They’re admitting how dull they are.

That’s an argument to be made, but I don’t believe that is true at all. Sending one car to check on the safety/welfare of one active threat seems an entirely reasonable balance of risk. An unverified active threat is not at all the same as a confirmed active threat. That should be obvious simply by the existence of “swatting” as a common term and act these days.

It is not the duty of police to protect people from eminent harm, they have argued this themselves in court. Their job is strictly punitive, again an argument they have made in court many times. They only pretend to “protect and serve” when it suits their agenda of justification for their over inflated budgets. This isn’t a public safety issue. It’s a class warfare issue.

It wasn’t supposed to “go” anywhere. It’s a Tarantino film, so it’s really more a meta movie about movies than most. The plot doesn’t really matter. It’s a movie about a particular time in Hollywood shot in the style of movie and TV Westerns that were very big in Hollywood, until they weren’t, just like the protagonist and his stunt double. The whole film is shot like a Western. The title is a play on the title of another popular western. Like most Westerns, and indeed most of the west (the desolate desert cliche), on it’s surface it’s a “whole lot of nothing”. The heart of most Westerns aren’t really about the plot; it’s the grit, the anti-heros, the everyday villains, the scenery, etc.

This new movie sounds interesting, but only because I liked the character of Cliff. This doesn’t seem like a movie suited to a sequel without being boring. Cliff in a C3PO costume, a Spy movie, or some other idom feels like it would just cheapen the whole thing.

The issue isn’t about what it can and can’t do, it’s that it is CONSTANTLY attempting to step in and “fix” my spreadsheet in bizarrely inane ways. Why won’t it give me the “shut up and stay the fuck out of my way” option? There is no option to remove or silence copilot. That damn thing follows my cursor like a ring wraith after Frodo. It has already fucked up more than one of my spreadsheets without asking or being asked. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I might not have caught the absolutely bat shit insane edits it was making to simple and correct functions I’d already entered. No, copilot you don’t know what I’m doing. Clippy was less intrusive.

Tasker can still automate almost all of this for you.

I setup some tasker automations so that I can leave my phone entirely in my pocket. When my phone connects to my car Bluetooth it: turns up media volume, sets the phone to “do not disturb”, opens and starts playing the last music player I was using (podcast, Spotify, Plexamp, or your media player of choice. Notably mine never switches to things that play video by default), initiates lockdown on my phone in case of fascists, etc. If I want to navigate somewhere or choose something different to listen to, that is something I start before I start the car. I get all my navigation cues via voice guidance, but the quality of that guidance can suffer from vagueness in general and confusion specifically in the midst of construction. I used to have it automatically read text messages aloud, but between reaction emojis, photos, gifs, and links that became super annoying. You can also setup an auto-reply to incoming texts that just say, “I’m driving and I’ll get back to you later.” That turned out to be annoying to, so I just silence them all. When my phone disconnects from my car Bluetooth, tasker sets everything back to the way it was before with the exception of lockdown mode.

Using voice commands kind of requires relaxing your privacy requirements, so I left those options out of this discussion.

Don’t worry. Time is a flat circle. What is old, is new again. Smart glasses will get smaller and more discreet packages and the kids will forget the original chunky look that meant “potential invasion of privacy”. I like what I like and I’m content to remain true to that until the merry-go-round of fashion comes back around again. Sometimes I may hop on a new trend and take the ride a bit, but it’s always my choice. Nostalgia is often used as a derogatory term by trendy/edgy people to feel superior about picking some style that is new to them. That fashion is almost always someone else’s “nostalgia”. Fashion is all just picking and choosing which spot on the nostalgia merry-go-round feels right for us in this moment.

He’s blinding it by putting a bag over its head, but the bag is strangely not illustrated. Ostriches calm significantly once they can’t see. The meme of an ostrich sticking their head in the sand has some basis in reality, especially considering they love building their nests in sandy areas.

I think the guy in the front is pantomiming putting a bag over its head, but the bag itself is missing from the illustration.

From the article:

The choice is a striking departure from the unwritten Hollywood rule of characters in historical epics employing British accents — from The Ten Commandments to Ben-Hur to Gladiator to HBO’s Rome. Obviously, The Odyssey characters speaking the various dialects of Homeric Greek, Attic and Hellenistic Koine wouldn’t make for a very accessible film. But the modern British accent is traditionally considered universally pleasing and “just foreign enough” to convey a timeless quality (even though it’s only existed in its current form for 250 years or so).

The trope is so consistent and familiar that even fantasy shows set in other worlds, like Game of Thrones, use British accents. In perhaps the most amusing example of Brit bias, the English accent was used in HBO’s 1980s-set Chernobyl rather than subjecting viewers to five hours of Russian accents (the limited series’ director, Johan Renck, rather bluntly explained, “[The Russian] accent on film is tremendously stupid”).

It’s never to late to relearn a suboptimal skill you thought you knew. I believe I found this site several decades after being taught the standard shoe lace knot and a child. That one ALWAYS needed a second knot to keep my laces tied. Now I tie either the two loop knot “bunny ears” or Ian’s Secure Shoelace knot. Both are balanced so the knots always stays tied and both can be pulled apart and undone with a simple tug at both free ends of the shoelace. Haven’t tied my laces the way my parents taught me ever since.

I did that, but on the ride to school.

I had no idea that the Creed and the Mung bean scene from The Office was a literary reference, of which this painting is an illustration, to Lord Dunsay’s Lord of Death. Mind fucking blown.

!

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Hmm…just a box.

FTFY: I have pan in both my legs.

Odd design choice. My oven turns the light on when the door is opened (in addition to a manual option). Maybe somebody “repaired” your oven at some point and replaced the door switch for the light with the wrong type? I had to be aware of this when I replaced a similar switch connected to a relay that turned a light on in a closet when you opened the door. I don’t remember the specific jargon at the moment, but it boiled down to whether or not the switch was open or closed by the action of depressing the switch. I think the language might have been something like normally open or normally closed.

In order to keep printers working properly they require regular blood sacrifices, tears are also acceptable. Most printers get these by accident as people clear paper jams, refill ink or toner cartridges, etc. Some printers clearly behave and perform better long term than others. More complexity (colors, 2 sided printing, large format, etc.) usually correlates to a larger thirst for blood/stress/anxiety. Remember Colin Robinson, the psychic vampire from “What We Do in the Shadows”? I’m pretty sure his spirit animal would be a color inkjet printer/scanner combo from late 90’s.

That’s just a taxi company with extra steps, extra wage theft, and fewer worker protections.

More like by design for an LTS release.

Does your Dubai chocolate hate have to do with the arguments made in this opinion article, which basically boils down to the popularity of foods and culture being exploited as propaganda, obscuring atrocities committed by authoritarian regimes? If so, that was not at all clear from your post. (I’m still unclear what the ethnicity of the chef has to do with anything.) Any cultural artifact or pastiche is free game for the propaganda machines of the powerful and elite. But those same associations are a double edged sword, hanging a lantern on the same atrocities the regime wishes to obscure. In the end, I feel it is more productive to embrace the fad, eat the chocolate (sourced as ethically as possible), and exploit the popularity as an opportunity to illuminate rather than add to the hate.

Dubai chocolate is really one ethically questionable imperialist exploitation food wrapped around another. The metaphor is delicious. So is the chocolate. Let’s eat and discuss instead of hating it.

I hate hate. Retail is hell. That was a great episode. Archer is the best captain. I actually grew to like the theme song a bit. I’m out. Mic drop.

Poetry@lemmy.world