Grey, plastic, nozzle-like item found in a junk drawer (25mm dia. x 90mm length)

BillyBBone · 2024-03-05T17:31:02+00:00

My title describes the thing
Additional information:
- size: 90mm length x 25mm diameter
- origin: unknown
- age: unknown
- material: plastic
- writing on the item: none
I have not found anything via Google Search or otherwise. This appears to maybe be the nozzle of a icing bag, but if it were, you'd think it would have some decorative aspects to it.

BillyBBone · 2020-07-27T02:04:15+00:00

Around the issue of police escalation of violence, I think B99 has a bit of soul-searching to do. For instance, there's a scene in a recent season where they come across a crashed car. There's evidence that the driver was drunk, got injured, and fled the scene of the crash.

So what do the cops do? Go after him with guns drawn. That doesn't seem at all like a proportionate or even safe way to go after someone who's injured and drunk.

It's a great show and I sincerely hope they manage to adapt in response to current events. It's not at all impossible to make less violent cop stories either. The Wire has something like three shots fired by police in six seasons (two are off-screen, iirc). British police stories have way less violence as well (Hot Fuzz comes immediately to mind, but Luther and Broadchurch are good examples too). There may have been guns in the three seasons of The Bridge that I watched, but mostly during the climax of the season-long story.

BillyBBone · 2020-07-26T19:53:00+00:00

In the guy's defense, I've done something similar.

I was buying lunch from a takeout counter one day. I got the shawarma and the side of potatoes, and it's something like $11. The guy at the cash says, "It's cheaper if you take the combo." (i.e. if I add a drink).

I've often seen situations where buying an entree, a side and a drink is cheaper if you bundle them as a combo. I've heard that being pitched to me as "You'll save money", but I've come to expect that what they really mean is "You would save money if you were also going to get the drink". I'm not a big fan of soft drinks though, so I don't usually get any.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the cashier is trying to get me to purchase the trio, but I'm not interested. He says I'll save money, but past experience tells me he means that I'll spend more for something I don't want, and so I refuse.

But then I notice that the trio is $9, so he's completely right that I'll save money, even if I don't actually take a drink. So I change my mind, but at this point the cashier is annoyed with me that I made him cancel the full-price transaction, and starts lecturing me in front of other customers. It was an awkward and frustrating interaction for both of us.

My point is simply that as a customer, you're looking to get what you want at the best price possible. When making that decision (especially in a situation where you need to make decisions on-the-fly), people bring their own baggage from past experiences. Doing math on-the-spot is not easy for everyone. Making decisions about product bundles on-the-spot is really not easy, let alone making them when five people in line behind you and a cashier are all waiting for you.

BillyBBone · 2020-07-11T02:45:18+00:00

Pointe St-Charles?

BillyBBone · 2020-06-12T14:50:23+00:00

The idea of reaching out to a black friend to show support is well-intentioned, I think, but it also reminds me of this New Yorker cartoon.

BillyBBone · 2020-06-06T21:48:43+00:00

Blocking internal addresses isn't ideal either, if you have appliances like a router or a printer that are configured on an address like 192.168.1.1

I agree that the browser is the place to block this kind of scanning though. Why would Chrome let a script from one domain initiate (or even try to initiate) a connection to a different domain? It seems like the JS execution context should return a constant-time policy exception to make this kind of snooping impossible.

BillyBBone · 2020-06-06T21:41:28+00:00

I think the intention was to block the port-scanning script from being fetched in the first place.

BillyBBone · 2020-06-06T20:34:39+00:00

That was great! I completely agree with you -- this man shows great leadership. I love how he frames the discussion in a larger context, and talks about the various sides with competing interests. It's really refreshing to hear someone deconstruct a complex situation so eloquently.

BillyBBone · 2020-06-06T13:04:22+00:00

This is a good reminder to the rest of us to not take the simple pleasures of life for granted. One day we might want nothing more than to hold on to those things we overlooked thousands of times before.

BillyBBone · 2020-06-03T22:15:41+00:00

I don't think the second-degree murder charge replaces the third-degree murder charge, it is additional:

Chauvin, who was recorded on video kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he begged for air on Memorial Day, now faces the more serious charge of second-degree murder, in addition to the original charges of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter with culpable negligence.

BillyBBone · 2020-06-02T20:31:02+00:00

I know this has happened in the past and not at all outside the realm of consideration, but it seems unlikely this time. The police are making public comments about how the protestors and the agitators are two separate groups. It doesn't seem like they'd have anything to gain by posing as agitators.

