Uriel238 [all pronouns] @ uriel238 @lemmy.blahaj.zone

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2 yr. ago

Don't drink the battery warnings fall into the cover-your-ass listings of all the stupid things people have done that might lead to litigation.

But around a century or so ago, Boy Scouts learned to build a bungalow and a tool shed which were part of their bear badge.

When I was a cub scout I had the option of building a pinball machine. Of course it didn't say how and a basic pachinko machine was easier if more tedious.

Note I didn't do any of these things, being a latchkey kid and no internet, nor libraries in walking distance. I flunked out of boy scouts.

That all said, most appliances we buy have a lot of instructions we don't remember, and the ones that are not obviously dangerous tend to require multiple infractions plus wear and tear before they're actually hazardous. But the US is a litigious society.

I was thinking Immorten Joe's warboys from Mad Max / Furiosa ( Witness Me! ) rather than Space Orks. They don't have any ambition (nor are really allowed any in the States) except to throw themselves into the breach and hope for to be judged worthy by V8 / God-Emperor Trump.

And to be fair to them, our neglect to confined education to bottom-rung worker / soldier employment pipeline -- in which they're regarded generally as ineligible for human relationships -- really screws them over and our educations system cranks out these guys by the millions.

(I was one in the 1980s, before there was internet or alt-right and social media was local or constrained to tech nerds on BBS. But I was sexually frustrated enough to be a social hazard, and in retrospect, wonder how they figured I'd be able to learn math. As a neurodivergent, I eventually learned how to human through 12-step programs when I was 25. The education system has only gotten worse since, so the alt-right is flush with recruits like the Rebel Alliance after Alderaan.)

Apparently soccer is offensive even though I grew up in AYSO. i got in the habit of calling them association football and gridiron football, respectively.

I thought the corruption of the leagues and the fanatcism of the US is bad and scary. Then I learned about FIFA. i had no idea.

Keep food out for them (maybe with a selective feeder). They might come back.

Jesus with selfie stick and handsome white-guy filter.

My feed today is getting a few glitches in the matrix.

Once again people are creeped out by the MLPFIM thing not because it's pervy (it's really quite wholesome despite there being some R34), it's because of the intensity of the fandom.

What this reveals is common society only respects otaku to an upper threshold before it gets marginalized and the right-wing starts pushing sexualized stereotypes.

Sociology is fun!

One of those glitches in the matrix that shows we live in a simulation.

My head leaks like a sieve.

I'm covering my ass, AFAIK.

Speaking of which, Allegedly and Alibi are great girl's names. So is Agenda

Donald Trump, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, joe Rogan and Alex Jones have done a fuckton of damage redefining masculinity to the White nationalist consensus (the warboys that won in November 2024)

When I was growing up the man code (circa 1982) was:

🔸️ DON'T launch the LGM-30 Minuteman nuclear-tipped ICBM. Evar. Even if the President of the United States orders you to. (He's bluffing.)

In the 1990s we learned women are perfectly capable of not launching the LGM-30 Minuteman nuclear-tipped ICBM.

And I wouldn't trust Joe Rogan to do the same.

Or, for that matter, President-Elect Donald Trump.

The internet

Where men are men

Where women are men

Where kids are FBI

—1990s USEnet era adage

Can confirm. Went as Final Girl on Among Us and wow. Dudes got viscous vicious inside minutes.

As a veteran dumper of useful stuff in the street, this is missing a magical word:

WORKS!

This is especially important during the age of CRT monitors since mischief-makers are glad to assume otherwise and smash the tube.

This magic word makes stuff disappear twice as fast.

This is an old John Candy joke from Splash

You're quite welcome. I'm a whodunnit genre nerd so I love talking about it.

Grandma gets it.

The closed circle of suspects is a mystery trope that has commonly carried onto the slasher / thriller genre even though it's not necessary. The purpose isn't necessarily to limit suspects, but also to keep the victims within the killing box (Fringe examples might be Phone Booth or Speed ).

