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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • This felt life changing at first. I don’t really know why. Maybe it was just the bulkier plug head that makes it feel more durable and the straight head style is more agreeable with today’s device/pocket arrangements.

    However, it means I can’t charge and listen to my phone at the same time. This is more of a flaw of the phone design than headphone design and only really comes up during 2h+ phone calls. I suppose my laptop is also older, which is why it only has one C port. I can get a splitter, though it’s harder to find dual-c than c+3.5mm. I can’t plug it into non-C devices, since there are still 3.5mm jacks out there such as on planes and older phones (I carry my older phone as a dedicated movie/music device on said planes/travels). I carry Bluetooth headphones as well, but the latency is unbearable for movies. Probably a headphone issue more than a sole BT issue.

    In summary of all my gripes, just review your devices for intended use. I still carry them when I travel and still use them for longer calls. It beats charge anxiety in most situations.



  • There is no significant loss in total skill with each newer generation. The paradigm is constantly shifting. Humans have always adapted and learned to manage whatever is readily available to them and how to maintain it. Your parents complain you don’t know their vintage skills. You complain they aren’t learning new skills. You complain younger people don’t know your “necessary” (vintage) skills.

    “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise” - some guy in 1907 summarizing Greek beliefs.

    The generation that can navigate whatever it is kids navigate (flipper zero?) can’t modify an OS. The generation that can modify an OS probably can’t tune a carburetor. The generation that can tune a carburetor probably can’t change a horse shoe. Your skills are based on what you have to do every day. As technology removes the need to manage those things, the skill is lost and new skills replace it.








  • Teams doesn’t even support task assignment, tasks are handled in Ms Planner which is an entirely different product that just happens to be visible inside of Teams if you want

    Do you really not see how Ms has pushed Teams to be a fucking awful imaginary OS box? They’re just tasks (Planner in a trench coat), it’s just a calendar (ripped from outlook), they’re just files (the worst way to access SharePoint), it’s just one drive (in the worst interface), they’re just notifications (triplicates of what outlook and windows already told me).

    touch? Mac? Airpods? What the fuck are you doing? You aren’t doing real business if you’re using an ipad

    Oh, honey. Not every job is performed by being fisted with code and network protocol. Businesses run on inappropriate excel databases and you know it. You know the number of local programs is dwindling by the second as each software dev moves to “access from anywhere” and “remove the burden of server management” as they slide down an icy hill towards putting everything in a cloud based Web interface. Either that, or you’re middle management that thinks you need asses in visible chairs to get work done.


  • Yes, the all in one. Beautiful.

    “I’m in the files tab and I’m 6 folders down, halfway through reviewing a word doc. I’m still in the teams app because downloading a file saves it somewhere between purgatory and duat, so this is easier” ping “Oh, a message. Hold my spot in the file and folders while I check that” Teams: actually, you could go fuck yourself.

    I went months without noticing it, but you can open the Teams library in the web because it’s just a SharePoint folder in a trench coat. Bookmarked immediately.





  • Native English speaker, but I’ve visited India, so I have a different, related topic. Of course, there’s two caveats: I have an outsider’s perspective and the British have a very lengthy history with the region. In major cities, spoken English seems as popular as Hindi. In Delhi, signs seemed to be entirely in English, although maybe I just didn’t notice the Devanagari script as much because it’s incredibly foreign to me. Kolkata had less spoken English, but still more English signs than Hindi or Bengal (I can’t tell the difference). Traveling to rural West Bengal, the advertisements have skewed towards Bengali (I believe) and road signs are dual language, but but I don’t think I’ve seen a single business sign that didn’t have English as the primary text.

    I thought it was silly that English and Chinese became the main languages in Firefly (which, for the show, was English with Chinese words thrown in). Now I realize, not only is that possible, but it’s already here. English is the global standard for air traffic control and imperialism has pushed language influence far and wide. International business has made English effectively a requirement for competitiveness. I was just oblivious as an English-only speaker at the time. I’ve wondered if Hindi would now be a more accurate 2nd language for the Firefly future, but I’m not convinced because of how prevalent English is there, like it might have already reduced the power of Hindi on the global scale. Plus, there’s so many dialects there, Hindi is the most common but it doesn’t have a majority


  • Surely, this question is targeted at USA/North Americans. The average commute is beyond biking distance. The average suburb is sprawled beyond biking convenience. So, exactly to your point, people reliant upon cars largely don’t see the benefit potential of bike lanes. You can point to tight older cities like NYC or Chicago, but, surprise, the cars in the city traffic aren’t fromthe city. They drove in form the surrounding neighborhoods to their jobs.

    I biked for 2 years when I happened to get a career job in the town I lived. It made sense because I could cut through a park and skip the traffic light bottleneck. The 2nd closest career job I’ve ever had was 17 miles. The furthest was 65 miles.


