“Supposed” is one of those words with a quiet “d” that people seem to often get wrong. Same with “used” especially in “used to” where people write “use to”. English sucks, but I still wish people would put in the effort to follow the rules so that they communicate more effectively.

I wonder what it will do to kids these days that they don’t use their imaginations like this. Kids today will be glued to electronic devices.

Yep, dirt bike for me too. Maybe it’s a lack of really creative imagination, but someone doing parkour couldn’t have kept up. A dirt bike makes sense because it could do highway speeds.

Generally not the entire lower face, the way men do.

Women shave all the time, they just don’t tend to shave their faces.

What’s interesting is that the ones who don’t have peach fuzz are men who shave. If a perfectly smooth face is what you find attractive, you want a man’s face.

Americans should use the Metric system the way Canadians do:

Temperature: Celsius. Unless it’s for cooking, or you’re talking about the temperature of a pool.

Length: Metric. Unless it’s talking about a person’s height. Or, you’re talking about lumber.

Mass / Weight: Pounds. Unless you’re talking small weights, then you use grams. If you’re shopping, it’s 50/50. If it’s really big weights it’s “tons” which might be metric or might not.

Volume: Metric. Except if you’re cooking. But, then when you’re cooking you have to figure out what a fl. oz. is because Canadian cans are in mL but the recipe is flozzameters.

I do that, but the more complicated the meal, the less down time there is, and the more stuff there is you can’t clean up until the end.

Also, if you use serving dishes, rather than just serve out of the pot / pan, that’s another thing to clean. It’s true that cleaning a pot or pan is normally a bit harder than a serving dish. But, IMO the extra bit to clean means it’s not worth it.

It is a bit of a triumph when the only thing to clean after dinner is a single pot or pan though. And, pro-tip, you can make the pans easier to clean after dinner if you dump a bit of water in them as you’re sitting down to eat. Even 30 minutes is enough to turn the remains of a delicious sauce into sludge at the bottom of the pan. But, soaking while you eat makes it super quick to scrape it out afterwards.

On a related note:

United States Department of Damage Control is a fictional construction company appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The company specializes in repairing the property damage caused by conflicts between superheroes and supervillains.[1] Three Damage Control limited series have been published.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_Control_(comics)

Also note that the initials of “Damage Control” are “D.C.”

This goes part of the way to explain why people are willing to continue to live in NYC despite it being regularly attacked by supervillains, aliens, demons, etc. Though, I still think Philadelphia, Newark, Allentown and New Haven would probably be experiencing a lot of growth, seeing as they appear to be close to NYC and yet safe from the NYC chaos and danger.

I did a little reading up on it. Apparently it’s hard to make it work unless all the pieces you’re melting are the same size, and any impurity, even dust, can cause issues. And that’s before you even get to the point where you’re trying to extrude a perfectly sized filament.

Also, given how cheap the filament is, there probably isn’t enough incentive to do this on a commercial scale. Otherwise someone could design a machine that could be sold to shops that sold 3d-printing stuff so they could recycle filament for their customers.

Many reduction gears, so each turn of one is a fraction of the turn of the one next to it. Pretty pointless.

Because the handset ended up in a “cradle”, there was almost always contact between the handset and the cradle before the switch cut off the phone. That was true even when someone was hanging up normally. There was a bit of a rattle as the phone went into the cradle. When someone slammed the phone down, that contact between the handset and cradle was much louder, but was cut off much more quickly. It wasn’t painfully loud, but the person on the other end was very aware that the phone had been slammed.

AFAIK, one reason for that is that AT&T was the monopoly provider of telephone equipment. They didn’t have to compete with anybody who might undercut them for price. In addition, people often rented their phones, paying a small rental charge every month. That meant that AT&T built the phones to last. They were extremely solid because AT&T didn’t ever want to have to replace a phone that someone was renting.

Also, each button was a combination of 2 frequencies, each row and each column had a certain frequency. So, each button was a combination of those two.

But, if you pushed two buttons on the same row, or two buttons in the same column, you could get a single “note”. So, you could play very basic tunes.

I wonder if there’s anybody that’s comfortable with slab-style phones being used as phones.

If you’re over a certain age, you grew up with proper telephone handsets. Even early cell phones had a vaguely ergonomic shape. Like, the original Motorola Razr didn’t open to 180 degrees, and had a “chin” near the bottom so you could get good contact with your ear while keeping your mouth near the microphone.

Then there’s people under a certain age who grew up with texting, instant messages, etc. For them, it’s not the shape that’s an issue, it’s that using a phone as a phone that’s odd. They’d much rather do anything other than voice calls.

Not saying things were better in the old days, but this is a major factor in our societal de-socialization crisis.

Nah, I completely disagree with that. I think phones were always a terrible means of communication, but they were the most used thing for a while because we didn’t have anything better for communication at a distance. Phones force you into an audio-only form of communication where you don’t get gestures, facial expression, or a moving mouth to watch. That cuts out a lot of the nuance of the communication. In addition, it’s immediate so there’s no time to think and interpret what someone is trying to say. It’s also initiated by the caller and the callee has to drop whatever they’re doing and respond immediately. It’s just bad.

Video calls with something like Facetime have some of those issues. The positive is that you get facial expressions and some body language as cues The downside is that it’s still expected that you respond immediately. But, it seems like there’s a convention to ask before doing a video call, or to schedule one. That means you’re generally not pulled into a conversation when you’re not ready. Even more so with video meetings like Zoom, where they’re almost never spontaneous, and always scheduled ahead of time. Phone calls are often spontaneous, and can catch someone at a terrible time.

Text messages in some ways are even worse than phone calls, because you don’t even get tone of voice or volume as cues to what someone means. OTOH, they’re not as immediate. Sure, sometimes you’re watching the little chat bubbles waiting for a response. But, the asynchronous nature of that kind of chat means there’s still a bit of a chance to think before you respond.

IMO, people of all ages abandoned phone calls because phone calls are just bad. Much better are either asynchronous ways of communicating where you can take a chance to think before you respond, or high-bandwidth forms of communication involving video where you can see gestures, facial expressions, etc.

Mythbusters would be on Dwarf TV. Dwarf TV would also show How It’s Made, Robot Wars, Scrapheap Challenge, Battlebots. I’m pretty sure they’d also be the ones obsessed with cars, unless that was in a universe where gnomes were the tinkerers and inventors.

Orc TV would be The Ultimate Fighter, Yellowjackets, Deadliest Warrior, WWE, Reacher, The Terminal List, Vikings, Highlander: The Series…

I wonder what mythical creatures would watch shows like South Park, Blackadder, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Exotic dancers, waitstaff, sales people…

I imagine it won’t be long before Steam turns into the badguy.

People have been predicting Steam will do a heel turn for more than a decade. But, their consumer-friendly policies and ease of use have kept them the dominant platform despite immense spending from other companies.

They’re still a store, and I don’t think anybody’s confusing them with a charity. But, a nearly 20 year track record suggests that they know that being trustworthy and consumer-friendly is essential to their long-term financial success.

There are parts of the world where outdoor spaces are basically unusable for most of the year because it’s either too hot or too cold.

When the temperature is reasonable, you can use parks, forests, lakes, rivers, beaches, pedestrian malls, bike paths, etc. Many cities have public basketball courts, tennis courts, skate parks, hockey rinks, and similar things. In some less busy areas you can even use the streets. Street hockey and/or street futbol are pretty common in some areas.

But, extremely hot weather, or extremely cold weather can mean that being outside is terrible. You can dress warmly for winter, and that’s fine to do sports. So, you could go cross-country skiing in the winter in a park. But, you can’t really just hang out outside when it’s -10C.

It would be great if there were more indoor options for places with bad winters and/or bad summers.

A lot of the reports I file are very similar month in and month out, with lots of specific, technical language (Patient care).

Holy shit, then you definitely can’t use an LLM because it will just “hallucinate” medical information.