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Fondots

@ Fondots @lemmy.world

Posts
2
Comments
657
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Correlation == Causation?

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  • My wife and I have kind of turned into eclipse chasers, we did TN in 2016, Montreal 2024, and in a couple days we're off to Iceland for another.

    We always plan on not doing much the day of the eclipse, figuring that traffic and such would be a nightmare, and leave ourselves a couple days on either side of the eclipse to hopefully avoid even more traffic.

    I don't remember exactly what days we did for TN, but I remember on our way home a couple days later we still hit what seemed like a weird amount of traffic for the area we were in.

    Day of the 2017 eclipse we really lucked out. We stayed at a little campground a little bit outside of Nashville, and about 10 minutes away from there we found some sort of wildlife conservation area. It was gated and I'm not totally clear if it was really supposed open to the public, but as luck would have it just as we were pulling up to the gate some sort of conservation officer/ranger/game warden type guy also pulled up there. We asked if we were allowed in, he asked what we were gonna do and we said we basically just planned to set up a couple camp chairs and a camera on a tripod and look and watch the eclipse and he gave us the go-ahead, so we had a big open field to ourselves.

    For Montreal, we took the train up from NYC, and the AirBnB we booked had a really nice rooftop deck, so we just posted up there.

    We'll see where we end up in Reykjavik, fingers crossed the weather cooperates.

  • Locked

    Is there any way to disassemble this bite valve?

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  • Most bite valves I've had are pretty much universal, the tubing is usually about the same size from one brand to another so you pretty much just need to jam the barb fitting in. If it seems like it's a little loose you could probably throw a hose clamps on it if you were really intent on not buying a new hose.

    At the other end of the hose the fitting to connect it to the bladder may be another story, that definitely changes from brand to brand and over time as they roll out new models, so getting a new one to fit may be impossible.

  • From the day you were born until today, what was the best piece of advice you still follow?

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  • Regarding marriage and relationships

    I saw a reddit thread many years ago before I met my wife asking for advice from long-time couples.

    I was single at the time, and was pretty comfortable with that, not that I wasn't interested in being in a relationship, but it wasn't a priority for me and I never had much luck picking up girls.

    Most of it was the usual stuff about communication, and sharing housework, respect, and all of that.

    But the one that stood out to me was

    "Don't forget to date your wife"

    A good many years later, I managed to stumble my way bass-ackwards into dating my now-wife. A few years later we were married.

    And for a lot of couples, dating kind of slows down at that point. One or both of them stop putting in effort, and they just kind of stagnate and drift apart.

    That's far from the only reason relationships fail of course, but I think that's a bigger part in a lot of cases than many people think.

    So I always keep my ear to the ground for cool events, restaurants, shows, places to go, things to do, etc. and make sure that there's always something coming up on the horizon for us to look forward to. Sometimes it's a simple dinner at a restaurant we've been to countless times, sometimes it's a big elaborate day out where we get dressed up, find our way to a couple different nice bars and restaurants, walk around a museum, see a show or to an orchestra performance, etc.

    I try to have at least one thing planned a month, not always successfully, but more often than not, and we sometimes squeeze in another little spontaneous date night or two here and there. Most of the time we're out doing something fun as a couple at least once a week.

  • What’s the most expensive thing you’ve eaten/drank?

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  • They do sell a version of it here, but it can be pretty hard to track down, it's definitely not available in my state (PA) But I've seen it in a couple stores in other states.

    I think bison grass isn't allowed to be imported to the US, so they use something else that's pretty close in flavor. For a while I think they were branding it as "Zu" but that may have changed.

  • What’s the most expensive thing you’ve eaten/drank?

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  • It's called Żubrówka, and it's flavored with bison grass

  • No, I don't think I will renew

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  • I always hear about the importance of shopping around for insurance, and I don't necessarily do it every single year, but probably about every other year

    And everywhere I look my quotes are always about the same, within a few bucks of what I'm already paying.

    And I guess if you add it all up over the years a couple of bucks a month difference does eventually add up to something kind of significant.

    But having been with my current company/agent for a while and having had to use my insurance a couple times over the years, I don't mind that so much because I've found them pretty easy to work with. They've paid out when I needed them to without any drama, and they've been willing to cut me when, like when I had some billing snafu that was kind of my fault they were saw that I'd been a customer for a while with otherwise perfect payment history and we're willing to waive some fees that were otherwise tacked on. And jumping ship to save very little money and not knowing if the new company is going to be as decent to work with just doesn't seem like a smart move to me.

    Still pisses me off to no end that my insurance goes up every year though. My car's not appreciating in value any, and I'm not getting any younger or more reckless on the road, nor have I reached the age yet where my mental faculties have started to nosedive, and I have a very clean driving history.

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    If a married man says he’s only married on paper, what are the chances he’s just cheating?

