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intransitivelie

@intransitivelie@beige.party

I'm the opposite of a murderer: I unstab people to life with my anti-knife.

I work in #theater, used to work in #computers as a #programmer, sometimes I #AmWriting and I dabble in #TTRPGs.

When my ADHD allows it, I love to read. #Fantasy is my jam but I enjoy a good #Mystery.

#BLM, #ACAB, #ADHD, #LGBTQIAdjacent, #NoTerfs, #NaziPunksFuckOff, #LandBack, #Leftist, #DisabledRights, #EatTheRich, #TransRightsAreHumanRights, #SexWorkIsWork #ReproductiveRightsAreHumanRights

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

intransitivelie , to random
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

A hundred chicken-sized Godzillas would make mincemeat out of pretty much anything. A Godzilla-sized chicken would feed a small town. I know which one I'd prefer to have to fight.

intransitivelie OP ,
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

@sollat
Don't get me wrong, I don't really want to face either of them in a fight, but I'm putting my money on the horde of marauding minizillas. Chickens might have rage, but they're not existentially angry about nuclear bombs. Plus a horde of small dinosaurs is just the sort of threat you dismiss until they come for you.

In a match-up between a mob of tinyzillas and one giant chicken, if nothing else, the chicken will eat enough of the Tokyo Tramplers that they'll kill it when they claw their way out of its digestive tract, because if nuclear bombs can't kill the 'Zilla and he eats lightning for breakfast, getting swallowed whole by a chicken is a minor inconvenience. Meanwhile, the rest of the pack are gnawing on the chicken's Achilles tendons. Victory Gojira Squad, then they skeletonize Perdue's Hubris in less time than it takes to snap your fingers. And that's not even taking into account Godzilla's ability to breath fire. I'm not even sure it'd take 100. I think a dozen could do it.

For that matter, a giant chicken versus humanity is no contest either. We'd lose a few, sure, but a couple hundred humans could take down a giant chicken with stone tools (we've done it before), and given modern weaponry, that bird is Extra-Crispy. You'll notice that chickens aren't resistant to bombs and high-velocity projectiles like Godzilla is. You can put a regular chicken down with a pellet gun. A tank or a high-speed gatling gun makes short work of the big one.

Meanwhile, facing down an army of small, angry, intelligent, fire-breathing lizards who can't be harmed by conventional weaponry? Forget it. I'm out. The planet was nice while it lasted but apparently it's the new age of the dinosaurs now and humans just live in it.

I may have thought about this too much.

intransitivelie , to random
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

I bet fedi has opinions on this: I want to replace Adobe Acrobat Reader for PDF viewing. What's the best alternative for Windows? Must be free, FOSS nice, AI-free a must.

intransitivelie OP ,
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

@picard
Thanks! I'll check it out.

futurebird , to random
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The Quakers don't quake anymore and maybe they should bring back the quaking I think.

intransitivelie ,
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

@futurebird
I don't think they ever quaked. Pretty sure it's a derogatory term which they reclaimed. That, at any rate, was what I was taught as a young Quaker. See the first paragraph of: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers

intransitivelie , to random
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

I carry a knife pretty much everywhere I go, which has caused me a few difficult moments in government buildings. I do it because I actually use my knife for a lot of things and it's handy to have. It is not a fetishistic attachment to the trappings of masculinity.

I don't collect knives, nor do I want knives I wouldn't use. I try to do the same thing about tools, power- and non-. Carrying a tool for its usefulness is one thing. Carrying it as a signifier is another. It's like owning a giant pickup truck to prove how masculine you are.

intransitivelie OP ,
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@NanoBookReview
I lost my original Leatherman Wave and while I like the new version just fine, it's not quite the same. I feel your pain.

intransitivelie , to random
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I saw my first Cybertruck in the wild yesterday on the road and it cannot be overstated how stupid they look. They're too big to be a car but not big enough to be one of those massive pickup trucks that make men feel more man about themselves. They occupy some strange space where they're clearly trying to compensate for something but doing a terrible job of it. They also look like they weigh a billion tons and drive like the QE2, which may not be true but they don't look fast and sleek. I have no idea why anyone would buy one if not for their notoriety.

intransitivelie , to random
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

I'm terrible at video games. Awful. Appallingly bad. I once died during the opening credits of Half-Life because I managed to fall off the tram. There are basically no types of video game that I'm any good at. I wish I could experience the joy that they seem to give to some people.

intransitivelie , to random
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"Cyber" comes from "cybernetics" which is in turn from the Greek "κυβερνήτης" which means "one who steers" as in a boat, from "κῠβερνάω" meaning, "to steer" so technically The Club is cybersecurity.

intransitivelie OP ,
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

@other_ghosts
Somewhere in my attic there's a painting of a take which keeps getting less niche.

intransitivelie , to random
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Ok, this is an extremely niche question, but I'm trying to work with a list of files in a Windows batch script, and one of the files contains two single quotes in the name, so the batch script is interpreting that as a command. Does anyone know of any way I can escape those single quotes programmatically? I can't simply add slashes to them because I don't have access to the filename. Should I pipe them to a text file and then munge the text file? I'm happy to give more information if necessary; this isn't a secret or anything.

