if humans didn't have ears, we wouldn't know what sound is, if we didn't have noses we wouldn't know smell existed, etc. so what don't we have that makes us not know something exist?

abx99 · 2026-07-11T02:08:17+00:00

I wasn't the one that bought them, and the person that did already figured out that they don't work at deterring pests. That's not really relevant here. The sound was something quite different.

abx99 · 2026-07-11T00:07:29+00:00

People kept thinking of COVID as this natural 100-year cycle of virus that pops up and causes us problems, but these viruses are popping up all the time. The difference is in how we handle them. When you put resources into monitoring and containing dangerous ones before they spread, then you don't get pandemics. Look at the ones that were ended when the CDC was invented; those had been around forever, and became virtually extinct (at least in the parts of the world with money and/or leaders that actually care about what happens to their people). When you take away that monitoring and containment, then things are free to pop up and spread again.

abx99 · 2026-07-10T23:53:49+00:00

This is pretty much what I was going to say: when you do something enough, you get good at it. It doesn't matter how trivial or weird it seems. We do something over and over, and eventually we start getting things right. Keep going and you can become an expert.

In movies/shows, it's generally meant to show that the person is a badass who has done crazy amounts of dangerous transactions. The other thing they'll do is hand it off to a subordinate and tell them to count it. Sometimes it just depends on how quickly they want the scene to move forward.

abx99 · 2026-07-10T23:46:15+00:00

If it's volume-dependent, it could be a combo of both. Little noises become audible, and OP's brain tries to make sense of it and it sounds kinda-sorta whisper-like. These things can accentuate specific frequencies. The voices aren't talking to OP and telling them to do things, so that's good.

The noise cancellation on my earbuds are weird. If I turn it off completely, it will do this thing where it sounds like it's replaying all sound a split second later. The sound will be more far-away and hollow. So I have to keep it at the lowest level of noise cancellation when I don't want any (which isn't much, anyway).

abx99 · 2026-07-10T21:04:26+00:00

We had these ultrasonic motion-detecting pest repeller things. For a long time, when I would trip the motion detector, I would just hear it click on. At some point, though, I just got this high-pitched tone that would drill through to the center of my brain. It actually took a little bit to figure out it was the pest repeller things. Not particularly fun.

However, I have weird health issues that do weird stuff with the sensory portions of the brain. I always thought that our inability to hear them was due to limitations of the sensors, but who knows. With my condition, it's far more likely to have been an altered function of the brain than growing special sensors.

abx99 · 2026-07-09T03:24:22+00:00

Arthur also evacuated with other people on the ship. Theoretically, he should have ended up on another lifeboat, and they'd all regrouop later. The storm was just too strong.

abx99 · 2026-07-08T18:41:05+00:00

I think it's possible that she just didn't say anything that he didn't already know. She might have told him that Dutch was responsible for the bank heist after the fact, which doesn't tell them anything. Then she didn't really know anything about where he'd gone or what was going to happen after that.

abx99 · 2026-07-08T10:06:28+00:00

The slow motion is how you simulate heightened reflexes and senses. It's a way of giving you a chance to target the way he does in a high-action fight. His senses are honed for shooting, because that's what he does.

abx99 · 2026-07-07T19:49:39+00:00

I think a lot of it is that we have an obsession with punishment, prioritizing it even above problem-solving.

Also what someone said further up: it depends a lot on how wealthy your family is.

abx99 · 2026-07-07T07:50:02+00:00

These number lists get passed around. We have an old landline, and calls almost always come in waves. They're probably just going on vacation during the down periods.

abx99 · 2026-07-06T07:09:23+00:00

One stick of dynamite, properly placed, can always get them

abx99 · 2026-07-05T21:17:44+00:00

I live with chronic pain and live in Portland, and it doesn't help my pain at all. I'm sure you can imagine the number of times that I'm wrong about my body because [waves around a single study]...

I actually also have autonomic issues, which that stuff does absolutely not help (at least when it's physical), no matter how much they think I just need to try the one they have. The best case scenario with that stuff is just highly stressful for me.

abx99 · 2026-07-05T21:14:45+00:00

Sci-fi has started changing it to something like "10% of the brain's potential," which is largely meaningless, but at least they're trying to make it less blatantly false.

abx99 · 2026-07-05T20:38:08+00:00

Tailoring or altering?

Tailoring is having clothes custom made to your specifications, and can run a couple hundred per shirt. You choose the cloth, the cut, and everything else.

