Fondots

Fondots , 1 day ago

I don't know the specifics of this project, but not all Amtrak trains are electric, they also run diesel and dual mode (diesel/electric) trains (I'm pretty sure, but not certain that the northeast corridor is all electric)

There's also other things worth considering like emissions from construction or maintenance vehicles, some lines are used for freight and passenger rail, construction might stir up any crap that might be in the soil, I suspect there's some amount of metal dust created by the constant grinding of wheels on rails, plastics from brakes and such, leaks from any hydraulics onboard the train, refrigerant leaking from the air conditioning, etc.

In the grand scheme, even if they're running straight diesel trains, leaking fluids, asbestos brake pads, etc. it's probably all negligible in emissions compared to just living in Baltimore, maybe even offset if it leads to more people using Amtrak instead of driving but all of it is still worth considering.

Fondots , 1 day ago

It depends on what I'm doing

If I'm going somewhere out of easy driving distance and hoping maybe some friends will come along, I'll start floating the idea about a year out, start making more solid plans about 6 months out. Give people time to get passports, save up for plane tickets, etc.

If it's an overnight to a long weekend with just me and my wife, maybe a couple weeks, we could probably do day-of sometimes but we gotta make sure someone can watch our dog.

Fondots , 2 days ago (edited 2 days ago)

These numbers are always a little fucky unless you really want to go combing through some incredibly dull spreadsheets, reports, statistics, etc. to find exactly what you're looking for

EDIT #2: I'm an idiot who doesnt heed my own warnings about fucky numbers. Disregard the rest of this comment unless you want to see me being wrong, leaving it up because I own up to my mistakes. See the following comments for details

But from a couple minutes of googling, it looks to me like the top 25% of income in the US puts you at around $100k/person, give or take maybe about 10K or so depending on where exactly you're sourcing those numbers.

That's of course only part of the picture, net worth, investments, all kinds of creative accounting, etc. also play into that, but I only have so much patience to comb through all of it.

That's not what I'd consider wealthy, but I'd probably consider that to be a pretty comfortable income for a lot of people. Again, a lot of variables there, but in general that would probably be enough to make sure your basic needs are all covered, and probably to save a decent bit on top of that, be able to send your kids to a decent college and pay for at least part of it out of pocket, and at least generally enough to give you a leg-up over a family making the median income at about half of that.

EDIT: My wife and I fall a bit short of that by probably about 30K each, we're doing OK, not struggling but not making a whole lot of forward progress either. That kind of money would be almost like having a whole 3rd income for us

Fondots , 2 days ago

Looking further into it, your numbers do seem to be more accurate and I'm going to edit my above comment to reflect that.

Serves to illustrate my point about fucky numbers though, there's lots of bad sources out there that are cherry picking different stats and statistics that sound like but aren't quite what you're looking for, doing some questionable math, bullshit written for SEO algorithm purposes and AI generated content making up numbers, etc, and I'm not immune to falling for that. Whatever the hell I was googling earlier (unfortunately I keep my browser and search history wiped pretty clean and I'm having a hell of a time trying to retrace my digital steps, otherwise I'd share where I got those numbers and where I went wrong) was giving me the very distinct impression that the 75th percentile was roughly in the ballpark of 100K individual

Fondots , 3 days ago

Not exactly the same thing, but my wife and I saw Logan at a drive in theater when it came out

Towards the end when he's all fucked up and near death, the audio started doing all kinds of weird shit, cutting in and out, getting fuzzy and distorted, etc.

We thought it was a pretty cool effect to show the sort of state he was in and we were all about it.

Then we heard some crystal clear audio coming from the cars next to us, turns out it was just my car's battery dying from running the radio.

Still think it was a cool effect, would watch it again that way if it were an option.

I've since picked up a battery powered radio for future drive-ins (we try to go at least once a year)

Fondots , 4 days ago

As a child on a taco commercial once said

¿Por qué no los dos?

Both show promise though need further research to determine how they should be used most effectively and safely, they have similar legal hurdles, and different patients may respond better to one, the other, or possibly even a combination of both,

Fondots , 4 days ago

Every time I see one of those "employees must wash hands" signs, I think about getting some custom made "and everyone else should too" signs made up to start posting below them in public bathrooms everywhere I go.

Fondots , 4 days ago

The problem is that the one thing I want to do that I'm not already doing is "not work"

I don't have any grand plans to take up new hobbies or anything in my retirement (though I'm sure I'll continue collecting hobbies just as I always have) I just want to be able to do them on my own schedule

Fondots , 4 days ago

You could chant primary colors at kindergarteners online line for a maximum of 20 hours per week, or in person for a maximum of 10 hours per week

That may work for you, and if it does I'm happy for you, but for me, as much as I want more time for myself and my hobbies, one thing I want even more is to not ever spend any amount of time doing anything even remotely like that.

I also have no real interest in working abroad even if I didn't think that job sounded horrible. A week or two of vacation, sure, but by the end of week 2, I'm ready to go home, and that's really the point here, I want to be able to just stay home, and only leave when it's to do something I want to do.

Fondots , 5 days ago

It of course varries from one school or area to another, and from different age groups.

I ended up going to 4 proms, my own junior and senior proms, the senior prom my junior year because a girl asked me, and then I ended up dating a girl at another high school after I graduated and ended up going to her senior prom (in case anyone's getting skeeved at that, we were both 18 at the time we started dating, just a few months difference between us, I just barely made the cutoff to be part of the previous grade and she just missed it)

That last prom was the only one where I was actually dating my date, the other 3 we just went as friends, although I did have a pretty big crush on the girl I took to both of my own proms but could never quite work up the nerve to ask her out.

