SwingingTheLamp
@SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip
- Comment on An all in one PC is less all in one than a laptop (it's only one less part than a regular PC) 1 week ago:
I was gonna say that this was my favorite all-in-one, but then I remembered the mouse. And the keyboard is removable, so that’s, like, 2½ pieces?
- Comment on The singular they is actually such a natural part of the English language, the people complaining about it almost certainly use it without noticing 1 week ago:
On the other hand, some people blow their tops when I match singular they to singular verb forms. I think people just like getting angry.
- Comment on [meme] choochoo 1 week ago:
From the passenger’s perspective, a taxi and a self-driving car are functionally identical. But back when Uber, Lyft, and the rest were offering cheap rides subsidized by VC money, all that happened was that they made traffic congestion slightly, but measurably, worse. People didn’t give up private cars in large numbers, though.
If we get self-driving cars, then people’s private cars can add to the problem by cruising around empty most of the time, and if they’re not in them, there’s nobody to be bothered by traffic delays. The only way to achieve the dream of eliminating gridlock would be to ban private cars. And if that were politically feasible, why not just do it now with transit?
- Comment on [meme] choochoo 1 week ago:
How will that help? By some studies, about 30% of traffic on downtown city streets is drivers circulating looking for street parking. With self-driving cars, they could cause congestion by circulating all day instead of parking.
- Comment on [meme] choochoo 1 week ago:
We haven’t banned cars, but my city did put a park-and-ride lot at each end of its one BRT line. It’s pretty great, now the haters get to complain that BRT is a failure because nobody rides it, AND that it’s useless because those lots are always full.
- Comment on There aren't any ancient ruins with crazy traps and riddles 1 week ago:
For fun, here’s a link to the 10,000-year clock, built by The Long Now Foundation. The level of modern engineering, and planning, that it takes to build a clock that will operate for 10,000 years is fascinating. When you stop to think about, say, the trope of a mechanism that will slide back a 20-ton rock door reliably after 2,000 years is quite ridiculous.
- Comment on The U.S. VP has strong Big Brother energy, but it's the "Why are you hitting yourself? Stop hitting yourself!" kind. 1 week ago:
Big Brother in the book was menacing. Best JD can pull off is bratty and annoying.
- Comment on The U.S. VP has strong Big Brother energy, but it's the "Why are you hitting yourself? Stop hitting yourself!" kind. 1 week ago:
I just learned recently that he actually died from the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s what caused his neck to that.
- The U.S. VP has strong Big Brother energy, but it's the "Why are you hitting yourself? Stop hitting yourself!" kind.media.piefed.zip ↗Submitted 1 week ago to showerthoughts@lemmy.world | 28 comments
- Comment on The boy who was relentlessly bullied by his uncle 1 week ago:
Hey, is this the 500/10 guy?
- Comment on Noses run, feet smell 2 weeks ago:
Homonyms.
- Comment on Protein bar 2 weeks ago:
*Probiotic protein bar.
- Comment on Stay under the speed limit, guys. It's not worth it. 2 weeks ago:
If it makes you feel better to believe that, go ahead. For my part, I think it’s a pretty obvious truth that when the government makes an open-access highway for everybody to use, everybody is going to use it, even in ways you may not like. Especially when it makes driving the fastest and most convenient way to get around. (Making driving on the highway faster than public transit requires lots of infrastructure, and was a deliberate policy choice.)
- Comment on The whole "toilet seat up, toilet seat down" gender debate could be solved by everybody putting the seat and lid down. 2 weeks ago:
For 15 years I lived in an apartment with the bathroom shelves directly above the toilet. It’s a corollary of Murphy’s Law that anything dropped in the bathroom somehow will land in the toilet bowl. Hence, the lid stays closed.
- Comment on The whole "toilet seat up, toilet seat down" gender debate could be solved by everybody putting the seat and lid down. 2 weeks ago:
You might think, but a couple of weeks ago, uhh, a friend was sitting on the toilet at work when m…, I mean his equipment retracted and shot a stream of urine over the rim, which fortunately(?) was contained by his pants and underwear. Reportedly, he had to drape them over the vents in his urine-smelling office until they were dry enough so that he could go home and change clothes.
- Comment on Stay under the speed limit, guys. It's not worth it. 2 weeks ago:
So there you have your answer as to why she’s on the highway to begin with!
- Comment on Stay under the speed limit, guys. It's not worth it. 3 weeks ago:
The other drivers could also take those different roads, too, and avoid the slow driver, no?
- Comment on Stay under the speed limit, guys. It's not worth it. 3 weeks ago:
Maybe your local government could do proper planning so that convenient and timely public transit would offer her a viable alternative to driving? Let’s not blame individuals for systemic problems.
- Comment on A boot meme for Gen X to complement to the earlier one for the Millennials 3 weeks ago:
Baby Boomers should get this, as the song came out on 1965, but it’s nice that Gen X wasn’t forgotten, for once.
- Comment on Midnight is a stupid time for the clock to roll over to the next day 3 weeks ago:
I feel like we could fix this problem with new terminology. We have words for many various events and stretches of the diurnal cycle: Dawn, sunrise, morning/forenoon, afternoon, sunset, and dusk, but nothing quite so definite for the night hours. I would certainly understand what it would mean if somebody said, “the evening of the 3rd into the wee hours of the 4th,” but those terms lack precision. Both foremidnight and aftermidnight would convey the meaning, but sound awkward.
Historically, I think it makes sense that we base the reckoning of a day on our natural photoperiod. Until the advent of artificial lighting, the night was a liminal period of time, and hardly anybody was awake and active to make dividing it up useful. I suppose we could change the rollover time to noon, but that divides up the sunlit period across different days. At least we already have words to use, and “the morning of January 1st” would be unambiguous, as would “the night of January 1st,” but counterintuitively, the morning of January 1st would occur after the afternoon. Making it some other time would just be just as arbitrary, and much more awkward. Sunrise, for instance, varies quite a bit throughout the year. (By about half an hour even at the equator, and by almost 5 1/2 hours in Oslo.) So, now does the sunrise on January 1st occur just after or just before the new day begins? What about places where the sun stays in the sky for longer than a clock-day during parts of the year?
Better to just agree on some new words, I think.