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  • I'd tread carefully and request some elaboration from him on the situation because just based on what he said that could be all over the place, and I'm not too familiar with the culture and laws in South Korea so you're probably going to want to do some research on their divorce laws and how their culture views divorce.

    This could be anything from he's cheating to to they're both living totally separate lives, have agreed their marriage is over and just haven't done the paperwork to make it official for any number of reasons.

    Off the top of my head, in no particular order here's a couple plausible-sounding scenarios, and it's not meant to be an exhaustive list.

    He could be straight-up cheating and lying through his teeth to you.

    Maybe he's even hoping to be caught cheating because he wants to get divorced and his wife doesn't and he's trying to goad her into it because it's in some way advantageous for him if she's the one who files for it. Maybe it gives him some kind of legal leverage to not be the one filing for it, maybe he just wants to be able to spin it as being her fault so he can claim to their friends or family that he was willing to work on their marriage and she wasn't.

    It could be that they're totally on the same page, have agreed to see other people, and are staying together on paper because there's tax incentives for married couples, or wonky inheritance laws at play and by staying "married" it's easier for them to make sure the other spouse can inherit their assets to help take care of their son if something happens to one of them.

    Or maybe they just haven't had the time or money to money to do the paperwork and just don't feel like it's a pressing issue right now.

    Maybe they don't want to saddle their son with dealing with the fallout of a potentially messy divorce until he's older, either due to legal/financial reasons, or because of some kind of social stigma.

    Maybe he's not even in contact with his wife and they haven't seen or spoken to each other in years, and it's just a pain in the ass to track each other down so that papers can be served, or they just really don't want to have contact with each other and are avoiding it until there's a real need like if one of them wants to remarry (I've known a couple people in similar situations in the US)

    Again, I'd say try to push him for more details, it can be a touchy subject for a lot of people and he may not want to air all of his and his wife's dirty laundry to someone he just met, and that's understandable, but you also should be allowed to understand what kind of situation you're getting yourself into. Find out if his wife is aware of it, confirm with her directly if possible. If he won't let you talk to her to confirm that could be a red flag that he's cheating, but it could also be that she's unstable and it's really better to not talk to her and risk her getting aggressive towards him, you, or their son, so tread carefully. Trust, but verify. There could be a whole novel squeezed in between the lines here that you need to be reading.

  • Are there any unskilled, minimum-wage jobs that would leave me with some amount of free time every day?

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  • I work in 911 dispatch, exact qualifications and work conditions will vary from place, but often you don't need much more than a high school diploma/GED, basic computer literacy, and acceptable typing skills, and of course the ability to keep a cool head and deal with emergencies.

    Technically, I work slightly more hours than a regular 40 hour week, but I have more days off overall, and especially on night shift you can often count on having a decent amount of downtime where you can work on pretty much whatever personal stuff you want between calls as long as you can put it down when the phone rings.

    And the pay is going to be better than minimum wage, not that you're gonna be making a killing, but you'll also have access to pretty great benefits and job security.

    It can be stressful and not everyone is cut out for it, but if you are I think it's a pretty great gig, I've been doing it for 8 years now. There is a lot of turnover from people either getting burned out or just using it as a resume builder to move to other public safety sorts of jobs, but that means that basically every dispatch center in the country is almost constantly hiring.

  • Every time

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  • I'm not disabled, at least not visibly, there might be a bit of neurospiciness going on in the background, but I do have kind of a unique look- shaved head, big beard, curly moustache, and kind of an interesting sense of style, so I get a lot of looks (and, not for nothing, compliments.)

    The other day I was dressed up a bit and on my way to meet up with my wife to have a nice dinner. I was wearing a linen suit and panama hat, so definitely dressed a good bit spiffier than most people on the street.

    As I was walking down the sidewalk on my way to this restaurant, this little girls' eyes just kind of lock onto me like I was the most interesting thing she'd ever seen, and she just kind of starts wandering towards me, and walks directly into my path. If I'd been distracted on my phone or something I might have tripped over her.

    She wasn't quite a toddler, but not much older.

    I didn't mind it at all, I don't really like kids, it was kind of funny, maybe even a bit flattering, but i could definitely see it getting old for people getting that kind of attention for things they're not in control or proud of.

  • What Are Your Hobbies? Trying to Find Something New

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  • I paint minis, focusing mostly on Warhammer right now and I'm telling myself I'm going to start playing.

    I started with the Reaper minis learn to paint sets, they do a pretty good job of teaching you the basics, give you a couple minis to start with and a workable if somewhat limited set of paints and brushes.

    It sounds a lot harder than it actually is. If you dilute your paints down right it kind of tends to flow exactly where you want it to.