There were never any elaborate promposals or anything, that was just starting around that time and hadn't quite caught on yet, my sister a couple years behind me did it, nothing too elaborate I think she gave her friend a cake and balloons.

The promposal thing is mostly just that it's silly and fun, and nowadays I guess it probably makes for a funny tiktok.

Prom was not a particularly big deal in my area, if I had to attach any particular significance to it, it's just that it's kind of your first "adult" formal event that you're attending for your own sake, not because you're going to a cousins wedding, not something like your first communion or bar mitzvah or whatever when you're still very much a kid. You get to dress up, you get a fancy meal, you rent a limo, maybe you go to a cool post-prom party and you're going to be out till the wee hours of the morning mostly left to your own devices. It's fun for its own sake, and the kind of event most teens don't really get to experience very often.

Fondots , 6 days ago

Part of the problem is not having the money or space for an extra vehicle.

I drive an SUV, I don't particularly like driving an SUV, I get a lot of use out of having a larger vehicle, I'm an avid DIYer who makes frequent trips to the hardware store to pick up lumber and such, I have a lot of outdoor hobbies and usually end up being the one who drives so I'm carrying gear for several people, I don't exactly go off roading, but those hobbies sometimes take me on some poorly maintained, deeply rutted, muddy roads and 4wd has gotten me out of some jams, I occasionally drive onto the beach to go fishing, usually find myself towing a small trailer a couple times a year, and I'm an essential employee that lives in an area that gets snow with a weird schedule that usually has me commuting before the snow plows have gotten through everywhere.

But even though I probably get more actual use out of an SUV than most people, most often I'm still only driving about 20 miles or less a day, on paved roads, in weather that doesn't require anything more than working headlights, wipers, and tires that aren't totally bald.

If I had the budget and parking space I'd probably have the cheapest base model EV I could find for most of my commuting and small errands and save the SUV for my days off and when it snows. That's not the case though.

Fondots , 5 days ago

I am so ready to hop on the PHEV or even full electric bandwagon.

I do have 2 major hurdles though.

First is there aren't a lot of vehicles out there, at an affordable price point for me that quite fit my needs. I've pretty much dialed in that a midsized SUV or small pickup truck is just right for me. There's some exciting options coming down the pipeline, but none that are out there have quite hit the sweet spot for me yet. (I am champing at the bit for Ford to release a PHEV AWD maverick with a midgate to make up for that short bed. That's basically my ideal vehicle, I'd also be stoked for Toyota to do a plug in 4runner, my current car is a 4runner and I like it a lot, if either of those happen before I'm ready for my next car theres a good chance that's what I'm getting)

Second is charging, I live in a townhome with no garage or driveway, so if I want to charge at home I'm pretty much stuck running about a 30ft extension cord across my front lawn and sidewalk. That's less than ideal, and my HOA hasn't exactly been friendly to others in my neighborhood who have gone electric who have done that. I can probably work around that though, the way my schedule works, unless I go in for overtime I usually don't work more than 3 days in a row, so if battery-only range gets a little better for PHEVs (which hopefully they will by the time I'm able to budget for a new car in a few years) I can probably do most of my commuting on one charge and find an hour or two on my days off to go somewhere with a fast charger.

In the meantime, I just try to get my wife to do as much of the driving as possible when we're both off since she has a prius, our schedules don't always align, but when they do I only drive if we need my bigger car for something.

It's a long way off, but we also fantasize about the possibilities of self-driving cars someday when all of the problems are worked out. Since we have different schedules (she works a regular 9-5, I work 3pm-3am on a 2-2-3 schedule,) we could have one self driving car for most of our commuting and errands, it could take her to work, come home and take me to work, pick her up and take her home, and pick me up at the end of my shift, and go charge itself in-between.

Fondots , 6 days ago

First of all, I'm not at all against medical (or recreational for that matter) marijuana. It helps people, and those people should have access to medications that help them, and I'd rather have the current system than no access to medical marijuana at all. I feel like I need to start off with this because otherwise I feel like parts of this comment may come off as anti-marijuana, and that's not my intention at all.

But it's always been kind of wild to me how the programs we have are handling medical marijuana, I'm pretty sure if a doctor tried to handle any other medication like we usually handle medical marijuana, he'd lose his license.

Marijuana isn't one drug, it's several, THC, CBD, Terpenes, various other cannabinoids and other active ingredients, all with different interactions with your body and with each other that can produce a variety of effects on their own or in combination with the others.

And often you're given little to no medical guidance on which ones will actually help with which issues, how much or how often you should take them, and in what way.

It's kind of like being given a bucket of assorted pills that may or may not help your condition and being told to mix and match them and try taking them in various ways until you feel better.

And don't even get me started on smoking it. Yes, it can be an effective delivery method, and you can go back and forth on how marijuana smoke is more or less harmful in various ways than tobacco, but at the end of the day putting smoke in your lungs is bad for you, and I don't think there's a doctor in the world who would disagree with that. If nicotine was some sort of wonder drug that could help with various conditions and you could get a prescription for it, I guarantee you it wouldn't come in the form of tobacco, you'd get pills, patches, maybe some kind of inhaler, vape or nebulizer, injections, suppositories, etc. some sort of purified product with a known dosage.

It's practically impossible to really do medical grade QA on a plant, there's going to be variation from one plant to another, or even from different parts of the same plant depending on weather, light, water, fertilizer, and other variables in the growing conditions, not to mention just the genetic variations in the plants, and knowing exactly how much of which active ingredients are in the product is kind of key to being able to dial in what is an effective dose.

