General_Shenanigans

@General_Shenanigans@lemmy.world
0 Post – 65 Comments
Joined 11 months ago

Me on Lemmy today:

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First console—or anything—that I played a video game on. I remember out of the games we had, my favorite was Joust (I was a little kid). Later, we got E.T., and that became my least favorite game.

I saved a coworker from walking into a propeller at least once when I worked on the ramp. I noticed he kept getting a little too close without really seeming to notice what he was doing, so I kept an eye on him. Had to grab him eventually. Pissed me off. We worked with Dash-8 aircraft, big ol’ propellers. I raised some questions about it with our boss, so he asked this guy some more questions about why THE HELL he would even be that way, ended up talking to this guy’s mother?? for some reason, who informed him that this guy had a learning disability that we weren’t aware of. It explained some other things about this guy, but it just gives me shivers each time I think about it.

I, too, have a job

Likely, however, Zionists also don’t like him right now. A high-profile popular Jewish politician speaking out against Israel’s actions in Gaza? Yeah, there’s a lot of high emotions there and he’s probably made some more crazy enemies. Right now, I’m 50/50 on which one of these two it might be.

David Duke is responsible for my phase where I grew out of a simplistic view of politics and economics and started looking into things a little deeper. Hear me out: Back in the day, I went through a Libertarian phase. I supported Ron Paul. I was young and stupid, what can I say? Anyway, I read some news article that claimed that David Duke donated to his campaign. I was like, “Hmmm, what’s this all about?” And so began my realization that things are never as simple as we want them to be. So, thanks for being a racist dick, David Duke. Without your donation to Ron Paul raising my suspicions, it may have been at least a few more months before I picked up on the rotten smell. I might have actually put that stupid bumper sticker on and everything (shudder).

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I think a better term to use would be “fact-based policy.” I believe that even if we intended to rework politics to be more scientific, it would just lead to all the same manipulations and twisting of facts that current politics involves. Don’t like a particular scientific consensus because it interferes with your goals? Hire a bunch of “think-tanks” to publish contradictory papers. Hah, guess what, that’s where we already are.

That’s exactly what he means by “ending the war” and it “never happening in the first place”

I was a teenager in high school. Late 90’s. I had never really been on a date of any sort before, so this is a first first date story.

I met this girl online on AOL instant messenger. We chatted very frequently for a couple of weeks, then started talking over the phone almost every day. We were really hitting it off, so we started trying to figure out how to hangout together in person. Eventually, she invited me to come over to her house. I was stoked. She said she lived in a nearby suburb, and relayed some directions to me, which I wrote down on a piece of paper. It didn’t seem too far. She said her parents would be home, so my parents said it was ok for me to go over there. I mean, they were probably stoked I wanted to go see a girl too, as I’m pretty sure they were starting to think I was gay by then. I wasn’t, but that’s a separate messed-up story.

An issue came up, though. Her parents said she couldn’t hang out unless she cleaned her room, as it was really messy. I said “No problem! I’ll help you clean it and we can hang out after!” Genius, right?

Anyway, hormones firing on all 8 cylinders, I hop in the car and begin my journey. Turns out she didn’t really live in the city she said she did. That was just the nearest city to where she lived. I’m driving, driving, driving, further away from town thinking I’m lost, but I’m not. I remember turning around and doubling back a few times assuming I MUST have missed a turn. I did not yet own a cell phone to call and verify with her. Folks, the struggle was real back then, LOL. I just eventually followed the instructions as best I could, and eventually found my way. They were not good instructions. It was a miracle, really.

I go up, knock on the door. She and her parents answer the door and let me in. These parents were weird. They were basically gushing to meet me and let me in, but were strangely stoic at the same time, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Whatever. But then, all of a sudden , these parents that were going to be there while we hung out suddenly grabbed all of their things and bounced. Drove off. Huh, weird. They just left this strange boy they’ve never met and their daughter alone in their house. Good thing I’m not a creep, I guess?

This girl is grinning happy, but then gives a warning. She says her room is really messy. I say “It’s ok! My room gets messy sometimes, too! Let’s just attack it real quick and then we can hang out.”

Narrator: No, the boy did not actually know what a real messy room was.

