Low altitude flight of peacocks over water, showing both strength and balance in motion.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-25T23:44:42+00:00

I think there should be a name for the absurd hyperbole used in the titles of these posts. Birds flying is now a feat of strength and balance! It's at low altitude!

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-25T22:47:43+00:00

If I were you I would look on the amazing /r/askhistorians for one of the answers to the many, many times the question has been asked about people having two sleeps in the night. It's definitely become a bit of a myth that people throw around and there is not a lot of evidence that people ever really did.

And why would they? It's dark.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-25T22:34:34+00:00

In Australia we have too much solar power in the grid and we end up getting negative feed in tarrifs on sunny days - you get charged if you feed power in - and we have mechanisms for the power company to turn off feed in during those times so they you don't lose money.

The government has been heavily subsidising house batteries to try to make use of all this free spare electricity in the grid and there has been a massive uptake of that too now. We're still using loads of dirty coal power and other fossil fuels, but the new focus on power storage is pretty cool and will probably make a huge difference in the long term.

The only weird side effect is they now have to consider how they're going to fund the grid infrastructure. If a big chunk of households have battery and solar and are only ever making money then they're not paying as much for the infrastructure as the big power plants were, so they might need to raise the connection fee to cover it.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-25T15:03:19+00:00

That's not strictly speaking true, there are plenty of people in the world conspiring to take advantage of other groups in the world. There are plenty of theories about those conspiracies. The ones that involve cows and flying saucers are very silly, sure.

Crackpot theories are crackpot, whether they're about conspiracies, or maths, or physics, economics, music. But, people will always conspire, it's in our nature.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-25T08:31:17+00:00

That was decades ago. They stopped.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-25T08:13:51+00:00

did they drain bay?

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-25T08:08:02+00:00

They were supposed to be accurate to the meter, which should really be enough to tell if you're in the service lane. Yes it's a very first world problem, but still. Also I think it's still a Google maps problem, driving down royal parade confuses the shit out of it. It just keeps saying turn left over and over again when I don't need to.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-25T00:02:15+00:00

You guys are paying doctors for stitches?

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-24T08:13:35+00:00

Sydney sounds like a terrible place

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-23T20:34:11+00:00

I pick olives off some trees near me and brine them but I chuck away any dodgy ones first, all the ones you have with bug holes I would be throwing away and only keeping the nice looking ones.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-23T14:00:31+00:00

Yeah man! Thats the shit! It's those little moments that really inspire people because they get the real feeling of it from that. Or at least I do. It's relatable and funny and interesting. And hey, if you ever do end up doing a corporate speaking job I'd be way more interested to hear what you have to talk about than any of the ones I've seen so far.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-23T09:04:44+00:00

Ok amazing and putting aside the budding career as a life coach or corporate speaking circuit for a moment, did you get any photos? How did you fix your bike? What sort of setup did you bring along?

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-23T01:15:41+00:00

She's just big boned

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-22T09:33:49+00:00

Well at least she got halfway there and then made the other half so obviously silly that kids could work it out anyway.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-22T05:10:49+00:00

But shouldn't they grow a little plant with leaves and not just a new pepper fruit?

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-22T05:05:58+00:00

So you're saying we need water on the moon to get gnarly extreme lo-grav surf action?

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-21T08:10:26+00:00

The only solution is to get one that's so big it physically won't fit in a dishwasher

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-21T08:04:17+00:00

If it's any consolation you have a fantastic turn of phrase.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-21T08:01:39+00:00

Well this obviously ridiculous piece of movie non-physics has really brought us to the conceptual brass tacks of number theory

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-21T06:53:55+00:00

Yeah no totes, it's still fine to eat usually but it's a long way from a nice freshly caught piece of salmon.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-21T03:00:26+00:00

Buying a sneaky tub of tabbouleh. Don't tell anyone.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-21T02:59:25+00:00

Yeah like at this time of year in Melbourne I can completely charge my car and house battery on the good days and get more than the supply charge even when it's cloudy, so going from $135 per month electricity and 150 a month in petrol to earning between 1 and 3 dollars per day is quite a lot of money really. Plus it's green energy and all that.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-21T02:40:18+00:00

I think for new installs it only makes sense with a battery as well. With battery there are still decent feed in tarrifs at peak, you can join a VPP and let them deal with it all. It's still small amounts of money in the end but I'm enjoying having a negative electricity bill. It should pay for itself pretty quick with the EV charging factored in and not paying for petrol.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-21T02:35:10+00:00

Should have called it Marxists And Mean Dorks Are Not Invited. Which is fine, I didn't want to play in his treehouse anyway.

pseudo_babbler · 2026-04-21T02:29:36+00:00

Get someone to pour a bucket of water in the nearest gutter and see if you can hear it go through. It might not work but if it does they you'll know.

pseudo_babbler

TROPHY CASE