FriendOfDeSoto

@FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If there's a sort of "apocalyptic" event but there are still surviving communities, will people be able to make eyeglasses again, or are people with vision issues gonna be fucked?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It took centuries to get to disposable contact lenses while trying to figure out the physics, both in optics and in manufacturing any sort of spectacles, at the same time.

  Will the survivors of the apocalypse be able to pick up where we left off or will they essentially start from scratch? That depends on the apocalypse and on the survivors. Do documents and knowledge survive, perhaps in a stash or in digital form? Do the survivors include an optician or a material engineer? Chances look good if that’s the case. If no, life will get a lot harder for many people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Germany is a collection of regions and former midieval fiefdoms that pretty much all hate each other. Munich and surroundings is representative of Munich, not the whole country. But a lot of the stereotypical things Americans think of when thinking of Germany will be there. Most of the South was occupied by US forces post WW2 and all the lederhosen, Oktoberfest, and Neuschwanstein Castle should feel just right for you. And that pisses off the Germans in the rest of the country like telling a Texan their BBQ is trash.

  Somebody said Germans aren’t into smalltalk. That’s probably true by comparison to the average American but by comparison to their countrymen in the North they are positively chatty in Bavaria.

  Bring cash or research at least two ways to get your hands on it while in the country. Just in case one method fails. A lot of places do not accept credit cards and that will probably extend to US debit cards that run on a cc system.

  And yes, especially intercity trains are a clustereff of neglect and wear and tear and timetables are not to be trusted at all.

  Don’t rent a car and just floor it on the autobahn. Take it at 120kph/75mph first for an hour before you put your pedal to the metal. Get a feel for the road and the rules first because Germans love a rule. And it decreases your chance of hitting a concrete pillar. No speed limit areas tend to be between cities, not on the built up areas. Know that speeding tickets will be charged after the fact or they will follow you by mail.

  The staring people refer to here may be, to a large extent, that if there are no Chinese tourists in the area, American ones will be the loudest ones around, carrying their cute little fear of dehydration made manifest water bottles around. You look funny to us and we can’t help it. Don’t buy bottled water, tap is fine to drink. But there aren’t drinking fountains around. A lot of drinks in bottles and cans charge a deposit fee you’ll get back when you return the empty container to the supermarket - your kid will know the drill.

  If you’re planning to cross borders be prepared for actual border checks. Our version of ICE crackdowns is making the federal police force delay EU cross border traffic with pretty much EU-illegal ID checks. We spend absolute millions of Euros, accruing a gazillion hours of overtime to catch two illegal immigrants or thereabouts. Political theater with waiting times for all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How difficult would it be to live in a modern-day developed country without a smartphone?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Doesn’t difficult very much depend on what you think matters? You’re instantly missing out on anything app, anything QR-code related (ordering food in some restaurants, links, etc.), membership cards that no longer exist in physical form. Some places sell certain tickets online only and then you may need a printer or you’re SOL. I’m sure in missing something so that’s not extensive.

  But at the same time, if you have a dumb phone, you can still stay in touch with friends and family. You’ll be missing out on images being sent that are bigger than 2 pixels. But you wouldn’t be completely out of the loop. And if you have an internet ready computer at home or at the next door library, just not on you at all times, I think that’s crucial. Without that you’re ending up in all sorts of trouble.

  I would say it’s doable if you are good at not giving F’s. If at the same time you only want to use cash or just no credit cards you’ll be making your life much harder though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Park shades not working⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Become active in your local politics. That’s where this urban design sausage is made. I’m gonna go ahead and doubt that your post here will reach many decision makers and urban designers.

  The reason why you can angle that parasol is because it will cost more money. Anything the public can use will be abused and then broken. We cannot have nice things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Never accept a pasta served by an “Australian mushroom.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does it damage my phone in any way it I use a faulty cable to charge it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  No one here can tell you for sure what’s wrong with your cable. So no one can answer if it will be good or bad over time. Slow (normal) charging is better for your battery than fast charging. A wobbly wire might stop and restart the charging process, which might be detrimental to the battery over time.

