Canopyflyer @ Canopyflyer @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

I have to agree with you.

Actors that have been "de-aged" or simulated just don't quite cross the uncanny valley for me. I loved Tron Legacy, but the de-aging on Jeff Bridges was just off. So those scenes with CLU and in the past just drew me out of the film.

It is a cinematic triumph. Peter Cushing himself called it his greatest role! Well, he might have said that.

Fun fact that I actually just learned today. The cast made from Mr Cushing's face for his scene in Top Secret was used by the SFX wizards working on Rogue One to digitally recreate the actor for the movie.

Imagine that, a casting for a prosthetic made over 40 years ago was used to recreate the image of Peter Cushing so that he could appear as Grand Moff Tarkin again.

Have to admit, that rather stunned me when I read it.

Older Gen X'er here.

This list was basically a Tuesday for me back in the day.

SIR/MADAM! I call foul! Most foul!

Your list is horribly disingenuous, due to the absence of Val Kilmer's greatest movie:

Top Secret

1985 Pontiac Sunbird and my parents had a 1986 Buick Skyhawk. Both were exactly the same car, just different front fascia. Same crappy 1.8L SOHC engine and terrible build quality.

Both cars blew head gaskets at 50,000 miles and my Sunbird blew it again at 65,000miles. Neither car were ever overheated. The A/C on both cars died at 60K. Various parts of the exterior and interior were just plain falling apart. The cars' performance was absolutely abysmal.

The cars were so bad that I haven't purchased another GM product since, nor will I ever buy another product from GM. My Dad had bought a mid-90's Oldmobile 88 and it was actually OK for the most part. It just ate alternators, until I convinced him to put an upgraded aftermarket unit on and that problem was solved. Later he bought a Chevy Traverse and that thing was an absolute piece of trash. He had to put timing chains on it at 70k and that was a $2500 bill. The power steering also went out on it multiple times. He had the steering rack and power steering pump replaced multiple times.

I traded my old Sunbird in on a 1985 Toyota Corolla GT-S and THAT was my absolute favorite car of all time. I autocrossed it for several years and it never broke. I'd love to find one to restore. I have owned multiple Toyotas in my 39 years of driving. My current car is a Camry Hybrid.

That is a generally accepted rule for repairing a car. It is not hard and fast, as it is not a simple decision. So you are correct, it's not right, but it is also not wrong either. It's a matter of whose yacht you want to finance? Your mechanic's, or your lender's.

The only time I would consider putting more than half the worth of a car into fixing it, is if it is a vehicle that is difficult or impossible to replace. Case in point is I have a friend that has one of the last Toyota Camry's with a manual transmission to come off the production line. He bought it new. About 4 years ago at a bit over 200k on the odometer, he replaced the short block, plus a lot of other work to essentially make the car "new" again. His total bill was over $10k, which is more than the car is worth in total. Why? He just loves it that much and Toyota no longer offers a manual in the Camry. He hates automatics and has declared it will be a cold day in hell before he ever owns one.

This is exactly why an automobile should be treated as a depreciating asset, rather than an investment.

You fix a car if it will cost less than half of its value at the time of the repair. If it cost more than half, get rid of it at the first opportunity. There are caveats to that rule of course. So don't fault yourself for buying another car.

You had some bad luck and that is just a part of owning a car. In commiseration, I invested $2500 into an Acura TL that I dearly loved for timing belt and some other 100K maintenance items. Only to have its transmission blow up less than 4 months later. The $2500, plus the transmission replacement would have been well over half the value of the car. I traded it. For a car that I still own and absolutely loathe, but it's been reliable and I've put over 160,000 miles on it. My oldest kid now drives it.

The short answer is:

Keep your current car. It's basically new. From a manufacturer that is notable for the reliability of its products. You also know its maintenance history, which is incredibly important.

Have your payments kept ahead of depreciation? Meaning, can you sell your car for enough to pay off your loan? Just so you know, that's almost always "no", but your results may vary. You would also be forced to buy another car. 7.59% APR sucks, but are you able to get a better rate now on another car? Do you have the down payment for another car? Again, you may not have any money left over from selling your current car and paying off the lien.

If you can refinance it at a lower the rate, then absolutely that is the path you should take. If not, then taking a more global look at your finances are in order to make the payment more palatable.

Used to work for a company that started out as a US startup for IT Services, later it was purchased by a large German company.

During its startup days, you did not dare drink alcohol at lunch time.

After being bought by the German company, you did not dare NOT to drink alcohol at lunch time. Especially if someone from Germany was visiting. They viewed it odd that we had an aversion to drinking beer at lunch.

Accusation in a mirror

My wife is a Rheumatologist. She actually had a patient attempt to use an article SHE WROTE to argue against her diagnosis. The article the patient was "citing" was not even applicable to the symptoms the patient presented.

For some reason, when Cibola Burns came out, Jefferson Mays was unavailable, so another person narrated it. I think it was Erik Davies, but cannot remember, the book has since been redone by Jefferson.

