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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Thank you, and you’re not the first person to say you’ve enjoyed my writing. I do like to think I’ve had some interesting experiences and that I have a certain knack for storytelling.

    I tend to consider myself more of a storyteller or conversationalist than an author though. Sitting down to write a book that maybe someone somewhere will someday read doesn’t really appeal to me, and I don’t think my stories necessarily hold up as well on their own without the support of a conversation around them, to some extent I’m usually crafting how I tell stories as a response to something someone said or asked.

    But if you do enjoy what I have to say and how I say it, by all means creep on my profile here a bit, I won’t pretend everything there is gold, but there’s a couple things mixed in I’m a little bit proud of. This is pretty much the only place you’re going to find me online.

    EDIT: Lemmy search is terrible, so good luck finding anything, but for a couple highlights, somewhere in my comment history I have a short history of the Falkland Islands that I’m pretty proud of, a few interesting stories from my job as a 911 dispatcher as well as a long rant about alarm companies that some people seemed to have enjoyed, and a lot of thoughts about life, the universe, and everything.


  • Years ago, I was in boy scouts (in the US)

    For those not familiar with the scouting program, one of the main philosophies is “boys teaching boys” so in a well-run troop, the older, more experienced, and higher-ranking scouts are responsible for actually running the troop. The adult leaders hand down some general guidelines- we need to be ready to do X at Y time, but actually getting the scouts to do that falls to those older scouts.

    At the top of the youth hierarchy, is the “staff” patrol, the most senior members of the troop. At its head is the Senior Patrol Leader, and under him there would be various other positions- quartermaster, scribe, one or more Assistant Senior Patrol leaders, etc.

    In this story, I was a member of the staff patrol, I believe at the time I was quartermaster, or maybe one of the ASPLs, so I wasn’t normally the one running the show, and truth be told I tended to avoid the leadership responsibilities when possible, and I wasn’t exactly the most by-the-book, type-a, over-achieving model scout, but I was generally well-liked and respected by the younger members of the troop, I knew my stuff, and I was happy to share my knowledge.

    On this particular camping trip, most of the staff patrol were unable to attend. I believe it was just my friend Dan and myself. Dan is very much the type-a, overachieving type, and, on paper, much more of a model scout, he may even have already earned his eagle by that point, while I was still chilling at star or life rank. So nominally he was the one in-charge for this trip.

    And I was happy to leave him to it. I took my back seat and let him run the show, and I just helped facilitate in the background. And he did a fine job of it, his organizational skills were put to good use throughout the day.

    Dan is exactly the type of person you want schmoozing with businessmen and politicians and such, I won’t say that he lacks people skills. But he’s not necessarily the kind of guy you want to hang around a campfire with and drink a couple beers. There’s a time and place for both skill sets, and sometimes when the task at hand is wrangling a bunch of 11-17 year olds who have been let loose in the woods with pocket knives and taught how to build a fire, it’s the second kind of skill you need.

    So towards the end of the day, when the task at hand was basically “get all of these asshole kids to settle down and start getting ready for bed” Dan was kind of at a loss. He enjoyed being the one in charge and didn’t particularly want my help, so I sat my ass down and started reading my book, while he tried to herd cats.

    And slowly the younger kids began to gravitate towards me. They asked what I was reading, what it was about, and I told them. They hung around, some read their own books, others busied themselves with other quiet tasks, I think a game of magic or two sprung up around me. More kids drifted over, and they’d ask what I was reading, lather, rinse, repeat.

    It frankly made it pretty hard for me to read my book, I could only get a couple paragraphs in at a time before someone interrupted me.

    So at some point, I decided what I’d do was I’d start reading aloud to them and have a little story time. I wasn’t very far into the book, so I started over from the beginning. I gave them a quick run-down of some of the important things from the first book in the series, and I began reading.

    And before too long, all of the younger scouts were gathered around me, listening to me read.

