas AI centers are getting water at a cheaper rate than private homes. Maybe it’s something to get active about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down, but Valve says payment processors 'specifically cited' a Mastercard rule about damaging the brand⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Curiously, in our society, killing is less of a taboo than sex, especially in fiction.

  Since the aughts, I feel it is a disservice we do to censor out the horror of warfare in games like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. I haven’t seen what they did with Six Days In Fallujah (by a vet of the Iraq War who experienced Fallujah and wanted to share his experience) but we’d have more respect for the gravity of war if the tragedy and immediacy of combat was properly expressed. In the Arma series, it’s very easy to die, but it uses a similar engine used for training purposes.

  It’s our Christian values (more specifically, our Paulinian values – he thought Christians should not have sex if they can abstain entirely¹ – which has turned into taboos against sex without strict licenses, that has made our society super-prudish.

  1. Paul actually also prohibited having additional children, the end being neigh and all. Later biblical interpreters would have to deal with the world’s failure to end, and Christ’s failure to return in their lifetimes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down, but Valve says payment processors 'specifically cited' a Mastercard rule about damaging the brand⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  So let’s say you’re in the market for a credit card. You can choose from:

  iChar-Jit: We are ethical. We don’t sell to Nazis. You (and your kids) will be safe from buying questionable products or from questionable sources.

  MoneySLAM Our card is usable by anyone, for anything, anywhere. Bangladesh; In orbit around Jupiter; Russia; Sex; Drugs; Bombs.¹

  1. Some products may be dangerous or unethically sourced; Please spend safely and exercise good judgement.

  Assuming all other factors (interest rate, online accessibility, confused foreign sales reps etc.) are more or less equal, which card will you get?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft confirms it made $27 billion after laying off 9,000 people, and its CEO physically cannot stop talking about AI⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Seriously, I think most rich people are mentally ill and are compelled to keep accumulating and hoarding until they own everything.

  Carnegie became critically aware that J. P. Morgan would totally kill him to take his assets. Carnegie even wondered of such a monster lurked in his own heart. ( Narrator: Yes. Yes, it did. )

  We don’t know the point at which people get greedy and lose empathy with their subservient co-workers, but even small business owners are stereotypically mean employers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A fair punishment for the obscene hoarding of wealth⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If we assume Hell isn’t real and dead people don’t exist, it means we’ll have to create our own justice.

  But since billionaires are pretty consistent tyrants (exceptions exist, but they’re rare) we should just have an intervention after the tenth million.

  Then the additonal money in circulation can be used to post-scarcity up our society so that everyone gets a burger and a milkshake whenever they want one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Peter Thiel’s bestie going mask off⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  My dad is a literal rocket scientist with an illustrious career at NASA navigating satellites and space probes. University of Missouri, but CalTech / MIT material math wizard.

  He’s full MAGA now. The scary part is now he regurgitates FOX News sound bites he’d disagree with twenty years ago.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Peter Thiel’s bestie going mask off⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Slept his way though college?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Peter Thiel’s bestie going mask off⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  A century ago fuck! About a century and a quarter ago this was the sentiment regarding new-money industrialists by old money landlords.

  Remove the racist layer and it’s class conflict all the way down.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dirty slut for water⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I remember a point right after gay was a generic derisive (e.g. That’s so gay! = That sucks! ) for a short while I’m gay for meant I like this so much I’d be willing to do sexual favors to get it (e.g. I’m gay for mineral water right now )

  Similarly when we talk about architecture porn we mean stuff that would excite people really into architecture. In some places, we still see it. ( _Gun porn, food porn, grammar porn, etc.)

  It’d be awesome if we generalized sluttiness the same way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This was actually posted by the Owasso Police Department⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Fine, adding a useful link to my comment above.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is, if true and accurate, delightful news! And has improved an otherwise troublesome day.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The new Christian nationalist orders are not so patient. Even Charles X of France rolled back rights too speedily, sparking public outcry resulting in Parisian haircuts. (a bit off the top 🪟🔪)

  SCOTUS used to be sneakier, carving out sections of fourth- and fifth-amendment protections, but since Dobbs the Federalist Society Six have tossed subtlety and reason to the wind and now adjudicate away rights based on vibe and conservative rhetoric grievance.

