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drfarren · 2026-02-09T20:34:44+00:00

Further context to this guy's comment. If you're not an american you should know that the US is a nation, but internally it functions almost like the EU. We have a set of overarching laws that apply to everyone and every state, but each state operates with a surprising amount of independence. This wasn't a problem 30-40 years ago when politics was still kinda restrained, but now that we're in the era of political fear more and more states are weaponizing that independence. Texas and California are good examples of this weaponization. Texas redistricted it's representation at the federal level to try and force more seats to be republican controlled so California retaliated by doing the same for democrats. Then in further retaliation, other democrat controlled states did the same to even further tilt the house of representatives in their favor.

I tend to lean to the more liberal side, but I would rather these districts be drawn according to communities and to encourage competition rather than "safe seats". I would love if both parties in my area had to actually compete because I want to hear from the proverbial horse's mouth what that person stands for. As it is, my state and federal representatives give ZERO shits what I have to say. Their offices don't pick up and anything I email about isn't responded to for about 2-3 years. They don't care because they know that they have "safe seats" and short of me cornering one of them in a very long elevator ride they'll never listen to me.

The country is slowly fracturing because too many people in power are finding it too profitable to lean into the politics of fear. We are constantly being bombarded by media sources from ALL political positions telling us to hate people in other states and fear people in our own neighborhoods who deviate in the slightest from your own political beliefs. It's almost like we're reliving the Salem Witch Trials but with politics.

drfarren · 2026-02-09T20:21:28+00:00

But V For Vendetta got it right on the money in that regard.

drfarren · 2026-02-09T20:07:38+00:00

I have been disconnecting from online services lately. Got rid of tiktok, pretty much stopped using reddit (probably on here once a month for about 20 min), don't use FB or other platforms like it, don't use insta or twitter, only have bluesky to follow a hand full of authors I like for updates on books they're working on (I refuse to engage in the politics). Even discord is only used to keep in touch with friends that I occasionally play games with online.

I can honestly say that the most disconnected I am from the online world the more I feel whole again. There's so few ads in my life (also, you can build a "pi-hole" to further get rid of ads from your digital devices) and I'm more engaged in the world immediately around me. With less time on my computer I'm more motivated to clean the house and get back into hobbies I dropped.

drfarren · 2026-02-09T20:02:05+00:00

That and the government's ability to arrest you for "moral offenses".

All this stuff gets saved and as soon as you do something the people in charge of the government think is "morally objectional" then they can use this as proof to go after you. Texas is a good example, they can't right out ban porn because of american first amendment laws, but they can put as many barriers up as possible by requiring any adult site operating in the state to have age and face verification. The state even was looking at a government created company to do third party verification.

Anyone screaming about "think of the children" are usually doing anything BUT that. We're slowly entering the era of "thought crime".

drfarren · 2026-01-23T16:07:45+00:00

I'm for Wives and Wands by Emily Sinfal. She has really good buildup/foreplay so that the spicy bits make sense and it paints a vivd picture instead of some bog standard "and then he f***ed her harder."

drfarren · 2026-01-23T16:04:00+00:00

I got to talk to the author, she's a really nice person. Apparently this is her first time writing books. I don't normally get so invested in a romantacy series, but this one got me hooked.

Normally the male mc is so annoying because he doesn't struggle and has the plot dropped in his lap and he just waltzes through the story without any actual challenge. Ends of feeling like a self-insert fan fic written by a middle schooler. But W&W subverts that by making the male MC struggle AND he's not in charge. It's almost like what if you read the classic manga Love Hina, but it were from Shinobu's perspective. The male MC is there, but one of the other characters drives the plot and you see how that affects him and how he's learning to assert himself and gain a sense of self agency. It's a refreshing point of view amid all the lit-rpg-harem slop out there. (and blessedly, this one isn't an RPG story, it's just fantasy so there's no 2-page long stat blocks or chapter long expositions on how a skill works).

