merc
@merc@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on simpler times 2 hours ago:
They’re still the stupidest thing I’ve heard of.
- Comment on simpler times 2 hours ago:
No, they’re stupid.
- Comment on Highguard will permanently shut down on March 12th. 2 days ago:
Whenever a game like this flops it gives me hope. Why? Because this kind of game isn’t something that interests me at all. I keep hoping that these companies are going to learn from getting burned, and switch to a style of game that I like more.
- Comment on Highguard will permanently shut down on March 12th. 2 days ago:
No, it’s a flop.
It’s hard to believe that a company would spend hundreds of millions to develop a game, only for it to flop. But, that’s how it works with live-service PVP only games. They depend on network effects. People want to play what their friends are playing. If a company gets this right they can be like Minecraft or Fortnite and it’s the game everyone plays, bringing in billions of dollars. If they miss, it can be a complete flop that nobody plays.
- Comment on Dear Faith I 2 days ago:
The other thing to know about this is that it’s normally a good partnership. The driver has to trust the copilot to know what’s coming up and to tell them in time. The co-driver has to trust the driver to drive fast without crashing. It takes a while to develop a partnership like that, and when it’s working well it’s amazing. The driver is basically driving what he can see plus what he’s told is ahead. If the co-driver says the road opens ahead, the driver will accelerate into a turn even if he can’t yet see that it’s straightening out trusting that by the time he runs out of road the curve will be ending.
The Samir commentary sounds like two drivers paired for the first time, with the co-driver being the one who owns the car. Compare that to a team that knows what it’s doing.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 days ago:
I’m not sure what the right way to link to these other ones is so that they show up on someone’s own instance.
- Comment on Just one more square bro 2 days ago:
- Comment on Yay, milkshakes! 2 days ago:
People who know: Blueberries create purple juice.
- Comment on according to sugar daddy’s net worth actually 5 days ago:
Which influencer’s fleeing Dubai?
- Comment on A modest proposal 5 days ago:
Can you imagine how horrific it would be for the sergeants to wrangle a squad or platoon of boomers and actually get anything accomplished?
- Comment on The script is mysterious and important. 6 days ago:
It has been a while since I saw it, but you’re right. I mostly remember it as drama, not comedy.
- Comment on The script is mysterious and important. 6 days ago:
Point Break? I think Keanu was a heart throb who could do action, but who had started in comedy. Will Smith was more a comedic actor who could do action, but was mostly doing action-comedy.
- Comment on The script is mysterious and important. 6 days ago:
Yeah, he was huge. Stallone and Schwarzenegger were bigger names for purely action movies. But, Keanu and Tom Cruise were the action stars who the teenage girls wanted to watch.
I think it’s all the years of Fresh Prince of Bel Air that makes me think of Will Smith as primarily a comedic actor at that point. Because, he and Keanu really had a similar path. They started with comedy and then proved they could do action. I guess Will Smith’s action movies were a bit more action comedy. Men in Black is definitely a sci fi action comedy. Bad Boys was an action comedy. Independence Day wasn’t really a sci fi action comedy, but he did punch out an alien. But, Will Smith did do Enemy of the State, and I don’t remember much comedy in that. For Keanu, Speed isn’t an action comedy, but there’s some light-hearted stuff in it. But, Point Break (from what I remember) was a more serious tone.
But, I think by 1999 if you were hiring Keanu Reeves for a purely serious action role, that wouldn’t be seen as strange. And, if you were hiring Will Smith for a purely serious role, it would probably be seen as wasting his talent.
- Comment on The script is mysterious and important. 1 week ago:
It would have been a very different movie. So, maybe people couldn’t picture Keanu in that forgettable action comedy called The Matrix. But, Keanu did show he could do comedy. His first big movie was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. He’d also done Parenthood. In addition, he’d shown he could do action movies / thrillers with a bit of comedy when he did Speed, and fairly serious action movies with Point Break.
Will Smith has done plenty of action movies, but all of them are at least somewhat comedic. He’s shown he can do serious roles too, like Happyness, 7 Pounds, etc. But, I don’t think you’d hire him for a science fiction action movie without having him do some comedy. I’m sure Will Smith could do a straight dramatic science fiction action movie with no comedy, but AFAIK he’s never done it.
IMO Keanu is a much more limited actor than Will Smith. But, The Matrix played to his strengths.
- Comment on The size of Portugal compared to Spain 1 week ago:
This Azores erasure will not stand.
- Comment on too many creators not enough destroyers 1 week ago:
In the absence of content destroyers, I’m happy to settle for content selectors, like OP.
- Comment on Also, in my state, all the drivers are the worst 1 week ago:
There’s a big difference between drivers who only drive in rural areas and drivers who drive in crowded rush hour traffic in big cities. And, different big cities have their own challenges. As a visitor, trying to navigate LA’s freeway hell was awful, and the drivers who were used to it were not at all accommodating. But, I think LA drivers would find driving in Boston and its Masshole drivers to be hell, because it’s all about squeezing down narrow streets that come from a time before automobiles.