  But it could also be that your port is so clogged up with pocket lint that the contact in your phone is affected and that’s why fast charging no longer works. Something could be broken in the brick you use and that’s why it won’t work any more. It could be that the cable was bent so many times it’s broken. It’s probably that.

  You could try to narrow down where the error lies. If you use a friend’s cable does the same thing happen? Friend’s fine-working cable in your power brick? If you got a phone repair kiosk in your neighborhood, maybe ask them if they could clean your port. If they’re friendly, they can probably help you narrow down this problem also.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do females got to be so hard to talk or flirt with?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If your approach at dating hasn’t materialized in anything, perhaps it is time to change your approach. For me, the best things happened when I wasn’t trying at all. Be social, be courteous, be nice - and as the owner of a penis: non-threatening.

  You have self identified a problem of anxiety. If your next step is to criticize all “females” as being difficult in terms of dating, you’re missing a beat here and making a bad word choice. The problem may be more of a you-problem than a them-problem. Also, no matter the primary sexual organ situation, people can pick up on both an air of entitlement or the scent of desperation.

  Also, all cicadas shout for sex but not every cicadas gets laid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨To win the show Alone, could someone smuggle a GPS locator inside of their anus?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If there is no checking in place, like an airport security check and/or check for devices emitting radio waves. Also, the producers know where the candidates are at, don’t they? If they spot regular drone flights in the area, I think the game will be up as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who had it worse?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Now i’m torn. On the one hand I want to dismiss your counter argument as a counter factual and therefore there is no need to even glance at it. On the other hand, the omnipotent dick is part of the equation and he can control these things and I kinda see where you’re coming from. I would say he is being more of a d though because he is rubbing Picard’s nose in how unprepared humanity is in the stars. The fact that his finger snapping detour shortened the encounter timeline with the Borgs may have had the one positive effect: forewarning for the feds. And that may have put them in a position to win by the skin of their teeth. So your counter argument holds some limited and not massive amount of water.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who had it worse?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Q is just a dick. He could’ve brought Voyager back home but didn’t and then involved Janeway in that continuufederacy civil war. He exposed Picard and crew to the Borgs and didn’t lift a finger when he got Locutussed. I think in terms of dead people he may have screwed Picard over more. I may be wrong but I think more people died in that cross section being cut out by the Borgs as a direct result of Q finger snapping the D out to meet them. But at the core, he just does stuff because he’s a bored omnipotent dick and he makes everyone in his path suffer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There is no accounting for taste.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do people hate coldplay?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They are the epitome of the adage that their earlier stuff was better. For me, they jumped the shark when Roman Catholic bells were ringing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier says criminal “geoengineering and weather modification activities" could have played a role in recent Texas floods⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Florida Man strikes again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a font/typeface designing program that is available for Windows or Linux that supports creation of variable fonts and OpenType features?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe 10 years ago I tried designing a font in Inkscape. It was possible but more of a gimmick. I then installed Fontforge and very quickly decided I wasn’t going to learn how to use it, didn’t have the bandwidth. But the tools are there. Both methods have a learning curve but I think have enough instruction resources online.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In languages which use complex written characters (such as Chinese's logographs), is there an equivalent to English's "text speak" shorthand?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s difficult 2 transpose what u can do in English just 2 other languages written in the Latin alphabet for centuries. English has a remarkable and quite confusing amount of homophones that is absent from other indoeuropean languages. The apostrophe as a letter skipped marker is fairly universal. But beyond that it’s already a different ball game in other more similar languages. 2 to too, 4 for, r u - that’s very English only.

  Simplified Chinese characters are a hint at what they did on the Chinese mainland to cut down on writing time. Beyond that (and I don’t speak the language so 🧂) there are single character abbreviations for countries. 美国 is America and 美 suffices as shorthand, which means beauty otherwise. Your example phrase is “R u coming 2nite?” In English we use the present progressive tense here, which doesn’t exist like that in Mandarin. It would be phrased as “Come tonight?” The question mark could be replaced with the character that functions as a question marker by itself. And I think you can do this in 3-4 characters and I think they might just beat you to it in a bilingual texting competition in terms of speed.