Yes, a lot of that has to do with all of the shitty laws and regulations we have around marijuana and our broken medical system in general, I'm not going to go into that too much because this comment is already going to be long enough that a lot of people won't read it, but I'll leave it it's hard to study marijuana to figure what works and how, and it's hard to build up the kind of industry needed to make actual pure and consistent medical grade marijuana products.

Now of course, if we handled medical marijuana the way it probably should be for the best results, it would probably turn out to be a hugely expensive undertaking under our current healthcare system. There'd probably be a lot of doctor-patient interaction to help you dial in your dosages, with more guidance on how and when to take it, we'd probably be getting into territory where you'd need some sort of a compounding pharmacist who could provide you with a custom blend of the right active ingredients in precise ratios in the delivery method that's most effective for your condition and needs, there'd be a huge pharmaceutical industry (and probably all of the corporate greed that goes with it) that would need to be built to provide these medications, etc.

And unless we have some major overhaul to our healthcare system, that would all probably price a lot of patients out of being able to afford these treatments.

And yes, the current system works well enough for a lot of people, but it's possible that it could work even better for them and for even more people if we treated marijuana more like other medications.

I don't exactly have a grand plan on how to fix things. I don't want to make marijuana more expensive or inaccessible for the people who need it. I don't want to feed into the pockets of big pharma. But I do want to make sure that our treatments are as effective as possible, that we're treating marijuana seriously as a medication and that people view it as such, and that we're not just settling for our treatment options being "good enough" when we can do even better. We didn't stop at willow bark, we built on it to develop modern aspirin and other NSAIDs, and someday we will probably do the same for marijuana, there will probably come a day when almost no one will turn to plant-derived marijuana products for medical reasons because we will have long since isolated, synthesized, and developed entirely new classes of drugs based on what we learn from studying marijuana that do the same things more effectively, more safely, and with even less side-effects.

Fondots , 7 days ago

It sounds like it's a ban on using the phone during school, not on simply having a phone with you.

Which honestly sounds like a rule every school has pretty much had for like 20+ years.

Fondots , 6 days ago

If it is in fact the moment you walk in the door, then it absolutely is the architecture. If the architecture didn't have any effect on it, whatever's disrupting the signal would also interfere with the signal outside.

Damn near every school building I've ever been in is a behemoth of brick, concrete, and cinder blocks. Cellular and other radio signals have a hard time penetrating that.

Same for a lot of hospitals, big retail stores, and other similar places.

I work in 911 dispatch, we have caution notes attached to the addresses of a lot of schools, hospitals, various office buildings, etc. in our area that there's poor cell reception or that our responders can't get radio reception inside the buildings, so we know how we can or can't communicate with our units when they're responding to an emergency there. I can guarantee you those places aren't purposely jamming police radios.

I lose my cell signal in parts of several of my local grocery stores, big box retailers, etc. that's just part of being inside of a big concrete and metal box. Why would they even want to interfere with my ability to use my phone?

A lot of these buildings were built before cell phones were even a thing, so reception was not a concern in their design. Even in newer buildings, it's often not a major consideration.

And as others said, jamming a cell signal is a huge no-no from the FCC. If anything, and I doubt they're even doing this much, they have picocells (basically tiny cell towers) in the building that they're turning off at certain times. If they didn't have them, there would still be no signal in those parts of the building.

Fondots , 7 days ago

I remember one of my elementary school teachers back in the 90s having a few, but even as a kid who got a lot of Lego sets I somehow never got one of my own

Until a couple of years ago, I'm now a grown ass adult, and my wife and I have been on a bit of a Lego kit, and just about every set we get seems to have one now.

So somewhere along the line Lego seems to have pivoted towards including more brick separators. I'm certainly not angry about that, but I definitely get how it could seem to some people that they're a mysterious new invention.

Fondots , 8 days ago

I was in Montreal for the eclipse, I'm sure it was a very busy tourist weekend and they were ready for the influx of us English speakers coming to town, but I didn't have any issues anywhere.

It was probably my favorite city I've ever visited. Everything we ate was amazing, even when we just stopped into some random hole in the wall Chinese takeout place for a quick bite.

Public transit blew anything I've ever experienced in the states clean out of the water. I was also kind of in awe at how bikeable the city was.

There's not many cities I've visited that I'm itching to go back to, but I'm definitely planning to go back sometime.

Fondots , 8 days ago

To be fair, you didn't say it had to be a modern technological invention, just that it impacted the modern world

Fondots , 11 days ago

What exactly is involved in taking care of it?

If it involves more than a couple trips through the automatic car wash a year I'd personally rather just forego the shiny bits altogether.

Fondots , 11 days ago

Also last time I checked most drop in LED bulbs aren't really intended for on-road use.

The headlights in my wife's old car were a real pain in the ass to replace, you either had to take practically the whole front bumper apart or grope around blind from the wheel well. I debated on getting her LED bulbs to hopefully never have to do that again, but I noticed that they were marked as something like "for off-road or motor sports use only"

Fondots , 11 days ago

My wife and I went on a road trip for the 2017 eclipse. At one point she was driving around and I was goofing around in the passenger seat with our eclipse glasses.

Couldn't see shit through them, I could see the sun, maybe just barely the vague outlines of certain big things off the side of the road if they were in full sun

I could absolutely see the sun glinting off of every bit of chrome on cars that drove past though. Couldn't see the cars themselves, just a brief little flash of light.

Kind of made me wonder what kind of cumulative eye damage you might get from millions of small flashes from chrome bits on cars over your lifetime. It could very well be negligible, I'm certainly no eye doctor.

Fondots , 11 days ago

Children are a big part of romantic relationships for a lot of people but by no means all

Many people are happily in committed childfree relationships, other people cannot or should not have children for a great number of reasons but still want and need romantic relationships, and there are still other cases where children put unnecessary strain on otherwise happy relationships.