    Mission accomplished. I got them all settled down, and I got to read my book.

    Dan was kind of amazed at how he had spent about 20 minutes trying to get them all to calm the fuck down, and I did it in like 5 minutes by just reading to them.

    That book was The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the 2nd book of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy 5-part “Trilogy”

    So that’s my recommendation. I figure if it works on a bunch of teens and tweens, it will probably work on a dog as well.

    I guess you could start with the first book, but there’s something that feels appropriately Douglas-Adamsian to me about starting from the middle and reading to your dog.



  • I’m sure there is a relatively simple way to get from liquid nitrogen to nitrogen compounds

    These days we do have the means to do it, though I don’t know how achievable they are to the home-gamer

    But historically this was actually a huge chemistry problem

    I’m not a chemist, so I gotta gloss over some stuff I don’t fully understand

    But nitrogen tends to form bonds with itself and makes an N2 molecule. That’s what the nitrogen in the air is, that’s what liquid nitrogen is.

    And unfortunately for us (for chemistry purposes) that molecule is very stable, it doesn’t like to react with much, for most practical purposes it can basically be considered inert.

    However, nitrogen is of course part of a whole lot of other chemicals as well, very important chemicals that plants and animals need. You probably heard about the nitrogen cycle in middle or high school science class at one point, and how nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil can convert atmospheric nitrogen into stuff that plants can use, and then animals eat the plants, and their waste also contains nitrogen compounds that can feed plants, etc.

    But for us to do that through chemical processes isn’t easy. We can’t just pour some liquid nitrogen into a beaker and mix in some other stuff and it reacts to make ammonia or whatever other nitrogen compound you desire.

    Until around 100 years ago, we basically couldn’t turn atmospheric nitrogen into anything else, at least not at any kind of scale and not in any commercially viable way. Which was a huge problem as the world’s population was growing and growing enough food to feed everyone was hard without being able to make synthetic fertilizers. The US actually has a law saying that they’re allowed to just claim uninhabited islands that are covered in bird shit because that guano was rich in ammonia and other nitrogen compounds and so immensely valuable as a fertilizer.

    Then along comes Fritz Haber, who comes up with the Haber process to turn atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia. This was a huge deal and he won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for it. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that if you’ve eaten pretty much anything grown on a farm you owe it to the Haber process.

    And it’s still a huge deal to this day, the haber process is responsible for around 2% of the world’s energy consumption, and about the same amount of our greenhouse gas emissions.

    If you’ve got a quick and easy way to turn pure nitrogen into something else, there’s probably another Nobel Prize waiting for you.


  • I do a movie night once a year and every year we do a different theme. Sometimes it’s a pretty normal and straightforward theme, the first year or two I did it was Robert Rodriguez movies (this party is nominally a Cinco de Mayo part) but we quickly ran out of those, so we pick a random theme every year

    One year the theme ended up being "movies that got a better “remake’” (we watched the worse versions)

    I believe that theme was 2023, it’s been a wild fucking 2 years so I can’t remember all of the movies we watched, we usually manage to squeeze in about 3

    But I remember David Lynch’s dune was on the list, as was the Super Mario Bros movie. None of us had actually seen the new Mario movie, so we just kind of took it on faith that it had to be better.

    If I had a point to this story, I’ve long since forgotten what it was, but I’ve typed it out and I’m gonna post it.


  • Doubt anyone’s going to see it at this point but figured I’d write out some of my other thoughts now

    When I talk about going back to square one and defining what a firearm even is, I mean that quite literally. Muzzleloaders aren’t considered firearms, and no they’re not likely to be used in a mass shooting, but they’ll still kill someone just as dead as a modern firearm. There’s stupid loopholes about antique guns that may function in much the same way as a modern firearm.

    They’re fucking guns.

