Mostly_Gristle
@Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.world
- Comment on I'd like to change my last name and want suggestions 2 days ago:
I think you should go with something strong, like Powers, Kingslayer, or Grimaxe. Your enemies aren’t going to strike fear into themselves.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Even if your entire family came from Norway it actually wouldn’t be that surprising that you’d get some DNA from other cultures popping up in there somewhere. The Viking Age, which spanned several hundred years, was pretty wild. The Vikings developed a type of boat that could sail the open ocean, but still had a shallow enough draft that it could navigate most of the major networks of Europe, and which was light enough that they could be carried overland from one river to another. It was an absolutely devastating technology for the time. They could often sail up a river, sack an entire city, and be gone before the surrounding area was able to raise an army to fight them off. As you can probably imagine the Vikings got all over the damned place. They got all the way to North America to the west, and pushed into Asia and founded Russia to the east. Some sold their mercenary services to the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople and served in his Varangian Guard. They got around Europe so much and sacked so many European cities so often that at one point Europe straight up completely ran out of silver.
The Viking Age also overlapped with the Muslim expansion throughout the Mediterranean coast of Europe and North Africa. The Muslim conquest of the Iberian region of Spain, and the famous Viking raid on Lindisfarne in England only happened about 70 years apart. So the Vikings were also bumping into them as well. Most people have this idea of the Middle Ages where everyone pretty much stayed put, and nobody traveled more than 20 miles from where they were born. And while that was probably true enough for some people, lots other people moved around a ton, and there was actually quite a bit of cultural cross-pollination and trade. It’s not hard to imagine that somewhere in all of that one of your Scandiwegian ancestors might have gotten a piece of some Spanish hotness.
Also, when the Vikings went raiding, they didn’t just take silver, they also took slaves and brought many of them back to Scandinavia. And sometimes they had sex with those slaves. So there’s also that possibility.
- Comment on Banned Mullvad VPN TV ad criticizing United Kingdom escalating censorship and mass surveillance “And Then?” 2 months ago:
Yeah, that surprised me too.
- Comment on How do you fight doomerism/pessimism in these trying times? 4 months ago:
I 100% read that as “carnitas,” and now I’m thinking that whatever the solution is, it should definitely include tacos.
- Comment on Why is kissing? 4 months ago:
I feel like I listened to this one like three or four years ago, but I listen to a lot of podcasts and unfortunately I don’t remember which one it was. It might have been Science Vs, or RadioLab, or Sawbones, or This Podcast Will Kill You, or even Box of Oddities. But it also might have been none of those.
- Comment on Why is kissing? 4 months ago:
I’m trying to remember this from a podcast I listened to a few years ago that covered this topic, so I might not have the details exactly right, but if I’m remembering correctly there is at least one evolutionary advantage in that there’s a virus (part of the herpes family of viruses, I think) that is asymptomatic and for the most part harmless, except when a woman contracts it for the first time while pregnant, in which case it can be pretty devastating to fetal development. But if the woman gets gradually exposed to the virus before becoming pregnant then her immune system learns to deal with it and it won’t harm the fetus. Of course that doesn’t explain why humans started kissing in the first place, but it could mean that humans who did engage in kissing may have had a significant breeding advantage.
- Comment on Cosmic Christmas Tree 4 months ago:
I can only see a Vogon.
- Comment on Get ready for... 5 months ago:
A lot of engines have a big plastic trim piece that sits on top and doesn’t really do anything except make the engine compartment look tidy. I guess you could call that a topper.
- Comment on Could gunpowder be chemically addictive for humans ? 5 months ago:
Gorn.
Only way to get rid of it is to build a makeshift cannon out of some random stuff you find laying around.
- Comment on The Fuck Jar 5 months ago:
And to think, this whole time I was using the rubber band trick like a sucker.
- Comment on Would it be correct to say that enshittification is the physical manifestation of the economic ai bubble bursting? 6 months ago:
No. Not really. They’re different things. Enshittification is a term coined by Cory Doctorow to describe how previously good tech companies break their own platforms to maximize short-term profits. The AI bubble is just a regular investment bubble where people are throwing too much money at a product that can’t deliver on its own hype.
A good example of enshittification is why Google search sucks now. A while back they noticed that the number of search queries was hitting a plateau. It hit a plateau because Google controlled over 90% of the search market, there are a finite number of humans on Earth, and there’s a limit to how many things a person needs to google in a day. But Google is a publicly traded corporation and line needs to go up. So what Google did was to make their search engine worse at searching so that people would have to perform multiple searches to find what they’re looking for. More searches = more ads delivered. More ads delivered = line go up. Their flagship product doesn’t do the only thing it’s supposed to do now, but the shareholders got a bigger return on their investment that quarter.