In cozy mysteries, this was a narrative device not just to box in the culprit and the victims, but also to make it clear to the reader that this is your set of suspects. (Mysteries traditionally were puzzles that the reader was supposed to be able to follow along and solve with the clues found by the investigator... though the authors didn't always play fair.) The classic example is the bridge between mystery-thrillers and slashers, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, in which the trek to the island and an imminent storm really secures the notion that no-one is getting in or out. (Plot point: -- 🤓 -- Vera Elizabeth Claythorne, a PE instructor is quite fit and a strong swimmer, and might have been able to swim to shore and either outrun or weather the storm. She chooses not to, though.)

This whole exercise was started by a supercut of movie instances in which phone service failed, a narrative device to lock in the participants (killers, investigators and victims alike) and lock out anyone else, and this was during that societal transition as people adjusted from often being separated, to always having a connection handy.

My point for the exercise was to note that instant communication may make a circle leaky, but it adds bunches of cool new tropes, and doesn't require turning off the phones (or the prior murderer trick, cutting the house phone lines.)

I have a different rant about the police, who, in mysteries go from clever and central to the solution to totally useless without the investigator. But in the 21st century, they can also turn your mystery into a dystopian horror as they SWAT into your home, kill all the minorities (and the dogs) and arrest everyone else for the homicides they [the police] committed.

Ima just leave this here, Climate Town's discussion of Natural Gas (or what we call Methane. Fart gas.)

He explains how it's a LNG is really fucking everyone over. Some points:

• NG infrastructure is leaky and causes lots of non-point-source pollution.
• Methane was supposed to be a transitional energy source as we moved towards renewables, but instead we're leaning heavily on methane while China is securing all the science patents and materials for solar.
• LNG is super inefficient. I think like 20% of it is used up in the liquification process, which is required for transit overseas. This is to sell it to nations abroad.
• Since we're really trying to get to renewables, everyone buying LNG is a jerk, and everyone selling it is also a jerk.
• If even one of these supertankers has a rupture incident, it will fuck the Earth, and I'll be sore as I watch wildfire ravage California, and by east coast buddies get hammered by hurricanes. Also we'll be closer to permanent drought and then global famine.
• Seriously, Methane is bad. NG infrastructure should be moved away from as quickly as possible. LNG is really extra super bad, and can ruin our kids' futures.

Around 2010-ish someone made a supercut of all the times in thriller cinema the phone service disconnected, since writers still felt the need to close the circle.

So I got the idea for a mystery / slasher / thriller called Cell Plan based on the family cell provider plans at the time, where groups were discounted more based on the size of the group.

A group of teens / young adults get a giant group cell plan right before their vacation out at Camp Scream. It's a great plan with great connectivity, and everyone can even see where everyone else's phone is on their GPS / Map service.

Moreover, the cell service never fails throughout the story, even in places that it shouldn't work (no explanation, nothing supernatural, just that communication blackouts are not part of this story). People might even think it's bizarre when they're way out in Whispering Lake or down in the Bloody Mines, in places where service normally cuts out.

And then throw bunches of cell phone tropes that elevate the suspense: The first victim's phone is found before her body is. One couple who sneaked off together get split up but take each other's phones. Someone forgets their phone back at the cabin, which is then grabbed by the killer (who then uses it to get close to a victim). The killer is holding someone's phone and stalking a running teen while another one sees them on the map and is giving directions.

Eventually, they'll do all the open-circle things: Call the police (they'll show up an hour or two later), call family, maybe even get help from an expert to get the power on again.

PS: If anyone is actually connected to a studio or cinema production team or whatever and wants to turn this notion into a script, do so with my blessing. It's just an idea, and I don't like IP anyway.

I've personally lost all sense of masculinity. There's no positive feature I would think men should have and women not, or vice versa.

To me gender norms feel weird and toxic, except there are folk in our trans community that get a lot out of representing as their gender.

But telling people they rock is a good thing I think. 2025 is expected to a lot of bad days.