    And with an eye to the future, it may be worth building in a little future with other weapons technologies that may come into play that should be regulated similarly. There are high powered air rifles today that are comparable in stopping power to some firearms, shouldn’t they be regulated in a similar manner? Or what if advances in battery technology and such make coil/rail guns viable as man-portable or even concealable weapons?

    We also classify things in really stupid ways. Take a look at some of the weird shit around short barrel shotguns/rifles and “any other weapons” where you can have 2 basically identical weapons that are classified differently just due to a quirk of how they were manufactured. An AR-15 with a short barrel is a no-no unless you’re willing to jump through some extra hoops, but you can build an AR-15 “pistol” and slap a -not-a-stock “wrist brace” on it.

    And machine guns are a no-no, but bump stocks, binary triggers, forced-reset triggers, etc. that get you basically the same effect are a-ok. Not to mention that absurdity we had for a few years where shoelaces of a certain length were technically classified as a machine gun.

    I basically want to create 4 categories

    Hunting arms- single shot or manually operated rifles and shotguns with barrel length 16" and greater, rimfire rifles, muzzleloaders, and certain larger handguns. Low rate of fire, not easily concealable.

    Concealed carry weapons- handguns.

    Other firearms- short barrels rifles/shotguns, semi-auto shotguns and centerfire rifles

    Machine guns, destructive devices, etc. we’re moving bump stocks, binary triggers, forced reset triggers, etc. into this category.

    For the first 3 categories, the main difference is going to be in the types of training required, as well as the required insurance rates. I think it’s also fair to be allowed to purchase hunting arms at 18, and bump the other categories up to 21. *

    For the 4th category, we’re keeping things largely the same as the current NFA regulations, but we’re fixing some of the wonky definitions, and increasing the cost of the tax stamp, because the $200 it was set at in the '30s really hasn’t kept up with inflation.

    We’re also going to make most gun accessories subject to the same sorts of background checks and such. And we’re moving silencers into this category.

    We’re unifying gun laws across the country. No more wonky patchwork of different states having their own laws. If it’s legal, it’s legal across the whole country, if it’s illegal, it’s illegal everywhere.

    I hate the term, but we’re closing the “gun show loophole” (which really has nothing to do with gun shows) all transfers must go through the process. We’re also expanding the locations you can do them at, not just FFL dealers anymore, police stations, and some details would need to be figured out for security reasons, but maybe some places like DMVs, post offices, courthouses, etc. and we’re getting rid of any fees. No excuses to not do things properly.

    We’re beefing up the background checks, getting all states on the same page with what does and does not disqualify someone from owning a gun, red flag laws, probably disqualifying people with DUIs (if I don’t trust you with a car I certainly don’t trust you with a gun)

    And we’re delisting marijuana so that if you like to smoke up once in a while you’re able to keep your guns.

    *Along with the changes in ages, we’re also making some changes to police and military. If you can’t legally purchase and carry a handgun or rifle as a civilian, you don’t get to carry them in your line of work either. You’re exempt from the draft until 21, you can enlist at 18 but only serve in non-combat roles until 21, and if you do enlist before age 21, you will receive education and training equivalent to that many years of college or vocational training. Police academy will become a 4 year program equivalent to a bachelors degree. Also off-duty officers do not get any special exemptions in their eligibility to carry firearms, and their duty weapon stays locked up at the station when off the clock. There’s a whole lot more I have to say about police reform too, but that’s an entirely different rant.

    Firearms must be stored in a properly-rated safe that is either firmly attached to the structure of your home - studs, floor joist, concrete, brick, or other masonry walls, etc. or that is heavy enough that it can’t be easily moved by 2 guys with a hand truck. No leaving them in your car, unsecured in your garage,in the night stand, etc. when you’re not able to directly oversee them. We’re not going to be doing in-home inspections on this, but if it’s somehow found that you’re storing them improperly, like if someone is able to steal them because they weren’t properly secured, then you lose your right to own guns.

