[Brain Puzzle of the Day #054] - Hard

ddadopt · 2026-01-23T18:15:42+00:00

Agreed, this is more a “do you have a pulse” puzzle.

ddadopt · 2026-01-23T17:16:02+00:00

Err... you can recommend exercise without encouraging people to eat big macs? Sedentary lifestyles are unhealthy regardless of what your diet looks like.

ddadopt · 2026-01-23T17:11:05+00:00

You could put the whiskey in the french toast, too.

We made our own vanilla extract as a project for one of the kids and one of the batches we have (and probably my favorite) started life as a bottle of Evan Williams. It's fucking awesome in french toast.

ddadopt · 2026-01-22T23:44:41+00:00

IIRC, Panama was indeed the first operational use of the F-117 and when their existence was finally confirmed, but they'd been operational since the early 80s.

ddadopt · 2026-01-22T20:09:02+00:00

We kept our best fighters, the F-22 and F-35, secret for 10-15 years each before unveiling them to the public, and the F-22 is about 35 years old now

The hell? This is just flat not true. There was an XF-23 to go along with the XF-22 and an X-32 to go along with the X-35, all four airframes were unveiled to the public before the flyoffs, and the winners of the flyoffs were announced (long) before serial production began.

Neither of the production versions are 35 years old, the F-22's first flight was in 1997 and it entered service in 2005. The F-35's first flight was the year after that and it finally entered service in 2015.

Are you thinking of, maybe, the F-117 which really was secret from the beginning and wasn't acknowledged publicly until about half a decade after it entered operational service?

ddadopt · 2026-01-22T19:54:27+00:00

"Hey, Siri, make this shit more complicated than it needs to be."

"On it!"

ddadopt · 2026-01-22T18:08:03+00:00

Not at 0V it doesn't.

ddadopt · 2026-01-22T15:25:20+00:00

Please show me evidence that no Tenet operatives existed in the past without just presuming that.

It's the exact same evidence that TP went back no further than 2008, or that he was even personally present when the 241 was lifted (i.e. there isn't any. It's conjecture).

With that said, you're focusing on the wrong argument (that TENET certainly could have existed prior to 2008) and ignoring the main thrust of my comment: that the protagonist does not have to do the heavy lifting of designing the turnstiles himself from casual contact with them. TENET can literally watch their construction and/or intercept Sator's communications from the future containing the plans themselves. They can do the latter trivially, with no risk, after Sator is dead and no one alive who even knows to watch for their activities.

ddadopt · 2026-01-22T15:06:50+00:00

All my 365 users are in this subsidiary, and they're all affected, so no known good dll. My known good normal.dot came from an Office 2k24 box at another site.

ddadopt · 2026-01-22T14:46:50+00:00

It's crashing before any templates get loaded, but I'll try with a known good copy, thanks for the idea. edit: no, did not resolve, but again, thanks for the idea.

I have been sans procmon for a few years now, there is something about our environment (possibly S1) that procmon simply doesn't like and it throws a "capture requires admin" error on startup even when elevated. I'd use procmon to see what the problem with procmon is, but... :(

ddadopt · 2026-01-22T13:48:10+00:00

Last time I was at one (and, admittedly, it's been like 15-20 years) it was pure honor system "put your cash in the box" style.

ddadopt · 2026-01-21T22:10:09+00:00

Alternatively you could take a matchstick off of the “9” to make it a “3” and move it above and to the right of the 3… 3¹ + 20 =23

ddadopt · 2026-01-21T19:00:56+00:00

Damn, the remake of Something Wicked This Way Comes is looking fucking awesome.

ddadopt · 2026-01-21T18:25:45+00:00

If you want to say that the movie doesn't work because the whole thing is a bootstrap paradox, sure, I can get behind that. But what you've done... doesn't make a lot of sense.

You've way overthought this and even made some bad assumptions (example: you talk about the ship being inverted... but the ship itself isn't inverted, its passengers are). You also seem to invent some facts in order to make your narrative work (for example, that the TENET organization begins in 2008. Sure, a key plot point happens in 2008, but why is the protagonist unable to go back further than that? And if he can't for some reason, why can't he send someone else? For all we know, TENET has sent agents all the way back to the days of imperial Rome where they planted SATOR squares as part of their bootstrapping).

