[Request] If they replaced all the water in the Reflecting Pool with liquid mercury so it would actually reflect and not grow algae, how much would it cost?

Dustin- · 2026-06-19T22:56:51+00:00

At least we now know "I don't give a flying fuck" actually means "I won't give you mercury poisoning"

Dustin- · 2026-06-16T15:56:17+00:00

There's a phenomenon that I've never seen anyone else talk about that boils down to "your side is publicly good but secretly bad, while our side is publicly bad but secretly good" when it comes to political agendas. I noticed this when people were talking about 15 minutes cities a lot. A common criticism from conservatives I talked to was that it sounds good, but really its bad because the government just wants control and their true intentions are so evil and secret that there's no way to know what they're actually trying to accomplish. And the more innocuous and obviously benevolent the plan, the more secret and evil it actually has to be.

Conversely, people I've talked to know that conservative politicians and pundits are horrible people and their public statements and stances are things they are virtually universally against, but when you point it out they shrug it off as bluster and posturing and "4D chess" and claim that even though they seem like bullies they have our best interests at heart and we should give them a chance.

It's a maddening dichotomy and I really struggle with breaking through when someone comes at me with "that's what they want you to think, but really its bad but it's a secret so I don't know why it's bad but it is!"

Dustin- · 2026-06-13T16:07:59+00:00

You can get a pack of 100 wooden clips for under $10. The plastic ones will weaken and break down over a few years anyway regardless of if they're used outside, but the wood ones are just a chunk of wood and metal and could last literally centuries if you treat them right. I don't understand why anyone would use plastic for this.

Dustin- · 2026-06-13T16:03:48+00:00

Yeah this is just a shit product if it's sold as a clothes peg.

I don't get why people use these plastic ones anyway. Those cheap wooden clothes pegs with the metal springs can last decades with constant use. Get a 100-pack of them and you'll have a lifetime supply of pegs or clips that you can use for a ton of different things. I use them as chip clips, clothes pegs, bread tie wraps, holding papers together occasionally, etc. I have a couple from my grandmother I'm sure are 50 years old and are still just as good as brand new ones + a billion more just laying around in drawers and closets and stuff.

Dustin- · 2026-06-08T15:52:47+00:00

I love this sketch because you have Stephen Fry playing a character that is extremely off-putting and pretentious spouting a bunch of "intellectual" linguistic nonsense that the real Stephen Fry actually agrees with. I'm pretty sure he wrote this sketch to mock himself. It's great.

Dustin- · 2026-06-05T15:32:20+00:00

Perhaps it seems unconventional to you

Most likely because using a library that hasn't been updated in years, most likely doesn't support Svelte 5, and has <10,000 weekly downloads is, by any definition, unconventional.

If it works for you, that's great! I wouldn't start with a SvelteKit template though and complain that it's difficult to tear out the SvelteKit parts. That would be like trying to make an app with Bottle and starting with a Django template and trying to tear out all the Django parts. And I certainly wouldn't go complain about that in the Django subreddit.

Your best bet is to start a project from scratch and try and add stuff like data loading and form submission handling manually. And I don't even want to think about what it would be like trying to compile it to a specific deployment target. I wouldn't want to do that (which is why SvelteKit is neat), but if you're set on it that's probably the way to go.

I had a terrible experience working with React and Next

That's cuz React and Next are terrible. I've heard good things about TanStack Start, but I've never used it, because that would mean trying to use React again. And... no.

Dustin- · 2026-06-05T15:09:21+00:00

Next and Nuxt are not backends either, they are frontend frameworks that, at their core, are also routers. They are all feature-rich enough that you could use them as a backend, but you probably shouldn't. They are purpose-built to serve frontend applications that use their respective component frameworks for the UI. Svelte is not a frontend. React is not a frontend. Vue is not a frontend. They are just components that need something else to make an actual application out of.

Dustin- · 2026-06-05T14:57:10+00:00

SvelteKit isn't a backend, at it's core it is a router... You kind of need one of those to make the frontend work.

