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Know your nazi
  • This is so goddamn exhausting.

    Thirty years ago I was reading poorly photostatted (sic) fliers at the local record shop explaining the difference between Nazis with red shoelaces and Nazis with yellow shoelaces. It was exhausting then, too. They're all basic bitch Nazis. Treat them the same way you would treat a potentially harmful arthropod, like a scorpion. You don't have to be a fucking entomologist to understand this shit.

    Shun the Nazi. Leave it alone. Don't ask for help from Nazis.

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    What's up with financial sites refusing to delete your account?
  • Presumably it's the same reason that I couldn't find a way to close my bank account (in person, at the fucking bank) in 1998. And presumably it's the same reason that my elderly parents can't get their Medicare supplemental insurance agent to close out their account prior to their move to another state, where that insurance won't be accepted.

    You're a customer. They love you. Reasons.

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    If there was any object in your life that was cursed, what would it be?
  • Easy. It's a dried and shellacked squid that has been posed in an artful, somehow bipedal and menacing position. I call it the creeping horror and keep it in an old wooden box.

    Not really my taste, but it was a gift.

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    every generation loves it's brainrot
  • Oh no. I feel that. Back when ipods were a thing, I liked to call it my husband's "tiny radio." Particularly on planes, with lots of captive listeners.

    But I was mainly torturing him.

    It's OK - he does similar shit to me. 30 years and counting....

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    Celebrities will never adopt the Fediverse until usernames are centralized.
  • I didn't really expect anyone to know that, which was sort of the joke. He was very famous in his time, but by now it's a bit of a deep cut.

    Artie Shaw was a clarinetist who ran a jazz band. In addition to that, he was also quite the weirdo. Womanizer, liked math a lot (like more than is natural), was an expert marksman who was nationally ranked in that sort of thing, and really into fly fishing. Also, currently, very dead. And that's good because otherwise he'd be 114.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artie_Shaw

    here's a sample of his work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_v3GY3ZqdM

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    not sure if hes from haiti tho
  • The actor cat who played Lucky was pretty chill, but ALF was pretty insistent upon telling the family that he wanted to indulge in some tasty cat recipes. It didn't feel violent or real. Just silly. I haven't seen the show since 1989, but that screenshot seems dead on balls accurate.

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    What's a long-standing mystery that still preoccupies you?
  • I collect ancient coins and this explanation doesn't fly for me. There's a certain amount of "artisanal-ness" in the production of ancient coins - which were all handmade. Like, I'm looking at a tray of coins right now and there's no way a simple go/no-go tool would be helpful. Also, for this purpose a simple handheld counterweight balance would be more accurate and portable. The existence of these simple balances, along with reference weights for various denominations, is well documented.

    Moreover - if you're an ancient merchant, what is more important? The weight of the silver or the ability for it to pass for a denarius issued by Rome? Particularly for international trade, it seems to have been the former. Bankers' cuts and countermarks are commonly seen on coins, and seem to have been an early form of foreign exchange. (eg - I'm travelling from Athens to Ephesus with a stock of my local currency. If I pass it to a local banker in Ephesus, they can evaluate it, determine the local exchange in terms of silver, and give it a locally recognized countermark to assure their own merchants that they're getting the equivalent local value).

    That being now off my chest, I've got no great answers for the dodecahedrons. I strongly suspect that it was a nifty thing that metal workers made as a master's thesis.

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    Are there any cartoons you watched as kid and watched back as an adult and how does it hold up
  • Thundercats! Not great, for sure, but I remember that the same weaknesses were still there in the 80s

    Snarf was always insufferable. My idiot brother and I hated Snarf. Why was he not humanoid like the other Thundercats? Why was he a ripoff of Lost-In-Space's Doctor Smith? Why did he have weird crocodilian qualities? "snarf snarf"

    Liono was just one dimensionally dumb. Kit and Kat were clearly there for the littler kids to relate to.

    Tigra and Panthro were solid dudes. Cheetara and Pumyra were the closest thing to making me question my sexuality at a tender age. Mumm-ra was great - he had a nice pyramid and flying wrappers. Mumm-ra's henchmen have probably aged the worst.

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    Have you ever tasted your pet's food?
  • My brother ate a Snausage for the low low price of one US dollar. There was a whole negotiation process beforehand (Snausage, milk bone, kennel ration biscuit and dog chow were all on the table). He had regrets. I'll admit that I drove a hard bargain, but he was old enough to know better.

    For myself? No. Some of my cats' shredded chicken in "gravy" looks and smells OK. Still no.

    The veterinary sales rep I used to work with said, "their taste buds are very different from ours." I'll trust him

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    RFK Jr. Was My Drug Dealer | Kennedy’s endorsement of Donald Trump raises an awkward question.
  • To add on. Some of the trust fund babies I knew in college shoplifted Wet 'n' Wild cosmetics. For context, these were lipsticks and nail polishes that cost $1 each. It wasn't so much the financial aspect of it as it was the allure of petty illegality. I guess?

    Oh - and if RFK was whining about "crystals growing" inside that straw, he was smoking that cocaine.

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    Am I the only one that thinks we should have dedicated buttons for copy/paste on keyboards?
  • I like the mnemonics of c (copy), v (get in there), x (snip-snip), and z (bad idea) as much as I like the similar ones for bold and italics.

    text you've already typed and change the format. Control (shift) + F3 used to do that in MS word. Highlight your text and Toggle Through The POSSIBILITIES.

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    a brief history of self regulation
  • I'm not sure this is true. Current US federal food and drug law has been in effect since the 1970s (for specifics, I'm thinking 21 CFR 211, which was codified 1979-ish) and it hasn't really been repealed so much as it was never very explicit and rarely enforced, in part because of the difficulty of enforcing something so vague.

    Example: The law clearly says, "you must have a written procedure in place to prevent contamination," But it leaves it up to the manufacturer to determine what that procedure should be. In contrast, some of the EU legislation (EUDRALEX) is much more prescriptive: "you must do X, Y, and Z to prevent contamination in a multi-purpose facility."

    What little legislation was in place as US law before 21 CFR 211 was worse.

    It's also worth noting that much of the US's regulation via agencies like the FDA is actually released as "guidance for industry." Or to paraphrase, "don't be a freaking idiot about things, but we can't legally prosecute you for it if you don't." That's a big loophole.

    Consider the legal fiasco that was the trial of the owners and "quality manager" of that peanut company that caused multiple salmonella deaths about 10-15 years ago. Their QA manager's legal defense was literally: I'm not qualified to do my job and should never been hired. 21 CFR says that "employees should be qualified to perform their jobs." What does that mean? Should she have a degree in biology or chemistry? A degree in early childhood learning and k-12 education? On the job training on the day to day of the peanut factory and what to do if you have in infestation of birds? Beyond that, who is in charge of making sure she's qualified? The regulations are unclear, and in the system that's been in place for 40 years, all of those questions will be hammered out in the randomness of court and in the worst way possible. Like so.

    https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2020/02/ill-fated-quality-control-officer-for-peanut-corp-of-america-freed-from-federal-custody/#google_vignette

    I'm sorry - I could write a whole freaking book about this.

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    National Park Service Will Cite Drivers Of AWD Cars For Driving On 4WD-Only Trails
  • Honest question from someone who has never owned either, but who once went camping with someone with an AWD Subaru and who, in turn, managed to get us stuck as fuck. Isn't the difference not so much the drive as it is the clearance of the vehicle? The Subaru was a glorified station wagon and just wasn't built to go through rugged terrain, regardless of how the wheels worked.

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