I think there's a great number of reasons that AI should not be considered a replacement for human relationships, romantic or otherwise, but reproduction isn't one of them.

Even if AI could otherwise replace a romantic partner, and if children are something you desire in a relationship, there's still options like adopting, IVF, and surrogacy

And if we want to get a bit weird and sci-fi about it, that's without considering the sorts of unknown scientific developments that may come further down the line. Who knows what form AI may take at some point in the future? We may end up with AIs inhabiting some sort of replicant body that's compatible with human reproduction, or perhaps even entirely new forms of life and intelligence in a sort of melding of man and machine.

Fondots , 11 days ago

A large part of the "magic" with human relationships is that out of all of the 8 billion some people in the world, those who are close to you have chosen to spend time with you. For all of our flaws, they see your true nature and value you for it, and choose to have you as part of their lives.

With an AI, that may not be a thing.

If they're programmed to like you, they're at best a toy and at worst a slave. There's no freedom for them to choose or not to choose to be with you. You're getting an imitation of a relationship. It could be a convincing imitation, with built-in arguments and other idiosyncrasies, but to me every time I hit one of those, it would just be a stark reminder that it's not the real thing and it's just programmed to behave that way.

If they're not programmed to like you and are free to form or not form connections with humans, there's no guarantee you'd have any more luck wooing an AI than you would a human.

Fondots , 16 days ago

If you have a government job, pensions are still very much a thing. Something like 1/3 of jobs are in the public sector and the majority of them offer a pension, and they're pretty rare but there are still some private sector jobs offering pensions as well, though I wouldn't hold my breath trying to get one of those.

It takes a whole lot of people to keep the local, state, and federal governments running, pull up your county job listings sometimes, they're probably hiring for a few different jobs at any given time, some require very specific skills, training, or education, others are going to be basic janitorial work, office clerks, etc. and everything in between that pretty much anyone could manage, and everything in between, and almost all of them will qualify for a pension plan.

Source- am 911 dispatcher, vested in my pension, still another 15-20ish years before I can collect on it

Fondots , 15 days ago

A lot of those are features of some government jobs, but not necessarily government jobs in general

they do not pay commensurate to similar jobs in non-gov positions.

No, but they do make up for it at least somewhat in benefits, which sounds like something OP is interested in, and since they're looking for a less stressful job, they probably have also come to terms with the fact that the pay would likely be lower

you must conduct mandatory quarterly drug tests to ensure you are in compliance to federal drug laws.

That varies on the nature of the job and the agency you work for. Like I said, I work in 911 dispatch, so I'm subject to a lot of federal regulations and such, including about drug use, but the only time I got drug tested was when I was hired, the only circumstance I'm subject to testing is if they have reason to think I'm intoxicated on the job. (The test when I was hired was a hair test, fun fact, at least at the place that did our testing, their policy is if you shave your head like I do, the next place they take a sample from is your armpit, I was expecting them to take it from my beard, but they wanted pit hair)

you must submit fingerprint and/or DNA samples

I did get fingerprinted, that is true. No DNA samples though. Not exactly unique to government jobs though, a lot of private sector childcare and healthcare employees, casino workers, bank employees, and security companies, just to name a few, require fingerprinting.

you must disclose many financial, foreign family, or unusual hobbies, so they can legally deny you things such as certain rights in case you are in a job that requires security clearances or NDAs.

Don't recall that ever coming up in my hiring process, and I handle a lot of privileged info. Not exactly a security clearance or NDA, but lots of personal info and such that I can't talk about outside of work.

it's difficult to promote to higher pay positions unless you grease the right hands and network the right people or simply be lucky right-place-right-time, you will simply stagnate in your place for a long time (or just simply be furloughed).

The same can be said about a whole lot of private sector jobs as well. Networking is a big deal. This also depends on the exact agency/department you work for, a lot of agencies do like to promote internally to fill openings and new positions when possible. At my work it's pretty rare to see someone totally new brought in to fill most of our positions we get people being promoted and moved around a fair bit when there's an opening, and most of my chain of command up to the director of my department started out as dispatchers and worked their way up through various supervisory roles, deputy directors, etc. Some positions are of course more of a dead end than others, there's only so many places you can move up to from courthouse clerk, but it can also be pretty easy to transfer to a different department, I've had a fair amount of coworkers move from the communications division (which dispatch is a part of) to logistics, IT, emergency planning, the coroners office, there have been cases where underperforming dispatchers have been found other jobs in the county, etc. And not everyone cares about promotion, I'm happy to keep answering 911 calls for the next 20 or so years, and I suspect that OP maybe doesn't care too much about long term career prospects since it sounds like= they're basically just looking for something to hold them over until retirement.

if the gov shuts down, you don't get paid.

If a private company shuts down, you don't get paid and you have to go looking for a new job because it's probably not going to open back up in a few days or weeks after the assholes in charge get their heads out of their asses.

Fondots , 16 days ago

There's no such thing as bad weather only inappropriate gear.

The problem is, in the summer, "appropriate gear" means an air conditioned house.

Fondots , 16 days ago

Hurricane season lasts from roughly June through November. The worst of it normally comes between August and October, so late summer and we'll into the fall.

Fondots , 17 days ago

I buy some roadmaps probably every 10 years or so to make sure mine are up to date and not too beat up, I keep them in my car and do use them occasionally. I usually have 3 maps, a local maps of my nearest city and surrounding area, one of my state, and then one of the surrounding region.

I also tend to pick up free maps wherever I can, lots of state parks and such, tourist maps, etc. but I'm not buying them so not exactly relevant.

