FinishingDutch @ FinishingDutch @lemmy.world

Posts

1

Comments

545

Joined

2 yr. ago

Ever seen the movie Black Hawk Down? There’s a scene where a convoy of hummvees takes heavy fire while trying to get out of Mogadishu.

Detroit is like Mogadishu. You don’t stop for anything and try not to engage the locals as much as possible.

It gets even wilder when you tell younger people that PC’s didn’t even come with storage drives in the early days. One of the earliest I used had to have software loaded through cassette tape. That was certainly a bit annoying, as it took quite a while and was error prone.

These days I somewhat collect old hardware. I love things like my Macintosh Plus where you need to juggle disks in order to load software in the memory so you can use it. Nowadays a single text e-mail outweighs the entire OS for a system like that.

Our first family PC had a 1,3 gigabyte drive. That had Win ‘95 on it, productivity apps, bunch of games, etc. This was a time when you could actually still run games off CD-ROM’s without needing installs.

These days, my phone has over 200 times the memory. It’s still amazing to me.

Same thing with SD cards. When I started with digital photography, a 32 MB card was big. My current camera takes images that are too large to fit on it! Early cameras even had floppy disk storage, if you can imagine…

I know, right? Sharpening things like knives and scissors is what I consider to be a basic maintenance skill. You don’t even need to go all out on it. Just owning a basic Spyderco Sharpmaker or WorkSharp Precision Adjust will let you sharpen a lot of things.

It’s also a given that many knives that you buy simply aren’t as sharp from the factory as they can and SHOULD be. A little effort can get you a lot better cutting performance.

I suppose the reason behind it is also that your average person thinks that ‘sharp knives are dangerous’ when in reality it’s dull knives that cause the most issues. When a supermarket chain here sold knives, people complained that the knives were too sharp! Can you imagine?

Behind the Bastards just did a four part podcast on him. Let’s just say: this likely wasn’t the weirdest thing that he was involved in that week.

When it had issues immediately post-launch, there were a LOT of Boeing-defenders: “oh no, keeping it there is a precaution, there’s nothing seriously wrong with it. They’re definitely not stuck on the station…”

Yeah. When this fucking death trap was launched WHILE HAVING ISSUES, I knew it wasn’t going to be a quick round trip. Frankly, I’d be amazed if those astronauts up there would be willing to take the return trip on it. NASA has a poor track record in that regard.

I absolutely love spaceflight and whole heartedly support programs. But Boeing needs to not be making spacecraft that humans fly on.

Could be, but I think a seat heating malfunction is more likely. Looks like an older vehicle so there’s all sorts of things that could break down.

The driver also might’ve just parked it in the exact right spot to catch problematic sun reflections. There’s been a few buildings that are known to cause issues. People who parked around the ‘Walkie Talkie’ building in London had melted body panels, mirrors, burns in their interior, etc. They had to install screens on the building to stop this ‘death ray’ effect.

Yeah, definitely can relate :D I was downright ecstatic when my supermarket got self-checkout. I absolutely hate waiting in lines, small talk, etc. With self-checkout I’m done in 30 seconds.

The few times I used ordering kiosks at McD’s or Burger King, I actually preferred them over ordering at the counter. At least with the kiosk, I can take my time, look at options and order without feeling pressured by the line behind me. I’ve got a visual disability , and it’s much easier for me to use than to read a menu that’s posted behind the counter.

And you know at least the order went through correctly, as opposed to dealing with some stoned teen who barely speaks the language and is liable to mess it up.

The kiosks definitely aren’t why I don’t go to MC’s. It’s the insane prices.

Honestly, I’m amazed people still go there to eat. The food was never really good, but at least it used to be fast and cheap. But these days, it’s neither anymore. McDonald’s is now more expensive than the gourmet burger places in my city; that feels insane.

I’ll look into those. That Sharp looks ancient though? I’m seeing videos on it from 6 years ago, assuming it’s the correct one.

Back in the ‘sweet spot’ of cellphone use, the late ‘90’s, you could get several days of use out of a battery. Some only needed a weekly charge. I also don’t need or want a flip phone to do everything that a smartphone does.

I’m a big proponent of making phones bigger with bigger batteries. I’ve got huge hands and most phones feel dainty and fragile. Give me a house brick with a week long battery and I’d be perfectly happy. Making phones slimmer is just silly.

God yes.

I was looking at phones yesterday and thinking: do they make an actual, premium flip phone with keyboard a la the old Motorola Razr? It appears nobody does. All I could find were cheap shitty Chinese plasticky trash or phones made for the elderly.

I want something with a nice metal/titanium case, premium keyboard, decent oled screen, 10+ megapixel camera on it… and something that I can snap shut like it owes me money. Don’t make it too small; I want a week’s battery life at least and swappable battery.

And I would - and I’m not joking here - pay 600-800 euros for that, depending on how premium the experience is.

I think there’s absolutely a market for that.

Bats. Some species really look like adorable little sky kittens. But they are also significant disease carriers, ranging from rabies to ebola. Bats themselves have evolved to be immune to things that can kill us and other animals.

It’s why you should never, EVER touch a bat. Just don’t.

He stood by his wife, then-US Representative Gabby Giffords, after she was shot in the head during a 2011 assassination attempt.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tucson_shooting

Basically, he also gets points for just being a good husband.

Kids killing kids sadly happens all through time. But it’s quite rare, so it makes the news.

Back in 1993, there was the murder of 2 year old James Bulger in the UK. He was abducted, tortured and killed by two boys aged 10. After they tortured him to death, they put the body on train tracks where it was cut in half, so as to make it look like an accident.

One of the kids was in and out of jail a few times since then, as well as charged with child porn.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger

The UK really should’ve given both the death penalty if it had still been available. Humanity is better off without people like that.

Neat, I didn’t know that was a thing that they offered. Sounds like a good idea to keep people safe from stupid mistakes.

Yep. Years ago I interviewed someone for a radio program here in the Netherlands. This was a forest ranger, on the topic of people foraging for mushrooms. It was the hip thing to do at the time.

He explained how wildly dangerous it is for average people to do. Especially when looking up things online.

He showed me two images that looked basically identical. He explained to me that one mushroom was edible and delicious. And that it could be found in the forests in the United States. The other, identical looking mushroom can be found in European forests. That one liquifies your internal organs and causes you to shit yourself to an agonising death.

He explained that each year a handful of people die from eating it. Because they looked up a guide online, and failed to understand that there’s regional differences between edible and deadly mushrooms. And by the time they got medical attention, there was nothing that could be done.

I’m not a fan of mushrooms anyway, but I’d certainly never be dumb enough to go pick some myself. That shit’ll get you killed.

When he followed up the debate by calling Zelensky Putin and confusing his own VP with Trump, there’s really nothing else to be said. You can’t make those mistakes. Not in that office. There’s simply no denying those clips.

‘Could lead to chaos’. Ma’am, that ship has sailed. When even high ranking party members openly doubt the president’s ability to get elected, much less actually lead, you’ve clearly lost control of the situation.

Will replacing Biden at this stage be easy? Of course not. But he shouldn’t have been in the Oval Office in the first place. Running a candidate this frail once was a gamble… doing it twice is suicidal.

Democrat leadership only has itself to blame for this predicament.