The AI bubble is the tech industry promising a fantastic blowjob machine, and selling investors on the vision of a future of unlimited bespoke orgasms where you’ll never have to foot the bill for taking a woman on a date, or pay a prostitute, ever again. Everybody started throwing money at that because, duh, it’s a magic blowjob machine. But now that people are using it they’re finding out that, yeah, sometimes it sucks your dick, but a lot of the time it just punches you in the balls, or it hallucinates that the definition of “blowjob” is anal penetration with a leaf blower. And sometimes it randomly turns into a nine-legged spidergoat that vomits acid on your crotch, and nobody really knows why. Also, it seems to be burning through a crazy amount of energy and water just to punch me in the balls. So now people are getting less and less enthusiastic about throwing money at it. And when the market can no longer buy into the hype because of all the testicle punching, the big investors will dump their holdings while they can still do so at a profit, and the bubble will pop.
- Comment on Bats taxonomy 7 months ago:
No vampire wombats that we know of.
It’s entirely possible that every scientist that went to study them is now a bloodless dessicated corpse slowly turning to jerky under the Australian sun.
- Comment on Which fly came first? 7 months ago:
Almost certainly fly as in birds came first. Trousers with a fly are a pretty recent fashion development, like within the last 200 years or so, whereas people have been watching birds since before the invention of language.
- Comment on Do all American stores have greeters? 8 months ago:
No, Walmart is kind of an outlier by having a greeter. In other places that have a “greeter” it’s usually an extra layer of security/theft prevention, or it’s a place like Costco where you need a membership to shop there. That said, it’s basically standard for an employee to seek you out and ask if you would like help finding anything fairly soon after you walk in the store. It’s generally seen as good customer service, and in larger stores it’s not uncommon to be approached by several employees asking if you’d like help finding what you’re looking for over the course of your time in the store.
American customer service culture tends to be a little extra. There’s a premium on going the extra mile that’s tied into America’s self-image of the “land of opportunity,” and the hustle culture that goes with that. But when that’s what you’re accustomed to dealing with, the customer service cultures of other countries can be kind of jarring. I know from my own travels through Europe that shopping in some countries can range from feeling cold and indifferent, to feeling actively hostile.
That said, most Americans wouldn’t think of complaining to your manager about it. It’s only a specific kind of over-entitled asshole that does that. Sounds like you had a real karen on your hands.
- Comment on Is it everywhere? 9 months ago:
There are huge sound effects libraries that have been continuously built up and added to since sound in movies became a thing. Foley artists dip into them constantly. If you watch enough old movies you can pick out some almost 100-year-old foley effects that still get used in modern tv and movies. A lot of the time foley artists will toss them in as a joke or reference that mostly only other foley artists are going to catch.
But yeah there are a lot of foley effects that get used a ton. I hear the exact door opening/closing sound from the old AOL instant messenger used in a movie or tv show at least a couple times a year. There’s also a specific cat noise that gets used constantly which people who played Postal 2 back in the day will recognize instantly.
- Comment on Apart, low in cholesterine 9 months ago:
All these fools trying to add hydrogen to water when they should be focusing on dechlorinating table salt.
- Comment on Why do people hate coldplay? 10 months ago:
Hate is probably a strong word, but I don’t really care for their music. There’s nothing technically wrong with it, they’re competent musicians, but it all feels boring and generic to me. It’s bland and inoffensive, like it was written to play over a grocery store PA at a barely liminal volume for a middle-aged housewife to absent-mindedly hum along with as she compares laundry soap.
- Comment on Microwave Intensifies 10 months ago:
I remember like 15 or 20 years ago the popular thing was printable papercraft doohickeys that you’d cut out and glue together with aluminum foil on the backside that were like little satellite dishes that mounted on the antennas that were supposed to boost/aim your wifi signal. I gave them a try, but if they made a difference it wasn’t big enough to be noticeable.
- Comment on Too Many Cooks 11 months ago:
Smarf!
- Comment on Would a matcha set be worth it? 11 months ago:
If the process and tradition of it appeals to you, then sure. You can find a cheap matcha set for under $20 (I think I saw one on Amazon a while ago for $10), so it’s not like you need to spend a ton of money to try it out.
