AFKBRBChocolate

@AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's no longer easy to play April Fool's jokes on Americans because their reality is so chaotic that it's no longer easy to tell what is real, funny, fake or sad.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It feels like there’s few pranks these days that don’t end up being cruel. We have enough horrifyingly outrageous things in the news, that is the prank is trying to make us think something horrible happened that didn’t, we sure don’t need that. On the other hand, if it’s trying to make us think that something good happened, but it didn’t, then that’s a really perverse cruelty.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I clean this mess?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Not for PLA

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a good way to buy chrome lettering in the same font as the brand's original lettering on the back of the car?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  No expert, but it seems unlikely. My understanding is that big brands generally use custom fonts, so you’re unlikely to find generic lettering that matches. But maybe you can find something close enough?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Multiple Tesla vehicles were set on fire in Las Vegas and Kansas City⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not sure why some people are disagreeing - it for sure fits the definition. I’m not exactly sad about it - Musk is helping to rip apart the country and I have a hard time blaming people who feel that helping to rip apart one of his companies is about all they can do - but committing arson to further an ideology is terrorism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did you get your job?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No, a NASA and DOD contractor. Worked on some neat stuff over the years, including the electrical power system for the space station. I ended up managing the software engineering group, and really liked that - very smart people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did you get your job?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Old guy checking in. I was a computer science major, graduating in 1985. My goal at the time was to go into computer animation (note that Toy story, the first full length computer animated movie, wasn’t released until ten years later). But there was a big computer animated project that was canceled or tabled just before my last semester, so the market was flooded with out of work animators and I decided I’d better do something different. I was getting married, and I needed a job.

  I had good grades, but I didn’t think there was much that made my resume stand out from my classmates, each of whom was making 100+ copies of theirs and applying to every software job they could find. So instead, I asked everyone I knew if they knew anyone who worked at a place that hired software people, and asked if they could get me a name of a hiring manager. I got seven or eight of those, and I sent each of them a letter with my resume, mentioning who pointed me their direction. Out of that I got three interviews and two job offers. My first job ended up being writing control software for the space shuttle main engines, and I stayed at the company almost 40 years. I just retired in January.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Having a baby? Use this one weird trick!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Didn’t they just elect a fairly liberal president?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Patients with long Covid regain sense of smell and taste with pioneering surgery⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My wife lost her sense of taste and smell because of COVID, but just for a week or so. I hadn’t considered how soul crushing that is. Food just becomes whatever the texture is. I remember her popping a Reese’s peanut butter cup into her mouth, then spitting it out. She said it was like having a lump of shortening in her mouth - all she tasted was the oil. She’s a daily coffee drinker, but coffee was just gross to her. She was getting pretty depressed before it came back.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What happens if I eat a box of paper clips before an MRI?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They wouldn’t do the MRI because they’d be ripped through your body

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a less stinky way to cook broccoli?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, broccoli is wonderful microwaved. Put it in a covered dish with just a little water. For a couple servings, I do on high like 2.5 minutes. Easy to adjust the time to get it just the way you want it. You can’t get it crispy that way, but it’s basically like perfectly steamed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can I still consider myself a “young woman” after I turn 24? I turn 24 in March (next month).⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks! Even though we’re ten years apart, I think we’re together on the tail end of the Lemmy age bell curve. It’s nice to have company.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can I still consider myself a “young woman” after I turn 24? I turn 24 in March (next month).⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s all relative. I’m 62 - from my perspective you’ve only recently gone from being a girl to being a woman, so for sure a young woman. Of course in ten years I’ll be 72 and you’ll be 34, and I’d still call you a young woman.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What 5 Megabytes of Computer Data Looked Like in 1966 ~ Vintage Everyday⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I remember our first personal computer had 40 columns on the screen, but we ended up getting an 80 column graphics card for it.

  I taught myself basic, but the first language I took in college was fortran, and it was on cards. A bit of an aberration: they had moved on to somewhat more modern equipment, but the lab was being upgraded, so they reverted you the card system for a semester temporarily. It was out of date, but not wildly so at the time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What 5 Megabytes of Computer Data Looked Like in 1966 ~ Vintage Everyday⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, it might or not be a line of code - depends a lot on the language. It’s 80 bytes, and a byte is one character. You could have continuation cards if your line was more than 80. That wasn’t ever needed for assembly language, rarely for Fortran, but very common for COBOL.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What 5 Megabytes of Computer Data Looked Like in 1966 ~ Vintage Everyday⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Seems about right. One card had 80 columns, a byte for each one, so 5,000,000 bytes divided by 80 would be 62,500 cards.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Giving the neighbors a laugh⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  According to translate, the side of the van says “Home delivery service, we always come.”