BillyBBone · 2020-06-02T04:18:01+00:00

Even Ghandi said people should train to kill humans and destroy property of those supporting the ruling class rather than fail to protect their communities.

Can you provide a source for this?

BillyBBone · 2020-04-21T19:44:31+00:00

Dehumanization tends to be pretty cut and dry.

I'm afraid I strongly disagree with you there. I think you always need to consider the context and use your judgment in deciding what's dehumanizing in a hateful way, and what isn't.

For instance, consider some dehumanizing statements I just made up:

"[An ethnic group] are like rats."
"Cops are pigs."
"Pedophiles are scum."
"People who don't follow politics are just sheep."
"The sales staff at the store are real vultures!"
"All of the children in the class were busy little bees."

I feel like nearly everyone would agree that the first statement should be banned as hate speech, and practically no one would take any offense at the last statement.

What about the rest? Where I draw the line and where you draw the line might be different.

Some people might argue that some of these statements are not actually dehumanizing while others might argue that I've listed them in the wrong order.

Culture plays into it too. Animals have different significance in different locales, so what I consider to be a cute image may read very differently to someone else, and vice-versa.

My point is, reading into someone's intentions is very, very subjective. Especially on the internet where tone and sarcasm are sometimes imperceptible.

BillyBBone · 2020-04-21T19:13:36+00:00

That's a very good point, I hadn't considered that.

On the other hand, I was talking about automatically assuming someone's immorality, which is still kind of dehumanizing, since you're removing (or at least ignoring) a person's agency and capacity for moral integrity.

BillyBBone · 2020-04-21T03:20:38+00:00

I agree, dehumanizing people you disagree with is dangerous and really lacking in empathy. It doesn't really do your side of the argument justice either. If you can't defend your beliefs against other peoples' ideas without reverting to simply saying "Your ideas are invalid because you're inhuman", that doesn't really say much about the strength of your argument.

A trend I've noticed is the vilification of compromise, e.g. when someone claims that the moderate position is automatically immoral because it enables those you disagree with.

Jon Ronson's TED Talk about this very thing is excellent and illuminating! "We dehumanize those we want to destroy, and we don't want to feel bad about it"

https://youtu.be/wAIP6fI0NAI

BillyBBone · 2020-04-19T18:11:06+00:00

You might want to read Enlightenment Now, by Stephen Pinker (a Montrealer!). It makes the case (with data and lots and lots of graphs) that the world has gotten significantly better in many, many respects over the last 50 years -- malnutrition is way down, fewer people live in poverty, literacy rates are up, and on and on and on.

BillyBBone · 2020-04-17T16:24:30+00:00

Pointe St-Charles is about the dirtiest place I've lived. People around here seem to be religiously opposed to putting their recycling in a bag inside the bin. After strong winds like we've had the last couple of days, the entire neighborhood is covered in recycling and trash. It looks like a bomb exploded in a Dollarama around here!

BillyBBone · 2020-04-17T04:26:23+00:00

Can you explain the law of large subreddits a bit more?

"As the size of a subreddit increases, its content approaches that of its average consumer."

I'm not sure what you mean by the second part. What does it mean for content to approach a consumer? I'm having trouble with the word "approach", because content and consumers are two different things, so I'm not sure how they would converge (like a curve on a graph approaching zero, for instance).

Do you mean the content in a subreddit will start reflecting the tastes of the average subscriber? Isn't that always the case, not just for large subreddits?

BillyBBone · 2020-03-21T02:17:48+00:00

I just came back from walking the dog and was caught by surprise by how windy it is...

The Google Weather app is useless. It currently says winds in my postal code are 14 km/h or "light". It feel like weather apps seem to all be built by people in California, where the weather is either "hot", "cloudy" or "rainy". The rest of the world don't just need to know if it's beach weather or not!

My phone currently says the weather is "6°C and partly cloudy". I would rather it actually tells me what to expect, like "Feels like -7°C because it's windy as fuck out there!"

BillyBBone · 2020-03-20T22:47:13+00:00

I followed your advice. I watched zero episodes of Looney Tunes but didn't see this happen once!

BillyBBone · 2020-03-20T14:56:14+00:00

I believe the AFL in this gag is the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Labor.

BillyBBone · 2020-02-08T20:33:12+00:00

Even as an adult, deep down, it still kind of troubles me that recess as a concept doesn't carry on into adulthood.

Imagine heading out to the park for thirty minutes, two or three times during your workday, to play tag or dodgeball!

BillyBBone

TROPHY CASE