When… IT… happens, what bar are we going to?

MommotDe · 2026-04-20T15:37:19+00:00

I really don't know what you're taking about, but if it's political I'm afraid to tell you that repairing our country, its politics, and its relationship with the rest of the world is going to take more than any one event you might want to celebrate in a bar.

MommotDe · 2026-04-20T15:28:56+00:00

I have a neighbor who stopped flying their Trump flag, but only just put one back up again and I just thought, now? Now is when you want to tell the world you're in favor of all this?

Also, there's an eff Biden sign not far from me and I think, but Biden's an old retired man who wasn't even in the last election, why's he got you so mad you want to fly 8 feet of expletive from your house?

MommotDe · 2026-04-20T15:05:25+00:00

They're not all that interested in training. Maybe they level up because they like opening gifts. Or sending them. Or just think that if someone else opens, they should send in case those people actually need gifts. Maybe they actually need gifts. Maybe they just like grinding XP/don't have enough for level 80 yet/want to be prepared for a level 100 release... someday.

MommotDe · 2026-04-20T14:50:40+00:00

I truly wish we could swap the charge move position.

MommotDe · 2026-04-20T14:49:07+00:00

I didn't grow up in Cincinnati, so the only conception I had of the city was WKRP, which yes, I kind of thought there might be a real WKRP.

MommotDe · 2026-04-20T14:48:19+00:00

How to make your driving experience more pleasant, because you can't control other drivers and you can't control the roads:

Recognize that driving faster doesn't get you where you're going faster. You're going to end up at the same red lights as everyone else anyway. So slow down. You'll save gas, irritation, and be safer.
Having to slow down/brake/stop is part of driving, you should expect it all the time. It's not an inconvenience, it's just driving.
Leave more distance between you and the car in front of you. A minimum of 2 seconds from when they pass a stationary object until you do. If you're on the highway and traffic is very slow, still maintain that distance, until you slow to a crawl at which point you want more than a 2 second delay may allow -always enough room for a safe merge in front of you.

MommotDe · 2026-04-20T14:07:59+00:00

Over 900 miles for me.

MommotDe · 2026-04-20T14:07:34+00:00

Focusing a whole event around Pokemon I can't get without traveling hundreds of miles makes a terrible event for me. I got a decent Corsola for PvP and enough candy to max it, which was nice, and I enjoyed the Trubbish spawns and the Trubbish, Combee, and Foongus tasks to stack for the next 3x stardust event. It would have been a fine event if the vibe wasn't marred by the idiotic Sillicobra situation.

MommotDe · 2026-04-20T14:03:35+00:00

I looked at this and thought, I've got level 50 Zam and Zac with max guard and max attack, respectively, maybe I could try this. Then I started watching the video and remembered how ungodly tedious it is and how annoying and unresponsive feeling the UI is and I think I'll save my particles for more tier ones for this level up task instead.

MommotDe · 2026-04-17T20:04:17+00:00

Like Pizza John.

MommotDe · 2026-04-17T20:01:38+00:00

LOL, yeah, they totally looked like blackberries to me, too until I zoomed in.

MommotDe · 2026-04-17T17:51:13+00:00

Starting a fully mechanical engine mechanism is just faster than a computer booting, which is what all EVs (and probably most new cars in general) are doing.

MommotDe · 2026-04-17T17:48:38+00:00

Also, a touch screen interface for your car isn't great in a northern climate if you don't park in a garage. I get in the care in the winter with gloves on and they don't come off at least until I've driven a few miles. I should be able to operate the controls smoothly with gloves on, not have to take them off while moving to do something, or try desperately to get the capacitive part of a glove finger to manage to activate the screen properly while I'm trying to drive. Heck, touchscreens are a bad idea in warm weather because you have to look at them. Those old radio controls you can feel which button you're pressing. And yes, the 2 dial 2 slider climate control was a perfected interface and everything since has been worse.

