palordrolap

@palordrolap@fedia.io

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is gravity called gravity? Why not newton-vity or something else like leroy jenkins-vity?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  OP, let me introduce you to Wiktionary, where you can look up all sorts of words, "gravity" included.

  It can be a little shaky around the fringes (obscure words; rare or slang usages) and with languages not closely related to English, but it's an excellent resource for when you want to know why a word is the way it is. Or at least to find out that we don't know for sure where some words come from. Gravity isn't one of those, though.

  You may also like to know that there is a metric physical unit named after Newton, so his name does get used in gravity-related concepts. At time of writing, the Wikipedia article for the Gravity of Earth mentions the unit in the first couple of paragraphs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is the m-word a slur for people with dwarfism? If so, what are more appropriate terms to use other than dwarf?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The R word as a verb has a different emphasis than does the (adjectival) noun that is taboo. The emphasis difference is common among identically spelled pairs of verb/nouns. The noun almost always has emphasis on first syllable, e.g. [a] record (noun) versus [to] record (verb).

  But yeah, some people are going to avoid it anyway, not least because it's indistinguishable in text form, and I wouldn't blame them.

  I note that the M word (to belatedly drag myself back on topic) doesn't work as a verb.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How hard/fast would a baseball have to go to completely pass through a pitcher? Like leave a hole through flesh?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The Waterjet Channel used to do things like this. They'd launch stuff out of an air cannon at a torso made of ballistics gel on what seemed like a regular basis.

  And I daresay The Slow Mo Guys, if not also the OG Mythbusters must have done something similar at some point, not that I can call anything specific to mind right now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the easiest way to calculate the calories in this bread machine recipe?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Canadian. I know that it's only supposed to be product labelling, not recipes, that has to be bilingual, and the inclusion of gram measurements did make me uncertain, but the sugar is what tipped the balance.

  I could be wrong and it's Canadian or I've missed something about another Anglophone country also putting sugar in bread.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the easiest way to calculate the calories in this bread machine recipe?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  English language with no French, cups as measurement and extra sugar in a bread recipe all point at this being a US recipe book.

  They love extra sugar in bread over there. At some point the sugar lobby got in bed with the big breadmakers and since it's addictive, it's now an expectation and a self-fulfilling cycle.

  So yeah, US bread is closer to cake than, say, European bread.

  And that milk powder isn't helping the case much either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would be a biological equivalent to an EMP?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Came here to say something like this, except I learned it from the (rather dark) joke "The neutron bomb was invented by an architect with no friends."

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How are North Koreans who escape to the South integrate, like what do they do for work, home, etc?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Quick test: Say something unkind about Kim Jong Un.

  I'm English. Our king has fat sausage fingers. Your turn.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My 1TB hard drive took a crap reformatted it, lost all my info, and it works now. How do I use a cloud or drive online to backup my stuff so I am not relying just on physical and can dl anywhere?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Tangential reply: The manner in which your 1TB drive "took a crap" might be cause for concern depending on the precise nature of the failure.

  If the hardware is fine, you might be able to recover files on it. This possibility is diminished if you've reformatted and put new files onto it, and practically nil if you did a full drive wipe beforehand (or the failure, whatever that was, did something similar.), but the possibility might have been there and may still be there.

  If the hardware is not fine, you probably shouldn't use it for anything important, if at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a website that can tell you the new names to I guess "classify" people? Like the R word, or the N word or skin color or nationaility? For ex. Is African American still acceptable and so forth⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For the sake of ethnic origin, white South Africans are European, but I grant you that things are getting to the point of being somewhat complicated there too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a website that can tell you the new names to I guess "classify" people? Like the R word, or the N word or skin color or nationaility? For ex. Is African American still acceptable and so forth⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Black for Sub-Saharan African descent, sure. Things get a bit more difficult if you want to talk about north Africans.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  To hazard a guess (don't know for sure, not even for my own country), it's for future historians to be able to build up a picture of who was where and when.

  What might seem obvious and common knowledge now might not be in 100 years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meal Replacement Drink Suggestions?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It's not clear whether you're replacing some or all of the sugar with an artificial sweetener or not. Some don't work for some people and some may be unsuitable for medical reasons, but there might be one or two that work.

  FWIW, I've been putting saccharin in my tea for years now. Not dead yet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could I theoretically grind up one of those pink salt lamps and use it to season my food?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Your smiley needs a nose. Is it a sad face with a hat or a demon with an evil little smile?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lemmy or Piefed?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There are dozens of us! Dozens!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What’s a reasonable tip for a barber? (America)⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  "Customers should leave your purview with the hair on their head, and possibly face, styled, trimmed or even extended, as close to their preference as possible."

