A note about surge protectors: Make sure they are actually surge protectors and not just “power strips” that Amazon has mixed into the search results. Power strips are easy to find in many varieties, made by any number of fly-by-night companies; they’ll do nothing to help protect your stuff from power surges. Legitimate surge protectors from reputable companies are much less common. Also, they don’t last forever. An older surge protector may still work as a power strip, but over time they may become much less effective as surge protectors.

Hot take: Most metal is just Classical Music II Electric Bugaloo.

I’d ask a couple thousand people to guess in private. So the most popular answer would probably be either surprisingly close to correct or Cuppy McHazelnutface.

I used to playing games on my calculator. I suppose you still can, but I used to do it. I remember I had RISK on my TI-89, but the games on my TI-82 were on par with the version of snake shown in the post.

Somebodies lying (or at least being deceptive). I checked the link. There’s no mention of 20 countries anywhere. Nobody said 20 countries here either. Setting that pedantry aside. In fact, even if it were used by significantly fewer than twenty countries, the ones that without a doubt do use them are spread around the globe. Thus, they are used globally.

David Byrne. Stop Making Sense

A fucking Members Only pizza.

There was a scene in Braveheart we had to skip when we watched it in middle school. I’m sure many convinced their families to rent Braveheart from Blockbuster for “homework” later. At this point, I don’t even remember what the scene was. Maybe there was a penis? Probably it was just butts or boobs. The corpses and violence were of little concern.

There was that one time we watched a particular version of Romeo and Juliet and the teacher was delightfully inept at skipping scenes. That girl was barely older than most of us.

I have cable. It doesn’t really work like that anymore. I used to be able to click through ALL the basic cable channels, catching a frame or two of every single channel, with zero delay between channels, all within like under a minute. These days every channel change or menu selection has a built-in delay of at least a second or two. Channel surfing just doesn’t vibe the same anymore. That form of TV is mostly if not entirely dead.

Plexamp has gotten better lately. It can save your progress on audiobooks now. It’s a per library feature, so I have one library of music (that does not save progress) and one for audiobooks (that does save progress). I used to have trouble with some audiobook formats (M4Bs needed to be converted (really just renamed) to mp4s, but that wasn’t necessary for the last few I loaded. Plex still has a little trouble with standards around multiple authors and different productions (and different readers) of a single book, but that’s more of an ID3 tag problem and is resolved if you’re consistent in normalizing the tags on your library. I’ve also used the syncing features a bunch for offline time (like on a plane or on long trips). For a large library, I see syncing offline files as a necessary feature.

And before the Jellyfin fanboys chime in, if Jellyfin could match these audio and syncing features (and be easier to setup for access outside my LAN and sharing with family), I jump ship in a heartbeat.

Properly designed speed tables should be able to be safety traversed at speed. Speed bumps force you to slow down to under the speed limit, sometimes far under, in order to traverse safely. That said, I’ve seen many many many more examples of things like: speed bumps with signs for speed tables, poorly designed humps that are neither speed bumps nor speed table, poorly designed speed bumps that are dangerous at practically any speed, or speed bumps without proper warning signs or paint to warn drivers, speed bumps in parking lots that just encourage people to drive wrecklessly around them. The absolute worst are those bolt-on DIY atrocities. Really, I’ve only ever seen properly designed speed tables in the richest of neighborhoods. All the other HOAs and towns seem to think they can get away with just hiring an asphalt guy or sending out a road maintenance crew to throw a speed bump and some paint down without any kind of survey, design, or traffic study.

Obviously Miles Davis is the only answer, but only while watching Elevator to the Gallows because he composed and performed the soundtrack. Otherwise I just listen to the thing I’m watching.

Yeah that was my first thought after getting over the weirdness of it, “How manageable is this hair going to be after getting home and later as it grows out?”

Just a reminder that everyone is a criminal, but only the out group get the punishments. It’s practically impossible these days to do anything without running afoul of some law somewhere, especially when the new fascist regime is turning your old civil rights into new felonies every day. Fed the homeless? Criminal. Shelter an abused person? Trafficking. Give water to a protestor? To an immigrant? Aiding terrorists. Exercising your right to protest? Actual terrorist. Be a librarian? Obscenity. Report facts and statistics? Treason. Give medical care to the wrong person? Felony. Fail to pay debt? (often debt you had no choice about taking on, like debts to courts, medical, and school debts) Criminal. Insist on a separation between church and state? Hate speech. Resist a kidnapping by anonymous men in an anonymous van? Resisting arrest and deported, yes even the legal citizens. These are just the spicy examples. There are plenty of other more mundane crimes that everyone commits every day. The system is too corrupt and complicated to completely avoid breaking the law.

“pretty easy” is a bit of a stretch

Yeah, I’d say they should only have shared it with the news if the news also named and identified them clearly every time the photos are shared. Corruption dies in sunlight. The dangerous ones already know, might as well hang a lantern on any attempts at retaliation.

Why not keep it simpler with one commandment:

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

Oh yeah, I was just venting. Every place has their quirks. I wish I had your lowkey Fridays.

LOL, not everywhere is like this. Fridays are always the day an emergency project gets dropped in my lap that absolutely must be done before the next Monday because somebody else has a deadline they need to meet (that they’ve known about for months) and they need our work for a critical part of it, but they never seem to remember until Thursday night.

I’ve also worked at places where the boss demanded a doctor’s note to return to work. I just said “No, I’m not doing that.” That’s always been the end of it. I returned to work once I was well and continued we all continued on as if it never really was about health and safety in the first place. Lots of places have policies on the books that are either outright illegal or unenforceable, but they get people to tow the line out of fear. If a few of us call their bluff, it’s better for them to quietly move on so that we don’t escalate the situation and shine a light on that policy. If word got around that the policy was unenforceable, they wouldn’t be able to bully the rest into compliance.

Moreover, not every “sick leave” is something that is contagious, migraines for example. I’ve even taken a sick day preemptively because I got to work and discovered that I’d have to work in close proximity to someone that was actually sick and contagious, but refused to stay home.

Also, if the company is requiring a professional evaluation in order to work, surely that is something that will be fully expensed to the company. I suppose that dynamic would be different under universal healthcare. But sending people that are recovering from a contagious disease that will resolve itself on its own would still be an incredible strain (and an unnecessary one) on the entire system.