We go in her room and I am shocked. I try not to show it, but it’s bad. Really bad. Every surface in the room is covered with stuff. No part of her floor is visible. Just clothes, toys, books, all sorts of stuff covering the floor, the bed, the shelves, the dressers. I take a moment to look around and take it all in. I’m already here. I’ve already agreed to help her with this, and I really want to get to the hanging out part. I clap my hands and say “Welp! Let’s grab some trash bags!”

So I spend the next couple of hours at least helping straighten out this disaster zone. Now, you really get to know a person when you dig through all of their stuff. There were a couple of things of note. First, it became apparent that this had never been done. Ever. As we pulled up the strata of clothing and toys on the floor, it was like an archaeological dig. The further we got down, the smaller the clothing became. The toys looked like those of a child younger and younger. By the time we got to the bottom, there was toddler clothing. Once able to get under the bed, there were baby toys under there.

At one point, I found a bible, and asked where she wanted to put it. Her eyes widened and she got very serious and placed it up on one of her shelves with the cover facing outward, on display. The manner in which she did this was a little creepy. Now, I was religious and had recently finished up Catechism at that point, so being happy to find your bible didn’t seem weird to me, but I found her a bit dramatic. Whatever. I keep going, and then I find a witchcraft book. SAME reaction. Eyes wide, she places it up next to the Bible. She then turns to me and says, “You know, sometimes, I feel like I’m a bit closer to the devil.”

Like an oblivious character in a horror movie, I don’t get too freaked out. I’m like, dang, this girl is weird and has some issues or something. She starts talking about sex. Saying something along the lines of how she’s had it before, and wondering if I have or not. A lot of things were said by her that, out of context, may have been just a bit quirky. All together like that in that setting, though, I really wondered what was going on with this girl.

Eventually, we finished the cleaning. Many bags of trash and old clothes and toys all bagged up. Vacuumed, dusted, bed made. It felt so good and clean and open. A sense of self satisfaction. She sits down on the bed with a weird look on her face. Looking down at the floor. I say, “Alright! Now we get to actually hang out! What would you like to do?”

Her parents walk in the front door. She slaps her knees and says “Welp! It was nice hanging out! My parents said I could hang out until [this time], so you’ll have to go home now. Maybe we can hang out again soon!”

Narrator: They would not.

On my way out, I look around at the house once more. It seems normal. Clean. Very clean, even.

We didn’t really chat anymore after that. I actually tried to, mainly out of curiosity and concern. I had questions at this point, as you would imagine. She no longer had interest in responding. I just hope she appreciated having her room be comfortable.

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Welp, time to set up a lemonade stand and sue everybody who didn’t stop to buy my $5000 cups of watered-down kool-aid.

A friend of mine who believed a lot of conspiracy theories told me it was bad because it calcifies your pineal gland. I called bullshit and googled it.

Turns out, it actually does. There was no proof at the time that this causes any sort of issues, but there it was. I was unhappy that they were actually right about something; I didn’t want to give them the idea that any of their other crazy ideas had any validity.

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Well then Austin can secede from Texas and then the more conservative neighborhoods can secede from Austin. Secedeceptions all the way down. Why not?

The two party system is somewhat undemocratic, but she’s more popular than the incumbent president everybody just assumed we had to stick with. Switching it up like that was more in the interests of the voters, wasn’t it? I don’t understand how that’s grounds for a claim that it was done out of distrust for the voters. Kind of the opposite, isn’t it? It wasn’t just representatives that thought Biden was hitting his limit.

Where do I fit if I use all three?

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Aside from having to switch his stance because Biden dropped out, higher profile politicians have to plan out when they announce their endorsements. The ones that progressive and liberal voters really care about are those of Obama and Bernie. You let the candidate build up some momentum to see how they do, and she did pretty well. They also want to make sure they can actually successfully accomplish making her the new nominee, seeing as how this was a weird situation. Then, you start doling out the endorsements at opportune times. You want to spread them out a little bit, but still leave them close enough to give the public that overall impression when they’re reading the news that the candidate is still building and gaining more momentum. As you can see, it works. Excitement about her replacing Biden is a wake they absolutely should ride as long as they can. Go too fast or too slow and you lose the boost.