  The mainland population may also be more adept to obfuscate their speech especially online. So similarly pronounced character combinations take over the meaning of a term the censors are actively looking for.

  The Japanese like shortening stuff, mostly loanwords, to unrecognizable words. The word for part time work is アルバイト (arubaito) taken from the German for work (Arbeit). Cool kids have whittled it down to baito. A remote control has become a リモコン (rimokon) in normal parlance. Overly long Chinese character combos like 自動販売機 for a vending machine get shortened to 自販機 dropping characters that can be inferred (if you speak it).

  I also want to add that text speak is heavily influenced by restrictions on text length and charges for each text. Non Latin script characters take up more than one Latin character per Chinese character for instance. It’s probably 5+ in decoding per character. So you reach 160 letters quite quickly and that’s why SMS in China was very cheap and quickly adopted a system where message threads would be sent and put back together on the recipient’s phone. In Japan they used email from the start, even in dumb phone T9 texting days. They had no Twitter-like restrictions on text length so they didn’t need to be shorter than what their thumbs could successfully fumble together.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Found a 2009 YouTube video about a green, healthy looking fir tree growing inside a man's lung. CNN video shows a surgeon and the patient being interviewed.. was it a hoax?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think what you’re not picking up on is the whole Ms. Moos vibe on CNN. She is basically satire. She always jumps on the most outrageous stories and narrates them in that annoying pseudo journalistic voice and has done for decades. The stories may be actually true but you should never assume that they are. They are a knock knock joke for people who watch 24h news channels.

  I don’t know anything about this case more than having watched the CNN video. Mr. Fir-lung and his doctor needn’t be actors. He could’ve really had it in his lung but played up the “haha, maybe I breathed in a seed” line because it got him attention on TV and paid interviews. And he doesn’t mention how he was in a landslide being chased by a bear 5 years ago and that’s when he accidentally inhaled the debris. The doctor may just have mentioned in a subordinate clause that it looked as if the sprig was growing in the lung but never actually claimed it did. Or he also believes in homeopathy. Or he also got paid for the interview. There are a thousand explanations why we get presented the story like that. But the biggest red flag remains that Jeanne Moos was reporting on it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you getting inundated with JFK was anti Israel posits and hot takes? Because I sure aren’t.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why doesn't the US government just tax illegal immigrants a little bit more than the Average american? Then use those funds to fix infastructure or a new WPA of the 21st century?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If illegal immigrants were possible to be identified easily by the IRS, ICE would have taken them over already.

  The problem is two-fold. A lot of the immigrants who fall into this “illegal” category are not on the books, they get a brown envelope, and pay little to no taxes at all. And the more “sophisticated” ones look just like your average American. So if you taxed them more, you’d be affecting a lot of the “legal” population as well.

  Also, the American economy is full of jobs that no “non-deportable” would like to do. Agricultural jobs come to mind. The current regime’s idea of eradicating all illegal immigrants runs contrary to a lot of economic interests (and I read that they’ve done a lot less deporting on the farms recently. Curious …) Even if you could just tax them more, you’d still mess with those interests as well.

  And while I’m not a tax lawyer, I’m gonna go out in a limb here and say it’s not going to be easy to make a tax law like that that isn’t going to be heavily scrutinized in the courts because it is unabashedly discriminatory.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US Politicians praying inside the House of Representatives⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s because these are people with the power to do more than thoughts and prayers. But they just stick with that while also taking health care off veterans and giving tax breaks to the rich.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a term for something like Imposter Syndrome, but instead feeling like it’s other people conspiring to give you an illusory taste of success with intent to pull it away and screw you over?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Gaslighting

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the canonical version of STVI?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Who thought it is a good idea to let George Lucas edit Trek? It’s like an Odo shot first kind of situation. And I think Odo never used a phaser.

  Is this is the guy that Scotty shoots in the end? If so, I’ve only ever seen the version with that scene and the bad Mission: Impossible face mask reveal. And I owned this movie as a VHS bought in Europe as part of a set released before VII came out…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the canonical version of STVI?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  II, IV, and VI are all worth a watch. They are a good movie, an entertaining movie, and a surprisingly good movie respectively.

