Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)F

Fondots

@ Fondots @lemmy.world

Posts
2
Comments
669
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • what's the craziest weather you've experienced?

    Jump

  • I got a few stories

    If we want to count "smoke" as weather, wildfire smoke blowing in from Canada was pretty crazy

    I work in 911 dispatch and was working the night in first started hitting our area. We got a couple calls about smoke, which didn't immediately seem like anything too unusual. We sent the police and fire department out to look for where it was coming from and they confirmed that yeah, there was smoke, but no obvious source. It of course didn't blanket our whole county at once, and as I recall the weather was fairly nice and at first we were kind of writing it off as a couple people having big bonfires somewhere.

    But as the night went on we kept getting more calls. Eventually we were somehow alerted about the wildfire situation. When someone called about smoke we still sent someone to check in case there was actually a fire somewhere, but we also advised our callers about the wildfire smoke, and basically everyone I told was brown away by that.

    --

    Hurricane Ida hit my area pretty hard. It hit on my day off. About a year before my area had gotten hit pretty hard by another storm and we had historic flooding, power was out for a good chunk of the day, and with that in mind I ran out to get a battery backup for our sump pump the morning before it hit. My wife wasn't sure if that was necessary, but we again lost power for like 16 hours so we were glad to have it.

    Once the storm was well underway, of course I got the page from work that anyone able to come in was needed to handle the call volume. I made an attempt to get in, but every direction I went I encountered flooding, I don't think I made it a half mile from home in any direction before needing to turn around.

    The storm the year prior was the worst flooding in our area since they started keeping records, and it was by a pretty solid margin. Ida demolished that record. It took them a week or so to figure out how much it broke that record by because it totally swamped the gauge at the river where they measured it.

    Like I said, we lost power for about 16 hours, I have some friends nearby who are on a well for their water. They have a generator to keep their fridge and freezer running but it's not enough to also run their well pump. We're on city water but have no generator, so after the storm passed we ran our perishables over to them to throw in their fridge, and they came to our house to take a shower and fill some jugs with water.

    Before that, I had tried to go out to try to grab some ice for our cooler. Without power, the one store I could get to of course wasn't open. I tried to get to somewhere else, and at that point I couldn't make it much further than the night before. In some places it was because of downed trees and wires and such, but in others it was because some roads and bridges were just totally washed out.

    Also, the main reason we lost power was because the substation that provides power to our area ended up underwater.

    --

    If we want to count solar weather, seeing the northern lights from my home in 2024 was wild.

    --

    Back when I was in scouts, I went out to Philmont, which is a big property in New Mexico for scouts to go backpacking.

    I don't think that area is technically considered a desert, but it was certainly a lot drier than what I'm used to at home.

    At least it usually is.

    We got to basecamp, everything was pretty dry and dusty. We do all of our orientation and checking in and such, and settle in for the night before starting our trek the next day. At Basecamp they have you in canvas wall tents on a wooden platform (if you search for something like "scout summer camp tents" you'll see exactly what I'm talking about)

    It downpoured that night, apparently the most rain they'd gotten in a single night in the last 10 years.

    Coincidentally 10 years prior was the last time my troop sent a group to Philmont, and they also got rained on pretty hard.

    I think because it was usually so dry they got a little lax in waterproofing their tents. It was blowing sideways and kind of worked its way through the seams of the tent. So if you were on one side you were fine, but on the other side of the tent you got wet.

    I was on the wet side. Luckily the first couple drops hit my face and woke me up. I checked with my tent mate and he was fine. I packed up my sleeping bag so it wouldn't get wet, pulled on some warm clothes and my rain gear and crawled under my cot, and that did a pretty solid job of keeping me dry. A lot of people ended up needing to dry out their gear the next morning before starting their trek.

    Again, I don't know if that area is technically a desert, but you hear about how the desert comes alive after the rain, plants bloom really quickly and all of that, and we did see a little bit of that happening, things were definitely greener the next day than when we arrived.

    We also ended up having to hike an extra couple miles the first day that we planned because the bus that was supposed to drop us off at the trailhead wouldn't be able to make it through some of the mud.

    A few days into our trek, our itinerary had us camping near the top of a mountain. It would be a dry campsite with no potable water available, so we made the call to have our dinner for that day for lunch, since it was freeze dried stuff that needed water to cook, so we could refill our water when we had the chance to last us through the next day.

    As we start up the mountain, a thick fog rolled in. By the time we made it to the top we were all pretty cold, damp and miserable and didn't even have a hot meal to look forward to. We pretty much set up our tents and went to bed.