  Does that pun actually work in both English and German?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨eggs in japan⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The protective barrier is true, but you’re either making assumptions about the rest or you’ve been misinformed. There really aren’t major issues in any of the developed countries today, but the washing and refrigeration is still the safest with the longest shelf life. It isn’t the condition the chickens are kept in - there are countries where it’s much, much worse than in the US - it’s just that chickens very easily carry salmonella.

  Many years ago, more countries washed, but there were some escapes, especially one from Australia with the eggs exported to the UK, and it got a bad name, so some countries dropped it, but the US figured out how to make it work consistently. Most countries require chickens to be vaccinated, but the US hasn’t needed to because of the washing and refrigeration.

  Lots of good info online. Here’s a USDA article on it, and here’s a higher level NPR piece.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨eggs in japan⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s just two different strategies for avoiding salmonella. The US method has worked very well for a very long time. So much so that other countries did adopt it, at least for a time, but it requires an infrastructure that can keep the eggs refrigerated through from processing to consumer, which isn’t trivial.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3033: Origami Black Hole⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Huh, I’ve always thought that a black hole required a lot of mass, not just a lot of density. Apparently not true?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When they tell you "oh of course it's safe" they are lying⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I understand why it looks that way from good reaction, but there was nothing my dad wouldn’t have done for my mom. I’ve never seen two people who loved each other more completely, trusted each other more thoroughly, or gave a bigger priority to each other’s happiness. But apparently they had an awful lot of sex.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the origin of aliens looking like humans? Why and when did it become the norm?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Several people have mentioned budgetary restrictions, which is a huge part, but there are practical considerations, regardless of budget. Even with a big budget, it’s only recently that they’ve been able to make convincing non-humanoid aliens that interact with other actors (mostly through CGI). Earlier, there were good examples of movie monsters or aliens that were done with stop motion or puppets, but not in a way that they shared the screen with the human actors in a meaningful way. Can you imagine if, say, the Vulcans on the original Trek series were wildly non-human - how silly it would have looked? The technology just wasn’t there to pull it off.

  Also, most aliens, even in books, are some variation of earth life. They’re reptile-people, big spiders, intelligent bugs, or whatever. I think that’s mostly because it’s pretty hard to envision something truly novel/new. So lots of books, movies, and shows come up with some rationale for why everything in the galaxy looks like some kind of earth life to excuse that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the origin of aliens looking like humans? Why and when did it become the norm?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d say that’s more of the excuse/rationale for it. The underlying reason is hot much not expensive it would have been to do otherwise.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When they tell you "oh of course it's safe" they are lying⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sharing an overly personal story because I think it’s funny.

  When my first marriage was swirling the drain, and my wife and I hadn’t had sex for a number of months, I was visiting my parents, who were in their late 60s at the time. I noticed that my mom kept getting up to go to the bathroom, so I asked my dad if she was okay and he said she had a yeast infection that was bothering her and they didn’t know what to do about it. I told him that those were generally pretty easy, she can get a cream that will take care of it in about a week. Not much else to it other than avoid sex for a couple weeks.

  My dad looked incredulous. He said “A couple WEEKS? Like two full weeks? No sex at all for TWO WEEKS? If we don’t do that, will it go away on its own?” My dad, pushing 70, was having a hard time coming to grips with the thought of going two weeks without sex, while I was in my 20s and hadn’t had sex for four or five months.

  I remember driving home and thinking, “Well there’s something I didn’t need to think about.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump surgeon general pick involved in gun accident that killed her father at age 13⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That would be pretty hard for a thirteen-year-old to move forward from. I know I would have blamed myself at that age for killing my dad, even though it’s crazy that a loaded gun was in a shelf in reach of a kid, apparently without even the safety being on.

  Her predecessor was big on reducing gun deaths. I wonder what Nesheiwat’s views are, given that incident.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Orange Dickhead dies before taking his oath again will sucession still be applicable? Like Vance the new pres and Johnson the new VP?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s only after the electoral college votes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gemini AI tells the user to die — the answer appeared out of nowhere when the user asked Google's Gemini for help with his homework⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Isn’t this one of the LLMs that was partially trained on Reddit data? LLMs are inherently a model of a conversation or question/response based on their training data. That response looks very much like what I saw regularly on Reddit when I was there. This seems unsurprising.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sleepy Bees⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For those wondering, this appears to be true. Most sites that say it all reference the same person, whose study doesn’t seem very scientific, but I found this much more controlled study that did indeed replicate the conclusions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stop whining. Do it yourself.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder if that’s related to a user base that skews heavily toward techies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stop whining. Do it yourself.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I did, thanks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stop whining. Do it yourself.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Completely agree. I personally I’m fine with the trade-off I made. There’s even some benefits to a smaller site. I remember on Reddit there were lots of times I didn’t make a comment, even when I had something to say, because there were already literally thousands of comments, some with thousands of upvotes, and I figured anything I said would be lost in the din. Here, if you’ve got something to say, it’s very likely to be seen.