  I’ll watch the odd numbered ones as well but I’m a fan and I know I is too long, III is mostly not good, and I enjoy V for its craziness.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If government hackers can infiltrate big companies, why not hack normal people?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the Sony hack is not a great example because there is a very good chance it was more politically motivated than financially. It’s one of those cases where we might never know but there is a good chance it was orchestrated by North Korea in response to a Sony movie that made Kim III not look very divine. NK is most likely connected to other hacks as well that were really just a way to get hard currency/to evade sanctions.

  Effort and reward are like supply and demand. If I want to steal your credit card number to go shopping, it might take me a long time to get to it. And then it turns out there is only $500 left on it. Too much effort for not enough reward. That’s why phishing, Nigerian princes, texted IRS/DMV fines, missed FedEx deliveries, and all that jazz happens. Low effort to throw a net out and then catch the dumbest of the fish. If you are a person of interest to me though the math if different. Maybe I’m a stalker (look behind you, I’m there right now). Or maybe horny me is looking for your (perfectly legal) sexting thread. Or you’re a pedo, a socialist, a cult leader, or all of the above. Private people get hacked. But it rarely makes a splash in the news like the Sony hack.

  Also, hacker ≠ hacker. There are good guys who hack stuff to show what needs fixing or to hold people to account. There are bad guys who do it for money or because they like it. There are those with one foot on either side of that fence. Motivations differ wildly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is this clock icon in my phone status bar?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Do you let your network set the time or did you do it manually? Could be a hint that you’re off by a minute or so (considering you’ve checked all the other reasonable things already).

  Any other apps installed that may want to set alarms? Maybe a sideload? Calendar app you’ve tried and not uninstalled?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If you want you get a good idea about the complexity, there is a sci-fi novel called “Three Body Problem” by Liu Cixin. It lays out a situation with 3 suns and it’s very messy (not a spoiler).

  The details are important. How big are the suns, how do they revolve around each other? I’m not going to pretend to be able to do the math if I had the details. But it throws into question if life on earth would have developed at all. And it it did it would be very different. Our planet has won the lottery. It got an atmosphere, is far enough from the sun but not too far away to benefit from its energy. A stable orbit gives us four seasons. A lot of life on this planet has developed around that and around one moon giving us predictable tides. All of that would be messed up, a livable earth would probably need to be further out from the bi-suns. The slow process of evolution likes relative stability. Two suns pulling on everything would provide the opposite. That’s why I would lean towards no life actually. Greater mass at the center of the bisolar system would also raise the odds of getting hit by a rock. The moons might be slamming into each other and then the planet.

  What I’m saying is it’s not a good idea…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I see from my own behavior that more and more stuff is done on my cell phone and less stuff on a PC. I think eventually everything will be merged into a single device. But I wouldn’t bet on the form factor yet. Whether it will be AR/VR headsets or a form of tablet or a tech yet to amaze us - IDK.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I get scared of a girl who approached me⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think you did anything wrong. I hate people striking up a conversation like that as well.

  You can train yourself not to panic, deep breaths, focusing on something in the middle distance, closing your eyes, counting to ten - whatever works for you. And then you can ride a situation like this out. Either by masking your discomfort or giving very curt replies. You can also just say “I’m very sorry, I’m not in the mood for a chat.” But you mustn’t worry that you made an extrovert sad. She’ll get over it and maybe learn from this experience as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I fear this has the potential of becoming the copied standard unfortunately. Fear of terrorism is like think of the children. All it will do is force people who need visas into having squeaky clean innocuous public profiles and operating anonymous accounts with actual opinions. Terrorists will do the same. So this privacy infringement will only catch really dumb people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is flirting redundant?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  No, it isn’t. They may already like you but how will they know you care if you don’t offer an array of easy to misunderstand signals?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is is bed with Google now, in a worse, more OS-integrated way than Mozilla was. This timeline sucks.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If these two companies are in bed with each other, they are hate-fucking each other though. Carnal pleasure but no love lost.

  I don’t find this that infuriating. And you have choices to run a different browser. Granted, most of them are chromium based. Edge’s only use case is to download a Firefox fork and/or a better chromium that is neither Edge nor Chrome.