dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️ @ dual_sport_dork @lemmy.world

Progenitor of the Weird Knife Wednesday feature column. Is "column" the rig

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Note that this is not a catch with this recycling process (necessarily, anyway; the article doesn't get into too many specifics) but rather an end-run to make lithium mining and refining appear less awful than it actually is.

Mining new lithium may be "cheaper" in raw dollars and cents provided only you don't include the environmental impact or the costs of dealing with the same as a line item on the invoice.

Are you callin' me out, old man???

Anyway, it's rarely the cardboard that's a hassle. It's the damn glued shut bubble mailers, the boxes that are completely shrink wrapped, or have those damn plastic straps around them, or plasic clamshell packaging.

All of those get the chop. The latter often with extreme prejudice.

Sure, Hitler only gave the orders to exterminate millions. That's totally different...

"I didn't shoot that guy, I 'only' pulled the trigger! The hammer, firing pin, primer, gunpowder, and bullet all acted on their own."

Mostly not finding the entire stack of towels either soaked through with water, toppled over into the sink, or scattered all over the floor the next time someone uses the bathroom.

And, you know, not making our business look completely janky and unprofessional since clients can also use this restroom.

"Those who live by the sword must also cook with a sword."

I don't know, something about swords.

Ha-ha, your box of counterfeits is small...

It's explicitly against Amazon's ToS to incentivize reviews, or write/modify reviews in exchange for any kind of compensation. This includes the typical business card included in the box with the product pleading for 5 stars and promising "free gifts" or store credits. When I still used Amazon, any time I got one of those it was the only thing I mentioned in my review.

I don't know if anyone actually meaningfully enforces this, but quite a few things I've reviewed in such a way seemed to disappear from the site more quickly than usual.

Yes, and it's basically a given that most of this crap is counterfeit, unless it's a scheme as dopey as simply ordering it from Amazon and shipping it back to you. Which still isn't a guarantee that it isn't counterfeit, come to think of it.

That profit margin for the drop shipper has to come from somewhere.

And this is coming from someone who deliberately orders counterfeit crap. (Yes, knives, how did you guess?) But if you're okay with that you may as well buy it directly from whoever is making the knockoffs in the first place via Aliexpress or whatever and pay a lot less in the process.

I have (briefly) encountered employers who literally believe the first one, though.

It's a great way to get your entire workforce sick, that's for sure. That'll certainly keep productivity high, won't it?

Yeah, this is one of those damn fool things you see hanging in gift shops and other outlets of kitsch, unironically on display as if it's still clever and nobody's ever seen it before. Usually right along side the very similar plaque with the "Labor rates: If you watch / If you offer advice / If you help" canard, "Harley Davidson Parking Only," "Complaint Department, Take a Number (Grenade)," and others of the same ilk.

I see what you did there.

It's even more familiar than you'd think at first blush. The Nazis literally used preorders of the Beetle to fund their war effort, grifting their own citizens in the process.

https://www.krause-papierwerke.com/post/kdf-wagen-savings-booklet

Nobody from the thousands of subscribers ever received the car. In 1939 war started and VW production switched to Kubelwagen and other military vehicles. Many subscribers kept paying till 1945 believing in final victory and not wanting to lose the money they invested in the program so far. In 1950 group of subscribers sued Volkswagen demanding compensation. After 12 years of a trial, they received a credit towards a new VW that amounted to ~12% of a price of a base VW model, or 5-times less in cash.

It makes total sense if you're of the generation(s) whose brains were fucked up by the American public education system pre-1980 or so, and were never taught how to understand abstract concepts nor any critical thinking skills. They learned everything by rote recitation.

Everything.

FYI, this is probably in no small part why your parents struggle with technology or at the very least anything with an on-screen user interface so much.

Up until then, "thing you stick in machine that plays movies" inevitably involved some manner of tape. I imagine the majority of the public has absolutely no idea nor any interest in how this actually works inside the machine; as far as they're concerned it's either magic or complicated nerd technology stuff that they have convinced themselves that they'll never understand. It was just hammered into them that When Done With Movie You Must Rewind (or else mom/dad/the video store will get mad at you). However, no logical connection is made between the medium in question and the act of rewinding. Merely that it is a movie thing. Movie things get rewound.

I'm sure this is also why a particular generation insists on calling Nintendo cartridges "tapes."

My father is an engineer, which has its ups and downs. He can definitely be trusted to read a dialog box and nearly 100% of the time even understand what it says. Abstract concepts, problems he's never encountered before, all generally no issue.

My stepmother, however, once asked me if she needs to rewind a DVD before putting it away. We've been working on it with her over the years. She's certainly better now, but she still has an acute case of just randomly clicking on things without reading them.

That's not the issue, though. In a vacuum there is no medium with which to carry the heat away. You can't send it into the air with fans or heat sinks because there isn't any air.

At least on the moon you could sink it into the ground. But in orbit you don't have that luxury. This is a major problem that spacecraft and satellite designs need to work around, and much effort is expended in that department.

Even though space is generally considered "cold," in the absence of a medium to sink heat into the best you can do is rely on infrared radiation which is not terribly effective.

INB4 chumps discover that cooling hardware in a vacuum is, in fact, quite difficult.

A surprising number of things on the Disc that appear to be made up fantasy are actually based on real world words, concepts, cultures, and especially bits of folklore. Sometimes messed with a bit, but oftentimes played completely straight. And it makes the jokes even better when you look it up and figure out what Pratchett was referencing when he wrote it. Some of it is quite clever.

It's true that the Discworld is a world, and a mirror of worlds (i.e. ours).

It bugs me more because it wasn't a casino, it was three casinos.

And if you really want a simulacrum of a real product for whatever reason, Aliexpress exists and has the same crap available for a fraction of the cost, and doesn't enrich Jeff Bezos.

I see they also invented a new connector standard, Nano-USB Type C.