AFKBRBChocolate
@AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world
Yet another refugee who washed up on the shore after the great Reddit disaster of 2023
- Comment on Is there a good way to buy chrome lettering in the same font as the brand's original lettering on the back of the car? 1 day ago:
No expert, but it seems unlikely. My understanding is that big brands generally use custom fonts, so you’re unlikely to find generic lettering that matches. But maybe you can find something close enough?
- Comment on How did you get your job? 2 weeks ago:
No, a NASA and DOD contractor. Worked on some neat stuff over the years, including the electrical power system for the space station. I ended up managing the software engineering group, and really liked that - very smart people.
- Comment on How did you get your job? 2 weeks ago:
Old guy checking in. I was a computer science major, graduating in 1985. My goal at the time was to go into computer animation (note that Toy story, the first full length computer animated movie, wasn’t released until ten years later). But there was a big computer animated project that was canceled or tabled just before my last semester, so the market was flooded with out of work animators and I decided I’d better do something different. I was getting married, and I needed a job.
I had good grades, but I didn’t think there was much that made my resume stand out from my classmates, each of whom was making 100+ copies of theirs and applying to every software job they could find. So instead, I asked everyone I knew if they knew anyone who worked at a place that hired software people, and asked if they could get me a name of a hiring manager. I got seven or eight of those, and I sent each of them a letter with my resume, mentioning who pointed me their direction. Out of that I got three interviews and two job offers. My first job ended up being writing control software for the space shuttle main engines, and I stayed at the company almost 40 years. I just retired in January.
- Comment on The billionaires and politicians did it 2 weeks ago:
As I understand it, it’s the effect of a number of policy decisions intended in the surface to stabilize the economy. They stopped approving minimum wage hikes, they accepted a higher rate of unemployment due to factory automation, etc. Also, the difference between worker and executive compensation has grown tremendously. image
- Comment on The billionaires and politicians did it 2 weeks ago:
That’s why the right aligned with evangelicals all those years ago. Prior to that, Republicans were actually for abortion rights as a personal freedoms thing. But then they started with the family values stuff, casting Democrats as literally against God. “You need to vote for us because we’ll protect marriage, keep you safe from the sin of homosexuality, and most importantly will protect the babies from being murdered.” Once in office, they could pass all of the tax cuts for the wealthy and reduce corporate oversight, which was the actual goal.
- Comment on The billionaires and politicians did it 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on Having a baby? Use this one weird trick! 2 weeks ago:
Didn’t they just elect a fairly liberal president?
- Comment on What happens if I eat a box of paper clips before an MRI? 3 weeks ago:
They wouldn’t do the MRI because they’d be ripped through your body
- Comment on Grub out and about 3 weeks ago:
I’m no expert, but I think most (all?) grubs are a stage of beetle development. Beetle lays eggs, eggs hatch into grubs, sometimes they go through a couple larger grub stages, grub becomes pupa, pupa becomes beetle.
I think the ones like that become June bugs or similar.
- Comment on Grub out and about 3 weeks ago:
Some kind of scarab beetle, like a june bug?
- Comment on Is there a less stinky way to cook broccoli? 3 weeks ago:
Honestly, broccoli is wonderful microwaved. Put it in a covered dish with just a little water. For a couple servings, I do on high like 2.5 minutes. Easy to adjust the time to get it just the way you want it. You can’t get it crispy that way, but it’s basically like perfectly steamed.
- Comment on Can I still consider myself a “young woman” after I turn 24? I turn 24 in March (next month). 4 weeks ago:
Thanks! Even though we’re ten years apart, I think we’re together on the tail end of the Lemmy age bell curve. It’s nice to have company.
- Comment on Can I still consider myself a “young woman” after I turn 24? I turn 24 in March (next month). 4 weeks ago:
It’s all relative. I’m 62 - from my perspective you’ve only recently gone from being a girl to being a woman, so for sure a young woman. Of course in ten years I’ll be 72 and you’ll be 34, and I’d still call you a young woman.
- Comment on Giving the neighbors a laugh 5 weeks ago:
According to translate, the side of the van says “Home delivery service, we always come.”
Does that pun actually work in both English and German?
- Comment on eggs in japan 1 month ago:
The protective barrier is true, but you’re either making assumptions about the rest or you’ve been misinformed. There really aren’t major issues in any of the developed countries today, but the washing and refrigeration is still the safest with the longest shelf life. It isn’t the condition the chickens are kept in - there are countries where it’s much, much worse than in the US - it’s just that chickens very easily carry salmonella.
Many years ago, more countries washed, but there were some escapes, especially one from Australia with the eggs exported to the UK, and it got a bad name, so some countries dropped it, but the US figured out how to make it work consistently. Most countries require chickens to be vaccinated, but the US hasn’t needed to because of the washing and refrigeration.
Lots of good info online. Here’s a USDA article on it, and here’s a higher level NPR piece.
