dual_sport_dork
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world
- Comment on Small victories. 12 hours ago:
An old joke, possibly originating from somewhere in the basement of a DuPont facility:
How can you tell a chemist apart from an engineer?
…
The chemist washes his hands before he takes a leak.
- Comment on Why do some people with college degrees and an education, still act so fucking stupid? 13 hours ago:
College is not a test of intelligence. It’s a test of your parents’ finances, perhaps, and your ability to conform and play the game, and in some cases one’s willingness to cheat as well. In my experience very few people come out of college any smarter than they went in, and given the preponderance of people who seem to major in beer the opposite may in fact be true.
What worries me is not the number of people who manage to stumble through college and still some out the other side stupid. Based on my personal experience with my client base, what keeps me up at night is the sheer majority of people who apparently cannot read and possess no critical thinking skills whatsoever and probably shouldn’t be trusted to tie their own shoelaces, but some asshole still saw fit to issue these people drivers’ licenses, insurance policies, mortgages, and allow them to buy giant SUVs and guns.
- Comment on I said maybe 14 hours ago:
Who the hell knows, other than the fact that the original retailed for $400 and you can’t get one anymore. When there’s demand, someone will step up.
- Comment on All Social Medias Track Urls 16 hours ago:
- Comment on I said maybe 19 hours ago:
This roller coaster ride is basically the story of my life. “Look at this screwball knife in Aliexpress, how did they come up with that?” Then what ensues is a multi-hour dive into the rabbit hole to discover whose design they ripped it off from.
For instance you can’t buy a HOM Chimera for love nor money nowadays, but the Chinese will sell you one or at least something shaped just like it for $60…
- Comment on New mods for !comicstrips@lemmy.world 19 hours ago:
I really want to know why anyone is resorting to AI of all things to accomplish this rather than just, like, MS Paint. Other than specifically as some manner of specialty trolling.
Anyway, I’m in agreement with all of the above.
- Comment on SlopOS 11 3 days ago:
That IoT Enterprise watermark just gave a thousand nerds a heart attack.
- Comment on What was the first game you ever bought ? 1 week ago:
Ha. I still have my Pokéwalker in my box of random Game Boy shit that’s on the shelf over there. Its battery is very, very dead. I imagine I left somebody in it before losing interest but I have no idea who.
I see these things sell for $50 to $80 on eBay now? Damn.
- Comment on WHERE THE FUCK IS THE CURSOR? 1 week ago:
Meanwhile, I’m fascinated by the type of dweebus that would waste construction time and budget, not to mention taking up precious squares in their base, sandbagging the edges of a cliff.
(I’m assuming this is a prefab computer opponent base in some damn fool mission or another, but I’ll be damned if I can remember which one after 30 years.)
- Comment on Would submitting a criminal complaint against Trump and his administration too the ICC for war crimes be a waste of time? 2 weeks ago:
*Asterisk.
^I’vebeenwaitingmyentirelifetomakethissnidecomment.^
- Comment on What should we actually turn our aggression towards? 3 weeks ago:
Teflon. Goddamned Teflon. Did your podcast mention Dr. Kenneth Berry? (No, not the nutrition quack. The other one.)
Dr. Roy J. Plunkett gets all the credit for the discovery of Teflon and it’s true that his name appears on the patent for the process for creating the actual material. As it was the dry powered precipitate wasn’t terribly useful as a consumer product and mostly only saw use being pressed into solid forms for making highly corrosion resistant gaskets and seals for e.g. nuclear equipment.
Dr. Kenneth Berry’s picture is not hanging in the hallways in DuPont’s offices. His name appears on no plaque. He’s not mentioned in the Wikipedia article about Teflon. When it comes to DuPont’s puff pieces and their official history, you’ll notice that in the gap between the accidental discovery of that weird slippery white powder and its advent as a consumer product there is inevitably some dismissive handwaving and use of the passive voice. Oh, “it was discovered that…” and “DuPont engineers determined that…”
They don’t mention that Dr. Kenneth Berry was the inventor of the solution form of Teflon. He figured out how to dissolve and suspend it in liquid, and by extension how to actually apply it to surfaces in a useful manner. He did not invent the pan, but he was instrumental in figuring out how it could be done. And it was Dr. Berry who ate the first fried egg cooked on a Teflon surface — not Marc Grégoire. Dr. Berry’s patent, applied and granted in 1951. Grégoire’s, 1954.
DuPont doesn’t mention this because Dr. Berry also knew damn well what nasty chemicals DuPont was using to produce Teflon, and to some degree he knew where and how they were dumping them. He documented all of this he could, stored it in a bank deposit box, and wrote it into his will that these documents were to be released to the public when he died in 2008. In retaliation for this, DuPont memory holed him. He is persona non grata there, even in death.