I also tend to pick up free maps from AAA since I'm a member whenever I'm going on a road trip, I'm paying for the membership so I guess in a sense I'm buying them, but also not really

Fondots , 20 days ago

I'm not from this instance, so probably not totally relevant to this poll, that said

NO, I'm not a tankie.

I think, however, it's worth considering that a lot of people that could be considered tankies probably wouldn't apply the term to themselves, and that could skew the results of your poll. First of all, tankie is sort of a pejorative term, and many wouldn't want to apply it to themselves for that reason alone. Secondly a lot of people just may not consider themselves to be a tankie, and genuinely do not recognize their own tankieness.

I don't think I'm the guy to come up with a definitive checklist of what does or does not make someone a tankie, but for the sake of getting the conversation going (and feel free to disagree with me here, I welcome the discussion) I think two of the biggest hallmarks of being a tankie are

1. Communism- not all communists are tankies, but all tankies at least claim to subscribe to some sort of communist ideology.

2. Authoritarianism- tankies either are authoritarians themselves, or are willing to support or overlook authoritarians as long as they see them as being in some way opposed to "the west"/capitalism/etc.

I think the authoritarianism aspect is going to trip some people up trying to answer this truthfully. A lot of authoritarians probably wouldn't consider themselves authoritarians, most people like to think they're standing for freedom, justice, liberty, equality, etc. even if their actual actions tell another story. Don't get me wrong, there are people out there who are openly authoritarian and proud of it, but a lot of authoritarians are a little brainwashed to the point they've lost sight of what they're actually supporting (take a look at the MAGA crowd, they think they're about free speech and anti-censorship but want to keep books they don't like out of libraries, they think they're about small government but want to regulate what kind of medical care you can get, they think they stand for law and order but also proudly proclaim that they are all domestic terrorists and have a convicted felon as their poster boy)

And politics are messy, full of moral grey areas and times where you have to choose between the lesser of two evils, make uncomfortable alliances, difficult choices, and kick some cans further down the road to deal with later while you tackle the current crisis. It's not always easy or feasible to draw a crisp line in the sand and say "we will not ally with/support/turn a blind eye to these authoritarian regimes," sometimes you have to play a little bit of the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" game if you want to actually make any progress against that enemy, or you may have to prioritize and deal with something else before you deal with them. There is a whole lot of grey area to explore about when, why, how, how long, and how much you can support or ignore them before you're advancing their cause as much or more than your own.

I think there's probably some tankies who have been taken for a ride on the propaganda wagon and don't truly realize how authoritarian they are, and there's others who have justified it, thinking that they're only going to be/support authoritarians temporarily to achieve a specific goal and will pivot away from that later, but have gone too far or keep moving the goalposts.

Couple last thoughts from me.

There can always be bad actors who are falsely claiming to be (or not to be) tankies for their own purposes. Not really much you can do about that.

Personally, a lot of the criticism I've seen about tankies here has been directed towards the mods and admins, not necessarily the rank average users.

Fondots , 22 days ago

A Puerto Rican coworker turned me onto hot chocolate with cheese in it. I believe the traditional method is basically just to put some cheese in the cup and you end up with a melted glob of cheese to eat with a spoon as/after you drink it. I've played around with that as well as actually incorporating the cheese into the drink itself, melting it all together on the stove.

Kind of gets you some of that well-tested sweet/salty/savory combo. I dig it in a Mexican hot chocolate with some cinnamon and chili powder.

I believe the traditional cheese is edam, I've tried that as well as cheddar and a few other cheeses, they all seemed to work pretty well, try it at your own risk if you go for anything too funky

Fondots , 22 days ago

That's kind of the point of this thread though isn't it? Weird food pairings that sound crazy but actually work if you're brave enough to try them

Elsewhere in this thread you'll find a lot of sweet/salty/savory pairings, one that's particularly relevant is adding chocolate to chili. Lots of chili will end up getting served with some shredded cheese, or some sour cream (sour cream is kind of next door to cheese when you think about it) so not too far off from a Mexican hot chocolate without the meat.

Cheese is dairy, and there's no shortage of milk and chocolate creations, like hot chocolate itself

Cheese can go with sweet things just fine, plenty of great fruit and cheese pairings, cheese and honey, etc. (if you haven't tried it, some warm apple pie with some sharp cheddar cheese on it is great, also sounds crazy to some people but if you ever do a cheese fondue odds are you're going to be dipping apple slices into cheese)

You're probably even familiar with a couple pairings of chocolate and other cheeses, things like chocolate chips in cannoli, chocolate cheesecake

Fondots , 25 days ago (edited 24 days ago)

It's probably more accurate to say that it's made from a fruit base than to say it's distilled from wine, (as opposed to a grain base like whiskeys, a lot of vodka, gin, etc)

Because there's things like Italian Grappa, which is a pomace brandy, which, if the name weren't obvious, is made from pomace, which is the solid leftovers from after you press grapes for wine. I suppose there's an argument that when you ferment it before distillation it could still be considered a wine, but probably not one you'd want to drink.

Then you have Applejack, which is a brandy (though not usually marketed as such) made from apples. When you press and ferment apple juice, you'd normally call it a cider, not a wine. Sort of splitting hairs a little, it's all fermented fruit juice, but such is life.