- Comment on eggs in japan 1 month ago:
It’s just two different strategies for avoiding salmonella. The US method has worked very well for a very long time. So much so that other countries did adopt it, at least for a time, but it requires an infrastructure that can keep the eggs refrigerated through from processing to consumer, which isn’t trivial.
- Comment on The Fantastic Four: First Steps (dir Matt Shakman) [2025] 1 month ago:
I always liked the F4, but they’ve yet to make a good move out of them.
- Comment on What's the deal with Signal? 1 month ago:
Yep, just the default messaging app on their phone.
- Comment on What's the deal with Signal? 1 month ago:
The problem is that most people don’t want multiple text apps, they just want one. I had gotten a number of people using signal, and it was secure when we talked, but when signal dropped SMS, almost every one of them stopped using it, so then none of their conversations were secure.
- Comment on Google's AI is using past tense to describe a sporting event that takes place in 3 days. And it knows who won too. 1 month ago:
I always try to explain to people that the key is the last two letters: language model. An LLM is a model of what a conversation should look like. Ask it a question and it’s intended to give you a response that looks like the right kind of thing. So if you ask it for a mathematical proof, it will give you one, but unless the thing you’re asking has the same proof written the same way in lots of places online, what it gives you won’t be correct, and probably won’t actually make sense mathematically, but it will look like the right kind of thing.
So likewise, if you ask it for relationship advice, it’s going to give you something that looks legit, but you’re an idiot if you get your relationship advice from an LLM.
- Comment on how normal is it to snore at 13/14 years old? 2 months ago:
It’s often a sign that the person is overweight.
- Comment on Boomers with their loud Samsung phone sounds 2 months ago:
My first thought was “How is this a boomer thing, I see people of all ages doing this.”
- Comment on So that's how they're made. 2 months ago:
Most likely another fake one, by the way.
- Comment on When they tell you "oh of course it's safe" they are lying 2 months ago:
I understand why it looks that way from good reaction, but there was nothing my dad wouldn’t have done for my mom. I’ve never seen two people who loved each other more completely, trusted each other more thoroughly, or gave a bigger priority to each other’s happiness. But apparently they had an awful lot of sex.
- Comment on What is the origin of aliens looking like humans? Why and when did it become the norm? 2 months ago:
Several people have mentioned budgetary restrictions, which is a huge part, but there are practical considerations, regardless of budget. Even with a big budget, it’s only recently that they’ve been able to make convincing non-humanoid aliens that interact with other actors (mostly through CGI). Earlier, there were good examples of movie monsters or aliens that were done with stop motion or puppets, but not in a way that they shared the screen with the human actors in a meaningful way. Can you imagine if, say, the Vulcans on the original Trek series were wildly non-human - how silly it would have looked? The technology just wasn’t there to pull it off.
Also, most aliens, even in books, are some variation of earth life. They’re reptile-people, big spiders, intelligent bugs, or whatever. I think that’s mostly because it’s pretty hard to envision something truly novel/new. So lots of books, movies, and shows come up with some rationale for why everything in the galaxy looks like some kind of earth life to excuse that.
- Comment on What is the origin of aliens looking like humans? Why and when did it become the norm? 2 months ago:
I’d say that’s more of the excuse/rationale for it. The underlying reason is hot much not expensive it would have been to do otherwise.
- Comment on When they tell you "oh of course it's safe" they are lying 2 months ago:
Sharing an overly personal story because I think it’s funny.
When my first marriage was swirling the drain, and my wife and I hadn’t had sex for a number of months, I was visiting my parents, who were in their late 60s at the time. I noticed that my mom kept getting up to go to the bathroom, so I asked my dad if she was okay and he said she had a yeast infection that was bothering her and they didn’t know what to do about it. I told him that those were generally pretty easy, she can get a cream that will take care of it in about a week. Not much else to it other than avoid sex for a couple weeks.
My dad looked incredulous. He said “A couple WEEKS? Like two full weeks? No sex at all for TWO WEEKS? If we don’t do that, will it go away on its own?” My dad, pushing 70, was having a hard time coming to grips with the thought of going two weeks without sex, while I was in my 20s and hadn’t had sex for four or five months.
I remember driving home and thinking, “Well there’s something I didn’t need to think about.”
- Comment on I don't have to check the price because I know I can't afford it. 2 months ago:
Sounds tasty
- Comment on I don't have to check the price because I know I can't afford it. 2 months ago:
I make a pretty good living and my family really loves cheese, so I buy fancy stuff pretty frequently, but I check the prices because some of them are just ridiculous. The ten to twelve dollars I spend on a chunk the size of a deck of cards or two is bad enough, but some are two or three times that price for the same amount and I just can’t bring myself to do it. I could do it, but it’s just hard to believe we’d enjoy the cheese that much.
- Comment on That perfect Christmas gift - a picture to hang on your wall commenorating when you wore that classy orange jump suit 2 months ago:
Who is she?
