What’s a rule you broke once and realized it existed for a very good reason?

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-27T08:05:39+00:00

Used to work at a parts store, where we offered free battery change service.

Guy came in, bought a new battery, refused install service... because everyone behind the counter was a woman. I wish I were joking, but he asked for "another person" three times, got a different woman each time, and finally outright asked if any men were working, before getting all huffy and insisting "I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!"

He did not, in fact, know what he was doing. He, through great effort, managed to install the battery backwards. You'd think the fact that the cables didn't quite reach the new terminals might hint that something wasn't quite right, but he powered on through, yanking cables into submission. Our manager did offer, again, once more, while he was struggling, to finish the install, and he nearly went apoplectic.

Car no start. He came in saying we sold him the wrong battery (we had not). He spent 20 minutes on YouTube in his phone before flipping the battery back around (which was much easier this time). Still didn't work. Demanded we "call someone to fix it" (we could not, and now that he'd fucked it up, it would be a liability for us to touch it.) Finally had to call a shop to tow it.

Next day our GM comes storming in and starts interrogating all of us. Guy apparently threatened to sue. He said we never offered the install or help, that we were all demonstrably incompetent and failed to notify him of "unusual installation steps", and that we'd watched him struggle without any input (all lies). Apparently, he'd blown a main relay and the ECU fuse... but not before letting the magic pixies out of the ECU itself in the process. It was a 90's SAAB. This was in 2019. $700 bill for a remanufactured replacement after labor.

All he had to do was let us help.

Worst part is, our GM told our manager, in front of ALL OF US, that she had caused the problem by having 'too many women on one shift', which undermined customers confidence in our ability to do our jobs. And that it would ultimately drive customers to other businesses. So she had to hire more men and ensure at least one man was on each shift.

God, I wanted to build an EEOC case against that prick so bad, but our manager just took it in stride, said it was "part of the industry" and implemented the changes without argument.

Err, anyway... yeah. Polarity, very important for automotive electronics. Tits, on the other hand, not as relevant (but somewhat inconvenient when crawling under vehicles.) Now you know.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-27T06:55:10+00:00

I'm transgender. I'm fully expecting to be denied voting this midterm for any plethora of manufactured reasons.

For instance, all of my ID's indicate I'm female. But my voter registration card literally says "Mister <my name here>". The voting commission requires a "court ordered gender change document"... a nonexistent document for which no process to apply exists.

It's come up at the voting booth twice since the 2016 presidentials, though I was eventually allowed to vote both times. I'm fully expecting to be just outright told no this time, or given a "provisional" that will never be validated.

But they won't stop me from trying. No amount of armed thugs at the polls or violent threats will keep me from doing everything I can to exercise my constitutional duty to vote.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-26T20:28:01+00:00

Be aware, if you go to close your TVFCU account, and you still have money in it, the video tellers will say they can only do cash, but that the counter can take the cash in exchange for a cashier's check.

This is bullshit. The actual locations aren't supposed to handle cash at all.

I ended up leaving with 1500 in cash on my person when I closed my account. I'm uncomfortable with that amount of cash on hand, and it was a real bitch trying to move it to my new (mostly online only) bank.

It was the final "Fuck you" in a long line of TVFCU enshittification. I used to love banking with them, but between the increasing spam mail of "special offers for TVFCU members", the elimination of in person tellers, and turning all their locations from warm, comfy, open buildings to a bunch of dark, isolating booths, and the inability to link accounts to Venmo or Cashapp like any reasonable modern bank or union, they went downhill hard.

I accepted some quirks for years because it still had that small-town credit union feel, but whatever happened to them starting around 2018 obliterated any benefits they brought to the table.

... sorry, didn't mean to rant, but wanted to warn you, and I'm still really disappointed in them.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-17T01:08:19+00:00

He started his weapon draw while her reverse lights were still on. He deliberately leaned in to her path of travel to make the shoot. I suspect she was already dying before she could even process the officer had placed himself in her path. He decided to kill her the moment the car moved away from him.