I've seen the French term "eau de vie" borrowed in English to describe brandies made from fruits other than grapes, which I think is useful to distinguish between brandies that are distilled from a certain kind of fruit and the various "[fruit]-flavored brandies" that are out there that are usually regular grape brandy with fruit flavor added. I have a bottle of Applejack and a bottle of apple flavored brandy in my home bar, they're not really interchangeable

Side note, in French "eau de vie" I believe is used as a more general term for liquor, not specifically brandies. Also a lot of liquors when you trace the origins of the names share similar "water of life" etymology, whiskey comes from the Gaelic "uisqe beatha" (spelling varies depending on if we're talking Irish or Scots Gaelic) meaning the same, Scandinavian Akvavit (again spelling varies,) "Vodka" pretty famously pretty famously basically means water (really it's a diminutive form of water) probably coming from the same sort of origin, and a lot of it goes back to the Latin "Aqua Vitae"

Fondots , 28 days ago

I'm not really worried about humanity's survival in general, we're a resilient bunch, we've successfully carved out niches for ourselves in damn-near every corner of the planet, as long as the earth is even remotely habitable I'm pretty confident that humans will be around.

The things I'm worried about are

The survival of many other species that aren't as adaptable as us

The quality of life for us and anything else that survives with us

The survival of vulnerable populations of humans. While humanity as an entire species will survive in one way or another, the same can't necessarily be said about individuals or particular groups of humanity. I'd rather not see entire families, towns, countries, cultures, races, etc. get wiped out.

Fondots , 28 days ago

It's north Korea, even if it wasn't a spy satellite, everyone would assume it is anyway, so no sense beating around the bush.

And everyone would probably figure it out pretty quickly anyway based on where the orbit is, any signals they're able to intercept from it, etc.

And really, it's north Korea, they don't have a whole lot of needs or interests in satellites besides spying and military purposes. They don't really need communications satellites, their country isn't all that big and no one else really wants to talk to them and they certainly don't really want their citizens talking to anyone else either.

Which pretty much leaves observation satellites for things like meteorology, and monitoring crop yields and such, and since those kinds of purposes would probably have a camera onboard, they'd probably try to use it as as a spy satellite in addition to/instead of that primary purpose anyway.

Really though, their primary purpose for NK in to test missile technology somewhat on the down-low.

Fondots , 29 days ago

A lot of my gaming experience has been on Nintendo consoles, and a lot of this list is going to be viewed through nostalgia goggles with a lot of my first ranking higher than games that might have done the same thing better.

Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt- this is where it all began for me, and I still wish light gun games had become more of a thing

Tetris- timeless classic, everyone knows and loves it, no further explanation needed.

Pokemon red/blue/yellow- my first forray into RPGs

Kotor- first forray into RPGs that actually involved playing a role, the fact that you could be a bad guy was revolutionary to me. I also think this may have been one of the first games that I played completely through, I've always had a bad habit of never finishing a lot of games even if I really loved them. Also one of my first PC games and the first time I needed to install a graphics card in the family PC to play a game.

TES: Oblivion - look, you could pretty much insert any of the elder scrolls or 1st person fallout games into this spot, and quite a few others that arguably do it better, but this was my first real taste of an open world where you could go do (moru-or-less) whatever you wanted, everything felt so alive, and the imperial city still kind of feels to me like one of the most alive and actually functional cities in a video game and not just a level that's dressed up to look like a city.

Portal 2: I don't think there are many games out there that are just this much fun, and everything the first portal did great (which was pretty much everything,) 2 expanded on and made even better.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch- I'm a sucker for short games with a good gimmick and intentionally weird controls.

Saints Row 3- it was stupid, it was fun, I could honestly entertain myself for hours just running around the city, stealing cars, and beating luchadores with a giant dildo for hours and have a blast the entire time.

Super Mario 64- my first experience with 3d gaming, and I'd argue still one of the best 3d platformers out there (wonky cameras and such from that era aside) I like simple, lightheaded games.

Ocarina of time- enough has been said about this game elsewhere on the Internet that I don't feel like I need to say any more.

Fondots , 1 month ago

I never really had an excuse to look into temperature data in Mexico and I'm honestly a little surprised by some of the numbers

It looks like Mexico City is likey to have temperatures of about 35c (95F for Americans like myself) Which does seem like it will be their all time highest recorded temperature there.

I knew they're at a pretty high elevation, but I guess I kind of figured Mexico=hot and that even their relatively cooler areas would be roughly on par with the high temperatures I'm used to here in Pennsylvania.

Because 95, while still a pretty damn hot day, isn't exactly news-making around here (this early in the year it definitely would be, but in general it would be a little bit unusual if we don't hit that temperature at least once or twice over the summer, even 100+ isn't unheard of.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay the situation they're experiencing, 95 is absolutely the kind of temperature that can kill people if they don't have the infrastructure to escape the heat, and they don't because the temperatures aren't supposed to get that hot there. I'm more pointing out my own ignorance of Mexican climate.

Fondots , 1 month ago

Leaving behind a destroyed country, half of which is a puppet of Russia?

Pretty damn accurate actually.

Fondots , 1 month ago

Went to the outer Banks with my wife, her grandmother, her brother, and his girlfriend.

First of all, I don't dislike any of them, I like them better than a lot of my own family, but we're different kinds of people. If I hadn't married my wife, they're not the sort of people I'd ever choose to interact with, I'd make polite conversation with them at a party or something, but I'd never really give them a second thought.

I'm not a beach person, I hate sand, I hate sitting around in the sun, I hate the biting flies, I like fishing but don't really enjoy surf fishing. They all of course wanted to spend a lot of time on the beach.

They have a lot of love for this island, once upon a time their family owned a vacation house there and they'd pretty much spend the whole summer there. I have no such nostalgia goggles, so as far as I'm concerned it's a pretty meh place to spend your time. It has a handful of mediocre restaurants and bars, a bunch of touristy stores selling mostly beach themed bric a brac and artsy craftsy junk that I have no real desire to buy or even wander around a store looking at, and a grocery store and liquor store with pretty limited selections. Nothing really there that appealed to me.