I stopped and returned the book when the narrator pronounced "cumin" as something a teenager does into a Kleenex. Which, to be fair, is actually an appropriate pronunciation of the word, per Webster's dictionary, I've never heard anyone else pronounce it that way before. There were A LOT of other issues with the guy's narration. His cadence, voicing, along with pronunciation was absolutely atrocious. By far the worst narrator I have personally encountered.

Jefferson Mays needs to have someone go through and coach him on pronunciation. Otherwise, his cadence, pacing, voicing are all pretty good. Certainly not an S tier narrator, but pretty solid and he gives "The Expanse" books the tone that they need.

Large ships that ply the stars at super luminal speeds. These ships are equipped with massive energy weapons capable of pulverizing planets. Powered by systems that use anti-matter, or ultra exotic inter-dimensional matter.

Yet, for some reason the ship is constrained on energy and is unable to keep all the lights on, or the crew has to conform to "energy conservation protocols" (ST TOS), or there isn't enough power available to keep the ship at a habitable temperature (BSG).

Life support would not even be a rounding error on the power output of some of the systems described in Sci fi.

55m here.

When I'd post on Reddit and started getting nothing but bots or trolls, or both I started to lose interest in it. The proverbial straw though was the API shenanigans. I used Bacon Reader on my phone, yes I know there were dozens of us, and the mobile Reddit app was crap.

So I did what any Gen'xer who was there at the dawn of the internet does... I searched for an alternative. Lemmy was one that kept popping up.

Been here ever since. Not sure how long ago that was no, 3 years? 4? I've slept since then.

High speed dirt man, high speed dirt.

Not just circuit breakers, but why are high powered circuits being used in the habitable parts of the ship?

Even modern cars no longer run high amperage circuits to the driver's controls. Back in the old days, you turn on the lights, the light switch carried a full 12v and a lot of current to control relays. Today, the light switch and turn signal stalk use a signal circuit to tell a body control module what to do.

The bridge of a Star Trek ship should have control panels running on the future equivalent of 5 volt signal circuits that tells a distant and well shielded control module to switch the ultra high powered circuits.

That leads me to the one thing that has always bothered me about Star Trek and its transporters and replicators. E=MC^2... When a replicator creates food or an object, it would take at least the same amount of energy to make, as it would if the same amount of mass were destroyed in a nuclear reaction. That DOES mean in areas where those devices are installed there ARE ultra high powered circuits (EPS conduits) in the wall. So high powered that they have the equivalent of multiple nuclear explosions flowing through them every second... YIKES.

Phone

SMS/MMS

Family Link

That's it. Everything else can wait till I open it up.

Told a janitor to not unplug the equipment rack in a closet to plug in their vacuum cleaner. Why they thought that plugging in their vacuum there, rather than just using the outlet not 6 feet away outside the closet is beyond me.

Further, why that closet wasn't locked in the first place. But this was almost 30 years ago and it was another time in IT.

I spoke with the janitor and she started plugging in her vacuum in the adjacent outlet. Then I went to the director of IT and got the capitol cost approved to secure all of the networking closets in the building, which there were 6, one for each floor. Only the one floor was an issue as that closet also house a sink and drain for the janitors to use. There wasn't another place we could move the networking equipment to without laying out a lot of money.

Farscape by a long shot.

As someone that literally spent 25 years driving a manual, including various stints in racing. Manuals have seen their day.

It used to be if you wanted better mileage, you drove a manual. If you wanted to be faster on the track, drive a manual (caveat there is drag racing.)

Today? The computer is just better at controlling a transmission. I drive a Camry Hybrid now and not having shifts is REALLY weird and the drone getting up to highway speeds is annoying, but I do like the 45mpg. Not to mention, when I sat down to learn how the Toyota Hybrid Drive works... It's a pretty clever system.

There are a lot of times that nostalgia gets the better of me and I wish I had a car with a manual. My oldest is possibly joining a skating team that is a 2 hour drive away. It's tempting to let him use my car and then buy an older manual for myself as a toy. I'd love to get a hold of another mid-80's Corolla GT-S. I autocrossed one back in the late 80's early 90's. It still remains my favorite car I've ever owned.

House:

No neighbors on the other side of the wall. Although, I live in a tightly packed neighborhood. My plot of land is only 10,000ft^2. That's not the size of my house, that's the size of my YARD. I do wish we had at least an acre. Honestly, I'd love to have 3 or 4 acres that are partially wooded, but beggars and choosers and all that.

More room to spread out. When we started having kids, we had areas we could turn into toy rooms, a dedicated bathroom for diaper changes and bathing the kids. We finished the basement two years ago and that has added even more room. I have my own personal man cave now, which is nice.

It's a home. Meaning our property looks like how WE want it to look. We're lucky in that we do NOT have an HOA. My wife and I love flower gardens and most of our property is taken up with flower beds. When we turn onto our street, we see our Home, not just a house. Never had that feeling in all the years I rented apartments.

For reference, I rented from 1991 to 2006. My wife and I bought our house in 2006 and have been in it ever since. This is the longest I have ever lived in one place in my entire life. Even over and above the house I grew up in. We're about to go onto the next stage of life, as our oldest is going off the college next year and our youngest is about 3 years behind him. We might move when the youngest moves, but there are a LOT of things that will go into that decision.