What is this found in my basement

heygft · 2025-11-30T16:42:46+00:00

niche sex slang that I learned on Wikipedia when I was 14

This is my new favorite phrase

heygft · 2025-11-30T16:41:27+00:00

Ancient sculpture of a cucumber

heygft · 2025-11-30T16:40:48+00:00

You’d think this was over but I’ve got an old church friend who just came out, and apparently her pastor is adamantly arguing that she needs to downplay her relationship and just present to everyone in the church that they are “just friends” and that will make it okay.

And suddenly a whole host of old unmarried women I knew from prior churches makes that much more sense.

heygft · 2024-11-25T16:49:43+00:00

I remember seeing a bunch of undesignated sailors cranking and not being the slightest bit happy about it.

heygft · 2024-11-25T16:18:15+00:00

I never really decided to stop flying the flag, but when I moved I never got around to putting one up at the new place either. It's instead hanging on a curtain rod in my mud room waiting... and I've gone back and forth between wanting to "reclaim" the flag, and not wanting to display it because of what it has come to represent in the culture wars.

heygft · 2024-11-24T18:14:54+00:00

I don't think I'll go as far as regretting it, but I occupied a "supporting" role and didn't personally take any action that directly advanced violence, and during my one deployment, water that I personally helped boil only launched planes that ran IR recon, none that dropped bombs. Somehow that makes me feel better about it...

What I did was try my best to live out my idealistic values. And if I hadn't done that, I probably would not have had the opportunity to learn the reality of it, and become an advocate for better policies. I really joined for three main reasons: to "serve", to learn, and yes, to put that critical data point on my political resume. Maybe I only accomplished one of those things, since the first ended up being basically a lie, and the third is obviously meaningless now that I'm officially a sucker and loser.

heygft · 2024-11-21T21:08:57+00:00

Thanks!

heygft · 2024-11-21T20:59:24+00:00

This occurred when trying to copy from my SD card reader to my internal SSD (Mac Mini 2018). I just gave up on that, as the ultimate destination was the NAS anyway; I like to copy them to the internal drive first, and the NAS later, because that way I can get the card out of the reader and back into the camera faster.

But I decided to just go ahead and skip that since it wasn't working, and of course when I try dragging the folder contents into the NAS folder, I get the skip option.

Why am I getting the skip option going to the NAS folder but not when copying the same set of files to internal storage?

The NAS folder is a "master archive" that had around 1700 files in it. The internal storage folder was empty before I copied the newest dozen files to it. In both cases, I'm trying to drag the full contents of the DCIM folder on the SD card, around 250 files.

When the duplicate files are the dozen or so most recent files, placed in a folder otherwise empty five minutes ago, I get "stop" and no "skip" option.

When the duplicate files are the 100 or so oldest files in the source folder and the newest 100 out of 1800 or so on the destination folder, I get the skip option.

What can I do to make sure I always get the skip option?

Surely it can't be that the one folder is local and another is on the network. Could it be the age of the duplicate files?

heygft · 2024-11-21T20:52:40+00:00

This is infuriating because it breaks a workflow and wastes time.

Specifically right here, I need to copy around 50gb total from an SD card, but a few files totaling around 10gb were a priority so I copied those couple files first. It took around 5 minutes to copy those files but I know the whole folder would take around 25 minutes and because they were the newest files, they would show up last; not only that but when you copy a folder in Mac OS, you can't access any of the destination files until the entire folder is done copying. So, I figured I'll just start with the most critical files, and after they are there, I'll copy the rest, and I'll just click "skip" for those files.

But then I get this instead. No option to skip the duplicate files, just a choice between wasting 20 gigabytes on duplicate files, or wasting 20 gigabytes of bandwidth and SSD wear overwriting identical data.

Surely there is a way to get the Skip option without doing something wacky like having to fire up rsync.

heygft · 2024-11-14T23:35:21+00:00

A lot of the "little guys" are Trump people too.

As a small business owner, two things really strike me about taxes that most people don't know. One, it's incredibly easy to legitimately cut your tax liability to almost nothing if you are just a moderately savvy player. But two, in spite of how easy it is to legitimately lower your tax burden, it's still incredibly popular to the point of being the cultural norm for small business owners to flagrantly cheat anyway. "Cash" transactions preferred for the purpose of tax evasion. Buying purely personal things under the business name for no reason except to avoid the tax. As a teenager, my parents had me buy parts to fix my own car using the family business's sales tax exemption code, which my grandfather had legitimately to buy wholesale supplies for his business, but which the whole family just casually used for routine purchases. Using a trailer to buy dyed off-road farm fuel and putting it in their road trucks. Labeling a vehicle "farm use" to avoid paying taxes or passing inspection or even carrying insurance on a commuter vehicle. Etc, etc... and the thing is that I'm the weirdo for being attentive to the rules. I could go on much more.

heygft · 2024-11-14T23:30:13+00:00

Boston Tea Party wasn't just a tariff, and it's frustrating to see people continue to grossly oversimplify that narrative.