I’m kind of lazy so I use one of those electric milk frothing whisks instead of a traditional bamboo one. But if you use that type of electric frother just be sure to use it in a vessel with high sides and a fair amount of extra room otherwise you’ll be wearing your matcha instead of drinking it.
- Comment on Ach aye, Scottish words for plants 11 months ago:
The Scottish people I’ve heard say it actually called them “piss-a-beds,” which trips off the tongue a lot easier, but that name comes from the fact that as an herbal medicine they are apparently a pretty effective diuretic.
- Comment on Japanese Tatami That Tricks Your Eyes 1 year ago:
That’s actually pretty cool.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 year ago:
Looking at this with adult eyes, no I don’t think you’re a jerk. It sounds like you’re trying help him see the reality of the situation before it causes him any undue emotional (or financial) suffering. It’s not, however, very hard to imagine how from his point of view he might feel like you’re being jerk, or maybe a bit hypocritical.
Is there any way you can get him playing with kids who are good enough to go pro? If he can start playing against people who genuinely have the goods, it’s probably not going to take him very long to figure out for himself whether he can keep up or not. And that way you don’t have to set yourself up as the bad guy as much, and you can play a more supportive role and be there to guide him to an alternative path once he gets sick of the other kids running circles around him. At least that’s how it worked for the couple of kids I knew growing up who were good enough at basketball or American football that they really thought they could go pro. It was playing against people who were the real deal that made them realize they didn’t have the shot they thought they did. It was pretty obvious that these other kids had something extra, and were playing on a level my friends felt they were probably never going to reach.
- Comment on Im watching an episode of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, filmed in black and white. In this scene a guest is showing glass making. What is going on with the film to make these black areas by the flame? 1 year ago:
Not off the top of my head, but the paint color is called “TV Yellow.”
- Comment on Im watching an episode of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, filmed in black and white. In this scene a guest is showing glass making. What is going on with the film to make these black areas by the flame? 1 year ago:
Those old black and white television cameras had a lot of limitations. For instance, things that were white and glossy would cause an extra-bright flare effect that would leave trails across the screen whenever it moved, and it was even worse on video. Guitar companies had to invent a brand new shade of yellow for musicians who performed on TV that still looked white on camera, but didn’t light up like a road flare under the studio lights.
Which is a long way of saying that when it comes to those old cameras I would expect the light from a blowtorch to cause some weird artifacts.
- Comment on Brent Spiner guest apperance in nightcourt 1 year ago:
He’s on several episodes playing that character.
Nana Visitor also has a guest appearance on that show.
- Comment on Is there anything Lemmy has more/better content for than Reddit and other mainstream sites? 1 year ago:
Definitely the Internet’s superior source ofl Star Trek memes.
- Comment on Desks 1 year ago:
Just keeping people away from the windows could potentially prevent hundreds of thousands of injuries from burns and flying glass in the survivable area of the blast radius. It’d be really hard to overstate what a massive difference that could make when it comes to allocating medical resources in the aftermath.
- Comment on Can someone explain the framework of the current British... idk is empire the correct term? 1 year ago:
Great Britain is the big island of the UK which contains England, Scotland, and Wales. The United Kingdom is Great Britain plus the six counties of Northern Ireland, The Isle of Man, and (I think) some of the islands in the English Channel.
A Briton is a person from Britain.
IDK, man. Canada be weird sometimes.
Yes, it’s its own country.
Canada, along with Australia and a bunch of other former colonies, belong to what’s known as the Commonwealth, of which the British monarch is the head. It’s basically an association of countries that used to be ruled by Britain, but Britain no longer has a say in their laws or how they’re governed.
Australia didn’t have a revolution. Australian independence was a long process that lasted from 1901 to 1986. You may want to check the “The steps to full sovereignty” section of the “History of Australia” wikipedia article.
No, Britain is not all the same country. As previously stated, the island of the Britain is England, Scotland, and Wales, which are separate countries, but members of the United Kingdom, and are governed by the UK Parliament. The six Irish counties that make up Northern Ireland is still part of the UK. The rest of the Ireland, known as The Republic of Ireland, is very much not part of the UK. They did have a revolution, and won independence in 1922.
- Comment on How do Americans win their country back? 1 year ago:
The frustrating thing is that Trump didn’t even get more votes this election than he did last election. There wasn’t a bunch of new Trump voters that came out of the woodwork and turned the tide. He was absolutely beatable. He only won because 15 million of the people who voted for Biden last election just didn’t bother this time.