    Sourcing minis to paint can get pricey depending on what you like and where you get them from. To support that hobby I've also taken up 4d printing, if you hunt around a bit you should be able to get a used resin printer for pretty cheap (but don't skimp on proper PPE and ventilation, liquid resin is pretty nasty stuff)

    I dabble in a little bit of woodworking. Nothing too fancy, I'm not doing intricate carving or anything, but once in a while I find a problem in need of a solution and think of a way I could build that solution myself from some boards and hardware and while I may not be saving any money over buying some off-the-shelf solution to that problem, I do think a lot of those thing I've made have ended up being better than anything I could have bought and they are certainly more satisfying to use knowing I made them myself.

    I camp, hike, and fish a lot. These can get pricey if you let them, but you can probably get enough fishing gear to go catch some fish for like $50. Depending on where you live, you can hit a lot of trails with just a sturdy pair of sneakers, a water bottle, and maybe a pocket full of snacks. And you can probably outfit yourself for some decent weekend at a state park campground for about $100 worth of Walmart gear (tento sleeping bag sleeping pad,) and some stuff you probably already have at home (flashlight, matches/lighter, first aid kit, some pots and pans)

    Reading of course is always a worthy hobby, and you can pair it with some of the others. (I sometimes joke that the reason I fish is because it sounds better than saying ”I'm going to go off into the woods alone to sit on a bucket by a stream and read a book”)

    I also enjoy cooking, trying out new recipes and such.

    I've dabbled in a little ham radio. It didn't particularly hold my interest, I liked tinkering with radios and it's cool being able to talk to people far away with your equipment, but that equipment can get really pricey (there are often good deals on used stuff but you need to know where to look for them and be patient) and at the end of the day you can really only talk to other hams, and they mostly fall into 3 main categories.

    1. Radio nerds- all they want to talk about is ham radio.
    2. Old guys who want to talk about their medical issues.
    3. Weird paranoid prepper types.

    And since the whole point of radios is to talk to other people, and I don't particularly enjoy the kinds of conversations those people want to have, I never really got too into it.

  • How do you feel?

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  • Did you attend your high school reunion? Why or Why not?

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  • My class has been kind of shit at getting the word out about reunions. There was allegedly a 5 year reunion but no one I know got an invite to it. I think it was kind of unofficial but together by a specific group of friends

    10 years rolled around, they did a little better for that one, but I still didn't hear about it until it was too late to RSVP, so instead I met up with them like 3 people from my class I still talk to and went and had a couple drinks somewhere.

    15 years I kept my ear to the ground, and did actually find it early enough. Decided I didn't want to go but did my part to try to get the word out to whoever I could in case they were interested. Met up with the same three friends again instead.

    We'll have 20 coming up soon, and I expect my plans will be mostly the same.

  • McConnell was loaded into ambulance on a stretcher, according to eyewitness and new video

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  • I luckily haven't been on-scene with a lot of EMS calls, I work from a bunker that's usually miles away from where the action is taking place, so take thoughts on this for what they're worth, I'm a bit outside of my area of expertise, and I don't have a lot of details to go on so I don't really want to speculate here, but I'll leave some thoughts.

    Also, just to reiterate, the class 1,2,3,4,5 terminology is what my agency uses, things can vary a lot from one place to another, and I certainly can't speak for the policies and training and such that are in place anywhere else.

    But an unconscious person is basically always going class 1 or 2 unless they were already a vegetable and it's normal for them to be unconscious, but honestly even then it would probably be class 2 unless they really just need an ambulance to move them from point a to b and there's not actually any other medical issues going on. They're going to be going with some sense of urgency and leaving with lights and sirens.

    If he was, in fact in cardiac arrest that is absolutely class 1 material. They'd be doing CPR on him or shocking him with a defibrillator as they're going, he'd probably be intubated and they'd be ventilating him with a bag, I assume EMS in whatever town he lives in probably have some pretty good equipment so they'd probably have a LUCAS device to do chest compressions for them, etc.

    I was actually on-scene with a cardiac arrest after a motorcycle accident once, helped perform CPR on someone until the ambulance arrived. I don't think EMS was on-scene for 5 minutes before they were speeding off with the guy with lights and sirens going and a LUCAS strapped to his chest. I never looked up the call, but I would bet good money that that guy didn't make it, but it was still fresh enough that there was a tiny chance and so he went class 1.

    Hypothetically if they were able to restore a normal pulse with a defibrillator or whatever else they might have in their bag of tricks these days, it might go class 2, but that would still be high priority.

    I can't imagine any situation where they're taking a patient who is unconscious and normally isn't any less than a class 2 unless they're dead.

