MoonMelon @ MoonMelon @lemmy.ml Posts 0Comments 149Joined 1 yr. ago
You're fucking incredible, Cowbee. I've watched you spend literally days patiently and politely responding to dozens of confrontational, probably bad-faith posters in thread after thread with nothing but solid information. I really admire it.
A pack of six light bulbs. Five of them sheared right off the metal base like wet tissue when I screwed them in, just one right after the other. Fortunately the last one worked. I was a poor college kid with no transport then, so getting that pack of bulbs for my single lamp was a lot of effort, I was disappointed.
Sorry I meant to say MPV, on linux here.
I had the same issue, but mpc mpv worked.
Could you find room for a 20L water can or two? Many are "stackable". That will be more important than a big food cache. The main point isn't "doomsday prep" its for anyone who is able to hold out for a few days. That gives emergency services the space to rescue the truly desperate first.
It's OK. Brood war marines require an upgrade to get the same range as SC2 marines.
Yep, this. Chisel, glue up, or carve a recess into a larger piece of scrap plywood to use as a jig to hold the work piece while you plane it. Make the recess the exact depth of thickness you need and you can plane it perfectly to thickness.
I keep thinking I should get a hardware key but then the cost, potential incompatibility, and my own confusion over all the options always stops me. But I have also had phones just randomly not turn on one day, so the current solution is a file folder full of OTPs. Sucks.
It's the same as learning anything, really. A big part of learning to draw is making thousands of bad drawings. A big part of learning DIY skills is not being afraid to cut a hole in the wall. Plan to screw up. Take your time, be patient with yourself, and read ahead so none of the potential screw-ups hurt you. Don't be afraid to look foolish, reality is absurd, it's fine.
We give children largess to fail because they have everything to learn. Then, as adults, we don't give ourselves permission to fail. But why should we be any better than children at new things? Many adults have forgotten how fraught the process of learning new skills is and when they fail they get scared and frustrated and quit. That's just how learning feels. Kids cry a lot. Puttering around on a spare computer is an extremely safe way to become reacquainted with that feeling and that will serve you well even if you decide you don't like Linux and never touch it again. Worst case you fucked up an old laptop that was collecting dust. That is way better than cutting a hole in the wall and hitting a pipe.
Yeah it's technically better (crisper, higher res, etc) but the visual language is totally different and IMO worse. That fire just doesn't look as hot, for example.
Lighting as an art form is highly coupled with the given tech. Something as small as just changing the shadow method can require artists relighting a whole game. My guess is they aren't doing this or maybe are pushing the stark lighting the same way depth of field, colored lights, lens flares etc got juiced in previous generations.
That's always wrong. The tech should service the art, not the other way around.
Bauxite is one of the few minerals the USA didn't luck into. I'm not sure how the economics of refining are currently structured in the tariffs but the USA simply can't economically create aluminum from "scratch" the way it can produce almost everything else. The mineral ilmenite (titanium) is another example.
I was surprised when I read the OG time machine story by Jules Verne and this was a main plot point, and only later stories hand-waived it. You'd think it was something from later analysis of the idea. Almost like that Verne dude was clever.
Maybe not dumb just dark and absurd, but called the cops.
Worked at a retail computer store with repair shop. Extremely assholish customer drops off his machine for an install of a "defective" piece of hardware he couldn't manage to install on his own, arguing that install should be free because it's our fault, somehow. Service manager cuts him a deal anyway just to make him happy.
He drops off his PC. Tech takes the machine, boots it up, bam... CSAM on his desktop. Cops came and got the PC, never saw the piece of shit again.
Actually this happened a few times but only once was the customer rude at first.
Retail is depressing.
Personally I haven't had luck with diatomaceous earth and ants, they seemed willing to sacrifice a few ants to push a trail through the powder and then they were fine (I had to admire this strategy, something I would have never considered). I have had great luck with those ant baits that are a mix of sugar water and borax.
Yeah you should. Look into soil testing with your local city, county, or University Extension office. You send in a little sample of dry soil and they email you the results. It's usually pretty cheap and will tell you if any soil is unsafe. My local library, for example, has sample boxes for free. Definitely a good idea for anyone in a place where lead paint could have been used, let alone other horrible stuff.
When I first started gardening I had this idealistic view of, "I will just grow a surplus, if the animals take some I will still have enough." Nope. They eat everything, to the ground. They can do it in one night. There are different pests that specialize in eating the seeds, the roots, the stems, the leaves, and the fruit. Deer will "sample" entire plants just to confirm they don't like them. Squirrels will take a single bite out of every tomato. Bears will push down an entire fruit tree just to get one fruit. Energy is scarce in nature and these organisms aren't fucking around.
Took me awhile to finally admit that barriers aren't just nice, they are required.
Basically, it's complicated. It depends on your soil/rock type, the water table, and the amount of poop. You want outhouses to be at least six feet deep for parasite lifecycle reasons, but at that depth you could be shitting directly into the water table and if the water is moving through cracks in the rock it could go quite far. Pooping in the top few inches of organic soil is much better for groundwater, but worse for surface water and then also hookworm can spread. And with enough people any primitive system totally breaks down.
Also, there are a lot of uneducated people. The people who owned my parent's property before them built their outhouse directly over the stream because "water make shit go away", I guess. In countries without sanitation people shit directly into the river or ocean for the same reason.
After a bunch of water quality data came out in the late 2000s, states and counties tightened up requirements but now to build anything you need to spend at least 10-15k USD on an "advanced" septic system which is completely out of reach for many people. It also requires electricity which could be another 10k. So you either subsidize it or people shit in the creek again.
@SOB_Van_Owen@lemm.ee mentioned composting. Laws are way behind on this. I looked into this before building septic and essentially no states around allowed it for permanent dwellings. I think Alaska and West Texas were the only regions where they still didn't care. If you truly couldn't afford it your best bet would be to do composting for your own health and just be illegal because you probably won't get caught. But that means no mailbox, no address, hiding your camper, essentially boondocking on your own land out of sight. One angry neighbor and its over.
In the USA this is illegal too but it is mostly a health thing, eg you can't live somewhere with no place to shit because you'll end up shitting in the river. Not that "health and safety" isn't constantly abused to brutalize the indigent, but it does also kind of make sense to not let people live long term where they can't shit, knowing what we know now about outhouses and groundwater.
That said, local governments in rural areas can barely keep fire departments and schools open. Nobody is checking on your vacant land unless someone complains, and they'd have to drive past fifty other shanties to get to yours.
Most of the comments here appear that way. It's kind of darkly humourous considering the essay.
Which is a shame because state law has a much bigger impact on the actual day-to-day lives of people than federal law. If there aren't actual journalists then nobody is hanging out at the state house, let alone the local courthouse, to report on what's going on. So the news is just outrage at federal politics and corporate/political press releases published verbatim.