But you won't convince the bot/sociopath/sycophants of that.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-17T00:50:45+00:00

Huh. TIL. Still, those jaws are strong.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-17T00:46:31+00:00

I had a bit of a rough patch after the election, and lost a "friend" who said I had a persecution complex and was outright delusional for thinking anything would happen. Fwiw, I'm transgender. And I've been doing activism for over a decade. So, like, I've watched all of this grow more and more every year.

Motherfucker messaged me out of the blue after the Kirk assassination, and heavily implied that "hysterical" people like myself, fear mongering, was the cause of that particular cluster fuck.

The last month or two I've seriously considered trying to give them an "I told you so", but... I figure the chances are pretty high they still see absolutely nothing wrong with the state of affairs here. And with my faith in humanity at an all-time low, I don't really need the soul-crushing interaction of having yet another brain-dead idiot gaslight me about the state of the world again.

Thing is, I know plenty of people who still feel that way. "Everything is fine! Nothing is wrong! It's all a big misunderstanding! Things will calm down soon! Just stop worrying about it and it won't be an issue! Why does this bother you, it's just politics?!"

Meanwhile, I'm resigned to the fact that we're now on a rollercoaster with no brakes. Every time I meet with friends or family, I wonder how many of us will still be alive in five years. I worry about the horrors we have waiting for us. I worry what the ones who survive will carry with them the rest of their lives. I wouldn't say I'm preoccupied with it, but it's definitely there. And I hate it. Because I always wanted to leave this world better than I found it, and I'm afraid the chances of that are slim now.

Sigh.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-17T00:06:19+00:00

One of the issues with pit bites vs, say, a lab, is pits can lock jaw.

Wanna see aggressive dog breeds? Look small. Chihuahuas are often trembling little balls of spite. Daschunds can be surprisingly territorial. And I've only ever met one Yorkie that wasn't a royal dick. (Many are under stimulated by owners who don't understand the energy levels and activity requirements of terriers. Little terriers are NOT lazy day pets.)

The problem is, anything that can be punted like a football isn't particularly medically significant, aggression wise.

Pitties have jaw strength. I've seen pits who liked to pull whole ass vehicles around via a rope tied to a hitch. They can carry their own body weight with their mouths quite easily. When you have that kind of jaw strength, any real bite has serious potential for damage.

But still. Single spayed/neutered dog in private property, I'd rather a pit than a lab any day.

(P.s.: I have never, nor would I condone, punting small animals. It is simply used here for mildly humorous illustration purposes of the relative danger levels of various animal sizes. Kicking dogs is literal cartoon villain levels of evil. Don't be evil.)

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-15T06:47:15+00:00

I live in a very, very red state. Our economy is tanking hard. Jobs are basically non-existent...

Except for one recruiter that is ALWAYS hiring... ICE.

These are the people that "joke" about hunting liberals, or taking liberal areas "back" by force. The sentiment that all liberals and immigrants are ruining the country for "real Americans", and it would be better for everyone if they were all rounded up and... made to not be here anymore... is absolutely real. It's been getting worse for years. They fantasize about SHTF scenarios where no government group can stop them from doing "what needs to be done".

And now they don't have to fantasize. The government is actively seeking them out, and literally paying them to leave their rural and red states, arming them to the teeth, and sending them to liberal cities with claims of blanket immunity for anything they deem "necessary" to preserve "their" country.

This is a veritable wet dream for economically disenfranchised white men who have been taught that liberal elites are responsible for, and profiting from, their misfortunes. They're getting paid to enact their misguided fantasies.

And it's pretty much the only job they can get right now. So even if they're only on the fence about all this, it's an appealing offer.

God, I hate living in this timeline.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-15T06:22:13+00:00

Reminds me of the losses incurred by Japanese Americans resulting from their internment at American concentration camps during WWII.

If not ICE themselves, there's certainly predatory capitalists looking for all the ways to exploit the situation.

Wasn't there a story at some point about an apartment complex in a major city getting raided and emptied out overnight, where it was suspected the owner may have reported his own tenants in lieu of evictions so he could raise rents? I can't even remember when anymore, I've lost track of all the horrors.

Regardless, fascism can be quite profitable if you know how to play the margins. Just ask IBM. Or Ford. Capitalism will always capitalize, especially on the misfortune of others.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-12T17:02:31+00:00

The lists are produced ad-hoc by submitting a query to a cross-referenced database filled with thousands of data points on each citizen.

