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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • I’d be pretty hard-pressed to name any of my friends who graduated “on time”

    I’m well into my 30s now, a couple of my friends are still working on degrees or just graduated.

    Changing majors, bullshit scheduling nonsense, life

    Shit, there was a whole fucking pandemic that fucked up a year or two of your high school years, it’s pretty damn amazing that anyone your age is graduating even roughly on-time as far as I’m concerned.

    Maybe it’ll throw a bit of a monkey wrench into your social life because you gotta skip out on a couple things because you have class. That’s life as an adult, we all got scheduling conflicts all the time.

    Otherwise, it’s never gonna matter. You’ll have a degree, that’s the only “important” thing about graduating. Unless you’re looking to get into some highly-specialized, super-competitive field, no one gives a shit how long it took you to graduate, how your gpa stacked up against the rest of your class, etc. It’s like the old joke “What do you call the person who graduated at the bottom of their class in medical school? You call them ‘Doctor.’”





  • To the best of my knowledge, the most common parallel universe theory that has any actual real traction in physics is the “many worlds interpretation”

    Which is basically that any time some sort of quantum event is observed, the universe splits into multiple parallel universes where every possible outcome of that event is realized in its own universe.

    Now people take that and run with it and make up all sorts of pseudoscience bullshit where those splits happen anytime someone makes a choice, or some pseudorandom event like a coin flip or die roll occurs. That’s not really what it’s about.

    This is about wonky quantum physics, radioactive decay, collapsing wave function type stuff. I’ll be honest this is high level physics shit, I only kind of understand some of it, which is more than probably 90+% of people out there can say, for most people it probably means about as much as if you came up to them and started talking to them in a foreign language.

    So that means that all of those parallel universes are going to be following the same laws of physics since they all diverged from the same universe.

    That means that flying reindeer and traveling around the world in a night delivering presents down chimney and such is probably a no-go.

    As far as there being a universe where some weirdo named Santa Claus decided to live at the North Pole and build toys, maybe, but probably pretty unlikely. I have a pretty hard time imagining a version of the world where different quantum outcomes would lead to that. Would, for example, a single uranium atom decaying or not decaying make that happen? Probably not. Of course, untold millions of tiny events like that can eventually add up to some big difference, but I still have a hard time imagining a situation where that would be the outcome.

    Like I think someone in this thread already said, there are an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1 (0.1, 0.2, 0.001234, etc,) but none of them are “2” some things are just impossible.



  • I used to be the shipping/receiving guy in a warehouse, it fell to me to arrange all of our freight pickups, which was annoying because I didn’t really have direct access to any information about pricing, deadlines, etc. so I was constantly going back to the office to show someone quotes to see whether the rates and transit times were acceptable.

    Most of our freight was LTL stuff (less than truckload, a couple pallets, not enough to fill a truck by itself) but a few times every month or two we’d get full truckload sized orders.

    When it came to them, often “intermodal” shipping had much better rates. Intermodal meaning at least 2 different forms of transportation were going to be used. Truck, train, boat, cargo plane, etc.

    As a US-based company with mostly US-based customers, that usually meant rail for us.

    However, almost none of our shipments went intermodal because it was too slow for our customers.

    It wasn’t usually a drastic difference, we’re talking maybe 1-3 extra days in most cases. Over the Road (OTR) there weren’t many places in the US that we couldn’t get freight to from our location in 5 days or less, and those 5 day locations were mostly real middle-of-nowhere customers on the other side of the country.

    It always blew my mind that we didn’t or couldn’t push our customers to just place orders 2 or 3 days earlier to save some pretty significant money on shipping.

    I don’t claim to know much about the industry, i was just some kid who needed a job and ended up the shipping guy because I knew how to use a computer and spoke English. But we a textile company that made things like work clothes (chef coats, scrubs, industrial work wear, etc) and restaurant table linens, and we sold mostly to bigger wholesalers, business service companies, etc. who would resell it or provide it to their customers as part some sort of contracted laundry service or something, so not really something I’d think of as being particularly time-sensitive or wildly unpredictable that they couldn’t anticipate their bigger orders a couple days ahead of time

    Guess it probably says something about how much we all love instant gratification.


  • I remember my 4th grade teacher having one of these and showing it off around 2000, it may have been the first digital camera I ever saw.

    Blew my mind back then.

    He was one of my favorite teachers, really into science, loved gadgets. He was an older guy who retired a few years later and I heard he wasn’t in the best of health, no idea if he’s still around, but I hope he at least lived long enough to appreciate how far digital cameras have come since then.


  • For me, a lot of it has to do with how it’s presented in schools

    Pi, for example. One day my teachers just kind of dumped this magical 3.14… number on me without any real explanation. Just basically “use this number to do stuff with circles,” no real explanation on what pi actually is on anything, just “remember this”

    Years later I found a gif of a circle sort of unraveling that showed how the circumference is π × the diameter of the circle

    And sure, mathematically, the formula tells you that, but actually seeing that animated out made a hell of a lot more sense to me.

    Now I got most of my basic math education before those gifs were so readily available, and smart boards were just becoming a thing when I was in high school, so it would have been a little hard to show that to a bunch of elementary or middle school students without having us huddle around a desktop.

    But that’s something that could have been illustrated pretty well with a couple circles of different sizes (cardboard cut-outs, printed on paper, different jar lids, etc,) a piece of string, and a ruler.

    And the same goes for a whole lot of different math things.


  • In the interest of battery life and redundancy, I think it might make sense to have 3 devices.

    Ereader with an e ink display for reading, a lot of these can last days or weeks on a charge easily

    An mp3 player for music. I don’t know what the current state of mp3 players is, I suspect a lot of no-name imported garbage, but over a decade ago I know my iPod used to go days or weeks on a charge with pretty heavy usage. Probably look for whatever has the least bells and whistles you can find- no touch screen, physical controls, etc. if you’re up for a bit of tinkering I’m pretty sure there’s a pretty active scene for people modding old iPods with better batteries, more storage, etc. that would probably be a great option.

    A tablet or smartphone for movies, or possibly a laptop (I’m not an apple guy, but I’ve heard MacBooks have pretty insane battery life these days.) Keep all the wifi/cellular/Bluetooth/gps, etc. turned off, keep it on power save mode, disable anything you can that you don’t need to watch movies. Unfortunately if such a thing as a dedicated video-only tablet exists, I couldn’t find it with a quick search. If such a thing can be found, I’d probably recommend that.

    A dedicated device that does one job well will usually be more efficient at that thing than a multipurpose device like a tablet, smartphone, or computer that needs to be able to do it all. An mp3 player only needs to be able to play music, it doesn’t need to be running a full-on OS that’s capable of sending emails, making phone calls, playing games, etc.

    Also that way if one of those things does die on you, you still have the other 2.

    I saw in one of your other comments your concern about a tablet having a bigger screen would be a bigger drain on battery life. That’s true to an extent, bigger screens draw more power, but since the whole device is bigger they can compensate with a bigger battery. I haven’t exactly done an exhaustive survey of tablet battery life and don’t care to look into it, but in my (fairly limited) experience, they usually pretty much at least break even or surpass phones in battery life. I have a cheap tablet that I really only use for reading it lives in my bag, usually in my car, often forgotten about for days or occasionally weeks at a time, and doesn’t exactly get heavy usage, but it usually can go at least a few days without a change, even with WiFi and Bluetooth left on. If I’m not using it at all, it can sometimes go a couple weeks just sitting idle. It’s usually good for at least a couple hours of streaming HD video, with WiFi turned off and 720p video on internal storage I imagine it’s good for at least a couple movies.

    WiFi and cellular data are pretty big power drains too. I know when I check my battery usage on my phone that probably accounts for about ⅓ or so of it. Having those turned off can go a long way. Jailbreaking/rooting your phone to disable unnecessary services probably wouldn’t hurt, but that’s probably a drop in the bucket compared to just keeping your device offline.


  • I don’t really like brand favouritism, but if you’re able to find a Toyota in your price range, as far as I’m concerned it’s pretty hard to go wrong with them. I’m pretty hard-pressed to think of anyone I’ve ever known who’s had a Toyota who had anything really bad to say about them, even with the few years of Tacomas that had major rust issues around the early 2000s, everyone I know who had one felt that Toyota did a pretty solid job of doing right by them.

    My current car is an '07 4runner. I bought it used with around 150k miles on it about 5 years ago, I now at just over 200k miles. and except for the usual shit like brakes that are expected to wear down every few years, the only major thing I’ve had to deal with was replacing the alternator. It does have a small exhaust leak that throws a code for the catalytic converter every so often (it’s on for maybe a couple weeks every few months or so) that I’m not particularly concerned about. I’m fairly confident that with not much beyond regular upkeep this car could make it to 300k+ pretty easily.

    My wife is driving a Prius that’s a few years newer (2012 I think) she’s had it for a few years now, only thing she’s needed is new tires so far.

    Growing up my mom had an '89 Corolla, and there’s a damn good chance it’s still on the road. At some point we sold it to my uncle who later sold it to a cousin, and after that we lost track of it, but around that time (circa 2010-ish) it was still going just fine, even after having a pretty large tree fall on it and all of the usual wear and tear you’d expect on a 20+ year old car.

    Outside of my family’s favoritism for Toyotas, I also have a hard time thinking of people who have anything bad to say about Honda’s. I’ve also never heard anyone complain about their Subaru, I have less personal experience with Subarus overall, I’ve never driven one, but my overall impression of every one I’ve ever ridden in has been positive, and Subaru owners sing their praises.

    Most people I’ve known with Kias and Hyundais have also spoken highly about them…

    Overall, my general advice is buy from any of the major Asian car brands unless you need a larger pickup truck (¾ ton or bigger,) then pretty much your only options are pretty much American trucks. For ½ ton or smaller trucks, I’d personally stick to Asian brands still, with the possible exception of the Ford Maverick.

    As far as specific models, my personal recommendations are

    Subaru in pretty much any market segment they inhabit. Smaller sporty cars are dumb regardless of brand, but if that’s your thing, go Subaru.

    Sedans/hatchbacks- Toyota Corolla or Prius, Honda Accord or civic.

    Compact suvs/crossovers- Toyota RAV4, Honda CRV, Kia sportage, Hyundai Tucson. Wrangler if you actually intend to go off roading, Suzuki samurai if you’re going off roading and not in the US.

    Mid-sized SUV: Toyota 4runner (I’ve dialed in that a midsized SUV is the right sized car for me personally at this point in my life, not going to go into all of the reasoning for that, but having driven a few different brands and models I am personally confident in saying that it is the be-all end-all of mid sized SUVs for me, if Isuzu ever makes a comeback in the passenger vehicle segment and resurrects the trooper I may be open to reevaluating that because I loved my trooper, but they’re all 20+ years old now)

    Full-sized SUVs: do not recommend. If you can find one of the old school jeep wagoneers maybe do that for the cool factor, but if you’re contemplating a full sized SUV what you really want is a minivan, or maybe a Ford flex. They’re not “cool,” but trust me, minivans are the shit.

    Minivans- they’re all pretty good, never met a minivan I didn’t like.

    Small pick-up trucks- Ford Maverick, or if you need/want a “real” truck get a Tacoma or Frontier, or go for old rangers/Mazda B series or a t100 if you’re ok with an old truck, or replace all of those recommendations with a Toyota Hilux if you’re not in the US/Canada

    ½ ton pickup- Toyota tundra

    Bigger than ½ ton- you don’t need this unless you are regularly towing a heavy trailer or live and work on a farm, or do major construction business with your personal vehicle, or something to that effect. If that applies to you, take your pick of any of the big 3 American brands, I like Fords, but honestly I view this as the same as picking your favorite color, it’s what you like personally, don’t let anyone else yuck your yum.

    Personally, and I’m not saying this applies to everyone by a longshot, what car you need/want is fairly personal, but if I had carte blanche to go out and buy any newish car I could find to replace my current vehicle I’d be looking at

    Toyota 4runner or Tacoma Subaru Crosstrek or Outback
    Ford Maverick

    But I’m an outdoorsy, DIY-minded person, who goes “off-road” occasionally (I don’t go off roading for its own sake, but my life sometimes tak me driving onto a beach, or down some shitty dirt paths, over fields, etc.) has to commute in the snow, often has to pick up bulky lumber and such, and occasionally how small trailers.

    My wife who doesn’t usually have any of those needs would probably be looking at a newer Prius, or maybe a Hyundai Kona if she decided she wanted something bigger.

    And in an ideal world, I’d probably have a maverick or 4runner for my various outdoorsy and DIY pursuits, and whatever the smallest cheapest DIY hybrid or electric car I can find is for my daily commuting as long as it has 4 wheels, a/c, and a radio, pretty much anything out there would be just fine for me. But I can only count on having 2 parking spaces.

    Honestly at 5k in this economy, you’re probably scraping the bottom of the barrel of anything that can be considered a “good” car, and you’re probably going to just end up with whatever is available near you in your price range with relatively low miles. Go asian if you can’t but don’t expect anything amazing to present itself.