I used to live in a house where the gas shutoff valve for the fireplace was in the living room floor, controlled with a little key. It was the perfect size for a marble to fall in and block it.

I found a metal straw and taped it to the end of my vacuum hand attachment, effectively forcing the suction through the straw. I felt I may have been straining the vacuum a bit, but I was able to pull the marble out easy-peasy.

If you have an attachment that fits in that hole, you’re good. If not, you can use a similar method to this.

I work in I.T. for a healthcare company. Ascension is a pretty large one. The bigger a company gets and the faster it grows, the more it takes on a diversity of varying technologies that all need to be managed, migrated, killed off, merged, hardened, etc. It’s a difficult job especially for healthcare. I know that the company I work for is working very hard to keep up with things, but it’s a logistical nightmare. You MUST have very smart people in charge that have the right priorities. You have to have information channels open to make sure administration knows what the potential issues are. Compartmentalization of information and access. There are so many potential points of failure it’s insane. And then there’s the most important thing of all: making sure all employees are educated enough that they don’t let their credentials get compromised.

Things are getting worse in general because of how hard it is to stay on top of everything nowadays. I just recently got a couple of letters in the mail about my info being leaked by some companies that had my info. I just have to do my part to stay on top of my own responsibilities, watch my own identity and finances, and make sure those around me are being secure, as well. Everybody needs to know how important this is, and many do, but I don’t think enough people really understand or make it a priority.

HHS is instituting new rules for healthcare (and other industries) to help track and respond to these things. The government is getting very involved with this now. I hope it helps.

When your whole base is full of reactionaries, making attacks is actually fulfilling your voters’ desires.

This is a good question, though. Seeing horrible things on the internet can affect you. Anywhere from getting wigged out to full out trauma is possible.

Personally, if I come across something like that, it’s a good cue to take a quick break from screens. Go for a walk. Eat if you’re hungry. Drink if you’re thirsty. Spend quality time with your pets or plants if you have any. Pay attention to how you’re feeling and do what might be necessary to make you feel good and healthy. In that state, it’s easier to bring yourself back to the here and now. Look around you and appreciate your life. Seeing how real and raw those things are can give a person perspective, but if you overexpose yourself or ruminate on them, it can fuck you up a little bit. Even if you’re “desensitized.”

If you’re lucky enough where things like that aren’t a regular part of your life (as it is for most of us here), use it as a lesson in not just taking care of yourself, but also of others and society as a whole. There are fucked up people in the world, yes. Sometimes the bad guys win and terrible or disturbing things happen, yes. It’s best to maintain pride in knowing you’re not trying to contribute to that problem, in whatever little way you can.

And if you can’t seem to shake it, get some therapy. Not just for that one thing, but, it may be likely you’re slipping into rumination or worldviews that make it difficult to handle depression. Therapy is great, for real. Shop around and find a therapist you like.

You see a genocide, chastise the people committing it, then go on to fully support some OTHER genocide as not being good enough, because of the genocide? In a single post you’ve demonstrated that you’re no better than any of the groups of people you’re referring to within it. That’s some real batshit drivel there, my fellow human. You should get that checked out.

We use Dell WD-19 docks. Not sure if you use similar. Updated dock firmware and laptop drivers made a difference for us with connection issues. Sometimes you gotta perform a reset on them to make them behave (disconnect dock power and USB-C and hold power button for just over 15 sec). Sometimes the laptop NVRAM needs to be reset instead (for Dell, disconnect all devices and power while off and hold button for just over 30 sec). Overall, though, no huge issues with DP specifically if the dock and laptop firmwares are up to date. Third-party docks/replicators definitely have way more issues, though.

Psychedelics can trigger psychotic episodes in some people, especially if they have pre-existing psychotic tendencies. Unfortunately, they’re not for everybody, mainly for this reason. My theory is that they may be making it sound like the mushrooms lasted longer than they normally do in hopes of potentially saving his future piloting career. I don’t think it will work, but I think that’s the motive behind their narrative. Admitting that you’re prone to psychotic tendencies will ensure that license never gets reinstated. Pilots tend to hide things like this. They love flying and losing that ability is losing the love of your life and your livelihood.

