Ha! I have one of these sitting next to me on my desk. It’s multi-function, as it works great for reaching up and opening and closing my curtains too.
Ha! I have one of these sitting next to me on my desk. It’s multi-function, as it works great for reaching up and opening and closing my curtains too.
I know at least one in our town that’s turned into a cannabis dispensary. Seems to me a smart business man would figure out how to combine the two…
I went through the US Navy’s damage control and fire-fighting training back in '81 and we trained with their oxygen breathing apparatus (OBA). I remember we’d have to pull a pin like in a grenade to light them off, and when we were done we’d have to release the canister into a barrel of water because they were like super-hazardous…
I’m one of the parents in this arrangement and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We raised three kids, a son and two daughters. None of us are rich by any means, but we’re all currently self-sufficient. The one’s that live here don’t do it out of need, but because they’d be crazy not to. We own a decent-sized ranch style house, plenty of room for two couples, on 2.6 acres with a largish pool, and it’s conveniently located to everything one wants to be convenient to. At this stage in our lives, if it were just my wife and I here we’d go crazy. This place has been the central family gathering spot for our local extended family for decades now. Pretty much every month at least one big gathering is happening here. Anywho… We’ve paid it off and deeded it to a trust, with the three kids being successor trustees. Once we’re gone, the property transfers automatically. They can live here forever, or they can sell it and split the proceeds three ways, but I seriously doubt they’ll ever do that. Our oldest lives nearby quite affordably with his girlfriend (both child-free by choice), and our middle daughter and her husband own their own place with our two grand-daughters just outside of town. Our youngest daughter and her husband (no kids yet) live here with us. This son-in-law races street-stocks on dirt and was able to build a big 30’ x 60’ shop in the back, so this place is like heaven to him. He’s 28 going on 12 and has a pretty good job, so he gets to buy whatever toys he wants, and with the investment of his shop into the property, he’s actually got some skin in the game. They are both hugely helpful, and it’s a great arrangement for all of us. We’re currently kicking around some ideas for my son and his girlfriend to move back onto the property, but into their own space…
you wanna make more christians? Then feed all those poor kids and tell them it’s literally by the grace of jesus that they’re being fed. The prayer they want in schools will naturally follow. It isn’t just men who’s hearts can be reached via their stomachs…
you’ll get no argument from me… we recently replaced both of our fridges with two identical Whirlpools. They’re nice and roomy inside, but you’re definitely correct about the inconvenience of having to open both doors most of the time. I picked up on that pretty much right off. It’s also taken me a bit to get used to the bottom freezer drawer design.
am I the only one who likes to fantasize about doing something like this? I was 60 years old before I discovered stealth camping was so popular on youtube…
yeah it’s a holdover from the early days of movies and vaudeville… think Abbot & Costello, Laurel & Hardy, Spanky and Alfalfa, the list goes on and on…
We have friends who had an African Grey, and that bird had an insane range of sounds and phrases, etc that she would mimic. Not just repeating words and phrases but impersonating the voice of whomever would say it to her. Like the AOL “You’ve got mail” voice when she’d hear the modem sounds. If we were smoking weed, the bird was having a coughing fit and dinging a pipe on an ashtray. If we were laughing and talking, the bird was over there laughing it’s ass off too. From calling the dogs, to having one-sided phone conversations, to setting off a car alarm whenever anyone would leave, her repertoire was seemingly endless. And then there was the smoke alarm. She liked to pull that one out if she wanted attention, and it would split your eardrums…
I’m thinking the manufacturer doesn’t understand how cats prefer to lay on them.
or in other words…
“fake it 'til you make it”
Nah… he ain’t special. His audience now… they are some kind of special. I live deep in the bible belt and have to listen to them talk and hear their opinions way more than I care to. Sometimes I just want to scream insults and call them all a bunch of suckers. What gets me the most is it’s not just 10% of their incomes, it’s also full access to their children.
One day a couple of years ago, we had some meatloaf and some baked mac&cheese leftovers that my wife had made. The next day I got a loaf of homemade sourdough from the farmers market that pops up every Saturday. I sliced off about a half-inch thick slice of the meatloaf and the baked mac&cheese with that fresh sourdough and grilled a sandwich that I really hope to be able to replicate at least once more before I die…
sitting under Schrödingers window…
it seems to me, and I could be wrong, that they don’t accent syllables the same way, if at all. Years ago I had a database teacher in community college who was from India and it took me a couple of classes to tune in to her, but after that it wasn’t hard to follow her at all. I’m often in Zoom meetings with a software engineer who immigrated from Vietnam and he was a bit of a challenge to understand at first, too.
Oh yeah… and my cancer doc is from Sri Lanka. That was doubly fun. His heavy accent pronouncing four-dollar medical terms took some serious getting used to. Listening to him dictate into his little recorder for the transcriptionists at the end of our visits is an added treat I always enjoy…
Sure, AI can whip up fantastical imagery and low-effort dialog — but if audiences call BS, the blowback can be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I see AI generated bullshit on youtube all the time these days. To the point where I can tell by the thumbnail before I even watch it. I’ve gotten in the habit of checking out new-to-me channels in a private window first, before deciding whether I want to subscribe or even keep watching. The instant I detect any AI… either in the voice or the nonsensical writing, I’m outa there. I do e-learning multimedia for a living, and we use a lot of stock images, and those sites are being loaded up with AI generated garbage. It’s getting harder to find stuff that isn’t AI, and using it to generate your own is a total crapshoot as far as results go…
My favorite channel would have to be Destination Adventure with Dustin Porter. Why this guy doesn’t have 10,000,000 subscribers is beyond me. Not only does he go to some amazing places, but he’s a really gifted videographer. Everything about them is top-notch, and he does it all by himself. The amount of B-roll stuff he gets must be a tremendous amount of work. He picks great music too…
I used to know a guy named Ed back in the early-mid '80’s who was a professional college student. We were both attending the local junior college. I was about 19 or 20, he was about 30. He was tall, had long straight dark hair and a full, fairly long beard with a fairly prominent hawk nose. One day, his parents finally got tired of him avoiding adulthood and declared they were no longer going to support him and he had to get a job. He showed up to classes with a short hair cut and no beard. We all had to do a double-take. He seriously had no chin, and combined with that big hawk nose, his profile had become so comically different from what it had been that everyone who knew him was noticeably shocked by the transformation. He went from having a long profile with a prominent nose to a little round head with a huge beak sticking out. He went from a moderately imposing figure to a sadly goofy looking character just like that. I watched a couple of different people just kind of blurt out stuff like “eww grow it back!” etc. It was crazy to see how everyone’s perception of him changed overnight…
Coincidentally, I just caught that for the first time this weekend when this song came on the radio while traveling with my wife and daughter. I knew she was Maya’s mom, but I had never noticed her singing her name before hearing it again yesterday…
I played “The folly of mankind” on that one once. I didn’t win the hand…