- Comment on Also, in my state, all the drivers are the worst 1 week ago:
I’m guessing wherever you live doesn’t have lots of snow and frozen ground.
- Comment on Without hierarchies/authority figures, the bootlickers would be totally lost. 🤠 1 week ago:
Because part of conservatism is the idea that hierarchies based on who your parents are, and the fact that you’re male, etc. are proper and right.
They want to submit to the people who are correctly above them in the hierarchy, and want the people who are supposed to be below them in the hierarchy to submit to them.
- Comment on Roses are red, cabinets have shelves... 2 weeks ago:
How many are doing it on purpose? They got a big signing bonus that has to be paid back if they quit. They hate the job, and don’t want to do it, but they already spent the signing bonus. If they’re injured on the job they get time to recover, and might be assigned to a desk job once they’re out of the hospital. Blam
- Comment on Get. Out 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on lol 2 weeks ago:
Where can we find the answers to the Turing test?
- Comment on We live in the future! 2 weeks ago:
I’m glad you at least tried.
- Comment on We live in the future! 2 weeks ago:
made us work
So, you didn’t draw the line there either?
- Comment on Acciracy 2 weeks ago:
I think Canada has next to zero in marijuana exports, because it’s illegal to import it in most places. It does contribute billions to Canada’s GDP, but that’s production and consumption that never leaves the country.
- Comment on Acciracy 2 weeks ago:
IMO, it’s more “aboat” not “aboot”.
But, Americans say “abawt” instead of “about” so we’re even.
- Comment on Acciracy 2 weeks ago:
25 years ago this was a bit silly, but these days it’s like saying: “Look, I’m not on the Epstein List!”
- Comment on Acciracy 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, some of the key Canadian words are missing, eh?
- Comment on Market efficiency 2 weeks ago:
If the RAM they were building for the datacenters was identical to the RAM for PCs, then maybe. Instead, I think they’ll have to slowly switch back to making regular PC RAM, and the shortages will continue.
What seems possible is China intervening. RAM isn’t as difficult to produce as other chips, so it’s possible they might spin up fabs and factories to supply their own domestic market, and eventually start exporting too. Currently 90%+ of RAM is made by Micron (USA), SK Hynix (South Korea) and Samsung (South Korea). China doesn’t like to depend on other countries, and it probably has the capacity to manufacture RAM. And, it probably knows that if it gets good at making RAM it has a good chance at outcompeting the other 3 in the long run. So, I don’t expect any short term fixes, but in the long run this might mean cheaper RAM with a 4th major supplier.
- Comment on Home renovations 2 weeks ago:
So, a fair estimate for a human body’s resistance is about 1000 Ω. That’s a case when the hands are sweaty, or there’s an open wound, or other cases where the skin isn’t acting as a massive resistor and blocking any current from flowing.
According to this chart, a 16 gauge sheet of metal is about 1.5 mm thick. A 22 gauge is about 0.76 mm thick. I’m going to go in metric since everything is so much more straightforward.
So, 9 feet long is about 3m long. Apparently stripper poles typically come in 38, 45 and 50mm diameters, so, let’s go for the smallest one to have the highest possible resistance. So, 38mm diameter means a circumference of 0.038 * Pi = 0.12m. So, the area of the pole is its circumference multiplied by its thickness, or about 0.12 * 0.00076 = approx 0.00009 m^2 (9*10^-5 m^2).
To calculate the resistance of something you need its resistivity. This table gives resistivities for common materials. Aluminum is listed at 2.82×10−8 Ωm. To calculate the resistance given the resistivity, cross-sectional area and length you plug the values into:
R = ρL / A
R = 3E-8Ωm * 3m / 0.00009m^2 = 3E-8 * 3 / 9E-5 = 0.333 E-3 = 3E-4Ω
Or, about 0.3 milliohms, or 300 microohms.
As a check, you can compare it to the resistance of a wire. Another chart gives the resistance of wires of various gauges at 1000 ft, or approx 300m. So, a 3m length of wire is going to be roughly 1/100th of that resistance. The values in the chart are on the order of 1 ohm at 300m, so 0.01 ohms (10 milliohms) at 3m. Of course, wires are much thinner than a whole pole, but wires are also designed to be good conductors, but 0.3 milliohms vs. 10 milliohms seems like we’re in the right ballpark. So, even if the neighbour was dangling from a length of AWG 14 wire, and it was somehow not breaking, even then she’d be in no danger of electrocution.
This is all just back of the envelope estimation, but we’re talking 6 orders of magnitude difference in resistance. No matter what the pole is made of, or how thin it is, it’s still metal, and metal has much lower resistance than flesh. The current is going to stay in the pole, and the pole dancer is in no danger.