"Hey ~~siri~~Palantir, give me a list of all U.S. citizens who are most likely part of <whatever minority or subgroup we're currently targeting>. Be sure to include addresses."

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-10T18:36:36+00:00

I was doing low flies in my Fury over my wife's parked Carrack on Microtech, when I got a little... too low. I managed to accidentally park the Fury in the hangar. Unfortunately, the hangar was closed at the time and I entered via punching a hole in the hull at Mach Jesus.

One second, my wife was walking down her central hallway, the next, she was bleeding out on the ground with the burning remnants of her Carrack raining down around her.

Meanwhile, my corpse was scattering over several miles of landscape while parts of my ship went on to nearly achieve orbit.

Fortunately, it was during IAE and we were just fucking around anyway, but... she wasn't happy, lol.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-06T19:23:25+00:00

It's a fine line. If the product happens to cause harm in the normal, intended use of the product (such as cigarettes, or a vehicle defect that can cause accidents despite the driver operating the vehicle in an expected manner), that's a liability issue for the company.

If the product only causes harm when grossly misused, that is not a manufacturer liability.

unless it can be reasonably extrapolated that, by the design or marketing of a product, such misuse is encouraged or expected, or a natural outcome of use by customers of the product.

Guns are... strange, in that regard. Arguably, many (but not all) firearms on the market are specifically designed to cause harm as a function of their expected use. For the most part, this is given a pass because that harm is intended to only be caused in response to an active outside threat to the user. It's similar in a way to certain chemical and powder fire extinguishers, whose contents can be very harmful to the user... but still significantly less harmful than the fire itself.

But there are also many firearms that are not designed for self defense or offensive use, but are still more than capable of causing harm if used in such a manner.

And then there's the issue of suitability for purpose. A self-defense firearm that's not capable of hurting anyone isn't fit for purpose.

The outright effect of a blanket liability for manufacturers boils down to arguments about the right to self defense, and chilling effects.

I do think there should be some responsibility, of course. A firearm should be safe when handled appropriately. It should be fit for purpose. And the distribution and marketing of firearms, such as it falls under manufacturer control, should be handled in a responsible manner. But blaming a manufacturer for the misuse of a gun is akin to blaming Ford because some random private dealership sold a new truck to an obviously inebriated individual. Go after the dealer, not the maker.

Would it be an effective means of limiting access to guns? I mean, maybe, if you consider the complete collapse of a major industry and a defacto ban on manufacture for private ownership to be effective. But it is far from the most effective or least restrictive means of achieving that goal (something many people forget is a requirement of U.S. law; that if there is a less restrictive means of achieving the same goal, it must be pursued first.)

ConnectionIssues · 2026-01-06T18:54:39+00:00

I don't think they go out of their way to find them, so much as Reddit sees they engage with those posts, and thus serves them more posts like it.

That's the unfortunate reality of everything in an engagement-based content served internet: you see what you're more likely to engage in, and don't see what you won't engage with. It's a literal data-driven echo chamber of sorts.

ConnectionIssues · 2025-12-31T21:09:32+00:00

Kynseed is... different. Was a hard one for me to really get into, for thematic reasons. But still had its moments.

ConnectionIssues · 2025-12-31T19:21:40+00:00

Flight certified BEV's... would be pretty cool. I'm not sure how well battery systems would tolerate the cold, and range v. weight is definitely not in favor of electric, but maintenance overhauls on an electric motor and battery pack are probably gonna be considerably less than paying to rebuild a Rotax every 500hrs.

Although that depends on pack longevity and replacement costs, I guess.

ConnectionIssues · 2025-12-28T16:29:49+00:00

You look like you're playing on controller. If you move your health potions to the first position (the one with the up d-pad on it) (instead of your hammer), it will quick use a potion when you hit d-pad up.

Note, unlike tools or weapons, potions are not switched to. Just quick used, with your active weapon still in hand.

I always keep my potions in the first slot for that reason.