    If you lose your firearm (I work in 911 dispatch, the amount of calls I’ve had for guns found in bathrooms, movie theaters, etc. that someone left behind is pretty worrying) or have a negligent discharge (that isn’t the result of a manufacturing defect,) you lose your right to own guns.

    We’re making some major changes to stand your ground laws and castle doctrine, I don’t have a problem with castle doctrine as a general concept, but a lot of states’ implementations leave a lot to be desired. When your outside of your home, I think the focus should be more on duty-to-retreat (again, I work in 911 dispatch, I don’t think a night goes by that I don’t have a dozen calls that could have been solved without police intervention if my caller just fucking walked away but instead escalated into some sort of fight)

    No, we are not arming teachers. Full stop.

    I’m probably missing some things here, and there’s a lot of details I’m glossing over a bit because this comment is already too long, but hopefully this kind of paints a general picture of where my head is at.


  • It’s not, and that would be addressed in the stuff I didn’t feel like writing last night (and still don’t)

    And I don’t feel like writing it because there’s a lot to it, to just barely scratch the surface, my ideal gun control reform would be part of major overhauls to basically all aspects of government and we’d have things like universal healthcare (which would cover the psych eval,) government funded childcare (so that you can do something with your kids while you jump through the hoops,) free and expanded public transportation (so that you can get to the courthouse or wherever you need to,) expanded workers rights (so that you would have PTO to use to go do all of that,) expanded hours for government offices (so that people hopefully don’t even need to use that PTO, I know it my county to get a concealed carry permit you have to be able to get to those courthouse during certain hours on certain days, the courthouse isn’t conveniently located and the hours suck, most people probably have to take a day off of work and get up early to do it, that’s bullshit) and we’d be getting rid of most fees for government services or at least making them scale to income.

    And of course, were funding this by massive taxes on the wealthy.

    Basically we’re putting a hell of a lot of hoops in the way, but we’re paving the way to those hoops so that anyone who wants to has a fair shot at being allowed to attempt to jump through them.






  • I think my current pixel 7 pro is probably the nicest looking smartphone I’ve owned. Prior to this it was the LG G3.

    Back in the day I had some Motorola TracFone that looked a lot like a razr that I also thought looked pretty cool.

    When my family switched from TracFone I got a Samsung Rogue which I also really liked, but I also remember wishing that my parents had waited a couple months so that I could have gotten my personal pick for the sexiest smartphone of all time instead- the original Motorola Droid. I eventually ended up getting the droid 2, which was, IMO, a fine successor to the droid, but just not as sexy.


  • I go to a nudist resort fairly frequently. Most of it is clothing optional except for the pools, so you see people walking around in various states of undress depending on the weather and what they’re doing (watched a guy weedwacking naked last time I was there, seemed ill-advised IMO)

    You pretty quickly stop seeing nudity as being sexy there . It certainly doesn’t help that the average nudist is middle aged or older and often not in the best shape.

    This resort also attracts a decent amount of swingers. While the nudists aren’t particularly trying to impress anyone, that’s pretty much the whole reason the swingers are there. So how do you make yourself look sexier than just walking around naked? You wear something. Bathing suits, pasties, big flashy jewelry, crazy hats, see-through dresses, ropes, etc.

    And though many of them aren’t much more attractive than the nudists, they turn some heads.


  • Best is one of two

    First was a couple who are more like friends-of-friends. I like them, they’re cool people, but I’ve never really hung out with them except when we’re part of a group of mutual friends, so I was actually a little surprised to get an invite to their wedding.

    But anyway, I booked a hotel room with a couple of those mutual friends. Did a little light pre gaming, and hopped on the shuttle bus to the venue. The ceremony was nice and short and it was a nice venue.