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I had no idea the center was run by Mormons prior to visiting. While walking around, one of them approached us with a pamphlet and tried to get us to board a bus so they could take us to their temple. I was like, “Let me get this straight. You, a perfect stranger, would like me and my girlfriend to get in your bus, so that you can take us to some unknown location that we’re not familiar with? No thanks.” My mind was a little blown by that. It is a super touristy place though, so I wonder how many people they actually convince to go see their church. Like an attraction or something.

Seeing as how the sun has flares that are wider across than the earth is, I don’t think it would do a whole lot. I’m on the fence, though. The surface of a star is the way it is and where it is because of two things: the immense pressure of the nuclear furnace and the immense gravity holding it together. Those two things basically fight against each other and determine how far out the surface of the star is.

I have to wonder if disturbing that equilibrium just for a second might cause a little “burp” or something.

Showed this game to my step-daughter who is used to playing modern first-person games. I was whipping through loops and jumping across parts of the map all fast, as one does. All she had to say was “What the hell is even going on in this game???”

They’re 1000 officers short of what a city that size should need, and anybody who you would probably actually want to be a cop doesn’t really want to be a cop. Especially in L.A. So, yes. They literally take anybody.

I’ve never understood that one. I understand even less now that I’ve written a Powershell script for remote troubleshooting at work. It started simple, but now it gathers tons of information, a lot of which is from the logs. On some machines it takes literal seconds to search and pull all of the log information. I could run this script probably 15 times in the time it takes to even launch Event Viewer.

Sometimes it’s SEO bullshit. Manipulation of site associations and keywords to boost the rankings of other sites they’re associated with. Not for these sites specifically, but some other site. It’s weird and stupid and has to do with trying to reverse-engineer how a search engine ranks its results.

See, mom? I told you onions were evil.

As many companies now use Bitlocker encryption, you’ll probably Bitlock your work partition by trying to install the second drive internally. IF YOU MUST boot to another drive, keep it external. And DO NOT unlock or mount your work partition in your personal OS. Really, though, you shouldn’t do this at all.

I hear that ominous music, too

Oh, there’s no way Elon wants a machine with a company image on it.

He probably bought a Win11 S-mode laptop, not knowing what that was.

I once met a man who was just trekking across the country. Took a rest next to me at the bus stop in my city with his a big ol’ frame backpack; one of those ones you would take on a long multi-day backcountry hike with a sleeping bag. He said he had just come down out of the mountains. Until then, I had not met a single person who even tried to make that journey in either direction on foot, but this person apparently would walk huge portions of an entire state on a frequent basis. You could tell he wasn’t like other homeless people. He actually seemed happy.

Just found an old USB Zip drive and a bunch of Zip disks in a box. Still works!

Puff puff pass no bogarting

I’ll bet the only reason this ended up a news story is because of one of those Brits who writes for the travel section was on the flight.

You’re thinking of Matthew McConaghey, but I can totally see how you got that mixed up, LOL

I got one of those once. Tried wasting their time but they weren’t having any of it. Wanted to get straight to the sale?? of this supposed cruise I won. Wanted my credit card number. They thought they had me in the bag, but I had a card up my sleeve. See, a lot of credit cards and credit card systems have these dummy card numbers you can enter to test the system. The POS will recognize the card number as valid and try to run the charge without flagging it as an invalid number. I slowly read a couple of these to them with it coming back denied each time. Kept trying over and over, LOL. “I don’t understand! I have lots of money in that account! Let’s try again, I’ll read it a bit slower this time.” Hahaha

ONN Exclusive: One-on-One Interview with God https://youtu.be/Vo1IwmaUz90?feature=shared

Cleaned many wheels with just a Lysol or Clorox wipe, but not the bleach or peroxide kind. Take that one guys great description of working it like a clit in a porno, but with a wet wipe of some sort. Just keep rubbing it back and forth as you rotate the wheel. It eventually removes gunk off the wheel and frees up gunk inside. Let it dry a bit before plugging it back in. If you have alcohol wipes or just high concentration alcohol, even better than the wipes, but maybe you have one or the other on hand.