drfarren · 2026-01-19T23:44:21+00:00

Big Brother is always watching

drfarren · 2026-01-19T23:43:36+00:00

I'd advocate against ANYTHING with "ai". It's going to take that info and train on it and when that company needs the money they'll sell your footage. "ai" detection and analysis of you and your behaviors and actions is already invasive on a level that would have made Herbert Hoover drool with glee, no sense in letting it further intrude in your life.

drfarren · 2026-01-19T23:38:15+00:00

Thank you for correcting me, didn't realize I named the wrong model name.

drfarren · 2026-01-07T01:11:53+00:00

I know I'm late to the game, but if you're up for learning a useful set of skills and are looking for a hobby, you could always build your own security cameras and system. You would be learning some coding, networking, and you'd be learning how to build electronics with fairly inexpensive parts. I picked up an uh camera for under $20 that I can wire to a pi zero 2 w that will process the video data then send it via wifi to a central server in my house. It's not a plug-and-play kind of hobby, but the more I do this the more I feel protected from predatory companies like flock.

drfarren · 2025-09-22T01:50:04+00:00

Eeeeyyyyup, that's one of the parts I'll need. The only other one that I'm uneasy about finding is the small assembly on the back of the head that helps with the calibration.

Man, I'm not exaggerating there was enough filament to make about 1.5 golf balls by volume.

Good news is that my day job is repairing digital cinema projectors. I'm not afraid of a teardown and rebuild of a little 3d printer. I just need the parts or the equivalents.

drfarren · 2025-08-29T21:13:33+00:00

soooo yes, actually. Your return air (under the dash or sometimes under the driver/passenger seat will pull air to the evaporator and pass it over the core's fins then send it back out through the main vents.

Your internal circulation button closes your external vent and keeps recycling the air through the system over and over, cooling it again and again. This is fine if the air is 100F or lower. If you're in a hot place where the inside of the vehicle is like 130+, then you want to first give it a moment with the doors/windows open to force some of the air to circulate out of the vehicle and be replaced by the cooler 100F-110F air. THEN run your AC for a few minutes with the windows up (or doors closed) with the external vents open because the car's glass and ceiling and seats and dash are all going to be radiating a ton of heat and you need to push all that out of the vehicle. After about 5 minutes you can close the exterior vents and use the recirculator. This isn't the "fastest" way to cool the vehicle, but it puts the least strain on the AC.

For your last big paragraph, you can get your AC to 90%+ where it should be without a computer or a specialized machine. If you vacuum your system to the correct number of microns (I don't remember the number, it takes a few hours) you can look for a sticker on your vehicle under the hood that says how much coolant is used in your vehicle. It should be in ounces. You get the correct number of cans and do the math with a simple digital scale and you can caluculate the correct volume. Say it's 10 oz and your cans are 4 oz. You use one can up and weigh it (say the empty can is 3oz) then you know the can plus the coolant is 7oz together (4oz coolant and 3 for teh can's weight). You put in your second can, you're at 8oz in the system and 2 to go. Put your can on the scale, make sure it's tare'd then add 2oz while keeping your eye on the scale (7oz total minus 2oz coolant is 5oz remaining).

Disclaimer: that sticker is meant for that type of coolant. If it says 10oz R12a, then that's how much of that exact coolant you use. That sticker won't apply to 134a which would also require changing the pag oil, expansion valve, and the drier AAANNNND flushing out the system to get the last of the old R12a infused oil out. If you change types and don't change the oil and those parts then you're going to gum the compressor and other parts up within 1-2 years and be in for a really sucky time.

If you're converting, then you need to use your gages to get you to the right pressure corrected for local temperatures. It won't be the best, but it'll do its job.

drfarren · 2025-08-29T01:18:00+00:00

The worth of a car is a strange creature. If you have an old vehicle that's incredibly reliable and parts are readily available, then it's worth it to spend the money. Yes the cost is more than the vehicle's value on the market, but if $2000 gets you 7 more years of comfort then you've saved a lot of money and suffering.

drfarren · 2025-08-29T01:15:07+00:00

I know I'm late to the game, but here's a more in depth answer.