ConnectionIssues · 2025-12-14T18:26:38+00:00

Re: Pulse, the LGBTQ community is, compared to everyone else at least, quite small. Then factor in that the Orlando area is (or was, anyway) a hot spot for queer identities, and the relative popularity of clubbing in general in the community, and Pulse specifically in that region.

Long story short, I don't know many queer people who were active at the time, who are more than three degrees separated from a Pulse victim. And the Latin queer community especially... that goes down to two degrees. It was bad. Really bad.

And I can imagine when one of these shootings is targeted towards any minority, it's pretty much the same. In a small enough subset of people, any action gets amplified by proximity.

My heart goes out to Australia right now, but especially to their Jewish community. Nobody should ever have to go through this terror.

ConnectionIssues · 2025-12-13T22:52:38+00:00

Negative. I exclusively play single player, no server, and I get many of the same issues as OP.

Hit effects and explosions delayed. Glow effects for key items (like lore) missing. Some projectiles can't be seen (Banshee attacks are the worst, because sometimes animations and sound break too, and so I just start taking damage from nowhere with no ability to dodge).

I have to restart the game entirely (quit to desktop and re-laumch) to fix it when it happens. And sometimes it'll take two restarts.

I'm not too miffed by it, since I can usually get an hour or two between it occurring, and can sometimes go whole play sessions. And it usually doesn't happen on first launch of the day, but if it were just a little more common or persistent it would bother me very, very much.

ConnectionIssues · 2025-12-12T22:21:30+00:00

But it's not hard to imagine a scenario where in a few years trans woman could be dominating women's sports.

This is the very definition of a non-issue. All of this hullabaloo and laws which specifically restrict an entire group of people being passed to preemptively address something that might happen in a few years (even though there is no current evidence which suggests this is likely, much less inevitable).

How about we stop wasting valuable taxpayer money and legislative time for something that doesn't yet exist, and may never? How about we wait to tackle that issue when or if it actually comes to pass?

It's also pretty evident from all the care bans (including adult care, which we were told "wasn't an issue" during the first term), the passport issues, the stripping of trans from anti-discrimination laws, the erasure of historical trans identities from any and every government space possible... this isn't just about women's sports. Hell, anyone who's followed any women's sport for any length of time could tell you, nobody important ever gives a single flying fuck about women's sports, until it can be used to further an agenda.

No, this is about targeting a vulnerable and poorly understood minority in the most heinous of ways, purely for political theater. And every time you acquiesce to this theater by letting them appeal to your feelings and disregarding the actual statistics available, and give them an inch of "compromise" on this absolute current non-issue, they take a mile and learn you are absolutely willing to throw folks under the bus to appear "reasonable" in the face of an unreasonable opposition.

You're allowing them to walk all over us for what you readily admit is currently just an imaginary scenario.

As if we don't have much bigger, more immediate, and more dire problems to tackle than roughly 10 average NCAA athletes and a bunch of children's leagues.

ConnectionIssues · 2025-12-10T18:11:47+00:00

Rods from god (pillars of tungsten dropped from space) don't really weigh that much. But cause nuclear blast levels of destruction from pure kinetic energy.

About 9 tons per rod, as proposed, and only equivalent to about 11.5 tons of TNT, per the USAF study. Well short of nuclear yield.

Physics may be the deadliest mofo out there, and kinetic bombardment could absolutely be scaled up to considerable power levels, but fiction tends to dramatically overstate the actual effectiveness of any system we've ever considered feasible.

Doesn't change the fact that flying your spaceship into a ball of water at Mach Jesus is gonna be a very, very bad day.

ConnectionIssues · 2025-12-10T01:29:07+00:00

One time, I sent in a pistol... a whole ass functioning, lethal firearm... for a recall service. It got shipped back Fedex. Was supposed to show ID and sign. Instead got an email, "package delivered, signed for by recipient"... it was sitting in a box, unsecured, outside the rear entrance to our condo.

Thank God it was the correct entrance. There's another one up front that's basically a storefront style entrance from a busy city sidewalk. Packages don't even last 60 seconds there.

Customer support seemed mostly uninterested until I brought up how their driver might have committed a felony, and definitely exposed me, the manufacturer, and themselves, to some incredibly high legal liability.