    From the short clip, and based off of the descriptions, it's hard for me to say much. They're certainly not running with the stretcher, but that could just be them being calm and professional, you don't really want to be jolting the patient around after all, and they're not exactly pussy-footing around, but still I don't know if I'm seeing the kind of urgency I'd expect. If they did in fact leave without sirens, that's really not jiving with the class 1 or 2 I'd expect for an unconscious patient, that sounds like 3, 4, or 5. It could be that they turned them on once they left the neighborhood, that's not unheard of to avoid disturbing neighbors and causing a scene if there's no traffic in the neighborhood for them to have to get through.

  • McConnell was loaded into ambulance on a stretcher, according to eyewitness and new video

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  • As far as VIPs getting priority, the only thing that comes to my mind that I've come across is one old rich guy with a note attached to his address with instructions that for basically any medical calls there can be directly airlifted to one of the big hospitals downtown

    He's loaded, lives almost right across from a small airport that one of our medevac helicopters fly out of, and made his fortune in some sort of healthcare/health insurance something-or-other (I'm fuzzy on the details of, but he was one of the big players in that field probably 30-40 years ago)

    We have a handful of other pretty rich and influential people in my area, and I've gotten calls from and regarding a couple of them (nothing too crazy) but at least from my end of things there's not a whole lot of special treatment going on. What special instructions the cops and other field units have isnt something I'm privy to.

  • McConnell was loaded into ambulance on a stretcher, according to eyewitness and new video

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  • I work in 911 dispatch, different areas and agencies may handle things a little differently but where I work we give our incidents a priority from 1-5, with 1 being the highest

    For EMS, priority 1 is things like cardiac arrests, shootings, stuff where the person has a very real chance of dying any second.

    2 is most of the things you'd expect people to call an ambulance for, they do need to be seen in a hospital for and relatively quickly, but you're not immediately in danger of expiring.

    3 is the stuff that you probably could have called around to a couple friends for a ride or called an Uber or something for or maybe driven yourself to urgent care. Like sure, you probably want to see a doctor about that, but it's not really that urgent, if you waited until tomorrow you'd probably be no worse off than you are today and in some cases you probably could have slept it off.

    4 is basically for psych issues. You're basically completely physically healthy and stable, you're just cuckoo for coco puffs. The only way you're going to die on the ambulance ride over is if it gets T-boned by a semi truck, or you annoy the crew so much that they throw you out the back of the ambulance while doing 70mph down the highway.

    Which brings us to class 5. You're dead. You're obviously dead and no amount of life-saving measures are going to bring you back. Usually they're not even going to actually take you away in an ambulance, they're just going to say someone with medical training can go "yep, that's a corpse" in case the cops on-scene are even dumber than usual and didn't see you breathing, they're going to throw a white sheet over you and let the coroner come around later to scrape you up. Unless you're Mitch McConnell apparently.

  • Work from home day

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  • Kind of similarly, my wife tends to come home from work and get changed right into her pajamas, and I think that kind of flips a mental switch for her saying that she's done doing stuff for the day, and so she kind of struggles to get any chores done after work or on her days off. She also kind of has trouble sleeping sometimes.

    I tend to get dressed and stay that way until it's time for bed, and I feel that I tend to be a bit more productive at home than her.

    And I feel like that kind of helps create more of a mental divide. If I'm up and wearing clothes it's time to get stuff done, if I'm wearing pajamas it's time to relax and get ready for bed.

  • Are pay-by-the-minute phone plans a thing of the past? (US)

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  • Your best bet might be something like tracfone that you top up with cards you can get pretty much everywhere

    No idea what the cost on them is these days and I haven't looked into any of their fine print in probably 20 years, but I'm pretty sure they offer a one year plan

  • What's the most interesting fringe group you've learned about?

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  • I've known a handful of juggalos. I can't claim that the ones I've met are necessarily representative of them as a whole.

    But I will say that overall the ones I've met have been really solid people. Not the brightest bulbs out there, but also very aware of that fact.

    I think the best way to think of them is they're the weird kids you went to school with who weren't smart enough to be nerds. They're a pretty welcoming and friendly group as long as you give them some basic respect, and they really look out for each other. There have been two occasions where one has literally offered the shirt off his back.

    Some of them definitely have some drug issues, but the ones I've met are mostly just regular stoners in clown makeup, most of them haven't even been big drinkers.

    Juggalos get a bad rap, but I think it's mostly a handful of loud assholes making all the rest of them look bad, I've never had a bad interaction with one and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • FYI

    A "fare" is a price you pay to go somewhere, for example a bus fare

    A "fair" is an event with vendors and attractions and such.

    You might have to pay a fare to enter the fair.

    Although classifying anything this administration is doing as some kind of price we have to pay does feel kind of appropriate.

  • Cooking @lemmy.world
    Fondots @lemmy.world

    Corned Beef Wellington - Am I crazy?

  • 3DPrinting @lemmy.world
    Fondots @lemmy.world

    Resin printing in the cold