  • Because every iteration of bike improvements has been fucked up. Isolated bike lanes that are painted where they can fit, but don’t properly connect anything. Bike lanes that are squeezed into part of a wider car lane. Designated shared bike/car lanes on 35mph roads that make cyclists a rolling obstruction to smooth traffic flow. Bike lanes squeezed between a travel lane and a parallel parking lane, causing exchange chaos, and double obstructions when city drivers double park in the bike lane. Widened shared pedestrian paths where cyclists are to pedestrians what cars are to bikes. Cyclists that think the bike lane isn’t for them. Cyclists going the wrong way. Cyclists taking their “right of way” sporadically, expecting drivers to read their minds. Bike lanes that barely overlap with my usual travel needs. Bike lanes in areas too sparse to be utilized for anything other than exercise.

    I am a car lover. I am a motorcycle lover. I am a bicycle lover. I am a walking lover. I am a train lover. I am a bus lover. I use all modes of travels as they fit my needs and wants - how far, what logistics, what weather, what cargo, what fuel cost, what purpose.


  • My take is to review prior abandonment. Very few people in your life will have a relationship that’s both strong and life-long. (As a very significant footnote, I am not going to justify abondonment by close family or disrespectful/exclusionary acts by friends, only more “natural” separations). It’s very easy to lose people as you change homes, schools, jobs, and hobbies. For a long time, I felt that was all due to them being fair-weathered and abondoning me, you could say. Maybe I wasn’t great, either. But, as circles have come and gone, I’ve learned to stop feeling sad for the friends I’ve lost and instead enjoying both the friends I currently have and the times with friends of the past. That in no way is meant to say the prior friends are thrown away, but rather it is to say live in the moment and cherish the memories.

    I miss my best friend from pre-school, but we no longer live across the street from each other. I miss my best friend from 2nd grade, but we no longer walk to school together. I miss by friend circle from 6th grade, but I no longer go to their church. I miss my friend circle from high school, but I no longer play soccer with them. I miss my friends from college, but we no longer dorm together. I miss my friends from every prior job, but we no longer spend 40 hours a week together. I miss my biking friends, but it’s winter. I miss my cousins, but we’ve moved apart and rehashed who our closest family members are by way of our spouses. I have my current work friends, I have my current hobby friends, but they, too, will likely be inactive parts of my past at some point. Every friend listed here was a friend not just from compatible personalities, but also from shared experiences. For a long time, I mourned their absence and felt everything was superficial. But, quite frankly, that’s just not right. I do not regret any of the fun times spent with them. They were friends that day. You might see them again.

    Stop putting asterisks on your acquaintances to degrade their status. Maybe it’s less abondonment and more natural separation.

    This comic chart has stuck with me since I first saw it. I believe it helped me understand this sort of zen mindset. It is by Olivia de Recat, though it appears her original site is down. What stood out to me is that the lines are not defined as “me vs them”. They’re ambiguous. Either line can be the first to depart. Either line can be the first to return. The FWB one shows how a slow departure can trigger the other to simply leave entirely, a pattern likely present in many former relationships of any kind. Neither person is in full control. I’ve pictured many other paths since then.

    Closeness Lines Over time - Olivia de Recat


  • Nearly all road vehicles are front heavy, but FWD has been dominant in the passenger market for 30 years. PIT works fine on FWD, so the drive wheels aren’t important. Static vs dynamic friction is not the primary mechanic. In fact, the drag from the skidding rear tires is imparting greater force to the road than the rolling front tires because the front tires are nowhere near the limit of traction at straight, steady speed. Think about this: isn’t it hard to do a burnout in most cars? And even if you burn some rubber, it may only be one wheel, or it may only be up to 10 or 20, and it probably only happens in 1st gear. Very few cars can spin the wheels in 2nd, so 3rd-6th is, effectively, impossible. There’s plenty of grip left.

    It’s entirely about the timing of the impact and placement of the steer wheels. A police sedan can PIT an SUV that has more weight on its rear axle than the cruiser’s front. A cruiser can pit a Porsche coupe with a rearward weight distribution. A Porsche can PIT another Porsche, as it’s effectively seen in GT racing. Losing front traction, as happens to the PITing vehicle, is very manageable because the steer wheels can be turned to regain and maintain control directly. Losing traction in the rear wheels becomes an inverted pendulum situation because the rears are not steerable. But, as you can practice by tapping your e-brake, a rear slide is self-recovering unless it’s slid past the tipping point where the vehicle is rotating faster than the sliding rear wheels can drag themselves rearward again. Crossing the tipping point is caused by the PITing car’s momentum. I specify tapping the e-brake because a skid in a PIT spin is not simple - the rear wheels are still spinning and are imparting a directional force. A locked rear wheel is a plain skid opposing the direction of travel. A rolling skid means the total force is pointing somewhere between opposite the directional of travel and opposite the direction of the wheel.

    There’s plenty of failed PIT maneuver videos for taps that are too light (causing the runner to just wiggle), taps that are too brief (runner wiggles), and taps that are too far forward (runner laterally slides but maintains control). It’s tricky to pull off correctly and many cops do it wrong, which is another main reason it’s banned in many places.

    A J-turn is caused by the same physics: imparting a rotational force that overcomes the wheels’ grip, past the tipping point. It doesn’t even start with a slide. By going fast in reverse and turning the wheel, the mass of the car is sent into a powerful rotation because the steer wheels are at the far end of the rotational center. The rear wheels sometimes don’t skid at all at lower speeds. But it still comes down to the same thing: a sideways force causing the “rear” wheels to overtake the “front” wheels