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What was a bad TV show season renewal you've seen?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Anyone remember Due South? It was a comedy crime drama about a Canadian Mountie trying to track down his father's killer.

  It got cancelled, but the fans protested and it was rescued at the last minute. The problem was there were a couple of significant changes to the characters and the whole thing felt off, like it was in an alternative universe... except they quite clearly implied that it was the same one and they wrote at least one of the changes into the plot, contributing to the discomfort. They never explained the wolf clearly being different though.

  A similar thing happened between seasons with a more obscure show called WPC 56 about a policewoman in 1950s England, but that was clearly due to budget cuts rather than outright cancellation.

  Then there's Red Dwarf series VII, which proved that more money is not always a good thing. It was a hard left turn that upset a lot of fans.

  ... and I'm sure a lot of people will say the same about what's happened to and in Doctor Who over the decades the show's been running.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do older files tend to have file extensions in all caps?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Technically it's a *FAT filesystem thing, and it still carries over into default Windows behaviour today. If I remember correctly, you have to explicitly tell Windows to distinguish between case in filenames, even on NTFS, which otherwise supports it... and then hope that something in the system wasn't relying on case-insensitivity, which is now broken.

  I have a few exFAT-formatted USB thumb drives and I find that Linux (an OS that has been case sensitive, or at least, its filesystems have, since the outset) complains that the filename is already in use when renaming files to lower case versions of themselves on those drives. I generally have to rename to something different (maybe add a letter) and then rename back. The case can be changed at either stage, but the intermediate name has to be different.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Vampire's are semi dead, then how come a steak thru the heart kills them if they are dead already? Do they still pump their own blood?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Did you hear about the wooden car with wooden wheels, wooden mechanicals and a wooden engine?

  It wooden go.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hypothetically if I found a suitcase of money by the side of the road, is there a legal way to claim it on my taxes?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Depending on local laws, income and other assets obtained by a benefactor within a certain amount of time (perhaps up to a decade) before death may be subject to inheritance tax or higher inheritance tax rates before being passed to beneficiaries.

  And if the parents don't declare it, then the benefactor will have the same "bag of cash" problem but a few years down the line, because the government has no idea where it came from.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come not all people are organ donors? It's not like they will need them where ever they go.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They switched from opt-in to opt-out a while back here in the UK. They figured that most people don't care either way, but that most people couldn't be bothered to sign up for a Donor Card.

  I'm kind of in the opposite boat. I have enough self-loathing and lack of desire to continue living on this planet any longer than I have to that I'm not sure I want any part of me to continue existing after brain death.

  I didn't opt-in before, and I feel bad about forcibly opting out, which is, I suppose, what the organ harvesters are counting on, so I haven't.

  Yet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I stick my head out a car window or a gust of wind hits my face it's like my throat closes and I can't breathe. How come motorcycle riders without helmets don't seem to have this problem?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Observation: When you stick your head out of a car window at speed, you're going from almost no wind to a lot of it very quickly, and that's bound to take your senses by surprise, regardless of whether you're consciously expecting it or not.

  Helmet-less motorcycle riders - inadvisable as their choice may be - have the advantage of being able to ease into it from standing to moving at whatever their cruising speed is over the course of a reasonable acceleration.

  ... though I note that other posters have given reasons why it's still not entirely pleasant for the motorcyclist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who makes the best chocolate sandwich cookies these days?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That's a tricky one. I'm a big fan of Bourbons, but since they're not restricted by copyright or branding, every UK supermarket and many other confectionery companies each make their own and the quality can vary quite a bit.

  There are also two common form factors. The original is roughly 2:1 (as pictured in the above article) and the other, which is less common, is closer to 3:2 to match the common form factor of the Custard cream.

  The supermarket own-brand I usually get (2:1) has the bonus of being dairy-free, which is not always the case.

  Sometimes I catch myself involuntarily doing a little happy dance on biting into one, so the quality of that particular brand has yet to drop beyond that threshold for me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How can a company like Terabox give away 1TB of space for free and still stay a stable company?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Chances are that they didn't have anywhere near enough space to give everyone the full terabyte and they were gambling on not everyone needing all their allocated space.

  I mean, it's not hard to throw 64TB of drives into a server, set up RAID with some level of redundancy (let's say something that gives 16TB apparent) and get it hosted in a data centre somewhere. If you've a thousand users all taking up no more than a few gigabytes each, you might not even fill it.

  And if they bought those drives prior to the recent price hikes on all things storage, it might not even have cost them much. (I mean, the initial outlay even now wouldn't break $10k.)

