prime_number_314159

@prime_number_314159@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon watches The Terminator⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s one gun show near me that allows private sellers to register for a table. The only time I’ve ever seen it is people in a historic items collectors club that show up, and I’ve only ever seen one with a gun to sell that was in working order and manufactured post-1899. He wanted $5,000 for a beat up m1917 Enfield. I don’t know whether he was stupid, or looking for someone else who was.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Guns, cats, razors, and laws⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would prefer Murphy’s cat: “Any time there’s a cat, it will make something go wrong.”

  And Murphy’s razor: “The simplest problem is probably the one that happens.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t like Elon. I think he’s not very smart, and I want him far from the government. I suspect he’s cozying up to Trump to get funding for SpaceX, and electric vehicle subsidies, and he’ll probably continue his underhanded battle against any kind of good public transit.

  If you watch it as a video, he says “my heart goes out to you”, puts his hand on his heart, then does a throwing motion, that ends with his hand up, and out to the side. Then he turns to a different part of the crowd, and does the same motion again.

  It’s not an accident, it’s an awkward gesture, because he’s an awkward person. A Nazi salute has the arm held up, and directly forward from the shoulder for some time. His arm is out to the side, and only there for a moment. Unfortunately, there are probably neonazis too stupid to know the differences.

  Treating everything as Nazi symbolism means that more and more people won’t hear alarm bells when you say there’s Nazi imagery, so the media pushing hoaxes like this is bad for public discourse as a whole.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hold on!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I can correctly compute that 12345678+87654321 is 99999999, and that 111111111*111111111 is 12345678987654321. Maybe I am a bot?

  Well, no matter. I’m going to return to reading every Wikipedia article sorted lexicographically.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Any relations experts?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I, too, am scared of clean spaces.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Percentages⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Wrong: I had a 1% chance, and I doubled my chances. Now my chances are 101%.

  Right: I had a 1% chance, and I doubled my chances. Now my chances are 2%.

  Wrighongt: I had a 1% chance, and I doubled my chances. Now my chances are 3%, because I’m a lucky person.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I've got a double peen AMA⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It, uhh… It looks like your double peen is made of plastic. Are you sure this is something to brag about?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨USA President term limits⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The 13th ended slavery. You’re probably thinking of the 12th which says that no person constitutionally ineligible to “be” president can be elected as vice president. Importantly, the 22nd only places limits on being “elected” as president, so it’s not (necessarily) creating a constitutional requirement to “be” president by some other means.

  Like I said, it could be an interesting legal fight if it even came up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨USA President term limits⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You can only be elected as president twice. You can probably hack the system by getting multiple other presidents to select you as vice president, then resign. If you serve more than 2 years of the term they were elected to, that reduces the number of times you can be elected as president to one.

  The 22nd amendment doesn’t say that someone that serves 3.99 years of another president’s term multiple times can’t still be elected, and it doesn’t say that someone not qualified to be elected as president can’t be elected as vice president, but the 12th amendment might. Either of those could be an interesting legal fight.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Git good, son⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They just had sex, too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pants⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The belt and belt loops go all along the top row. If there’s only one row, the matrix can only wear a short-shorts version. There’s a crotch in each space between columns, and a leg on every column of length greater than 1.

  Sparse matrices have their own special pants that are more efficient, of course.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When was the last time a Republican Oresident left office with a good economy?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  George HW Bush was the last one to leave office while the economy was doing well. It was going fine at the end of George W Bush’s first term, then the 2007 housing crash brought it down. Trump’s first term ended with the covid lockdowns severely harming the state of things. So… 3 Republican presidencies ago, but that’s a lot of years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Realistically... How fucked is the US?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Trump was pretty ineffective in his first term, largely because he did a terrible job of supporting people who really agreed with his agenda, and an even worse job of removing people from influential positions who didn’t.

  He said during his campaign that he knew much better who to trust, but now he’s got Elon Musk and RFK Jr. prominently featured. I don’t think he has learned anything, and I think he will be just as ineffective this time.

  It’s possible that some of the Republicans in Congress will support more of his agenda, but even there if they have to overcome the filibuster, I don’t think mass deportation, a federal abortion ban, or most of the rest of the potential worst of it is in the cards.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨And 299999999 is divisible by 13⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  With 17, I understand that you’re referring to how 299,999 is also divisible by 17. What is the 51 reference, though? I know there’s 3,999,999,999,999 but that starts with a 3. Not the same at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Balls⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This makes for way better TV than if the camera simply worked. It’s a mistake that a human would probably never make, and definitely not persist in making.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Since when does a clock need a privacy policy?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ha! Unlike (some of) you plebs, I live in a very exclusive time zone with less than a billion people in it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pee posting?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  As long as you can maintain a steady stream of ejaculate, it’ll feel the same for her.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some men dis other men who sit to pee? (& follow-up questions)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have made fun of another man for peeing sitting down, but in a manner comparable to making fun of an ugly outfit. The very hidden secret is I sit to pee sometimes too, and I have ugly clothes that I wear sometimes. To answer the other questions:

  If I’m already sitting, I’d pee sitting, 100% of the time.

