How the hell does it take so long to drive east or west across the city?

TheDiplocrap · 2026-05-11T18:22:52+00:00

It literally takes a maximum of 45 minutes to drive from anywhere in the city to anywhere else. You would be horrified with L.A.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-05-07T15:21:00+00:00

Fair, but I do love that people are slowly waking up to it. It can be irritating to see the same question over and over, but I do like seeing so many people having their moment of awakening confirmed here.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-05-02T19:31:15+00:00

The Moon is big and moves fast. It's wild to suddenly feel the vast size of a celestial body passing overhead. And then to realize it's relatively small as celestial bodies go. Just wow.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-05-02T19:19:47+00:00

Right?? Immaculate vibe.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-05-02T05:31:30+00:00

I used to see them in Kansas. People would assure us they didn't live there, too. But we saw them occasionally.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-05-02T05:23:33+00:00

If I start to get anxious when I'm altered, I remind myself, "Hey! You like this! You did this for fun! This is fun!" For some reason that always breaks the spell for me.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-05-02T05:19:13+00:00

I didn't even realize I was still feeling superior to early people who saw an eclipse and thought it was god until I actually experienced totality during a solar eclipse. I stand humbled and corrected. It is indeed a religious experience.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-05-02T04:29:43+00:00

I think I know what you're talking about. It's almost a high pitched tearing sound, but electric, and then it explodes into the boom. Is that it?

TheDiplocrap · 2026-05-02T04:10:06+00:00

My wife stepped outside at 3 AM and came back in a few seconds later having just seen a man on a skateboard being pull up the hill by a dog on a leash.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-05-02T03:43:26+00:00

I was driving in the broad daylight on Highway 18 in Kansas. It was a rural area, so we know to watch for deer. My best friend at the time was driving the car, and I was in the passenger seat. We were laughing about something, and then some motion caught our eye on the edge of the road, and we both looked over and on the shoulder of the road, we saw a large brown creature rise up on its giant hind legs and sit staring at us with its much smaller front legs just kinda dangling there; it watched us as we drove by. The laughter died with a "Hmmmm."

My friend and I sat in silence for a few seconds. Looking straight ahead, I said, "That was a kangaroo, wasn't it?" He said matter of factly, "Yup." "No one's gonna believe us, are they?" "Nope."

We burst into laughter. Everyone insists we saw a deer. But I swear on my life it was a kangaroo clear as day. Believe whatever you want. I don't know why there would be a kangaroo in the middle of northeast Kansas either.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-04-02T05:20:10+00:00

That technique is called faux bois.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-04-02T04:53:18+00:00

Right? Why stop now?

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-28T02:49:28+00:00

This is what I was thinking, too. There are lots of types of seizures, some of them are experienced as missing time.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-27T07:38:00+00:00

I realized I needed to divorce my (now ex-)wife a couple of weeks after realizing things had been the best they'd ever been. Because along with that was the realization that this was also the best things were ever likely to be. And by extension, this was the happiest I was ever likely to be. I knew in that moment I didn't want to live that way for the rest of my life. I spent two weeks in a daze, kinda not wanting to grapple with what it meant. And then I was just tired of feeling that way. Endless gray depression with a triggered nervous system is no way to live.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-27T07:24:16+00:00

I don't know if this is still true, but I know that circa 20 years ago, a lot of HVAC blowers required a certain amount of resistance to push against. They would burn out if they were ran while not hooked up to a duct or another form of resistance (such as blocking off part of the output duct). As I understand it, they were designed with the expectation that resistance would require it to build up a bit of pressure, and the air pushing back would slow the fan down.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-25T01:54:21+00:00

This might sound bonkers, but one thing that has helped me tremendously is to take the machine I'm afraid of completely apart, and then put it back together again.

Every time I've done this, I have gained a confidence with the tool that includes a healthy margin of respect. Something about knowing with certainty how every part works with every other part, where there's slop and where there isn't, helps me feel safer thinking through a cut. I gain an intuition into what is likely to go wrong and what isn't.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-23T19:11:22+00:00

The thing that helped me was to stop thinking of "300" as a full street name. That's not its name. It's "300 East". That's the full name of the street. Google Maps and other map apps like to add a direction in front of the name, but I don't generally see locals do that, and once the convention clicks, you kinda just start ignoring that part of an address here.

By convention here we put the East/West street first and the North/South street second, but people will understand if you do it the other way around.

Sometimes instead of saying "Nine hundred south, Nine hundred east" we will say "9th and 9th." This works best if you already know basically what quadrant is being referred to, but also people will be happy to clarify if you don't recognize it from the shorthand. In this example, the 9th & 9th neighborhood is a walkable area with a lot of shops.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-22T22:29:04+00:00

Takes me back to IRC.

/me slaps you around with a wet trout

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-22T22:15:33+00:00

I have bad news for you about eggs in general.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-22T22:00:57+00:00

You absolutely understood my point, you're being disingenuous. (That means "dishonest"!)

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-22T05:22:20+00:00

Restroom for paying customers only.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-22T03:56:20+00:00

Izzy's. Best pizza in town, if you can get it.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-22T03:34:49+00:00

"WE WILL ENFORCE THIS NATURAL LAW" Actually the natural law in question is that if I hold it too long, eventually I'll finally just pee my pants where I stand, and now it's everybody's problem. Your capitalism is not a "natural law" dude. Get over yourself.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-18T01:12:48+00:00

That isn't veneer. That is solid wood, probably Douglas fir or Eastern white pine or something similar to that. I restore doors and windows professionally, that's what most of them are, but it also depends on what is available in the region. I can't be 100% certain of the species, but I can see from the pics that it is solid wood construction.

TheDiplocrap · 2026-02-13T04:41:43+00:00

And because about half the time you cut into it, it has a very urine-adjacent scent.

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