We mostly cooked at the house, which isn't really my idea of a vacation, I get it, it's cheaper, but I'm trying to avoid doing chores, that's kind of the point. Nonetheless, I do enjoy cooking, I planned out my meals, came up with cocktail pairings, etc. had to modify them a bit on the fly because as I was finding out my brother in law and his girlfriend are kind of picky eaters. The other parties kind of skimped a bit on their meal planning, we had some meals that were frozen store bought lasagna and such. I kind of knew my meals would be fancier and more involved than theirs but I kind of expected them to put in at least a little effort.

Her grandmother was in the early stages of dementia, not too bad at the time, but she was a little restless and forgetful, which just made her a little annoying to deal with when we just wanted to chill at the house.

I had also somewhat recently started a new job working night shift, so my whole schedule was kind of flipped upside down and most of the time I just really wanted to sleep.

Also the place was about a 9 hour drive, which baffles me because we have a lot of perfectly fine beaches with more stuff to do within an hour or two from home.

We decided to drive mostly overnight to avoid traffic meeting up at about 11 IIRC to drive down in 3 different cars, we'd get there probably by about noon accounting for bathroom breaks, grabbing breakfast on the way, etc. giving us a chance to put pack, grab lunch, maybe take a nap, then still get some time in do vacation stuff (whatever vacation stuff means on an island with literally nothing to do)

I kind of figured they would all have their cars mostly loaded and be ready to go, which was wishful thinking, we didn't actually get on the road until well after midnight, it might have even been after 1.

I really felt like I wasted my week off from work. Only real things I enjoyed was when my wife and I rented a boat with her brother and his girlfriend and just kind of boated around for a few hours, and playing boardgames at the house at night, but I didn't need to spend about 18 hours driving and spend a week there to boat around for a few hours and play boardgames.

They had talked about trying to do annual family vacations after that (they were at least going to throw me a bone and not do the beach every year, though I suspect a lot of my other gripes would've still persisted) but luckily for me the next year COVID hit, her grandmother's dementia has progressed a lot since then and her mom is taking care of her, and we've all just had general life stuff keeping us busy so that hasn't happened.

Fondots , 1 month ago

In the grand scheme of disasters, I didn't get this too bad, but hurican Ida.

I live in an area with a lot of rivers and streams and we experienced some historic flooding for our area to the point that it took us a few days or weeks to even know exactly how high the water got because the river gauges went completely under water, the old records were totally shattered.

My house was at a high enough elevation that I didn't have an immediate flood danger to my house, but we did loose power for about 16 hours, which meant I did need to go bail out my basement sump pump every so often because the pump wasn't running without power. People who were closer to the rivers of course got it worse, some people had to be evacuated from their homes by boat, lots of flood damage to go around, a handful of homes practically got washed away completely. There was some concern about certain dams potentially being overwhelmed but thankfully nothing much came of that.

I work in my county's 911 center, and of course they paged out for anyone available to come in to do so. I tried, couldn't make it more than a mile or so in any direction without hitting flooding and that was the before the worst of the flooding. Some roads and bridges were really fucked up from the flooding.

Luckily I have some friends nearby with a generator so we ran our perishables over to them to throw in their fridge. Those friends get their water from a well, and their generator doesn't have enough juice to run the well pump with their fridge and stuff, so we bartered some potable water and cold showers with them in exchange.

They pulled up the stats at work for how many storm related calls we had, water rescues, electrical fires, downed trees, flooding, etc. I don't remember the numbers, it's been a few years but they we insane.

Fondots , 1 month ago

I think this is kind of a thing for a lot of stereoscopic 3d technology.

I could play the virtual boy, 3ds, watch 3d movies, etc. for hours without issue, and other people can't take it at all.

I don't know what factors play into that, maybe it's genetic, maybe there's some kind of skill/technique/habits about how you focus your eyes, or how often you blink, maybe it's just luck of the draw that your pupil distance is just right or wrong. Maybe it comes down to something ridiculous like how many hours you spent trying to make sense of Magic Eye books when you were a kid.

Fondots , 1 month ago

Long before I was born, my town was a working class mill town, steel mill, tire factory, textile mills, etc. the steel mill is still there, but it's not a big feature of the town like it once was.

Even up into my lifetime, it was still essentially a working class town, nothing wrong with it, perfectly safe town, walkable, convenient to pretty much every major highway, public transportation, major shopping areas, etc. but it just had a little bit of a reputation for being kind of a slightly lower class town compared to a lot of its neighbors.

Within the last decade or so it's kind of exploded, property values have gone through the roof, lots of cool bars and restaurants, a whole bunch of new high rise apartment buildings, etc. It's attracted a lot of yuppies and priced a lot of the old families out of the area. It's also created some significant traffic and parking issues, with new apartments and such bringing in more people, and people wanting to come into town for the bars and restaurants and such the infrastructure just isn't there for that many cars.

I can't afford to live there anymore, but with my parents and relatives who still live there not getting any younger, sooner or later I should be able to snag up one of their houses, my sister already managed to snag my grandmother's house for herself.

Like all cases of gentrification it has its plusses and minuses. The bars and restaurants and other new businesses are pretty great. Getting priced out of the town my family has lived in for over a century kind of blows, even if I have a roadmap laid out in front of me to get back. Some of my favorite cheap dive bars are no longer very cheap or divey, which is a bummer. The traffic can be a nightmare when you have to deal with it. The character of the town has definitely changed, there's a definite difference in attitude between people who have deep roots there, own homes, and intend to spend the rest of their lives here and the newcomers, landlords, house flippers, renters, etc. who don't have any real attachment to the town.

