gramie

@gramie@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do we have shampoo, conditioner, and body wash soaps?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Soap (although of course some soaps are actually detergents in disguise) can’t necessarily replace shampoo. Soaps can react with hardness in the water and leave the residue on your hair. Detergents like shampoo do not react in that way. On the other hand, replacing your soap with a detergent like shampoo or body wash would be fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hacktivist deletes white supremacist websites live on stage during hacker conference⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Not to mention that the Germans themselves took a few years out, and then put a lot of the Nazi political machine back in charge.

  Does anyone remember when Kurt Waldheim, UN Secretary General for 9 years and President of Austria for 6, turned out to be a former nazi? Whoops ie!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japan’s Birth Rate Set to Break Even the Bleakest Forecasts⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That sounds like a bit of an improvement since I was there. At that time, women were not even given the chance to be on the career path, because it was assumed that they would quit when they started a family.

  We had two children when I was in Japan, and the prenatal care was pretty good. The births themselves were not great examples of medical care, I have to say. Still, it’s normal for women in Japan to stay in the hospital a week after a typical birth. I suspect that’s because if they went home, they would still have to do all the housework.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japan’s Birth Rate Set to Break Even the Bleakest Forecasts⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I did a quick search, and it appears that it is still very common for Japanese companies to expect unpaid overtime.

  Even when I was there, overtime pay was mandatory. The thing is, you get a lot of peer pressure to do unpaid overtime because everyone around you is doing it. If I recall correctly, the government made a big deal about limiting overtime, only to reveal sheepishly that their own employees had worked tons of unpaid overtime to bring in the new legislation.

  One of the advantages of being a foreigner in a Japanese company is that you don’t have the same kind of pressures or expectations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK Tempur Mattresses fail quickly and the warranty is fake⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Wow, their website is really shitty on a phone, though (not sure about on a desktop). Half of all the pages are taken up with ads. Much too easy to hit one by mistake.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Rise Of Fake Casio Scientific Calculators⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You mean RPN, right? Reverse Polish Notation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japan’s Birth Rate Set to Break Even the Bleakest Forecasts⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They don’t even have to pay overtime for work over 28 hours. If they just paid overtime for the actual or time work that is done, that would make an enormous difference. When I worked in Japan (25 years ago, but I have read/heard nothing to suggest that the situation has changed), it was normal for people to work 60 or 70 hours, but not claim any overtime.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨So now that it's that time of year again in the US, what are some tips and tricks for dealing with that one relative who goes on about the same bullshit for hours and won't shut the fuck up?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Also excellent is The Princess Bride. At the last family party I went to, the parents kept sneaking away from the dinner table to watch snatches of the movie with all the kids.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Death of beloved neighborhood cat sparks outrage against robotaxis in San Francisco⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not to mention the literally billions of birds that are killed every year by cats in the US.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's interesting to see what qualifies as a swear in different languages.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In Sesotho, a language of Southern Africa, there are no swear words, however there are insults that (I was told) may cause someone to want to fight or even kill you.

  Those insults:

  • I’m not your mother
  • You are like a cat that jumps across a ravine and scribbles up the other side
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How realistic is it for me to learn Japanese so that I can experience Anime better? How long would it take to learn? Has anyone attempted this?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The other thing I would mention is that even if you learn standard Japanese anime is going to have a huge amount of slang and idioms.

  The good thing is that, as in most modern Japanese, it will also have a huge amount of English loan words. The pronunciation may be slightly different, but you can recognize things like “hambaagaa” or “paypaa”.

  Of course, sometimes it can go too far, like when I lived in Japan in the 90s and on days when they encouraged people not to drive themselves, it was a “No mycaa dayi” (“No my car day”).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crunchyroll Faces Cancelation: Why Anime Fans Are Choosing Piracy After Latest Update⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  people they’ve given no other choice or recourse

  I don’t know, I find I also have the option to not consume media that I can’t pay for or justify ethically. For instance, the only streaming service we have a subscription for is The Criterion Channel.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rock Band 4 to be delisted on tenth anniversary following the expiration of its licenses⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For about 1 year my two sons and I played Rock Band, mostly The Beatles, everyday when they came home from school. At least an hour each day. We played other versions of Rock Band, but the Beatles was easily our favorite.

  It directly led one of them to learn the piano and eventually get a master’s degree in composing, and the other to enjoy playing in bands and performing in musical theatre.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Exposing Why Farmers Can't Legally Replant Their Own Seeds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I read a column recently in my local paper by a farmer whom I know.