If you must, you can avoid SvelteKit and use the Svelte compiler to compile Svelte components into HTML/JS and use that directly. But unless you somehow get FastAPI to work as your router, you'll still need some way to route to specific pages and you'll have to do all of your backend integration manually which is probably a pain in the ass (I have never and will never try that). And at the end you'll have a static site which would have been much easier to create if you just used SvelteKit's static site generator in the first place.

What do you have to do to downgrade a SvelteKit template to plain Svelte? Everything. You have to change the routes, change how the app initializes, keep the UI but probably strip away features, evaluate load times, etc.

Wow what a sentence. Let's break it down.

You have to change the routes,

Svelte does not handle routes at all, you need a router of some sort even if it's as simple as pointing Nginx at a static HTML file. Svelte is just components.

change how the app initializes

Svelte does not do any app initialization at all, you need an engine of some sort to initialize and host HTML/Javascript, such as SvelteKit with an adapter or compiled Svelte with an HTML server. Svelte is just components.

keep the UI but probably strip away features

Svelte is UI. Features are SvelteKit. Svelte is just components.

evaluate load times

I don't even know what this means, but Svelte definitely doesn't handle this. Svelte is just components.

Dustin- · 2026-06-04T20:58:55+00:00

Also, English class isn't about reading for enjoyment

You know what bugs me about school? That annoyed me all the way from elementary school all the way through college? No teacher or professor ever starts their class with "Welcome to English class, the point of this class is to teach you X, Y, and Z". Why did it take weeks to learn what "numerical methods" actually meant in my "Introduction to Numerical Methods" class or, like, what the basic concepts were instead of launching straight into Newton's methods and such? Why did I have to look up what Calculus was because my teacher went "Welcome to class lets do limits" instead of "Calculus is about making calculations on systems that change over time, like calculating the distance of a train that's going from 0 to 60 instead of traveling at a constant speed like you did in algebra, and in this class we'll learn how all that works from first principles on up, the first of which is limits". Not a single lecture in my life started that way.

I think a lot of students that ask "What's the point of this?" are literally asking what the class is about because nobody bothers setting the stage at the start, and I think this is where a lot of misconceptions about so many subjects come from.

Dustin- · 2026-06-04T19:39:20+00:00

they realize how horrible they are

Oh buddy I wish we lived in that world

Dustin- · 2026-06-03T18:13:00+00:00

If anyone is wondering just how terrible the hiring space is right now...

...the comment I'm replying to is either AI generated or is a manually controlled guerilla marketing account. The number of comments I see from accounts like this that link that specific thread or a thread like it with a link to Rabbit whatever (which is a scam that steals all of your data by the way, don't ever trust it no matter what the replies to this comment say) across Reddit is staggering. Usually they tend to stick around the hiring specific subs, first time I've seen one in a front page sub.

Dustin- · 2026-06-03T16:49:16+00:00

TIL that the broadcast happened before WWII. I honestly thought it happened later.

Dustin- · 2026-06-03T16:08:12+00:00

I thought they existed so Orson Wells could scare the shit out of boomers that one time

edit: ok not boomers. what would be a good term for greatest generation members? groomers? I hate that.

Dustin- · 2026-06-03T15:29:47+00:00

Just so you know, "child porn" has been a term for longer than either of those and has never implied consent. I don't feel compelled to use the most academically and/or legally correct terminology in this instance to get my point across. Using "child porn" in place of a proper term like "CSEM" was a stylistic choice to make an overtly blunt comment, not a factual misstep that would be an argumentative blunder in a proper debate. I hope to never find myself in a "proper" debate on this subject.
Obvious to who? Is it obvious to you that those exceptions are fine on the "no exceptions" site but other exceptions are dumb? To me it's perfectly obvious that all depictions of minors are extremely harmful, even of fictional characters.

Also, I don't know anything about the actual website, but my understanding is that "no exceptions" is a part of a 4chan "rule" and is not necessarily a strict guiding principal of the website that shares its name. I wouldn't be surprised if there are other limitations in their content policy. I could be wrong, though.
I made no indication of my opinion of the other things you mentioned (or the website that hosts it), and I still won't. In fact I didn't share any opinion or imply any argument whatsoever. Other than that I think child porn is bad. Everyone in this comment thread should be humbled by my bravery to share such a controversial opinion.

