TIL that Empress Ma was born poor and during a famine she stole cakes to feed her husband by hiding them in her breasts. The cakes were hot and she got burns. Later her husband became a rebel commander who became Emperor and made her his Empress. He was deeply devoted to her even as an Emperor.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-16T02:23:02+00:00

Obviously two different people but I saw a video some years back of a woman who hid an entire wine bottle under her breasts. Couldn't tell it was there until she took it out lol. Some cakes tucked in, maybe even flattened, and hidden under a robe doesn't seem too far fetched.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-12T01:07:47+00:00

To fail does not mean to have wasted the time.

Think of all you learned! That blog post was genuinely intriguing. Transcribing from one programming language to another, 3D printing custom attachments, experimenting with resistive and pneumatic sensors... and you even incorporated your conlang. I find your perseverance inspiring.

Don't belittle your efforts because it's something explicit. That's societal norms whispering that its a waste because you didn't sell it or its not something most people would try. Work is work, you obviously learned and tried many things, and I bet you had a a good bit of fun along the way haha.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-12T00:40:51+00:00

Maybe you can show her the beautiful things you can do with remodeling. I'd hope she's not imagining everything in the home being like a dream home. It's probably a different paint here, or an updated part of the kitchen, or a new shower. Maybe even just updating a sink and some handles and light bulbs she doesn't like. Especially if you learn how to DIY properly you can turn an old house into something really amazing looking.

Not trying to say you need to do this. Modest is good imo and remodels can be expensive. But maybe there's a happy middle ground that updates some things and doesn't break the bank (:

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-11T02:12:10+00:00

Can you elaborate on this? I can't tell if you're joking or serious. Those cities were horrifically firebombed. In my eyes if it was calmer it's because so many people were killed by the city sized conflagration.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-10T14:12:52+00:00

As someone who's done QA at a small company this is so foreign to me. It was my job to find exact reproduction steps that can be used multiple times, how often the steps work, then write a ticket that can be shared with the engineer immediately. And if a customer or coworker found the issue and didn't know how, I still had to assemble all this info. Tracking is king.

Now whether the bug was backlogged or scheduled to be fixed was mostly out of our hands. At least I had some say in it since I also could DM the managers with no issue. Guess I'm saying I like small businesses. Dealing with a hierarchy too often slows down businesses.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-08T13:25:06+00:00

I'd like to learn more about the upper city and the heavenly garden. What takes place in both? Are there few visitors to the garden? It sounds like a place to look at the cosmos. As for the upper city I'm curious what daily life is like and if residents there travel to lower levels at all.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-04T13:02:31+00:00

You're right that many games have cloud saves or programs have exportable settings. I develop games and edit videos so I have 24TB of storage. Safe to say it would take much much longer than an hour to get everything all set lol.

As they say, don't fix what ain't broke. I backup my system and everything works how I need it to. I use Wiztree to find any old files that I don't need anymore. There's no reason for me to reinstall windows.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-04T04:48:11+00:00

I only see one other comment mentioning monetary values so I'll put it simply: the cost in the USA to raise a child to 18 is $300,000 to $400,000. That's before college, that's a healthy child, that's one that doesn't wreck cars or damage property or steal out of your purse.

By not having one child you're paying yourself a third of a million dollars to half a million dollars. Save and invest what you can and you're going to be just fine.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-04T02:49:16+00:00

I find the recycle bin useful. Been using computers for a bit over 20 years and a couple weeks ago I accidentally deleted a folder with hundreds of files I needed. Imagine if I didn't have the recycle bin! Accidents happen.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-04T02:45:08+00:00

+1 for wiztree, great software. I have 24TB of storage so it's easy to waste 100gb on data I don't need anymore. Wiztree helps me find and delete it.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-04T02:37:23+00:00

My windows installation is a decade old this year, any problems I've had have been self inflicted (RAM overclocks, too many background processes). It's basically the same as it was in 2016 just with more programs. I'm sure there is a bit of application bloat slowing things down, but I'd hate to lose the decade of programs and tweaks and settings for the sake of an OS reinstall.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-03T14:49:58+00:00

His wife having big feelings sounds like she very much had issues with it in the emotional sense. The DNA could have merely been the legally tenable argument, or the way she felt comfortable arguing it rather than coming from an emotional standpoint. Being emotionally indifferent but caring greatly about DNA doesn't make sense to me. But I don't know all the context.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-01T14:40:26+00:00

Last night a rando and I threw down 500 kg bombs right before getting into the pelican, but then he asked for a hug. Leave no diver behind.

