gnu

@gnu@lemmy.zip

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨how badly could a pelican fuck me up in a fight?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It was really just a matter of how to get a pelican to cooperate rather than it being aggressive or anything - they aren’t intelligent enough to figure out you aren’t going to eat them so will resist attempts be caught.

  Dad and my sister were coming back from town one night and saw this pelican by the side of the road moving really awkwardly, so they pulled over to check it out and found it had a punctured lung (and a somewhat wonky beak, but that had healed from a previous injury). Best guess is someone wasn’t as good with a shotgun as they thought they were - being charitable there is a chance someone figured it would struggle with the beak, either that or they were an arsehole.

  Anyway the pelican wasn’t up to anything much so they took it home, made up a comfy spot in a cardboard box, gave it some old painkillers, and expected to just give it an easier end than being eaten by whatever came across it that night. Next morning however when the box was opened the pelican was alive and kicking (literally) so we pinned it down and put it in part of the chook pen to recover. After a fortnight or so of hanging around eating bits of fish and scaring the daylights out of the chooks every time they saw it the pelican had healed up enough to be properly active again so we wrestled it down once more (took noticeably more effort this time) and bundled it into the car to release down at the dam.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨how badly could a pelican fuck me up in a fight?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I actually have wrestled a bit with a pelican and can say that if you’re prepared to take a few scratches you’ll be able to hold one down. You just have to hold the beak and wings, once you’ve got it pinned their legs are too short to really get at you.

  Admittedly the pelican in question wasn’t operating at full potential (recovering from a wound) but I was in my early teens at the time so wasn’t exactly an example of peak physical performance myself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I would personally just treat whatever direction I'm facing at the time as North and go from there.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And it’s a very weird and frightening feeling if I do get disoriented.

  I know what you mean, there has been a couple of times in my life where my internal idea of direction has been turned off course and it is a very weird feeling indeed trying to reconcile the direction you internally believe you’re facing against the different direction a map or compass is telling you is actually true.

  As a kid I also once spent a weekend in Melbourne feeling somewhat disconcerted due to not being . I’d never been there before and flew in on an overcast day which never ended up letting up until I flew out so never ended up getting my bearings while we were down there (didn’t help that this was before the smartphone era so maps weren’t available at the drop of a hat).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I would personally just treat whatever direction I'm facing at the time as North and go from there.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If it’s night and you can see both the Southern Cross and the Pointers it’s pretty trivial to determine south; if you’re in the northern hemisphere you get it even easier with Polaris to mark north.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tweety. I like stretching⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not including a Golden Gaytime in these options is a real missed opportunity…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I would personally just treat whatever direction I'm facing at the time as North and go from there.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Listen to reason, reason is calling on the same handy device every man and his dog has which will provide a north oriented aerial view of the area in question and even a compass display if the map isn’t enough to orient yourself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ok boomer⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Self checkouts that just let you scan items without issue and accept payment are a nice enough idea for a bag or less of shopping, my problem with them is how they are implemented in reality (in Australia anyway). The first implementations I encountered I considered an useful addition but both the machines and the staffing changes due to them have steadily gone downhill in terms of user experience.

  Instead of a quick painless experience you get a horribly touchy weight sensor which can’t reliably handle particularly small items, particularly large items, or non-standard bags (and there are no longer standard bags due to plastic bag bans), a machine which demands assistant intervention at the slightest issue (and the assistants are understaffed so never arrive quickly), and when you finally get to payment it makes you click through an annoyingly slow interface to tell it you don’t have a rewards card and don’t care to donate to some charity before it will activate the card reader. To make things worse the manned checkouts are never staffed at a level - if any are even open - to cater for people with full trolleys so these end up clogging up the self checkouts (which have tiny bagging areas and are not intended to handle a trolley load) and making everything slower.

  The icing on the cake is the self checkout treating you like a thief and throwing errors if the camera system thinks you didn’t scan something in the trolley or letting off an alarm like you’re trying to make off with something when you just want to buy a can of paint.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Home Depot⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  As in plasterboard sheets? I don’t see why not if hand loading, plenty of vans will fit a 2400x1200 sheet (my Transporter fitted a bunch of plywood with room to spare). Loading one with a forklift is harder due to no side access long enough to fit 2400mm but that’s a problem shared with tub back utes. If however your plasterboard pallet is side accessible a van with barn doors (like you’d buy if pallets were a priority) will allow you load it in fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon starts asking questions⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The design of the front forks also assists with stability - having some rake and trail means the front wheel has a tendency to self centre (particularly at speed).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Posting the shopping cart theory because people had questions in a separate thread⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If I’m doing a small shop I’ll take a bag in, fill it up as I go, then everything goes out at the checkout and ends up back in the bag. I’ve never had anyone care about this and I’ve been doing it for a few years now (ever since the old plastic bags got banned in my area).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wii Fit⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You pour a bit of boiling water down the side of the cylinder then run your hand down where you poured the water - you will feel a clear delineation in the temperature at the level of the liquid gas inside.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wii Fit⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Boiling the jug and pouring a bit of hot water on the cylinder seems like it’d be less work than digging out the Wii fit gear, unless of course they use it more regularly for the intended purpose rather than just weighing gas bottles.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨hoping to impress⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Weirds me out that she’s got the watch in right hand though

  If you’re left handed the right hand is the normal hand for a watch, it’s not that unusual.

  Admittedly it’s less common to see anyone wearing a watch now, and there’s less of a reason to put it on your right hand now that most people don’t handwrite regularly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it generally safe to walk through a field of cows?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I never had a problem with walking around cows as a kid and I did it pretty often. Visitors would get spooked occasionally because cows love to follow you and see what you’re up to, but I never got chased or anything. That was beef cattle country though so these cows were mainly cows (female) and steers (castrated males). I’ve heard that some bulls could be territorial however so your mileage may vary if one is around - the couple I’ve walked around were fine but your chances of issues are higher with them.