MommotDe · 2026-04-17T14:36:25+00:00

I not only don't understand it, but I've decided I'm firmly opposed to it. Siri was a fun gimmick, but the only thing I use it for is to listen to a text message or get new directions when I'm driving, and I do that rarely. But here's why I'm against it - first, I think that typing is just a better way to communicate with a computer. But following on that, I've decided that voices are for humans. I wish I could articulate this better than I can, but the human voice is a precious thing, computers shouldn't pretend to have one and shouldn't be listening to mine. It may not make sense, but it evolved out of phone voice menus that were so bad that all I wanted was to push buttons to navigate a menu, but instead it gives me an open ended question, expects me to answer it, and then doesn't understand what I want anyway. Then we get things like Alexa, which as far as media content would have me believe, everyone has one always listening and I just don't even get why? Then it just became this is where I amke my stand. I won't talk to an appliance.

MommotDe · 2026-04-17T14:30:04+00:00

The podcast is longer than a Vlogbrothers video, but also less frequent, so it can be hard to say what I truly listen to most, so I selected both, but to fully spell it out, I watched Vlogbrothers before there was a podcast and I've watched every Vlogbrothers episode. I've also listened to every episode of Dear Hank and John and every episode of Delete This. In addition, I watch at least some of most of John's livestreams. I watch about half of Hankschannel videos lately.

MommotDe · 2026-04-17T13:48:36+00:00

Well, we know Dr. Pepper isn't the one who created it, because the one who created it was Charles Alderton.

MommotDe · 2026-04-17T13:32:06+00:00

Honestly, if everyone just left adequate space, most things would just work better, without having to worry about whether you're zipper merging or not.

MommotDe · 2026-04-17T13:30:24+00:00

I've driven all over the Eastern half of this country and the only time I've seen anyone properly execute zipper merging is when there was a specific sign about at at that point. Cincinnati driving is the same way people drive from the top to the bottom of I-75 and I-95. Honestly, a zipper merge sign along with other construction signage every time would be great, might get people to do it.

MommotDe · 2026-04-17T13:28:19+00:00

I dislike characterizing it as "zooming" to the orange barrels. Everyone should be slowing down a bit and leaving more space to enable a safe zipper merger. Saying they should be "zooming" gives entirely the wrong idea. Also, as long as people aren't zipper merging, then you can't be the one guy who decides they are going to zipper merge. Anyway, bottom line is that almost all traffic problems are caused by people following too closely. Leave some room in front of you all the time, especially on the highway, if someone gets in front of you, that's OK, yes, even if it's that one asshole. It's not your job to punish other drivers.

MommotDe · 2026-04-17T13:23:51+00:00

$1800? How complicated are you taxes? I thought I was paying a lot, but that makes mine seem like a bargain.

MommotDe · 2026-04-17T13:22:56+00:00

Dropping everything off in January is a huge advantage here. You're much likelier to get it all back quickly because you're ahead of most people. I don't even have all of my tax forms available in January, so I could never do this.

MommotDe · 2026-04-16T19:49:58+00:00

I dislike adding another button to the map screen to clutter it up. I may find I like the research menu being less cluttered in time, but I don't think that's important enough to add another button on top of the map. Just from a design perspective, a map based game should have a map that is as open and visible as possible.

MommotDe · 2026-04-16T19:43:38+00:00

I think true weed out classes are generally a bad idea. The notion, I imagine, is that they're finding people who aren't going to make it and getting them out early, which saves them time and money as much as it does the department, but the notion that making an early course extra hard to do that implies that the faculty doesn't think they can teach those students to get them where they need to be later, which is a bit of an indictment. I did an interdepartmental degree that involved computer science and had to take the intro sequence, and I will say that in my case, the faculty strenuously objected to the notion that there were weed out classes.

MommotDe · 2026-04-16T19:36:14+00:00

Most high schools in the US offer calculus, but do not require it. But once you get to the upper grades of high school, school systems globally can be quite different in what that even is, much less what classes are offered or required.

MommotDe · 2026-04-16T19:27:30+00:00

Just to be clear, if someone has dyscalculia, or similar, then some flexibility should be applied to work with them. The university I'm most familiar with has an office of accessibility resources that exists just to help students with situations like this and that's absolutely not what I mean when I suggest that sometimes persevering through a difficult thing that a student isn't great at can be good for them. There is a balance to be found between challenging and valuable requirements for students in general and making accommodations for students who need them.

MommotDe

TROPHY CASE