P.S. If your suggestion is not to use a batch script to do this, believe me, I've considered it, but at the moment batch is what I've got. I'm not going to install an entirely new shell to do this fairly simple task and I don't like PowerShell enough to go to the trouble of scripting in that. If I were to write a non-shell program, I would probably write it in Python as that seems like the most reasonable option, but I remain convinced that there's a way to do this in a batch script.

intransitivelie OP ,
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

@picard
I'm not sure whether that will work, but it's definitely something to look into. Thanks!

intransitivelie , to random
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

What I wanted from AI: hundreds of robot servants to automate away all my stupid, repetitive tasks, leaving me free to pursue the life of the mind.

What I expected from AI: self-driving cars maybe, at some point.

What I got from AI: a wrong-answer machine which steals money from me and is powered by burning the rainforest.

intransitivelie OP ,
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

@hisham_hm
I suspect that the billionaires who want robot servants only want them because they think it would be cool, not because they actually need them. I can see Elon Musk dumping tons of money into robot servants because he thought that would make people respect and fear him, for instance. But you're right about most of them.

I guess I just don't know why they'd invest any effort in customized, convincing lies at industrial scale to manipulate elections when the old fashioned methods seem to have worked just fine up until now. You don't need terribly convincing lies to manipulate people. We'll buy any old lie pretty easily as long as it seems less effort than other options. You don't need deepfakes to sell white Americans on racism, for instance. Hell, Donald Trump's lies are incredibly threadbare and he's got half the country eating out of his hand.

I speak about American politics because I'm familiar with them, not because I think they're special in any way. The lies fascists the world over tell are effective not because they're convincing but because it doesn't take much to convince most people. I can list all sorts of easy-to-disprove lies which nonetheless worked extremely well.

I don't know. Maybe the danger of "AI" is that it allows unsophisticated lies to be delivered more effectively? Or maybe it's just a fad and the real danger is that it heightens distrust of information in general, or makes sources so unreliable that truth cannot be determined? I'm not sure that convincing lies is the aim as much as simply industrial scale, which pollutes the information well much more effectively than before. If there's so much junk that the truth can't be found, it doesn't really matter whether the junk is convincing or not.

intransitivelie , to random
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

I don't do anything for a living. I stave off the icy hand of death through my exploited labor, but I'm not living, I'm just not dead yet.

intransitivelie , to random
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What the fuck do you British people mean when you say, "lash yogurt with honey" or "lash fries with salt?" Speak English! You invented the language for fuck's sake.

intransitivelie OP ,
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@Edelruth
How much is a lashing? That's what I want to know.

intransitivelie OP ,
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@duckwhistle @Edelruth
You're the first person to give a definition which justifies the use of the word to me. Thanks!

The concept of "more than necessary but less than excessive" doesn't have a strict equivalent in American English that I can think of. A "mess," perhaps, but that implies a bit of excess. A "bunch?" "Lashing" is as good as any other word, and if it's a verb too, so much the better.

intransitivelie OP ,
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

@sollat @duckwhistle @Edelruth
Yes, or maybe "a healthy amount of" or similar. "Lashing" just seems a bit more profligate than that, maybe?

lowqualityfacts , to random
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

Someone told me to stop shamelessly promoting my Patreon. Believe me buddy, there is shame and lots of it.
https://patreon.com/lowqualityfacts

intransitivelie ,
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@lowqualityfacts
"Stop shamefully promoting your Patreon," doesn't have quite the same impact, does it?

intransitivelie , to random
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I have never once rotated my tires. I don't intend to start now.

intransitivelie OP ,
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@dillyd
...can you leave your winter tires on year-round? Because if so, that's what I would do if I were in your situation, so you can probably see where my problems arise.

intransitivelie OP ,
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

@dillyd
I have been known to make stupid decisions because my executive function is entirely sourced from outside chemicals, but I'd probably get someone to change them twice a year because I'm also a skinflint.

intransitivelie , to random
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

The climax of The Empire Strikes Back in the center of Cloud City. In the first panel, Darth Vader says, "No. I am jockin' Mike D to my dismay." In the second, Luke Skywalker says, "No. No. That's not true. That's impossible!" In the third, Vader says, "Search your feelings. You know it to be true." In the last panel, Luke screams, "No! No!"
ALT
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    intransitivelie , to random
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    If property damage is violence, oil spills are mass violence and should be prosecuted as such. Flint, Michigan is violence. Wrongfully evicting homeowners is violence. Failing to maintain our infrastructure until it collapses is violence. Destroying homeless encampments is violence. Strip mining is violence.