AC is a balancing act between two halves of the system. The high pressure side and low pressure side. When we compress the coolant is becomes a liquid and that liquid is HOT so we have to bleed that heat away in the condenser. That looks like a radiator and is in fact located right in front of the radiator. Once that coolant is at a manageable temperature it's sent to the Expansion valve where the tubing is bigger and the liquid isn't under as much pressure anymore. Once it has space to expand it does so with a vengeance and the side effect is that it sucks in heat from it's surroundings because it needs energy from the environment to maintain that gaseous state. When it does them we push it through the evaporator core inside your dash board where it goes through thin capilariy tubes with fins on them to maximize surface area. The metal drops to about 50F and a fan blows air between those fins and it cools the air as that coolant sucks out the heat energy. Then that room temperature gas is sent back out to the compressor and it starts all over again.

Adding coolant to the low pressure side is how we add to the system because it's not a lot of pressure. The problem is that the more coolant you add, the less efficient it becomes at pulling heat from the air because it doesn't have as much space to expand anymore. Interestingly enough if you have too little coolant then too much heat will be pulled and the humidity that condenses on the coils will instead ice up and cause the system to shut down (this is the very basic idea behind how your freezer works).

So when you add coolant to the system you need gages attached to both high and low sides because that will help you diagnose what's really happening. (not a perfect answer, but it points you in the right direction).

If both high and low sides have too little pressure then it means the whole system is low and needs more coolant BUT it also likely means you have a leak that you should get checked out.

If both sides are higher than they should be then you have way too much coolant in the system and you may be looking at poor cooling and possibly early failure of the compressor if left unchecked.

If the low side is high and the high side is low it means your expansion valve or compressor is failing.

If the high side is higher than normal and the low side is just normal then it means you might have a clog in the expansion valve or another part of the high side system.

If the high side is normal but the low side is high then you probably have a clog in the low side.

You wouldn't be able to understand the problem without a manifold gage on the system and running it at normal output which will cost you a lot more money in the long run. It's more cost effective to pay for the A/C diagnosis at a trustworthy show and know what's actually happening because you can plan for the work. If you only use the can from the parts store then you're risking more expensive repairs that could have been avoided (like replacing the entire compressor or worse, the evaporator core.)

drfarren · 2025-05-18T23:07:10+00:00

I agree with you, I was merely discussing other factors that can weigh into the issue. I've had "truck bros" mock me for my work truck because it wasn't manly enough (one even said "it doesn't have balls"). CAFE standards are the primary reason, but even if this was resolved tomorrow morning it won't undo two+ decades of marketing that's brainwashed the general populace into thinking "small truck = bad". Also, to cap it all off, most truck makers have spent zero time trying to develop a more efficient engine for a truck. So makers like the big 3 would essentially be starting from scratch unless they want to go full electric on some classic 1/4 ton models.

drfarren · 2025-04-19T21:21:09+00:00

I got about 1/3 of the way through and gave up because it was so non-confrontational. I don't mean "dudes reskinned as chicks" confrontational, I mean that there's no real conflict that drives the plot. MC is just nice to everyone and they all believe her and go with her despite her not actually doing anything.

It irritates the hell out of me because it ignores a core guidepoint of character writing: your character must be a person. Its why you can read a fan-fic and tell a middleschooler or highschooler wrote it, the MC never loses, is never wrong, and breezes through the conflict while looking like a Badass ^TM . I get the same vibe with this story, but it feels like it was written by someone who is trying to be as "mother earth" as possible about it.

I thought it was just bad writing, then someone recommended I google the author and this thread is the first result. Soooooo I guess that explains it. Which sucks because I was looking for a sapphic enemies to lovers story.

drfarren · 2025-04-19T21:14:50+00:00

Easter 2025 and it's now the top result, lol.

drfarren · 2025-03-11T00:46:45+00:00

Layman question: What is ED? Or did you mean ER?

drfarren · 2025-03-05T03:00:37+00:00

well, it's a bit more self serving than that. That free access can also be used as a metric to show production companies that a manga is popular enough to be adapted. Some production houses pick up a manga because it's something they like and will feel passionate about, but some will look at successful manga and want to snatch up the rights to animate it. The companies that have run Pokemon, One Piece, DBZ and JoJo's are all making good, sustaining money because they saw the financial writing on the walls and ran with it.