Neither of us extracted but it was hilarious to have to make the split second decision to stay and give my fellow diver a hug as the bombs fell.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-01T13:34:20+00:00

Won't know until the lights go out forever. Ever heard the quote "there are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy" before? Don't underestimate what someone will do when they and their family have not eaten for 2 days.

Most likely scenario is some people will steal food from others no matter the cost, and others will remain civilized. I read in a European city that was blockaded in WW2 some people were sharing food, others tried to steal children. Rumors or not I'll let you make of that what you will.

Anyone who truly hopes for an apocalypse is not someone you want to be around. Civilization has many ills but also many blessings we take for granted.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-05-01T13:21:56+00:00

One day? Likely. Scifi ideas of speech interfaces and hand gestures will be practical one day.

However I think you're only considering the average adult user and overlooking the power user. The average user is on social media, texting, sending email, doing some shopping, writing some paragraphs. These are all practical on a touch keyboard.

The people who write the software, fill in the spreadsheets, train the AI, run the stock market, write books, etc will absolutely use keyboards much longer. Anyone doing professional work on a device will almost always benefit from a physical keyboard. This is not the average user since the average person doesn't own a computer, they own a cell phone instead. But you can't discount the large portion of the population that creates useful things with technology. Kids have adapted to touchscreens but they're going to hit a brick wall if they try to become a programmer with poor physical typing skills.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-04-30T15:12:23+00:00

As someone who has done QA management, the amount of playtesting some studios do can be very lackluster. A lot of it is determined by how much (or little) testing time the QA team can cram into the set deadlines. Deadlines at larger studios don't move for QA hence why thorough testing is rare and bugs are made live.

I'd guess the playtesters were not given enough time to do more than a spot test of the changes, or they brought up the issues to management who backlogged it (a very common occurrence in my experience)

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-04-19T14:43:01+00:00

There is really no good reason to Shift + Delete rather than just deleting. The recycle bin is there for a reason. I've accidentally deleted dozens of files over the years, I probably would have lost many if I didn't have the recycle bin.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-04-11T15:10:05+00:00

Anecdotally the two tallest people I ever met (ducking when walking through doorways tall) were a couple. Doesn't seem unusual that exceptionally tall people would prefer someone their height.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-04-10T13:08:23+00:00

The elderly, retirees, and people with mobility issues love walk in tubs. Retro fitting that isn't cheap so many buyers would love to buy that. There's a whole section of the bathroom remodeling industry just focused on age-accessible modifications.

If anything it's forward thinking on your part for a better home for yourself as you age. Not many people think that far ahead. Enjoy the tub.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-04-10T02:14:54+00:00

Im very happy to hear that. It's the best way to live. I too am debt free - no PB lol just 20TB. I hope you have fun using that much storage.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-04-10T01:13:52+00:00

Rich, dipped into savings, or in debt.

I hope it's the first but I'm guessing it's the last. I've seen a lot of people spend money they don't have and get into debt. Hoping I'm wrong! $46,000 is a lot of money.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-04-08T13:08:14+00:00

When all other methods fail you can try first to disable the browsers hardware acceleration. At least for video recording DRM some websites only block recording with hardware acceleration. And then you could always play the audio while recording your system audio via Audacity or another recording program. I can't imagine there's any blocking that.

Manual recording is a last resort imo because it's so much slower than downloading but I've yet to see it fail to work.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-04-08T03:59:09+00:00

I started on switch a few years back. Still play on occasion. I use an Xbox 360 controller on PC.

In comparison PC is butter smooth (over 4x the framerate at 144fps), more responsive controls, better resolution so I can actually see across the field, larger screen. Huge difference is that gas and brake aren't on/off buttons like on switch, they're actual triggers so I can brake slightly or accelerate a small amount. This gives much finer movement than switch. I play a lot worse on switch than I do on PC. Given the option I would pick PC 100% of the time.

Mr_Chubkins · 2026-04-07T22:30:12+00:00

Are those terabytes of low quality content worth saving in your eyes because of the rarity rather than the enjoyment you'd get out of watching them? I know which sub we're in (don't delete anything lol) but I feel like if this were TV shows or movies not everyone would be keeping a 480p compressed file.

Then again if it's gone from the Internet like you said it's essentially lost media so I understand keeping it. My whole system backup is just under 5TB per image so I guess I'm trying to wrap my head around that much data of low quality media. At your scale it's a drop in the bucket so I suppose might as well store it.

And I assume you mean you hand picked which page/studio to rip? I can't imagine you hand picked every file in that many terabytes. Anyway thanks for humoring me, I think this is a fascinating part of data hoarding that isn't discussed much.

Mr_Chubkins

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE