The world is cruel and ugly. There are plenty of justifiable things to be upset and distraught over. I don’t want to hear about those. I want to know what bizarre out of left field takes you have that infuriates you.
I’m still upset about Tenochtitlan falling and being buried. I’m a gringo, I shouldn’t have an opinion about Lake Texcoco being drained centuries ago.
On tinder, I can’t fucking stand seeing pictures of people’s kids. Like, if I’m swiping, and I come across a woman with pictures of her kids? Hell no. Automatic left swipe.
I know that that picture has probably been logged on a dozen servers, it’s been scrapped for AI training, and someone is already falsifying videos with her kid’s face before she gets a first date. And I get she might not know that. But I kinda can’t help feeling like a responsible person would think about these things and try to learn about them.
Also, I’m pissed that it’s happening at all, and people who have no idea it’s happening get caught in the crossfire. Their kids will grow up in a world where generative AI can perfectly replicate them online, where intelligence agencies have cross referenced data on their every movement and formative event from their childhood. And their parents unwittingly made that easier instead of trying to protect them.
That drives me up the wall.
I get a bit frustrated sometimes to see stars and think of the universe burning away it’s entropy without anyone putting it to useful ends, like most of the universe going to waste before anyone can even reach it.
In the context of the universe as a whole, what even is “useful”? Maybe its just here to shine bright for a few trillion years and that’s all it needs to be. Art doesn’t need to be useful.
If human history tells us anything its that we’d somehow suck the beauty out of it all in the name of profit.
I’m not really a nihilist or anything but it seems like almost anything we touch turns to shit. I’m all for colonizing the moon and Mars and making use of the asteroid belt but on bigger scales, maybe its better off to just sit back and enjoy the view?
Imagine all the cool planets that’ll never be observed
Yeah but that’s justifiable (and existential).
without anyone putting it to useful ends
You never know; we might be a car battery.
HBO never finished Carnivale.
I love cars. I also love this planet. Cars are bad for the planet.
How I feel about motorcycles.
Moderation my guy. If everyone had a car they only drive on weekends or as a sport, there wouldn’t be an issue. So cars are not really the problem per se, it’s how we designed our world to revolve around moving in a car.
Sane take.
I’m also very much a “car guy”, but I fucking love that since covid and work-from-home I don’t have to do day-to-day driving anymore. I do less than 20% of the mileage that I used to do.
So yeah don’t get mad at car owners, get mad at return-to-office mandates and such.
I have never felt so seen on the internet!
I love cars and the environment. I really want EVs to be cool / better but we just aren’t there yet.
They still have issues with tire dust, but yeah they’re a lot better.
I mean better at being cars not better for the environment. I want a greener car but I don’t want to have to own a worse car to accomplish that.
If ICE cars were banned for everything but racing/recreation I’d be very happy.
Racing series’ do not need to make their race cars green. They need to make their logistics fleets green. Race cars need to be able to remain loud and dirty. The sights, sounds, and smells of racing combine to create the majesty that is racing.
I look forward to a future of efficient public transit, no new ICEs on the roads and V12s back in F1.
Oddly, the wake-up call that made me realize I needed to step back from cars was at a racetrack. I was standing on pit lane with our race about to start, and was looking up & down pit road. There must have been 1000 gallons of gas all stored in 5 gallon jugs (100+ teams, each with 20-30 gallons, so probably closer to 2500 gallons in hindsight). And it made me realize we were all going to burn it all just for fun.
I do not regret my time racing at all, in fact I still encourage new folks to get out there & actually do it (check out ChampCar & 24 hours of Lemons!). I learned so much, had way too much fun, and made some simply irreplaceable memories. But I also feel it’s an irresponsible use of a limited resource. Still haven’t found a way to balance that equation in my head. For now, I’ve hung up the helmet.
Solar powered cars when?
Didn’t the 2nd gen Prius have a solar roof? It could only power the ac and accessories iirc.
Get an EV. Get a garage charger. Put panels on your roof. The future is now!
It said weirdest. This is common and I see it a lot so not weird at all.
Apparently, concrete blocks are a thing to be mad about
captain_america.gif
It’s alright, I’m gonna breathe in the month of October and eat me some Reesies Peesies
When people say “We cannot do that because of GDPR/insurance”. I do not know, why these two “reasons” trigger me so hard, but: you dismissed an idea within microseconds, because you ever read the GDPR or the insurance conditions? You really know all the court rulings and intricacies around those of the last decades, to know within half a second, that something is not feasible?
Really, those are just magic words which for some reason makes everybody go “yep, that must be true. We can’t do anything anymore, because of insurance or GDPR. That ist how the world works”.
The cancellation of Bosh: Legacy
The foxwq client isn’t free software. It is a great injustice.
How am I supposed to care about a series that takes 4 years between seasons
The only show I ever liked enough for that was Venture Bros, and it was only that bad once.
4 years? What the f do you watch? Three Body Problem?
One Punch Man 😭
Maybe Severance? Was only 3 years between seasons 1 and 2 though.
Stranger things
Bicycle drivetrains keep getting more complex and expensive. A 3x9 drivetrain is beyond adequate, bulletproof, and inexpensive. But NooOoOoOooo, it’s nearly impossible to get a quality bike with 3x9 now, without a full custom, DIY build. Everything has to be 1x11/12, which is expensive, touchy, and very particular, all while still lacking the gear range of 3x9.
It all seriously sticks in my craw.
I don’t know what this all means, but I do know my son blows through bikes like crazy. The chain always, always get fucked up and falls off. Even with a cover, even if it’s a more expensive bike, they don’t last.
I had the same bike all my childhood needing nearly no repairs, yet my kids bike is constantly broken.
The root cause of what you describe is a build or maintenance issue. Properly built, tuned, and maintained bikes don’t drop chains.
Lol The root cause is a 12 year old with ADHD.
I’m sorry, 1x11? I’ve never really shopped for a bike more expensive than like $500 and the idea of getting less gear options for more money is wild to me.
There’s surprisingly a fair bit of overlap on the gear ratios of a 2 or 3x that makes a 1x11 or 12 have a similar range of ratios. However you do have to sacrifice either a bit of top end speed or climbing ability so you see a few more 2x on road bikes. I’ve never found myself wanting more from my 1x mtb drivetrain
Wait, you said a 1x can have a similar range, and then immediately followed up with:
you do have to sacrifice either a bit of top end speed or climbing ability
It is impossible for both statements to be true at the same time.
For mountain biking at least, 1xs are superior due to the narrow-wide chainring, not to mention completely eliminating a derailer and associated controls. I don’t understand how this could possibly be more complicated or expensive than a 3x9, but I’m sure these companies have found a way.
superior due to the narrow-wide chainring
Fully agreed. Narrow-wide rings are absolutely a boon to mountain biking as are derailleur clutches. And 1x is superlative for hard trail riding on that factor alone.
A factor in the issue I take is the proprietary nature of modern bike drivetrains. With older drivetrains, we could mix and match to our hearts’ content. But now, even within a component line, e.g. Deore XT or SRAM X[n], specs such as pull rates can be different even for the same cog count. “These are the only combinations of components we think you should use, and we will do everything we can to block you from customizing.” Shimano is especially egregious about this expensive mess, and they know it, which is why they tried to un-hash things with CUES.
Pretty much everything 3x9 all works together. Road derailleur and cassette with mountain crank and bar-end shifters? Sure! Gear range for days. I sincerely believe this is to sell more bikes. Want to climb hard pack and mixed surface? You need a gravel bike! Want to get groceries? You need a commuter or loaded tourer! Want to go on a fast road ride? You need a road bike!
It used to be really easy to build up a bike that could perform most bicycle functions well. Mixed-surface, loaded, commuter/grocery-getter, randonneuring, snow, rain, club rides… one bike with maybe a wheel change*. Good luck with that now. Gravel bikes are kinda filling that niche now, but the components and frame manufacturers are again trying to fracture that even further. The gravel drivetrain won’t have the range to cover all the use cases without a cassette or crank change.
Moar rant, moar example: my partner works in an LBS. We can literally afford to buy any bicycle we could want. She wants a general-purpose gravel bike, and it’s not even a case of “just spend more money to get these additional features.” Component selection on a pre-built, geometry, wheel selection… all tightly engineered to cover as few use cases as possible. Okay, we’ll build from a naked frame. Oh, the more racy geometry frames lack braze-ons and can’t fit a 50mm tire.
*It makes complete sense to have a full-squish mountain bike for the aggressive off-road stuff, and those bikes are necessarily different. Even for that case, I can hang with the LBS trail/flow rides on my do-almost-everything bike. My current do-everything took me more than six months to source compatible parts and troubleshoot. This used to be a matter of just pulling the trigger on the parts I wanted.
Halleluja! I just want my Deore XT 3x9 back.
I’m still mad at Yahoo for killing xFire with a frivolous lawsuit.
xFire was better 20 years ago than Discord is today. We had a real gem stolen from us.
You sound like me, except for me it’s Google Plus.
Doctor Who losing Ncuti Gatwa and facing an uncertain production future.
wasnt he kinda of a weak link, i think people are also upset what they did to the previous doctor, whittaker.
IMO Ncuti did a great job with what he was given, but the writing was pretty hit and miss
There are so many people who are fundamentally wrong about what the Fermi paradox means, and proceed to present their shower thoughts about “what if everyone just, like, decides not to colonize the universe” as if they were profound or novel insights.
Explain then
No. I get enough of this in the subreddits and communities where it comes up naturally, I’m not going to get into a debate about it here in a thread where the subject is specifically how annoying it is to debate this stuff.
I’m not looking to debate. I just don’t know what you are talking about
Well, alright, but I’m not going to argue about any of this.
The Fermi paradox basically says “based on what we think we know about how the universe works, we should be seeing obvious signs of alien intelligence in it. But we don’t, so we’re wrong about something we think we know.” The problem is that we don’t know what we’re wrong about.