  Yes, and that’s one reason I would sit to pee.

  Not spotless, but it seems normal to me. If there’s pee visible anywhere, I wipe it with paper. My wife mops the floor more often than I do.

  I don’t have a ready answer for this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Seattle is like "come to downtown please"⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Neither Lynnwood nor Everett is part of the City of Seattle. There is a separate local government for each of those three areas, with separate people setting a separate agenda, prioritizing separate resources.

  The government of Seattle cannot install cameras in Everett to increase safety there (or even for fundraising).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨how do I accept I'll never know why any employer rejected me?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Whenever I’ve been on the hiring side of an interview, the people seated in the interview aren’t given any special “Keep the company safe” training, but the HR person coordinating always have been. I suspect that’s why it works much better to ask in the interview than after it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨how do I accept that a doctor earns more than double what I do?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re in the US, run for Congress, win, reform the medicaid backed doctor residency program, with the aim of opening it up so many more people can become doctors. Then watch as the new supply brings down salaries, and eventually gets lazy/ineffective doctors fired. Revenge is a dish best served nation wide, as they say.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How many squirrels do you think you could take in a fight to the death?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m mentally well, I just like thinking about hypotheticals. I have no plans (nor any desire) to fight any number of squirrels to the death, and I do not condone doing so as entertainment or sport.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How many squirrels do you think you could take in a fight to the death?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are details missing in this question that matter tremendously. Squirrels are faster and more agile than us. If they are well coordinated, and behave optimally to win (without concern to their individual survival, only the group’s success), I think it would take only a small number of squirrels to brutally murder most people, something like 5. I think their best strategy would be to go for the eyes first, then inflict bleeding injuries and escape again before the person can react. Without tools, and without backup, this approach wouldn’t take long to wear down most people.

  If the squirrels don’t care about their own survival, but make straightforward attacks, I’d think closer to 10-20. The person’s injuries will still compound quickly, but once thet have a grip of a squirrel, it wouldn’t be especially hard to lethally injure.

  If the squirrels still behave like squirrels, and are instead attacking because (for example), they are starving, then the number probably doesn’t matter much, as they’re more likely to go after each other, and the person would have the opportunity to plan and ambush small groups at a time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Regain Control in my ass⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not a song per se, but I was listening to “Relaxing - Bach in my ass”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jackhammer⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The sun itself is a medium that can propogate sound waves. Someone standing on the Moon could equally well make the case that there is no medium to propagate pressure waves from the Earth, so the Earth must not make a sound.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could an American please prove me wrong?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  McDonald’s at sea is just as good (if not better) than land McDonald’s.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How can I get a screw like this out?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The rubber band trick is great, and very low effort/cost. I want to say, though, that it can take substantially more force than it looks like it should on small screws like this. You also don’t have to use something shaped for the original driver of the screw. With the rubber to help it, a round cylinder a little smaller than the head of the screw can work very well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the best way to measure the size of the government?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “Bigger” is easy, because there are obvious ways to measure the size of a government, like the revenue the government gets, the amount of government spending, the number of people working directly for the government, the number of people currently imprisoned, or who have been imprisoned at some time in their life. There’s also slightly more abstract things like the amount of time people spending doing paperwork for the purposes of the government, and the total volume (pages might be a reasonable measure) of government laws, and regulations.

  As for controlling more of our lives, I think it’s significant that many of the most influential regulations are local. Cities design with building codes with the idea of servicing car traffic, emergency vehicles, and parking needs. This prioritizes cars over other forms of transit by government mandate, and puts a pretty steep upper limit on how walking friendly (or bicycle, or mass transit) city areas are allowed to be. In most places, you need exceptions to the rules to have areas without roads running everywhere.

  A similar thing happens in food regulations. Many places around the world have small food vendors that sell a single (or a few) food items from a stall on the street side. The US has strict food regulations that require sinks, refrigeration, and other items that don’t fit in that kind of environment. Most US cities also control the number of street side vendors that are allowed to exist. If you watch “street food” videos, that doesn’t exist in the US because of our regulations.

  Regulations add to the cost and complexity of housing. My great grandfather built a house. I read the requirements to do that now, and gave up. There are hundreds of pages of regulations and requirements, inspection schedules, and licensing requirements that must be followed. Some of those regulations aren’t even free to access.

  On the other hand, these requirements placed uniformly on many industries have some benefits. When you buy a house, you can expect it to be suitable in a huge number of circumstances. Self built, self designed houses sometimes have major design flaws, and sometimes collapse or burn down or flood for surprising reasons that could have been foreseen by experts.

  It’s very likely that more things we do are regulated, and those regulated activities are more tightly controlled than they were in the past. A part of that is that politicians are systemically more willing to make additional regulations than they are to remove existing regulations, even if some of those regulations are known not to work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨1 + 1⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Am I misunderstanding? ‘1’ + ‘1’, 49+49 = ‘b’

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"30 minutes or it's free" back then was wild⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Drivers rushing to make the deadline lead to some deaths, which was followed by lawsuits. I don’t remember if there was a huge payment from one of those, but I know a bunch of pizza places have chosen not to risk it.