    Then we head into the area to have dinner, and find our assigned seats, and we’re a little shocked when the bride and groom joined us at the table instead of being off at their own private table somewhere. They said they wanted to sit with their friends, so they did, they were of course off talking to various friends and relatives a lot, but they definitely carved out a nice chunk of the night to eat and sit down and eat and enjoy their wedding. I’ve heard a lot of stories from people getting married where they say they never even had time during their reception to actually eat, that’s always sounded terrible to me and I think they felt the same way. Food was amazing as well, I had just about the biggest slab of prime rib I’ve ever seen and it was cooked to absolute perfection. They even came around offering seconds if anyone wanted them.

    A big part of how I knew them was because we were all part of a large group that regularly went to a music festival together, and as you do at a festival, we all tended to get belligerently drunk. Apparently part of the reason I got an invite was because of that, in their words they paid for an open bar and wanted to make sure they got their money’s worth, and they knew the whole music festival crew would be up to the task.

    We were all on our best behavior, but we were all definitely pretty hammered when we boarded the bus back to the hotel to continue our party at the hotel bar.

    We slept in way too late to grab breakfast at the hotel, so most of us made our way to a nearby diner to grab breakfast.

    All in all just a really fun day with good friends, good food, plenty of booze, and a nice casual wedding.

    The second contender for best wedding is actually one I officiated. Years ago I got ordained online from the universal life church, and never really did anything with that. I’m not religious, it’s just a fun little thing to be able to say that I’m a minister.

    My buddy apparently remembered that. We were in scouts together, he was a couple years younger than me and sort of looked up to me as a mentor and we’ve stayed good friends. So time comes for him to get married and he immediately says he wants me to do the ceremony, and I of course agreed.

    This dude has a way of finding really cool stuff, and somewhere in his adventures he finds a cave. It’s open for tourism by appointment and the entrance is through the owners’ basement. He gets to talking to the owner, and apparently it had always been her grandmother’s (who originally owned the house/cave) to have a wedding there, but no one had ever approached them about that. Since he was looking for a wedding venue he jumped at the opportunity. They also charged a ridiculously low price for it (I think they initially said like $50, he gave them like $500 and even that is fucking peanuts to pay for a wedding venue)

    The wedding ceremony itself was pretty small, there’s only so many people you can cram into a cave at once, but more people were invited for the reception. I came up with what everyone seems to think was a really good script for the ceremony, even if it was a little hard to read in the dim light of a cave.

    The reception was at a brewery, and the food was mostly a buffet of fancy pizzas, all really good, excellent party food. Again, everything was really chill and low-key.

    The worst was my brother in laws wedding. He’s a good dude, but if I hadn’t married his sister I don’t think we’d have anything in common with each other.

    His (now) wife’s family is fairly well-off and have a really nice vacation house on a lake in upstate New York where they go a lot. So they had the wedding up there.

    Even before the wedding, it rubbed me kind of the wrong way that neither my wife nor I were ever asked to be in the wedding party. Not that I had any particular burning desire to be in it, but that just kind of seems like a normal courtesy thing. Until that point I know that I had figured he’d be one of my groomsmen when my wife and I actually have a wedding (COVID threw a monkey wrench into our plans and we ended up doing the courthouse thing, so I think we’re planning to do a big 10 year anniversary in a couple years)

    The place is about a 6 hour drive from where most of their friends and family live, and for the rest of them it’s even longer. It’s not convenient to any sort of a major city where you could easily take a flight or a train or something to save yourself some of the driving, and let’s be honest, no one really wants to take time off for a wedding so most people were driving up 6 hours on a Friday, doing wedding shit Saturday, then driving 6 hours home on Sunday. They didn’t seem to understand why some of their further-flung relatives RSVP’d that they weren’t coming.

    The hotel they reserved a block of rooms at is what some people might call “charming” or “rustic,” but personally I’m more inclined to call it “a crappy old house where everything creeks, none of the doors seem to close quite right, and the bathroom fixtures haven’t been updated in about 50 years.”

    It was also August, and it was an outdoor wedding. Fuck that shit, it’s too damn hot to be outside for a wedding.