It is common in various science fiction and space related subreddits for people to confidently sweep in and declare that obviously the reason that aliens aren’t around is <insert some vague shower thought here>. As if all the thousands of researchers working on these concepts were all just a bunch of idiots who hadn’t thought of whatever they’d thought of.
A common class of these sorts of shower thoughts involve assuming that every single alien species and culture, throughout all of time and space, conform to some particular notion they have of how aliens should think. Some sort of “prime directive” or Nirvana-seeking conscious refusal to go out into the cosmos to colonize new solar systems, or conversely some kind of pessimistic self-destruction that everyone dives into without exception. I try to explain why these sorts of explanations don’t work well, I question their basis for making these assumptions, and I usually get some form of “oh, so you’re saying you know how all aliens are going to think and behave?” Shot back at me. Which, of course, is exactly the opposite of what I’m saying.
Another common theme is the “nothing will ever be possible in the future unless we’ve already done it now and have an economically practical example” approach, usually to try to argue that space travel or colonization is impossible. The other day I had someone who ultimately argued that it was impossible because steel would evaporate over time in a vacuum, so building spacecraft that lasted longer than a few centuries couldn’t be done. I pointed out the examples of billion-year-old metallic meteorites and he dismissed them because “meteors don’t need structural stability.”
I try to address these arguments rationally, with math and references to actual research, but end up butting into a position of pure faith. It’s incredibly frustrating. As befits the topic.
Thank you!
k
That was an absolutely fascinating rabbit whole. Thank you so much for explaining!!!
You’re welcome. I’m still dreading that someone will respond with a “but what about…” though. This is a debate that haunts me in so many other communities, I want to think I can escape it at least a little while. :)
I got so frustrated at one point that I had an AI make a song about it.
Respect
Invasive species.
My region is absolutely infested with Siberian Elm and Tree Of Heaven (A.K.A., the “semen tree”). You cannot cut them down, because they will resprout like a hydra from the stump. You cannot dig them out, because the smallest root left behind can and will resprout wherever it is, leading to a many-year game of whack-a-mole.
I have near-daily fantasies of going around with a powerful backpack sprayer filled with glyphosate (Round-Up) and an application wand that can extend from 1m to 10m, and hitting everything just as they’re sending nutrients to the roots for winter.
The problem is, Glyphosate is highly restricted to purchase and own in Canada unless you have both the appropriate class of Pesticide Applicator’s License (an agricultural variant, for example) as well as the venue to use it in (own or manage an orchard, for example). Thankfully my family owns an orchard, and I am starting the process for the former.
But still. It’s an absolutely bizarre thing to be obsessing over and I. Just. Cannot. Help. Myself. Every time I drive and see clumps of those disgusting trees, I start to uncontrollably strategize how I could hit them with glyphosate in late September.
We have Autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) here.
Ive been battling it for years. I mentioned bittersweet in my comment down thread, but I’ve won my battle with bittersweet. I pluck it everyyear and keep it at bay. I have not won with this fast growing (so fast) shrub tree. You cut it down, it grows back triple, relentlessly. It’s everywhere. I hate it so much. If it could just chill and be a bush, it would be fine, but no, ive a 40 foot tree bush in the back that was cut to stub 5 years ago. 40 feet tall, in five years. I hate chemicals, but when I get to the day I can afford to haul away 40 ft of tree bush brush, I will definitely be spraying this shit this time around. Fuck invasives. I go down the road and the forest edges are just bittersweet and autumn olive, also called japanese silverleaf. It’s ugly.
blue gum here, cali doesnt want to get rid of this invasive species, because its “iconic” its a huge fire hazard, and they are designed to burn due to massive amount of oils they produce in thier native environment of australia. they also grow very fast compared to montery pine and cypress. Also thier leaves and bark drop very frequently and that is also a fire hazard because of the oils, and they have allelopathic affects near the trees.
I hate the spotted lanternflies! When they’re small and black and white they hop and scare me! When they’re a bit bigger and red they’re more scary! Then they get WINGS. Eurgh.
We also have the tree of life around which is what they enjoy munching on. I’d like both gone!
I found out all the ladybugs here are the invasive ones. And if I want to buy ladybugs for pest control, I can only buy the invasive ones. Annoying.
We do at least still have some native pollinators and other bugs.
Lanternflies are so pretty! But there are so many of them again this year.
One of the hallmarks of a destabilizing and imminently pre-collapse ecosystem is when certain fast lived species like insects have sudden surges or collapses in population.
And I’m talking about short-lived species that typically have yearly cycles. Something that can respond very quickly to sudden surges or absences in food or environmental niches, but which does not normally see sudden population fluctuations in a healthy ecosystem.
insects, and plants.
also people mistaken the asian lady beetle for native ones, and those are also invasive and very noxious.
Russian thistle. These asshole things pop up all over the yard and driveway and I go around and pull them out of the ground with welding gloves. Sometimes I get stabbed even through welding gloves. I can completely understand why someone would blast a cancer causing chemical across their whole yard. I’ve been experimenting with everything else but I’m too worried about my dog to do roundup.