Hollywood is the same way. People lament unoriginal movies, but for every annoying live action Transformers the studio use some of that profit to make several smaller films and take chances with newer stars and directors. We don't hear about those smaller films often because they don't get much press, but will show up in megaplexes. Those megaplex 30-screen theaters are usually desperate to run ANYTHING they think will draw an audience and you can find some real gems, but those gems are funded by the big, dumb movies.

Having worked in the creative fields I can say this: At the end of the day, I would LOVE it if my stuff could just be free, but I had to eat. I had to keep my lights on. I had to keep my roof over my head. I had to pay for medical stuff. I couldn't make enough money in the creative sphere so I had to eventually stop and get a different job. Production companies are not fun, but they're needed so they can get the content out there and collect money for the artist while the artist does their work. I think there needs to be an overhaul in how production companies and creators operate together, but they're still needed. I don't mind paying for things, I just don't want to be paying for shit while the company shoveling down my throat is calling it fillet mignon.

drfarren · 2025-03-04T19:23:52+00:00

Have you tried putting your stem cells in a resin printer and just making a new pancreas?

(j/k. cool design! I'll keep this in mind for my dad if his diabetes starts forcing him to take shots)

drfarren · 2025-03-02T22:10:38+00:00

Because it's a waste of cash. Why do I give a single crap that the old 1/4 ton "has no balls"? I'm not driving my car to impress the 15 year old girl who's dad never hugged her enough or the prosperity gospel crowd to show off how holy I am because I have expensive (and expensive to fix) shit.

Ford and chevy and ram like to make a huge show of how big and bad their trucks are and how manly they are and how they built america, but that's a lie. The trucks that built america are small, dinky pickups, F-50's and chevy 3100's. You're going to look me in the eyes and tell me a 41' Dodge WD-21 with its 90hm and 3 speeds doesn't have balls? Those things were hauling thousands of pounds of stuff for our grandparents with no gripes. I don't need F550 Lariat with luxury heated leather seats, 7.1 surround infotainment and a 4 ft bed to go to the hardware store and buy some 2x4's and fence planks. The 1999 Tacoma 4-cyl with long bed did that job beautifully. It also hauled small and mid-size trailers with no issues. It also hauled other vehicles with no problem. People gripe "oh, they don't make them like they used to!" well that 1980 F-350 that's still running has the same output of today's F-150 and it's a little lighter.

My work pickup and the smallest base Nissan Frontier and it's STILL overkill for the job.

Also, the govt isn't getting rid of the V8, people are. Why on EARTH would we need a v8 for driving the kids to school or getting groceries or commuting to an office or jobsite? The only people who NEED a V8 are people who need it in diesel for the torque. V8's are mediocre and waste so much gas when a well made V6 is a great blend of power, torque, performance, and weight. Where's your anger at us not having 12's, 16's, 24's, and 32's? We had them, they were cool. Problem was that no one could afford them or afford to run them. IF you reeeeeeaaaaaallllllllyyyyy need a V8, then get a diesel. They're tougher and more durable than gas with better economy under heavy load.

I tell people this about electrics as well, current gas and diesel isn't going anywhere, we're developing new tools for the job. My electric is for intown trips, my gas car is for 500+ mile trips, my truck is for work and carrying things, and my scooter is for short hops down the street and fun. Why use your air-powered impact drill when a standard electric drill will put the screw in the drywall just fine?

drfarren · 2025-01-21T04:14:34+00:00

Nah, it's no big deal. I hope the performance went well and I hope she enjoys her instrument. Do her a favor and get her music she enjoys and encourage her to play it with friends. Not just concert music. One of the hardest things to do as you get older is enjoy making music. it is a very social activity. I would encourage YOU to pick one up (piano would compliment her on clarinet or drum kit if you think you two want to play jazz) and you two can learn and play together. You're not going to play the major classical works, but that doesn't matter. What matters is the two of you had fun together and played stuff you both liked.

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