  Hopefully the US and UK both will recognized why the French public was swift to act when manarchists took shears to the Napoleonic Code.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Every society has its pathway there. TERFs are one of the last milestones.

  GB has really wanted to go fascist autocratic since Germany looked over in the 1920s and saw a like minded kin.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK Government responded to the "Repeal the Online Safety Act" Petition.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  When the regime ignores petitions by the public for the redress pf grievances, you petition harder.

  Demonstrations, Public Disobedience, Mischief, Sabotage, Terrorism.

  Censorship always expands and encroaches on things important to the public. Obscenity and indecency protections eventually turn into queer erasure. Security concerns are always followed by carve-outs of civil rights.

  Hit hard early.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This was actually posted by the Owasso Police Department⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, but they are each multiple different things. It’s complicated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Pilot had to dive aggressively to avoid midair collision over Burbank airport."⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I was commenting on the vast difference in the statistical numbers. I have no doubt there are lots of steps that can be taken to decrease the risk of shortened lifespan.

  But yes, we can safely engage in high-risk behavior (or in some instances like air racing pilots, come to terms that they will likely (and preferably) end their lives explosively and spectacularly). And then there’s how James Cameron does super-deep submersible exploration vs. Stockton Rush.

  My mother would not only climb up rock faces and summit mountains all over the Sierra Nevadas (and later in other parts of the world) but would lug twenty five pounds of old-school photography gear to show she did it and took pics of the astounding vistas. As a kid I went along with her sometimes, and encountered a few two many poison oak pushes, mosquito swarms, and stories about lost bits due to frostbite. I Belong To The City now (I belong to the night).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Users Rally Behind Anti-Censorship Petition⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We knew in the aughts that this was going to be an issue when the charging companies defunded Wikileaks and Julian Assange¹ and were allowed to do so, defying public accommodations laws.

  1. Yes, Assange is a git and a Russian asset (or at least has been before) but he did serve as a whistleblower against evil shit done by Bush and Obama administrations and the general aristocratic corruption at play in US federal politics. As with Chelsea Manning, he embarrassed politicians using their positions of power inappropriately, revealing that the state was not serving the public. Incidentally, ACLU in its early years was funded by USSR to cause trouble against the US state (which it was doing anyway and still does), which makes it historically (and debatably) a Soviet asset. Strange bedfellows and all that.

  This is a tale that keeps repeating itself, and is why protections by the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments of the Constitution of the United States have been carved out like a holiday turkey by the US Supreme Court. We found it easy to deny unreasonable search and seizure protections from major crimes suspects, only to find that every black citizen with a gram of cannabis now no longer has those protections.

  So it is with monopolies that decide they can be selective with their accommodations.

  If we can’t pressure the transaction services to obey public accommodation rules since they have monopolistic power, it may be time to circumvent the issue, and support black market tactics ( Archie comic and bag of sawdust, $20, comes with free incest porn! )

  These days, when discussing the usenet alt.* heirarchy, its acronym ( Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists ) is now considered a backronym, a joke. I was there, and it belied a serious point: The worst of us deserve free speech, as per Larry Flynt, knowing that Hustler magazine is legally published in all its (raunchy) glory means that whatever you’re releasing to the public is safe from moral guardians and critics because they have worse stuff to shout at.

  But we’re in an era of book burning, which means those would-be moral guardians are emboldened to try to reshape society in their image, in contrast to the principles of liberty and free thought. And soon ICE will expand its POI list to include liberals and wrongthinkers.

  It may be time for bricks in windows and direct action against high-ranking company officials, but such behaviors carry high risks of consequences. So be careful and thorough.

  In the meantime, write petitions of your grievances and sign those others have written. And remind them at this moment the public presumes petitioning them for redress of grievances will be acknowledged and acted upon. And if that turns out not to be the case, the outraged public will not simply disappear and keep to its place.