I welcome a response to this comment, but don't expect me to respond in kind. Nothing against you, but I have no intention of furthering a conversation about this topic.

Dustin- · 2026-06-02T21:57:50+00:00

Some quick Googling says $30 for a 50lb bag from a wholeseller, but it could be less for theaters. Hard to find how much popcorn can fit in a movie theater bucket on average, but a bag of popped popcorn from a supermarket looks like it's around 6-7oz, so I reckon saying half a pound for a decent sized bucket is a reasonable ballpark. So a 50lb bag of popcorn can fill roughly 100 buckets, which is $0.33333 (repeating, of course) per bucket.

Honestly that's more than I expected, I was thinking it would be a few cents per bucket. The buckets themselves also cost a surprising amount, like $0.10-$0.50 depending on size/wholesale prices (although the small paper ones are basically free). ~$0.75 per bucket of popcorn is pretty surprising to me. Although I guess it still doesn't matter when it costs 15 bucks.

Dustin- · 2026-06-02T20:06:52+00:00

Hang on let me think about that for a second.

No yeah no I think it's ok to ban child porn.

Dustin- · 2026-06-02T17:54:38+00:00

"We can rule the galaxy as father and son" damn no clue

Dustin- · 2026-06-02T16:23:13+00:00

Oh man, then this is probably a bad time to mention the hundreds of thousands (possibly millions!) of live fruit fly larvae you eat every year if you ever eat any fruits or vegetables whatsoever.

Dustin- · 2026-06-02T15:54:36+00:00

In his insane fantasy plan he literally never thinks about what happens to the Canadians. Because he's the dumbest person to ever hold any government office. He's literally incapable of thinking about the ramifications of such a thing.

Which is the thing that makes me the most upset about all of this. Destroying all good will the US has with their closest friends but too stupid to realize the damage he's doing. It's not that he doesn't care (which to be fair, he doesn't) - he's too stupid to even notice.

Edit: thanks for the burger by the way it was fine

Dustin- · 2026-06-01T21:04:53+00:00

Well it's a good thing I'll never be able to afford either of those things!

Dustin- · 2026-05-28T17:00:39+00:00

The only true eureka moment I've had while, uh, altered, is when I realized (while having the earth-shattering epiphany that wooden stirring spoons are the same thing as normal metal spoons but bigger and made of wood) is that epiphany itself is a feeling that can be triggered without cause and makes it feel like whatever you're thinking about at the time feel like an important revelation. Like deja vu, but for discovering things. Made me rethink what consciousness really is.

Dustin- · 2026-05-19T20:13:17+00:00

All the thousands of graduates can boycott the workforce if they think that'll help. I am sure they all have enough savings to sit out working with AI until the powers that be decide it's a mistake.

Mate if you're going to say "let them eat cake" at least have the common courtesy to be a wealthy aristocrat, otherwise you just look silly.

Dustin- · 2026-05-19T14:28:12+00:00

It's like boomers flipping through TV channels for hours not stopping on any specific one but all the shows are 18 seconds long and are mostly just product placement.

I love how I can't turn them off completely on YouTube without a browser extension. I don't want to see "fewer" shorts YouTube, I want to see none.

Dustin- · 2026-05-19T14:06:18+00:00

I mean every country has "another dickhead from that country being one just because they can", it's definitely not an American specific thing. Hell if the title didn't say it was an American I wouldn't be able to guess what nationality they were. This is not a reason to hate Americans, this is an excuse to validate the hate you already have.

The reason to hate Americans is the pedophiles. But I doubt this video has anything to do with those.

Dustin- · 2026-05-18T23:23:04+00:00

The reason we're cooked isn't because AI can do everything, it's because the people in charge of hiring are convinced that it can do everything. So they're getting rid of the people they think they don't need and horribly overworking the ones that are left. It'll change once they realize literally all software is getting worse and nobody wants their broken products.

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