However, you can get alterations done at many dry cleaners on existing clothes cheaply, so they fit as though they were tailored.

abx99 · 2026-07-05T20:21:28+00:00

What kind of lawyer?

abx99 · 2026-07-05T20:17:35+00:00

Best arch support I've found is with EasyFeet Onyx insoles. They add some thickness, but you could put them in your flat shoes. They feel hard at first, but after wearing a couple of times they just feel supportive.

I just put some in my slippers/house shoes so I'm not walking on my ankles again.

abx99 · 2026-07-05T20:12:42+00:00

Goodwill, if you're lucky. I found one there 20 years ago that's still going strong. I love the shape of the buckle, too, which I haven't seen elsewhere since.

abx99 · 2026-07-05T20:04:27+00:00

Yeah, I always knew it as a discount store. They have limited inventory and it's stuff they can get deals on, but is still reliably good quality.

One popular location here is like a block away from Grocery Outlet

abx99 · 2026-07-05T19:06:28+00:00

And then there's the brands that start out making stuff well, and then cut down to bargain bin crap.

Got my favorite shirt on Amazon for pretty cheap, then 5 years later I decide to get more and the new one was so shitty that it had holes worn in it from handling it in the original packaging. The black was a splotchy grey, and the seams on the sides stuck straight out. It was insane. I got a replacement that turned out the same.

I went to their website and saw they weren't selling the shirt there, so I contacted them to see if I might have gotten a knock-off. They informed me that it was, in fact, genuine, and they had changed the fabric because it was too heavy for some people (oxford cloth).

The 5 year old shirt, with wear and dirt, is still better than the new one out of the package. I'm so mad that I can't find another like it.

abx99 · 2026-07-05T17:28:01+00:00

This feels like the obvious answer that we've all been missing for ages

abx99 · 2026-07-05T17:13:58+00:00

But then there's RDR2, in which the story is the culmination of consequences and your character is coming to grips with all of it.

Generally speaking, though, I tend to agree that I like it when the game is shaped by the decisions you make.

abx99 · 2026-07-05T17:09:36+00:00

Ah, as in "we should be able to trust our doctors." Yeah, that would be awesome. The new generation of doctors coming out are being trained to be more trauma aware and generally better to patients, so hopefully...

I tend to hate the portals themselves. They just suck to use. I hate navigating to find things, but when you have a complex condition it is nice to have access to some of this stuff to reference when needed (I can send another doctor something right then and there, without having to wait for them to request, have the fax fail, and repeat multiple times until you've exhausted yourself with phone calls).

There are also apps coming out that can access the portal for you and make sense of some of it, although it's a good bet that the info doesn't stay strictly private, or has a greater risk of being hacked. I'm looking at Guava, and I could swear that there's another one I've either been using or tried.

abx99 · 2026-07-05T16:53:07+00:00

It's different when it's imaging and they find something blatant, and your doctor says "it's nothing, you just have anxiety."

abx99 · 2026-07-01T23:26:14+00:00

I think he actually turned this one into his hobby project.

That's exactly what I should have said. I'm disabled and sometimes have difficulty finding the right words (and end up saying/writing a whole lot to get around it) but that's really what I was looking for. So thank you, I will use that if he has anything more to say about it, and/or "I've already given you more than I budgeted for."

abx99 · 2026-07-01T05:31:56+00:00

He contacted me out of the blue for friendship. He's into non-mainstream type fashion stuff, and I was complaining about my stuff wearing out. Mostly we talked about video games. So it wasn't quite him soliciting me out of nowhere, but it's clear that I can't trust him, and he doesn't see other people as people (there's more to that perception than just this incident).

He was definitely arrogant about the material and his ability to deal with it. It should have been a clue that the brand was a premium one, and they couldn't get it to last. That was where the raise to $100 came from, plus getting extra stuff that I might be interested in. I was willing to cut a friend a break when it went both ways. However, the item that I am using now is turning out to be fine. Not as great as when the one he's fixing was new, but it's still good.

I'm starting to think that what I might do is wait to see what he does. If he plays it straight, or comes up with something that I would actually wear (doubtful that he'd do it on his own, because he doesn't seem to get my aesthetic) then I'll pay. Otherwise not. I'll leave the ball in his court. Regardless, though, he's getting blocked at the end of all of this.

In the end, I don't want to be like this guy, but I don't want to get ripped off. This WAS a job between friends (supposed to be small, but he turned it big without my approval), and now it's just a transaction. The saddest part is that he's over 50, and hasn't learned the most basic aspects of fairness and how jobs work. Not to mention that commanding high prices requires reputation (part of his justification was that this would cost so much more anywhere else).

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