    The next morning we woke up to a clear, beautiful day. We go to the top of the mountain to appreciate the view, and look down into the valley below and see... Clouds. Just a couple of them drifting by. And we realized that the fog we hiked through and camped in the day before had been a cloud.

    If a mattress salesman ever tells you "it's like sleeping on a cloud" - run. Clouds suck for sleeping.

    We had two crews doing different trucks that took us through different parts of Philmont. The other crew at some point got caught in a thunderstorm where lightning was striking way too close for comfort and had to spend some time crouched down in the lightning position while it passed.

  • What movies out there have horrible taste and poorly thought-out plots but were excellently executed?

    Jump

  • I remember when my wife and I watched Morbius, we were pretty impressed with the sound mixing. We could hear what everyone was saying without our ears getting blown out by the explosions and such.

    I feel like the effects and such were all petty solid too, but there's no saving the fact that the story, writing, and acting were just trash.

  • MP Shocker: Man Survives Tree Fall, Dies Hours Later In Hospital Lift Mishap

    Jump

  • Yeah I did get that from the article, I was more building on the comment I replied to.

    But I do appreciate it, those little dialect differences can trip people up, like I've talked to a surprising amount of British/Australian/etc. people seem to think that when Americans talk about peanut butter and jelly, that we're talking about putting a gelatine dessert (like Jell-O) on our sandwiches, because that's what they call "jelly" (for anyone just now learning that's not what we mean, what we call "jelly" is sort of like a pulp-less jam)

  • Do you think you are a good person?

    Jump

  • I think my impact on the world is a nut positive. I make it a point to help other people when I can, I've given a bunch of strangers a jumpstart in the parking lot, helped them change a tire, gave a stranded bicyclist a lift home when his pedal broke, clear my schedule to help my friends move, put my shopping cart back the right way and even sometimes straighten out the ones that were carelessly pushed in the general direction of the cart corral by some degenerate, and generally try not to be a bother to others.

    As for whether that makes me a good person, I think that's kind of up for debate. At my core, my motivations tend to be pretty selfish. I do those good deeds because I want others to do the same kinds of things for me. If I need help moving, I can count on a small army of friends and acquaintances showing up to help me because I've always made time for them. I want to live in a world where other people treat me the right way, and if I'm not even willing to do that, why should I count on others to do that? Not that it's all a 1:1 transactional thing, I don't expect every good deed I do to directly come back around to benefit me, but I do kind of hope that I'm sort of kicking off a chain of "paying it forward" that maybe inspires even more people to do the same and eventually I get to be the recipient of some random acts of kindness.

    So a lot of the time it's not really some sort of selfless altruism that drives me to do the right thing, which is a big part of what people imagine when they think of a "good" person.

  • MP Shocker: Man Survives Tree Fall, Dies Hours Later In Hospital Lift Mishap

    Jump

  • I work in 911 dispatch, I'm always a little amazed at how many calls I get for lift assists. Not for a patient that fell and hurt themselves, not for someone who weighs 300+lbs, it's just that no one there can apparently help an uninjured, 100lb old lady up off the floor or to stand up from the chair she's sitting in.

    Now granted, sometimes it's another 100lb old lady calling, or someone with other disabilities, and they genuinely can't do it. But just as often it's a reasonably young and apparently healthy, able-bodied person, and most shocking to me it's sometimes a nursing home or other facility like that where you'd really think they'd be prepared to handle something like that in-house.

    I know there's proper technique and equipment involved, and in some cases theres a lot of liability issues at play, but man It's pretty wild to me that so many people and facilities are either unable or unwilling to just pick someone up.

    Also, from all of the calls for falls and lift assists I've taken, I've started telling my wife that if I ever fall and can't get up to just leave me on the floor. Gravity has spoken, I'm to be a floor-person from then on. Just slide a skateboard under me and let me scoot around on it. I have some people who call almost every day, and sometimes multiple times a day because they've fallen and can't get up, and I really don't want that for myself.

  • What do you think is a fair length of time for copyright?

    Jump

  • But what were talking about isn't implemented a flawed system, it's improving one that's already flawed, and the result still wouldn't be perfect but it's better than what currently exists

    And it doesn't prevent passing even better laws further down the line, but I think you know that creating new more comprehensive survivor benefits that would cover everyone is a much harder sell than a comparatively small tweak to copyright laws.

    And if we remove those copyright benefits before those new systems are ready, you're leaving people in the lurch without any safety net until those new systems can be created (if in fact they ever are)

  • What do you think is a fair length of time for copyright?