  This is all catastrophically bad planning, yes, but businesses do this sort of thing all the time, even long after the start-up period where something so basic might make sense.

  (And thus we see a likely reason why they've suddenly shrunk the free tier to a slightly more sensible value.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What should I do with boxes of old photos?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Local historical societies and any locations that still exist from those photos maybe ought to be given the option to save them if you don't want to keep them.

  If you can identify people and locations all the better. Since you have scans you can provide a physical thumbnail sheet with what's going on in each one. Or do what they did in the old days and write on the back of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the weirdest thing in english?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don't think articles, definite or indefinite are the weirdest things about English, if only because other languages have the same features.

  There have to be weirder things that are specific to this one language, but it's hard to find something that isn't shared by any other language, especially not the closely related ones. German goes one step further with the whole capitalisation thing, for example, where all nouns are capitalised, not just those that are names.

  Perhaps we could go for how vowels all become, or at least move towards schwa in unstressed positions. That's the vowel at the end of "the" when unstressed and before a consonant. (German has some of this with final -e (and to some extent, the same with older French pronunciation), but it's not necessarily the same thing going on there.)

  Consonant aspiration might be another oddity. Aspiration depends on position in a word in English and doesn't hold any semantic or grammatical meaning, but in other languages, an aspirated consonant can completely change the meaning of a word. I think Korean is one such language. They even have different letters for the different sounds.

  If you don't know what aspiration is, it's the burst of air that follows some consonants. English speakers generally don't even know they're doing it. The often-used example is "pin" versus "spin", where the leading "p" of "pin" has far more air after it than it does in "spin".

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I am someone who works out daily and sweats a lot. Just doing laundry doesn't seem to adequately clean the underarms of my shirts. What are some ways to clean these areas of my clothing better?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You may need a different detergent or a detergent booster that works harder on stains. Usually they're peroxide based, but contain other agents as well. Some come in powder form and others in sprays.

  One powder I grabbed does brighten better than detergent alone and makes things smell like an honest-to-goodness laundry. (Which I'm not going to name because this already sounds like a sales pitch. It isn't. It's just something that was on special offer on my supermarket's website and I added it to my virtual basket because I have a few blood-spotted items of clothing that regular washing wasn't getting out.)

  It worked wonders on some very greyed white t-shirts, but not so great on the blood spots on coloured clothing. I may need to soak them for longer or use more additive, risking the colour, which I may have been too cautious about up to the present.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are some Linux community so toxic?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Some people forget what it was like when they were starting out. They find it difficult to remember when they learned what they know now because it feels like they've always known it, like it was and is second nature.

  It doesn't help if they were able, either through circumstances, zeitgeist or sheer aptitude, to pick up a topic relatively easily right back when they did first learn it.

  And so it can be difficult for such people (or at the very least, some of them) to see that anyone else might, for whatever reason, be having a hard time picking up the same thing in <current year>.

  Combine that with toxic personality traits and you can end up with an embittered person unloading on you for not being able to do what they consider to be a simple thing.

  These people are a percentage of a percentage of a percentage of everyone relevant, but they do make a heck of a lot of noise when they're unloading, and they often gravitate towards each other, so they seem like they make up more of a group than they really do when you finally run across them.

  Note that at no point yet have I mentioned Linux. This is a human problem that affects all topics and activities.

  If you want to get into the peculiarities of why it seems to be more common with technical communities, it might have something to do with the fact that people who don't feel particularly confident dealing with other people often chose to deal with something else instead.

  Computers and other mechanical things offer stimulating complexity without any of that human nonsense.

  This can lead to poor interpersonal skills perpetuating themselves or festering. And so you end up with a few of the aforementioned misanthropes trying to control what they know how to control and lashing out at everything, or everyone, else.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there words in reverse order between two languages using the Latin Alphabet?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  All things considered, "rosbif" is almost endearing as an insult. I'm kind of surprised that it's still the default.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there words in reverse order between two languages using the Latin Alphabet?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The truth* is that the French are excellent at English, but they find it beneath them to speak it.

  Therefore, I suspect that "talkie-walkie" is a deliberate attempt to annoy the English. A trap you have fallen straight into (even if you're not English).

  *\ for some interpretation of that word

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why can't I apply SPF50 sunscreen twice to get SPF100 protection?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Light clothing

  You still need to pay attention to the weave density and thickness. That "infinity" falls somewhat if you're wearing the clothing equivalent cheesecloth.

  Source: Once got a severe sunburn on a relatively overcast day through a t-shirt that I soon learned hadn't been thick enough.