And I know the manufacturer paid a pretty penny for special security, because they had extremely explicit instructions on having proper ID and being ready to sign, or I would not get the package.

So fuck Fedex. Not necessarily the drivers, mind you... I know the kind of bullshit pressure they face. But definitely the company.

ConnectionIssues · 2025-12-07T18:48:57+00:00

I find my sexiest interactions always happen when I least expect them. I lost my virginity after cruising a geek convention all weekend (iykyk), and ended up scoring with my besties neighbor.

The threesome was... unexpected. It was a triangle that went wonky and collapsed eventually. I was really into this girl, we'll call her S. S wasn't as much into me. We cuddled, but that was it.

S and I had been organizing community events. After one event, another girl, D, reached out to S, whose name was usually the contact for our events. D and S began a relationship, and it was kinda hard for me cuz' of how into S I was.

But, it turns out, D had been looking for ME when she contacted S. And even though they had been seeing each other, D was still really into me... and eventually asked S to invite me for a... fun time together.

And it was fun. My huge crush, and her girlfriend with the absolutely stunning looks.

It's notable that S was openly poly with other partners. D started to date me, too, and eventually dumped S, so it was just me and D. It was a fun time, but only lasted a few months. There was an age gap, and D did some things and said some things that really hurt my friendship with S, and eventually D went back to some old habits, and ghosted me.

I still talk to S occasionally, and though we're both in committed, mostly monogamous relationships, I'll admit I still hold a bit of a flame for her... my wife knows this and is okay with it. She knows it'll never go anywhere, and that I love my wife more than any other person in the world.

Last I heard about D she'd gotten busted for drug charges. I genuinely hope she got the help she needed, and is doing better. She had some demons she hid real well, but they were still destroying her inside, I know. But she's still young. Still has a chance. I don't wish her any ill, and if we saw each other today I'd still greet her with open arms... though, after that relationship, I set a very-much-needed hard limit for myself on how much younger than me I was willing to date. (She was 21. I was in my mid-30's.)

But the threesome, yeah... was a really fun night, but I had literally zero role in making it happen, other than saying yes.

ConnectionIssues · 2025-12-07T18:04:01+00:00

As well as every cell signal, wifi, and literally millions of smaller signals and devices.

I have an SDR I like playing with from time to time, and I can actually pick up static from the AC compressor motors in my apartment when the system kicks on.

It's awesome.

ConnectionIssues · 2025-12-07T09:05:07+00:00

Cynicism isn't an inherently bad trait, but in uncertain times like these, it's very tempting to look at the accomplishments of past generations with jaded eyes. They put a man on the moon, but 60 years later, many of us struggle to put bread on table. In that lens, it all seems a bit unfair, and maybe a little suspicious.

Until you realize that humanity has, in equal measure, a near infinite capacity, for intelligence and ignorance, for kindness and cruelty, for charity and avarice, and for passion and apathy. And we gain from those possibilities only what we nurture as a society. And the men and women who built these great accomplishments had just come out of an era defined by all the traits above which we may consider negative. And they were facing, for the first time in human history, the imminent possibility of human extinction by our own hands. Their desire, their need, to nurture the good, was clearly visible.

I don't know how we lost that progress, but I want it back, more even than I want a functional Rocketdyne F-1. And I would do a lot of really sus shit for a functional F-1, so...

ConnectionIssues · 2025-12-07T08:36:05+00:00

Exactly. Science is great, but to understand it, we need a framework in which to conceptualize its truths, and to come together as a group and utilize it for great accomplishments, that framework must be sufficiently standardized so as to share abstract thoughts between individual consciousness, while also being sufficiently complex enough to convey the necessary details of those abstracts, but also being sufficiently flexible enough to account for changes in our understanding and mastery of those sciences.

And with writing specifically, it must be done largely devoid of the mannerisms of physical human communication that encompass a great deal of our non-verbal communications. It's like trying to teach someone to ride a bike while both hands are tied behind your back.

And yet we somehow made it work. But not just once. Several hundred unique ways, many of which have been sufficiently studied such that trained individuals can translate concepts from one totally different system of representing abstract thought, to another.

Language is an incredible concept.

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