    And I’m pretty sure the reason we weren’t in the wedding party was because they needed someone to babysit his/my wife’s grandmother. She’s got a pretty bad case of dementia, and was just really lost and confused the whole time she was there. She lives with his/my wife’s mom, but if course she was going to be busy with wedding stuff all day.

    My wife drove us up, so I didn’t have my own car there. The entirety of the town we were in was about 3 block long, and mostly touristy shops selling stupid knickknacks I had no interest in. We were in a nice wooded area, and I’m an outdoorsy dude, and I pretty much spent all day looking at the mountains surrounding us thinking how much I’d rather be hiking than wandering around this crappy town.

    I also normally work night shift and had turned my schedule upside down for this. I think my wife assumed I was going to sleep in, so when I woke up at a pretty reasonable hour (9-ish) figuring we’d at least be able to grab breakfast together before we got stuck babysitting her grandmother, she was nowhere to be found. She’d gone off to get breakfast with her dad (who was really pretty much the only other person there I knew, and he’s a really cool dude, I was looking forward to spending some time with him, we don’t get to see him very often)

    So that left me by myself with no way to really go anywhere, and no one around I wanted to hang out with. A pretty crappy start to my day which put me in kind of a bad mood.

    No really good food options in that town either- a crappy pizza place, a bar that’s just like every other mediocre bar in a touristy town, and a little breakfast and sandwich shop that was trying really hard to be cool but had nothing particularly exciting on the menu. Your best option was to drive about 15 minutes to the next town and eat somewhere there.

    And of course we still got roped into all of the wedding picture bullshit.

    The wedding and reception were nice enough, aside from it being too damn hot, food was ok but forgettable (my brother in law and his wife have just about the most bland palates imaginable, no surprises there) if it had been somewhere closer where I could have just attended the wedding and went home that night I probably would have left with an overall fine impression of the wedding except for feeling a little snubbed about the wedding party.

    But it was absolutely not worth 12 hours in the car, the cost of a hotel room, and spending most of the day either by myself or babysitting a senile old lady who had no idea what was going on.

    But at least now I don’t have to feel obligated to have him in my wedding party and I can free up that spot for someone I actually like.


  • It was both best and worst since I’ve only lived in one apartment in my life

    It was actually a pretty nice apartment, I might still happily be there if they hadn’t kept jacking up the rent every year.

    But I had some complaints

    The kitchen was ridiculously tiny, and one of the cabinets couldn’t open all the way because it hit an overhead light fixture. We actually pointed that out when we first viewed the apartment (it had recently had some light renovations and that was obviously an oversight) and to their credit they installed a smaller fixture before we moved it. It still got in the way and the cabinet didn’t open 100% but it opened wide enough to get anything you needed in and out.

    The bathroom vent fans definitely shared ductwork with other units, and someone along that vent liked to sing in the shower. We also occasionally heard her yelling at her kids. We didn’t mind that so much, it’s kind of part of living in an apartment that sometimes you’re going to hear what your neighbors are doing, it was usually more funny than anything, but it was a little weird the first time we heard someone singing from our bathroom.

    The people above us liked to vacuum at like 10am on a Sunday. Not too unreasonable I suppose, but I worked night shift and it could be a little annoying from time to time when I was trying to sleep

    They also had some kind of water leak one time that fucked up our ceilings a bit, and it also leaked right into our circuit breaker causing some electrical issues. No serious damage done though, and again they were quick to repair it.

    When we moved out, our roommate discovered that the window in his room was leaky, which had caused some mold and water damage in his room. He never noticed it until then because of how he had some furniture placed along that wall.

    There really wasn’t any decent spot to have any sort of a proper dining table, at least not if you also wanted to have a couch and a TV, so we pretty much ate off the coffee table or folding tray tables the whole time we lived there. (The apartment was actually fairly spacious overall, it was just sort of laid out weirdly)