    Jump

  • And? Doesn't everyone deserve that kind of safety net? Should we take away people's 401ks, pensions, life insurance, etc. because other people don't have them?

    I think I'd rather focus my energy on making sure that more people can make sure their families are secure if something should happen to them, not less

  • What do you think is a fair length of time for copyright?

    Jump

  • In the US, it's a pretty common situation to have some kind of retirement plan through your job, like a 401k, or if you're very lucky a pension. And if you die, in a lot of cases, that retirement plan gets paid to your spouse or children in some fashion. That's a big part of how people plan for their families in case something happens to them. It might help to cover funeral expenses, or settle debts, or legal expenses, or just to make sure their spouse or children can afford to live if they die.

    If you're an independent artist though, you may not have that. Ideally you'd have some kind of life insurance, IRA, etc. to help fill that same role, but art is a fickle business, not everything sells well or is an instant classic, and sometimes it takes a while for something to get popular.

    Let's say I write a book and get it published, and it's reasonably successful, but not exactly a bestseller. I probably got a nice little payment for selling the rights to the publisher, but I'm also expecting to have more money trickling in for at least a few years as long as it stays in print and keeps selling. And in the meantime I'll hopefully get more books published, more payments, hopefully bigger, from the publisher, and then have even more money flowing in from book sales. If I'm really lucky, maybe one or more of those books will really be a hit, if not, hopefully I'll at least have enough moderately successful books published to have a steady income from them, be able to save up some money, keep food on the table, save up for my kids' college funds, my retirement, etc. it's a long-term plan.

    But instead I keel over and die. My spouse is now a single parent.

    If I worked a normal job, hopefully some of those benefits are kicking in to help my spouse take care of herself, my funeral arrangements, and our kids. Survivor benefits from my pension start payment out to them or they get access to my 401k, maybe I even had some kind of life insurance through my job.

    But since I didn't work a normal job, all they get is that trickle of money from my book sales.

    And you want to cut even that off for them.

    And then to add insult to injury, now that I'm dead and it's in the public domain, maybe my book gets turned into a movie which becomes an enormous hit and makes millions of dollars for some Hollywood studio, and my family doesn't get a penny of it.

    Yes, ideally we'd have better social safety nets in place to help people out in those kinds of circumstances, but we don't, and until we do this is what we're stuck with.

  • What do you think is a fair length of time for copyright?

    Jump

  • For an independent artist in the US, I think their lifetime +25 years & 9 months.

    It's something they made, they created it, they deserve to profit off of it.

    Why the +25 years & 9 months?

    Independent artists may not have a more traditional retirement plan with a pension/401k, health benefits, etc. They work for themselves, their income can be inconsistent, sometimes their work may not become popular until years later or even after they pass away.

    But that work is how they're providing for their family, their children's care and college funds and such, funeral expenses, help their spouses along after they pass, etc.

    In the US you can usually stay on your parents healthcare up until 26, so I think it's fair that we should allow their family to profit off that copyright for that long after their death.

    If I were an artist, and immediately after getting my wife pregnant, keeled over dead, I'd want to know that I've left behind something that will help them along at least a bit hopefully at least until my kid is hopefully old enough to stand on their own since.

    And sure, not every artist is going to be leaving behind a pregnant wife, but most people are going to have some sort of family who are going to be stuck with funeral expenses and other legal bullshit to sort out, and I think that 25ish years is a reasonable enough timeframe to keep the copyright tied up before releasing it to the public domain.

    --

    For works created by/for a company (or owned by one if an individual creator sold it to them,) I think it can get a little murkier.

    A lot of people cite the old 14 years + one 14 year extension that was the original US copyright law. And I get it, that sounds reasonable enough I guess.

    But a lot of things have changed since then, companies are bigger, things like video games exist now that didn't back then, and some things have gotten a lot more complex.

    Let's look at the MCU, just the main movies have come out over 18 years and is still going for the foreseeable future, and with spider man and Deadpool sort of tying in some of the pre-MCU movies into the shared multiverse, you can even argue that it's 26 years at this point. Hell, Marvel and DC have been doing their thing since the 30s. New Star Trek stuff has been trickling out since the 60s. Mario first appeared in Donkey Kong 45 years ago. Skyrim came out in 2011, and the next elder scrolls game is still probably years away. We just didn't have franchises like we do now back in 1790, I think it's fair that the laws should reflect in some way how long-lived some franchises can last now.