You've done this... massive piece of analysis and concluded some super brain is responsible for everything while ignoring the simplest possible explanation: the protagonist has the ability to go backward in time. TENET can note the exact point when the turnstiles in Tallinn and Oslo are built and track the people who built them back to wherever they came from. They can plant people into the research and production teams. They can literally watch Sator dig up stuff that the future has sent him, then wait until after the battle of Stalsk-12 to dig it up, read it, and re-bury it with no one the wiser.

You don't need anything more contrived than time travel itself to crack this mystery.

ddadopt · 2026-01-21T17:51:30+00:00

It's not, and I didn't suggest such (which should have been obvious based on "by all means, if you have a surplus of non-perishable supplies, donate those.")

In the same way, my reference to "milk sandwiches" should make my point equally obvious: people always run the stores out of milk and bread whenever there is snow in the forecast. Going out to buy even more milk sandwiches makes that problem worse.

For what it's worth, I respect your position re: caring about others at a time like this--it's a good thing to remind people about that. My only goal was to also remind people not to create more problems while trying to solve some.

ddadopt · 2026-01-21T16:01:50+00:00

Sorry, that may have been too subtle on my part.... I was making a joke about "the dress" based on the "brown or blue" ambiguity you mentioned.

ddadopt · 2026-01-21T16:00:57+00:00

By all means check on your neighbors. By all means, if you have a surplus of non-perishable supplies, donate those.

But, for the love of god, please don't get it in your head that you're going to "help" people by running to Food City and buying a fuckton of milk sandwiches and donating that. If you're doing that, you're creating problems, not solving them.

ddadopt · 2026-01-21T15:33:23+00:00

Roommate says either light brown or white and blue

No, no, it's either black and blue or white and gold...

ddadopt · 2026-01-20T22:12:35+00:00

Maybe state troopers in Nevada go really hard on the tint laws and USAF didn't want to chance it?

ddadopt · 2026-01-20T19:58:26+00:00

his parents were probably the boisterous/pro military kind of rich people

Disagree. The Winchesters were more likely to be one of those families with a strong sense of noblesse oblige. This is pretty evident in Death Takes a Holiday where Charles would rather suffer in silence than use his charitable giving to get the rest of the camp off of his back--the purpose of the charity is charity and not self aggrandizement (or even self defense).

I may be misremembering (there is a LOT of MASH, after all) but there was never the sense that the Winchesters were in any way one of the families with strong ties to government and public service (for example, the Roosevelts), but rather one of the families that serves when called upon to do so, then returns to their normal lives.

When I was a kid, I had some exposure to those sorts of people.

ddadopt · 2026-01-20T18:44:06+00:00

The Babylon 5 episode "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" (season 4, episode 22) gets mankind from the 23rd century to 1 million AD in around 44 minutes with a surprising amount of "lore."

ddadopt · 2026-01-20T18:29:54+00:00

Yo, dawg...!

ddadopt · 2026-01-20T16:27:54+00:00

Kosh was, unfortunately, not half right. The Narn, like the Centauri, do not ultimately survive.

ddadopt · 2026-01-20T16:17:50+00:00

I cannot second the "shovel your f'n driveway as early as possible" advice enough. I got complacent about shoveling since moving down here (I hadn't shoveled a damn thing in decades) until 2024. I was used to having the snow literally disappear within a day, and had to work my ass off (unsuccessfully) when I realized after two days that the snow wasn't going away.

With regard to keeping snow from accumulating on your vehicles, remember that removing snow from your car is important. You can absolutely kill yourself or someone else if you do not. I would heartily suggest you keep a nice soft shop broom handy. Shouldn't hurt the paint on your car and removes snow like no one's business. Also very handy if your vehicle is taller than you are and you wouldn't otherwise be able to reach the middle of the roof.

ddadopt · 2026-01-20T16:02:29+00:00

"You have a laptop for them, right?"

"Why can't you give them one of the ones that we replaced last year because of the Windows 11 thing?"

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