  He argued persuasively that the problem with GMO crops is not that they have been genetically modified, but that the modification is often to allow them to resist high concentrations of pesticides. So the food that you are getting has been exposed to massively higher amounts of toxic chemicals.

  Makes sense to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Are Ya'll Playing?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I probably played Max Payne 2 from start to finish three or four times. It’s superb.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I Built a Mobile-First Retro Gaming Website (Because I Couldn’t Find One That Worked Right)⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes. That was a quick close of the web browser for me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FTC chair Andrew Ferguson warns Google not to filter or suppress emails sent by Republicans over Gmail⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I get three to five spam emails every day from Republican agents asking “Patriots” to send money to help defend against the woke liberals. They keep changing the subjects and domains sent from, so it is difficult to block them effectively.

  The kicker is that I live in Canada, and have never lived in the US or been eligible to vote in a US election.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Many primary school kids will never have a male teacher, and experts say that's a problem⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I went to elementary school in the 1960s and '70s, and had only one male teacher then. I don’t think it’s a new phenomenon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SpaceX says states should dump fiber plans, give all grant money to Starlink⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Just have a look at what’s going on in ukraine. Once they started using drones, the drone were attacked through their wireless connections. Now they trail fiber optic cables for control. What does that say about the relative reliability and security?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stripes! 🐅⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  1 hour border Collie had surgery, I saw that where her fur was white, the skin was pink, and where the fur was black, the skin was also black.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨U.S. Wine Exports to Canada Have Plummeted 97%⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  American wines are fine. Even back in the 1970s, they were regularly ranked higher than many French wines

  And in the 1800s the French vineyards had to import American vines for grafting purposes, after a blight destroyed French vineyards.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m still using my Amazfit Bip. When new, it could go 6 weeks on a single charge. After about 7 years, I still get about 2 weeks – enough for me not to bother looking for a replacement.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It must have been a whole lot more difficult to design and build tall buildings before computers existed⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They also took into account that a certain number of the workers would die from accidents and disease (see: the Panama Canal) and they were okay with that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm setting up a Windows 11 laptop for my uncle. Is there a sneaky way to make it block right-wing bullshit websites?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  OP was not very specific about what behavior they actually wanted. Changing the host file would prevent the uncle from visiting those sites, but as you say, it would not be subtle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm setting up a Windows 11 laptop for my uncle. Is there a sneaky way to make it block right-wing bullshit websites?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I suppose you could add entries for those right-wing websites into the “hosts” file, redirecting them to Google or some other relatively innocuous place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Not welcome here’: Malaysia lashes out at ‘Zionist’ US envoy pick Nick Adams⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I was in Malaysia a couple of months ago. The country is a mixture of malay, indian, and Chinese ethnic groups. The Malays are the largest group, and most of them are Muslim, so there is respect for Muslim traditions but they are not enforced on everyone.

  For example, in stores they sold beer (very expensive) but there were signs saying that Muslims were not to buy it. I don’t know if that is enforced in any way.

  My Chinese sister-in-law, who is very biased towards China, will admit that Malaysia has the best food in Asia, because of the above-mentioned fusion of cultures. And I can confirm that the food is spectacular!

  I took my wife (who has not traveled very much) to Malaysia because it is different enough from Canada to be exotic, but still has enough comforts and is developed enough not to be intimidating. She found it far too hot and humid, but other than that enjoyed it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Conversely, Japanese people learn to tell the difference between an “o” vowel held for shorter or longer periods, a skill that I find incredibly difficult even though I lived in Japan for 7 years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the funniest insult / joke you've come up with on the spot?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A young woman I knew was complaining that she had made plans to meet a friend in the city (long before most people had mobile phones), but the friend hadn’t showed up so she waited for a long time on the street corner.

  My brother immediately chipped in, “what was his name, John?”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨$440 Charge For A Wheel Scuff Raises Questions About Hertz's AI Rental Car Damage Scanner⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have had nicks in my windshield due to gravel thrown up by vehicles traveling in the opposite direction.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Man 'refused entry into US' as border control catch him with bald JD Vance meme⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re trying very hard to be Texas north. The Premier of the province is ignoring science and, in many cases, logic. Anti-vax. That’s one reason they have more measles than the entire USA. There is even a fringe group that wants Alberta to secede from Canada and join the US.