  • Gonna try to give a very general ELI5 sort of answer

    There’s basically 3 main types of carbohydrates

    Simple carbs- basically sugars (mono- and di-saccharides)

    Complex carbs- starches, whole grains, etc. (polysaccharides)

    Fiber- arguably these are just really complex carbs that your body can’t really break down

    In general, sugars are the source of energy your body actually runs on, especially glucose. Everything else basically gets broken down into glucose.

    Your body can pretty much use simple sugars as-is or can easily break them down into a form it can use. There’s some variation just how quick and easy it is for your body to use different sugars, but in general your body will start to feel the effects of eating sugar in the space of a few minutes, and the effects will peak within about an hour or two.

    Complex carbs take a little more digesting to break down into a form your body can make use of. They’re basically being turned into simpler sugars, but that process takes a while. You might hear about athletes carbo-loading with a big spaghetti dinner or something the night before a big competition. The idea there is that the energy from that big, complex carb-heavy dinner won’t really hit them for a few hours or even until the next day, and it will keep providing that energy for a longer period of time.

    Fiber is, for the most part, indigestible, your body can’t really break it down into simpler sugars that it can make use of. It goes in your mouth, through your digestive tract, and out the other end relatively unchanged. That doesn’t mean it’s useless though, it still plays an important role in digestion. It takes up space in your stomach helping you feel more full. It absorbs water and helps keep your stool soft and helps waste move through your intestines, and it minds to things like bile acids and cholesterol so that they can be passed as waste.

    Again, this is meant to be a very general answer, there’s a lot of details I’m glossing over both just to keep things simple, and because I’m not a doctor or anything of the sort and I’m not 100% sure myself.



  • I believe in Iceland’s case it has to do with how the Icelandic language works and certain names just kind of don’t work with the rest of the language. I’m far from an expert on the Icelandic language, but my understanding is that nouns, names included, sort of get “conjugated” (I’m not sure if “conjugation” is the correct term, I think that’s specifically a vowel thing, but it’s similar in that the word changes depending on how it’s used in a sentence and most of us are familiar with the concept of conjugation.)

    There’s a few random things in English that do it, like depending on the sentence, you might use I/me/my/mine/etc. when you refer to yourself refer to yourself, but in icelandic all nouns do that in a regular predictable way, so they have to be pronounceable with certain suffixes tacked onto them.

    I think they also do the old school patronymic/matronymic name thing instead of family names. So if you meet someone in Iceland whose name is something like “Steve Robertson” then “Robertson” isn’t his family name, his dad is literally named “Robert” and so he is “Steve, Robert’s Son” so names kind of have to work with that kind of naming convention as well.

    So it’s less of a “this name is stupid” and more of a “this name breaks our language”

    It also seems like they’ve eased up on some of the rules in recent years, first names are no longer gender restricted, and they’ve added a nonbinary suffix for the patronyms/matronyms so now you can be a -bur instead of just -son or -dóttir



  • I work in 911 dispatch, a lot of the 10 digit non emergency lines also redirect to our center, we get a lot of wrong numbers calling into us

    One of those numbers is just one digit off from a pizza place, which is always fun because once in a while someone is a domestic calls in pretending to order pizza because they don’t want the person they’re with to know they’re calling police, so we kind of have to grill those calls with are you having an emergency/do you know you’re calling the police/are you safe to talk kind of questions

    Pro tip for anyone who finds themselves in a situation like that, most dispatch centers are aware of those types of calls, but some posts online will tell you that there’s a code that pepperoni = they have a gun or something like that. No such code exists, at least not in any way that’s universally recognized. Maybe some departments have that standardized but it certainly wasn’t part of my training.




  • I think I already addressed your first paragraph pretty well in my comment.

    If you’re touting something as an alternative to the Global Positioning System, I think it’s reasonable to expect that it’s going to cover at least most of the globe.

    It also doesn’t really seem like it’s intended to be an alternative, more like an extension or backup to GPS. If I available you should still be using GPS, this is just something you’d fall back on if regular GPS goes offline. Sort of like how you wouldn’t want to run your house off a generator 24/7/365, but if a tree falls on the power lines by your house you at least have the generator to keep your fridge running.

    EDIT:

    Also, for pretty much the entire history of TV, different parts of the world have operated using different and often incompatible broadcast standards. I don’t really see that changing and the rest of the world adopting ours, especially with the current administration being blatantly hostile to our allies. At best they’ll adopt their own standards that will do something similar to BPS but probably won’t be directly compatible, there may be devices that can make use of both, similar to how a lot of GPS devices can also use Galileo or Glonass.