I know this because he told me so. Dr. Berry lived in the town I grew up in. It’s not in whole thanks to him that we know the full story of the deeply evil things DuPont has done, but it is certainly in part. I was knee high to a grasshopper at the time so the significance of this was surely lost on me. I know, however, why my mother was so insistent that we never owned any Teflon pans.
Dr. Kenneth Berry: Lived, invented, developed a conscience, once shot my stuck kite out of a tree with his shotgun, tattled on DuPont, died.
- Comment on i guess lunar eclipse got an update too.. 3 weeks ago:
Yes, the Omnians. They’re a scathing critique of dogmatic hierarchical religions in general and Christianity in particular. The zenith of their folly is depicted in Small Gods, where it’s revealed that not a single one among them except for one lowly initiate actually believes in their god anymore, having replaced him instead with blind obedience to their rituals and the bureaucracy of the church itself. The Discworld being what it is, their god is very much real but has been diminished to inhabiting the body of an ordinary tortise and is unable to communicate with anyone except his sole remaining believer.
One of their ironclad declarations is that the Disc is spherical, a notion that they are quite willing to torture people to death over questioning. Of course as we all know, the truth is the opposite.
And yet, the turtle moves.
- Comment on Can't get better than this 3 weeks ago:
Approved. I will see you, and raise:
- Comment on Even as an adult I always loved these cartoons 3 weeks ago:
Them as would like to be socked directly in the nostalgia may also wish to click on:
- Comment on public service 3 weeks ago:
In case you’d like to know just how fucked the entire Linkedin edifice is, now is once again the time to trot out this piece of trivia.
Windows users only: Hold down all four modifier keys on your keyboard, Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Win, and press L.
You can never unlearn this piece of knowledge. You’re welcome.
- Comment on Requesting to Mod /c/Photography 3 weeks ago:
Rockin’.
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to support@lemmy.world | 2 comments
- Comment on Administrative task management 5 weeks ago:
There’s a friggin’ drop shadow on her arm and the gun as if somebody made this in Microsoft Word. The shadow falling across the corner of the computer tower wouldn’t line up with the part on the wall and bookshelf like that, not to mention the edge of the door frame.
- Comment on Administrative task management 5 weeks ago:
With the jank-ass safety lever and the top grip screw in the wrong place?
Don’t worry, I have a worse one you can look at. Here you go.
- Comment on Xbox Co-founder Says Microsoft is Quietly Sunsetting the Platform 5 weeks ago:
When computers were just a teletype attached to a mainframe?
- Comment on Xbox Co-founder Says Microsoft is Quietly Sunsetting the Platform 5 weeks ago:
Only if you want to have the black and green version of Toy instead of the white and blue version, at this rate. Barring a handfull of exclusives everything gets released on PS5 and Xbox now and maybr also a watered down port on the Switch/2. The current Xbox and Playstation are so architecturally similar to each other that they may as well be the same machine with the only difference being which asshole is at the helm, and for either of them you may as well have a PC.
- Comment on Shit would be pretty sick 5 weeks ago:
Way ahead of you, chief.
- Comment on Games you fell out of love with. 1 month ago:
How many other games from 2011 just got re-re-re-released on the Switch 2 for a full $60, though?
- Comment on My only response to Discord 1 month ago:
As any night club bouncer or liquor store clerk knows, ZIP code 12345 actually resolves to Schenectady, New York.
- Comment on PROTIP 1 month ago:
I carried my Schrade Switch-It every day in the little seam pocket of my carpenter’s jeans (as was the style at the time) and the only flak I ever caught for it was one day the principal spotting it and telling me he didn’t want to see me with my “pager” at school anymore.
I told him he had my scout’s honor that he would never see me with a pager so long as a lived. Yes, this sailed right over his head. I still didn’t get into trouble, though, which is surprising given the sheer variety of other stupid and highly spurious things that somehow got me in trouble in school.
- Comment on PROTIP 1 month ago:
- Comment on All fight no flight 1 month ago:
I don’t think I’ve ever been in a meme before.
- Comment on Anyone old enough to have used this before GPS? 1 month ago:
I have seen guys do it, though. I suppose in certain specific scenarios it might make sense. I’m in agreement there, though, I think I’ll give it a pass unless I absolutely have to.
- Comment on Anyone old enough to have used this before GPS? 1 month ago:
For anyone wondering what the heck this thing is, it’s called a roll chart. Usually these are loaded with turn-by-turn instructions for rally racing or similar, but as you can see you can also stick a map in one.
If you’re going to do the map thing it kind of helps for your overall route to be oriented vertically, or else otherwise you have to stick the map in it sideways.
- Comment on Anyone old enough to have used this before GPS? 1 month ago:
It’s a map in a roll chart holder. These days they’re used in rally and off road racing, and sometimes motorcycle touring.