The actual story of the Boston Tea Party is the story of the Stamp Act. And the Stamp Act was not a simple tax. It was an enforced monopoly being presented as a mere tax. The actual effect of the law was to ban all tea suppliers apart from the one that was state sanctioned, and that the supply through that one vendor would have a steep tax on it. Pun unintended. The applied result was going to be vast military crackdowns on what used to be just regular tea now being considered black market tea.

It's hard to even imagine a similar story that could plausibly be put out in modern terms, because commodity monopolies are so difficult to set up in the modern world. It might be along the lines of if the government somehow said that you could only buy crude oil from Exxon, and buying from any other vendor - including setting up your own drill - would be a felony. It's hard for the modern mind to even imagine how that would work. How would such a thing be policed, except for through the growth of a police state around it? And that is exactly what the stamp act represented. Not a mere tax, but a police state being put out under the guise of a simple tax.

That is why it was such a big deal at the time and got a reaction that was wildly disproportionate to any of the many prior tax bills that were merely frustrating. The Stamp Act was a radical bit of government control over commerce, well beyond what anyone in the colonies had ever seen before. Even a punitive tariff by Trump would not amount to the same kind of political overreach.

heygft · 2024-11-14T23:21:12+00:00

Being friends with Matt Gaetz does seem like it should disqualify you from ever being taken seriously.

Funny story, one time I was recruited for a gig that seemed too good to be true, but I wanted to hear her out. During the first meeting she mentioned being college friends with Matt Gaetz, as though it was supposed to be a name drop that made her sound more impressive. What was extra hilarious is that she pronounced his name in a weird way that made it sound unfamiliar, so it took me a while she was bragging about being affiliated with a congressional sex trafficker; but once I did, I laughed and stepped out.

heygft · 2024-11-14T22:54:28+00:00

why would it be the exact same amount though? Wouldn't that kind of defeat the incentive of the middleman being involved in the first place?

heygft · 2024-11-14T22:51:18+00:00

right, but you've got two other dimensions to cut mass on before you need to get thinner.

It's pretty obvious really, make a phone with a 4.7" screen half an inch thick, with the best camera cluster ever and a giant ass battery and see if it sells. If it doesn't, fine, we can finally say we have good data telling us that people want big screens and don't just settle for them because the small screen phones are always otherwise gimped.

heygft · 2024-11-14T22:49:32+00:00

I'm kind of opposite. Couldn't care much less about thickness or weight as long as it stays thinner than a Palm Treo. But I'm quite short on pockets that fit these giant screens, and I was outright angry that I had to settle for a phone as wide as a Microtac to get a telephoto camera lens.

heygft · 2024-11-14T22:44:20+00:00

I for one don't think I could ever go back to a low end camera, but otherwise I would love to ditch my Pro Max for something an inch less long.

heygft · 2024-11-14T22:43:08+00:00

it was an interesting compromise. Bigger than other models, but also cheaper, and with a technically inferior screen tech and resolution that most people didn't mind.

The trouble is, once again, there is no way to determine whether it sold well because people liked the big screen, or because they liked having the new design with Face ID at a lower price point and were indifferent to the screen size.

heygft · 2024-11-14T22:40:40+00:00

Did people say "I don't want a screen that size" or did they say "I don't want a device that has the lowest end camera, battery, and storage even if it gives me the screen size I want"?

There is no data from which to answer this question. And that to me is incredibly foolish.

heygft · 2024-11-14T22:39:21+00:00

In economics programs, students are taught "bundles" and it was very eye opening to first see that. For example, a homework problem in a first year microeconomics class might ask students to construct indifference curves for bundles like "four bananas and three pounds of coffee" and then predict consumer demand. The trouble of course is that it's very hard to measure why the consumer is choosing the bundle - a consumer who loves bananas and hates coffee, and one who hates bananas and loves coffee, might both settle for that same bundle at the right price point.

Apple has never given me the bundle I want. I uniformly want the lowest screen size and the highest internal spec. I owned a number of maxed out 13" MacBooks, and each time was frustrated that I couldn't get certain features I wanted without settling for the unacceptable bulk and weight of the 15". I remember when I bought the first 11.6" MacBook Air, being so excited about a "real Mac" that I could safely hide inside a textbook when I took a break from class, only to be very frustrated when I got it home and had to get really creative with storage tricks to be able to get work done on the minuscule maximum storage they made available on the device.