    I think it might be fair at this point to allow a company to hold copyright on something indefinitely (please put away your torches and pitchforks) but

    1. They need to renew the copyright every 5 years. If they don't it automatically enters the public domain.
    2. In order to renew it they must make that copyrighted property available to the average person. If I can't go out and buy a copy of a specific movie, game, book, etc. then they don't get to sit on the copyright for it.
    3. After maybe 50 years (I'm flexible on that, but 50 is a nice, round number,) as long as they've kept up with the renewals, they still own it, and other people/companies have to pay them to use it for commercial purposes, but they no longer control it, after that point they can no longer deny anyone the right to use that media as long as they're paid for it, and they don't get to set the price, that becomes a fixed rate set by the government. A 50+ year old movie (or whatever) costs $X if you want to make and sell copies of it, $Y to create and sell merchandise based on it, $Z to show it in a theater, etc. and those prices will be kept reasonable.
    4. Also, after 50 years, non-commercial use opens up. You can use it to your heart's content however you want, copying it, sharing it, posting it online, whatever you want, as long as you're not making a profit on it.

    Bridging parts 4 and 5. Let's say you wanted to post a whole movie on YouTube. If your channel isn't monetized you're totally in the clear, you can do that. However YouTube might still make a profit off of it being there due to ads and such. So YouTube can either

    A. Not allow copyrighted material in their TOS, and must take it down when (and only when) requested by the copyright holder.OrB. Choose to pay the appropriate licensing fee to stream that copyrighted material, which again would be a fixed, reasonably low rate set by the government. It might be worth it to them to pay that fee because it means increased traffic to their site.

    If your channel is monetized, you would have to pay that fee. Again, these fees are going to be fixed and kept fairly low. What those fees are is probably going to depend on how it's used. Using, let's say, a clip that's 30 seconds or less of something in another video might be a one time fee of $5, but if you're posting the whole movie, maybe that deserves some percentage of what you earn from those views unless YouTube decides to pay for the streaming license for that movie (if you then owe anything to YouTube for that and how much would be part of whatever monetization agreement you have with YouTube)

    Deciding exactly what those licensing fees for 50+ year old media should be is well outside of my pay-grade.

    EDIT: There's a lot more to intellectual property than just copyright, trademarks, patents, etc. so this is really only scraping the surface, but hopefully this kind of shows where my head is at with these kinds of matters.

  • “Postal Service Rule Could Bar Millions From Voting by Mail”

    Jump

  • I'm a little unclear on how this whole vote by mail process works, I've always voted in-person because I haven't trusted Republicans to not pull shit like this to fuck with my vote.

    But how exactly does the postal service have the ability to do this? They're not the ones tallying the votes, they're just delivering mail. You put something in the box with correct postage and they take it to the address on the envelope. I don't really get where they have the discretion to say "no" to doing that.

    And hypothetically, let's say they do refuse to deliver what looks like election mail. What's to stop you from taking your mail-in ballot envelope, stuffing it into another plain, nondescript envelope addressed to wherever your ballot is supposed to go and mailing it that way? I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to be opening up mail to see what's inside.

    Genuinely asking and trying to understand.

  • The dystopian peasant food isn't bugs or corpse starch, its plastic bottles

    Jump

  • NileRed on YouTube has done a few interesting things like turning plastic gloves into hot sauce through different chemical processes.

    It's more of a fun science demonstration than anything meant to be even remotely practical to create food from waste, and there are some pretty nasty chemicals involved in some of them that really have no business being anywhere near food

    But it does I think drive home the point that everything is basically made out of the same stuff and it's a matter of figuring out how to break it down and put it back together in the right way to be useful.

  • What's something adorable your pet does that you'd like to share?

    Jump

  • My dog sometimes makes some adorable little yipping/whooping noises in her sleep.

    She's also figured out that if she paws at my wife's lap when she's at her desk she can spin her around to force her to give her attention.

    And when she wants to play she'll throw a ball at you. Or when she wants to play by herself she sometimes throws things down the stairs so she can chase after them.

    She's got a weird mischievous streak, she sometimes steals random objects off the counter, doesn't chew or try to eat them, just kind of carries them to a random place around the house. Came home one day to a martini glass sitting on our bed, kind of impressive since her breed (malinois) isn't exactly known for having a soft mouth.

    If you're napping on the couch, sometimes she'll come over and nibble on your nose gently if she wants attention.

  • Correlation == Causation?

    Jump

  • 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?

    Jump

  • 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?

    Jump

  • 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?

    Jump

  • 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?

    Jump

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

  • No, I don't think I will renew

    Jump

  • 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.

  • Deleted

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

    Jump

  • 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.

  • Cooking @lemmy.world
    Fondots @lemmy.world

    Corned Beef Wellington - Am I crazy?

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

    Resin printing in the cold