    But they're not. After all, if they were, we'd have to do something about it. Since we're not a violent people.

    intransitivelie , to random
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    Authors of whose books I've read five, huh. Well this should be embarrassing.

    Brian Jacques
    Timothy Zahn
    Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
    C.S. Lewis
    Harry Harrison
    Daniel Pinkwater
    Dave Barry
    Robert Benchley
    Robert Asprin
    Robert Jordan
    China Miéville
    Neal Stephenson
    Martha Wells
    Tom (shudder) Clancy

    If plays count, I've read Shakespeare and Beckett as literature.

    I'm probably forgetting one or two because I have a terrible memory.

    intransitivelie , to random
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    Damn it, it's cicada summer and I keep forgetting and being reminded anew. Fucking cicadas.

    StillIRise1963 , to random
    @StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

    On its face, what fucking sense does ticketing people who can’t afford a home make.🙄

    intransitivelie ,
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    @StillIRise1963
    They can't legally make homeless people do slave labor. But if they can fine homeless people, they can put many of them in jail for non-payment of fines, which in turn makes enslaving them legal. Jail for non-payment of fines is indefinite, legal slavery.

    intransitivelie , to random
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    Every breath you take
    And every move you make
    Every bond you break
    Every step you take
    I'll be jockin' Mike D to my dismay

    FediTips , to random
    @FediTips@social.growyourown.services avatar

    The third party Android app Fedilab (which lets you use Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, Friendica etc) is now free on Google Play, and continues to be free on F-Droid too. If you haven't tried it yet, this might be a good time:

    ➡️ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.fedilab.android

    ➡️ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/fr.gouv.etalab.mastodon

    (It was previously paid on Google Play and free on F-Droid.)

    There's a review of the app on the fedi.tips website:

    ➡️ https://fedi.tips/fedilab-for-android

    intransitivelie ,
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    @FediTips
    One other helpful tip which isn't made obvious by the interface: a lot of buttons can do additional things if you long-press on them. For instance, if you want to boost a post from a different account than the one you're currently using, you can long-press on the boost button and pick the account from which you want to boost.

    intransitivelie , to random
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    When all the Antarctic ice melts, do you think the old ones who slumber deep beneath it will be pissed or grateful?

    intransitivelie OP ,
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    @sollat
    Oh yeah, probably. But then, when aren't they hungry?

    intransitivelie , to random
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    I genuinely didn't know there had been an earthquake until I read about it later.

    intransitivelie , to random
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    The fact that we never got a movie or TV show where Prince played a vampire is a sure sign that we're in the bad timeline. I don't even particularly like Prince (sorry Prince fans, it's me, not him), but that he didn't have even a cameo as a vampire in the Blade cinematic universe or something... it's wrong, is what it is. Maybe he wouldn't have done it for religious reasons, but they could have asked.

    intransitivelie , to random
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    Just a friendly reminder to the atheists that no, Easter is not actually a pagan holiday named after an obscure goddess who may or may not have actually ever existed. Yes, Easter falls around dates which were traditionally fertility celebrations, and yes, the rabbits and eggs probably go back to those traditions at least in part, but no one invented Easter to co-opt an existing German holiday. Easter is tied to Passover. Take it up with Judaism.

    intransitivelie OP ,
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    @sollat
    I only care about chocolate too.

    dillyd , to random
    @dillyd@allies.social avatar

    [Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    intransitivelie ,
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    @dillyd
    I may have. I certainly would recommend it if given the opportunity. I'm glad you're enjoying it! 🙂 Her other books are very good as well, if you find yourself looking to read another history book at any point.

    intransitivelie , to random
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    There are basically three kinds of mongers: war, cheese, and whore. Nobody mongers iron anymore. The heyday of mongery is past.

    intransitivelie , to random
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    On the one hand, chatbots suck, but on the other, when people who don't know what they're doing implement them, they can range from unintentionally hilarious to criminally negligent and I'm here for sticking it to the man.

    masterdon1312 , to random
    @masterdon1312@mastodon.social avatar

    : you can’t say you support without supporting people

    intransitivelie ,
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    @masterdon1312 @melissabeartrix
    Including non-binary people who don't identify as trans.

    intransitivelie , to random
    @intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

    Damn, pi Day always reminds me that I missed February 71st and e Day again this year. I guess I'll have to wait for i Day. That's when the real party starts.

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