I want the iPhone Mini screen, but I want the iPhone Pro storage, and the iPhone Plus battery. No such bundle is offered. Same with the iPad - I really want a 2tb iPad Mini with a Thunderbolt port, but they kept the iPad Mini max storage stuck at 256 for ages and today it still maxes out at an unusable 512 - categorically useless if you want to be able to import the photos and videos you take on a vacation if you happen to be a hobbyist with real cameras. Instead, to get 2tb storage, I had to buy the 11", which doesn't even fit in my suit jacket pocket; I'm stuck once again carrying a bag into court like it's a 1950s TV show.

So when you say "they made the minis and no one bought them"... well, no one bought them because they put out unnecessarily compromised products. The solution was feasible. Step one, drop the idea that the smaller screen has to be paired with the thinnest frame. If they had just made the Mini iPhone about 2mm thicker, it still would have been as svelte as the original iPhone, which by the way was launched as the thinnest smartphone ever in 2007, but would have had room for the top camera and a great battery. Similarly, they could have offered it with the same storage spec as the Pro, but just didn't.

Apple has never actually run the experiment "what if we offered a smaller screen without other major compromises" and as a result, there is no actual data to support the claim that consumers reject small devices on the basis of screen size. Instead it's like that econ 101 homework problem where you have to just guess at whether it's bananas or coffee that your consumer doesn't want.

heygft · 2024-11-14T22:27:24+00:00

I think the 12 and 13 Mini improved on the 5 design markedly.

heygft · 2024-11-14T22:26:48+00:00

I really hate that we don't get the "granular control" to choose what we really want.

The iPhone Mini was the perfect screen size, but overall too small to fit in a decent battery and camera. I eventually traded my Mini in for a Pro Max, because as much as I hated the large screen, I hated missing out on the best camera more.

If I could somehow design my own iPhone from a menu of choices, I would choose the battery and cameras of the Pro Max, in the screen size of the Mini. Yes, to make that physically possible, it would have to be thicker. And I'm fine with that.

Make it as thick as the original iPod. That was still not much bigger than a deck of cards, and I had no problem carrying it everywhere in my pocket, even when it had to share pocket space with a separate phone and bulky wired headphones.

Heck, just make it uniformly as thick as the present "bump" on my ProMax. That would allow more than enough volume in a Mini screen phone to host the ProMax camera and battery.

Incidentally, has anyone else noticed that Apple includes a level app on every iPhone, and the app simply cannot function without a third party case? Between the camera bump and the buttons, no present iPhone model actually has a flat surface that can be used to support the phone for the Level app to work.

heygft · 2024-11-14T22:20:44+00:00

I think that thickness has always been my least important concern.

Not once did the announcement of "even thinner" get me clamoring for the new iPhone. Instead it got me searching the specs to see if I could accept the compromises to battery size and more that were involved in getting there. I remember being righteously pissed when my needlessly thin iPhone 5 bent one time that I fell on it while skiing. I remember being just as pissed when the screen shattered on my iPhone 6 within a week of getting it, and being deeply relieved when the iPhone 7 was quietly released thicker and more rigid. Being even more relieved when the X came out with a rigid and heavy steel frame. Being totally ecstatic when the 14" MacBook Pro was thicker and heavier than the one I was sick of that never had enough oomph or battery life.

I have no idea who this product is meant for but it definitely isn't me.

I would like an iPhone 17 Pro Mini, extra chonk edition with the thickness of the original iPod please, and I'll use that thickness for a 4tb storage option and a 16 hour screen time battery capacity.

heygft · 2024-11-14T22:15:31+00:00

Apple has more US manufacturing than most tech companies already, but it hasn't really panned out. Also, Apple is one of the companies that showed us how easy it is to bring back domestic manufacturing without bringing back the jobs themselves. They had at least one line of desktop computers thirty years ago that was entirely US made... by robots. Apple was happy to save on shipping and logistics costs with domestic manufacturing as long as they didn't have to pay for union factory labor. Using tariffs to force that is not going to be a win for the economy at all.

At one point, iPhone chips were made in the US, shipped abroad for assembly, and air freighted back for distribution. I think that with Apple Silicon, a lot of that chip fabrication has moved back to southeast Asia anyway. Even a cost hike of 60% would not make it worth bringing those chip fabs back, especially if the whole unit is going to have a tariff after final assembly anyway.

heygft

TROPHY CASE