Fondots , 1 month ago

Probably the biggest thing is to try out a few different brands of blades to find what works for you, that's probably going to be the biggest variable. There at least used to be some variety packs you could order on Amazon and such

Personally I like feather blades, they do have a reputation for being ridiculously sharp even by razor standards, which can make them a little unforgiving, there's a good chance you're doing to slice yourself up a little when you're first using them, but find what works for you. About the only thing I purposely avoid is store brand blades, they're pretty much all garbage, try to track down pretty much any name brand.

Other than that, pick a handle that seems sturdy, and comfortable in your hand. Honestly I think most options out there, even a lot of the cheapest ones are just fine, there's really not that much to them. Be prepared for a bit of a learning curve as you figure out the technique.

Some people get way into it, and will give you a whole lot of recommendations about soaps, creams, lotions, etc. and by all means experiment with them, but don't feel like you absolutely need to get too into it. Personally I lather up with whatever soap I have on hand and splash on some old spice afterwards and like my results just fine (disclaimer - my skin isn't picky, I could probably just about wash my face with acetone and dry shave with a piece of broken glass, some people have more sensitive skin, so find what works with you)

Fondots , 1 month ago

Just to kind of give you a sense on my personal thought on the handles, I have 3 razors, an old one that's either a Gillette or a Merkur (I honestly can't remember which one) that I scrounged from my dad's junk drawer, one I picked up from a grocery store or target or something that I believe is a van Der Hagen, and one my wife got from somewhere on Etsy, so I feel like that's a pretty decent cross section of what's out there.

All 3 shave just fine. They all shave a tiny bit differenly, but that really kind of comes down to personal preference and that technique/learning curve I mentioned. I wouldn't really say any of them are significantly better or worse than the others.

The Etsy one is my usual razor, probably feels the nicest in my hand, the handle is a little longer which I like, but the real reason it's my main razor is because it looks the nicest hanging on my razor stand and because my wife got it for me. I'm not crazy about how you change the blade because you basically unscrew the whole top and I don't love needing to fiddle around with it that close to the blade.

The junk drawer razor is my traveling razor because its handle is kind of short and it fits better in my toiletry bag. It probably has my favorite blade changing method, there's a little knob at the base of the handle you turn to unscrew the head and the top half of the head comes off. You can also halfway undo it which leave the blade a little loose without the whole thing coming apart which I find makes it easier to rinse hair out. If I had to pick one that shaves the best it's probably this one, but it's also the one I've had the longest so I've had more practice with it and I'm pretty sure that's like 90% of the difference. It's probably my best quality razor, even though it's probably a few decades older than me everything about it still feels rock solid, but it also had probably a half century worth of tarnish, scratches, etc. that I'm too lazy to really clean up, so it's also probably my ugliest.

The van der Hagan razor has sort of a butterfly opening thing for the blade. I feel like on a nicer razor that would be kind of nice, but with the fit/finish/tolerances it was made to, it feels a little cheap to me, like it wants to break (although it's been years and it hasn't broken on me yet, so my fears may be unwarranted) it has a slightly longer handle which I like, but it's also skinnier, which I dont like. It probably gives me the worst shave, but it's also my least used and again I feel like practice and technique probably play a bigger part in that than there being any significant shortcomings in the design. This one lives in my guest bathroom for when I shower and shave in there if my wife is hogging the master bath.

And when I say one shaves better than the other, the difference is pretty miniscule once you get used to the razor. When I first got it, I thought the Etsy razor shaved terribly, now that it's been my main razor for years I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between it and the junk drawer razor. And since it doesn't get used as much anymore, I feel like I get worse shaves from the junk drawer razor than I did when it was my main razor. I also noticed my shaves get better with the VdH razor when I tried to use it more, but honestly I never put much time into getting used to it because I always felt like the handle was too skinny. But that's personal preference, I like thick-handled heavy tools in general, some people like thinner handles and lighter weight.

Fondots , 1 month ago

English

A very tiny bit of French, I can understand more than I can speak if they talk slowly, my French education was kind of shitty and it's been well over a decade since high school since I've really used it so

I've been learning Esperanto on Duolingo, it's been going pretty well, I'm just about at the point where I can confidently read a book without having too look up too many words. I'm far from fluent, but I getting there.

Fondots , 1 month ago

I rarely drink coffee on my days off, when I work I bring a 20oz mug of drip coffee with me. At my old job, I'd probably polish of a pot or two to myself most days, mostly because walking back to the break room and brewing a pot when it was empty was a good way to avoid actually working that no one ever batted an eye at.

Fondots , 1 month ago

Not exactly sending them to coworkers, but I did kind of refer a coworker to one once.

I work in 911 dispatch, it's kind of hard not to end up a little desensitized to some crazy shit. We once had a call about some kind of industrial accident, someone's arm caught in a machine or something along those lines. Obviously not going to share too many specific details about the incident, but we did have a teams on location ready to do a field amputation if needed, but luckily they were able to get the person out without any major injuries.

So our conversations tended to be about a lot of the crazy gory fucked up things we'd taken calls about or otherwise seen or heard about, and I mentioned the Russian lathe accident video to one of my coworkers (don't look that up if you're not the kind of fucked up who can deal with that sort of thing, it's a guy getting caught in a heavy duty lathe and spun around and mashed against the machine until someone comes and hits the emergency stop, at which point there's nothing much left of him)

That piqued her interest, and she went and watched it on her phone at her next break.

I wouldn't send the video to anyone, especially not out of the blue, and when it comes up I warn people not to look it up if they're the type of person who would be significantly disturbed by it. In general I won't even mention it to people who don't work either in some sort of emergency services or medical sort of field where we have to occasionally deal with that kind of thing, or in a machine shop where they're working around those kinds of machines, and even then it's something that only gets brought up to certain people in certain contexts.