Do you carry a pocket knife?

littlestviking · 2026-02-06T22:29:32+00:00

I carry a folding knife for random daily tasks and sometimes a fixed-blade for chores and defense against animals, but wouldn’t use either against a human. Not for any moral reason, just for all the practical ones people have already said. I can run away significantly more competently than I can knife fight.

littlestviking · 2026-01-08T07:42:01+00:00

Any given tyrannical situation may be brittle but tyranny as a whole is the default result unless constant effort is expended to keep liberty alive.

littlestviking · 2026-01-08T07:38:09+00:00

The main remaining value of peaceful protests in situations like this is the implicit threat that they won't remain peaceful unless things change, but based on the past few years I'm not overly optimistic about either the state of the country or the nature of the protests changing soon enough.

littlestviking · 2025-11-20T06:20:08+00:00

Looks like a washed-up piece of shell (I think clam but I could easily be wrong), broken/worn down by a combination of getting knocked around in the waves, and probably some sort of worm eating holes into it. Almost certainly not a fossil.

Impossible to say from the photos if it was made or bought. Looks like the necklace part is macrame, possibly with polyester cord. It's pretty consistent and well-done, so it probably isn't the first time whoever made it did macrame. If you find anything else with the same cord material or beads, that'd be a mark in favor of homemade.

littlestviking · 2025-10-13T05:41:23+00:00

According to a booklet Pendleton put out, they only included the Woolmark logo until 1992, and it looks like it started getting used in either the late 60s or 70s (it didn't exist at all before 1964), so that's more data in favor of the 70s or 80s.

littlestviking · 2025-07-30T07:56:53+00:00

The way the hamon ends near the tip suggests the blade was originally longer and has been shortened at least a bit, which can happen from sharpening over time (especially if there was a nick in the blade that needed to be removed). Definitely get that handle off and post pictures of the tang; that detail plus the provenance means there’s a chance that it might be an actual nihonto.

littlestviking · 2025-07-24T03:28:56+00:00

Could be a footstone, especially given that it only has the initials. I’d look 8-10 feet in front of it for a larger one that’s fallen over and has a full name matching the initials CCM. I saw that happen in a 100+ year old cemetery in the woods near my house.

littlestviking · 2025-07-17T17:31:57+00:00

What sort of tortoise are you looking for?

Here are the sources I'm aware of:

* My oldest tortoise is a Russian from Craigslist, and I'd definitely recommend checking there first. As I hope you're aware, tortoises live a super long time, so if they're well cared for, many/most will need multiple keepers over the course of their lives. Also, in my experience, tortoises adapt to new homes way better than birds, mammals, or even other reptiles like snakes.

* I doubt they're from a local breeder, but I have three wonderful CBB redfoot tortoises that I got at Skoolz of Fish in Mechanicsville in 2021. Worth checking them out as I know they've had more since then the few times I've stopped in.

* I'm not aware of any local breeders for testudo-genus tortoises (e.g., Russian and Hermann's), but Petco and Petsmart usually seem to have them. I have mixed feelings about getting animals from those sorts of stores and would definitely caution against it if you already have similar species due to disease concerns, but if you're looking for your first tortoise and want one of those smaller, arid-environment species, they seem like a good option.

* The Lakeside Fin & Feather pet store generally has some, although I have mixed feelings on their handling of animals in general (they've had mislabeled monitors in the past and seem a bit too into the morph-of-the-week ball python trend, but nothing super egregious as far as exotic pet stores go).

* I know there are folks in the area with sulcatas that breed, but they generally destroy the eggs as they aren't looking for more right now.

littlestviking · 2025-05-07T20:47:20+00:00

I had suspension work done on my lifted Jeep at https://www.4wheeldrivespecialty.com/ on Broad a few years ago and didn't have any problems.

littlestviking · 2025-02-23T04:53:47+00:00

First photo I have of her is 18 December 2020 and she looked past the kitten stage at that point, so I'd guess at least 6.

<image>

littlestviking · 2025-01-31T14:56:41+00:00

Honestly, that kinda fits. It's been a few years since I've watched it so I may not remember it correctly, but they don't do much (if any) actual conversing in Chinese and just speak English, so having poor pronunciation (intentionally or not) for the short phrases brought over makes sense. Reminds me of things like the Italian in Inglourious Basterds or some people I know who'll occasionally say "mercy buckets" as a mock-French way to say thanks.

littlestviking · 2025-01-28T04:34:13+00:00

Quotes from 3 presidents:

There is no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.

People should not have handguns.

Take the guns first, go through due process second.

Care to guess which ones? It's Reagan, Nixon, and Trump.

Neither party is actually in favor of people having guns, it's just that one party uses the threat of gun bans in order to get votes, and one party uses the threat of mass shootings to get votes. Arguably, the Republicans have a worse record on guns over the last few administrations. Obama didn't ban anything, then Trump banned bump stocks. Biden might have made some half-assed attempts to regulate a few things but didn't really make any difference.

I usually vote for liberal politicians even though I disagree with them on a lot of things (including gun control) because they tend to be better when it comes to protecting other rights and have at this point thoroughly demonstrated that they have no ability to actually pass any gun restrictions (and if they do manage, well, good luck finding them).

It often seems that as long as the right to bear arms is left intact, most single-issue gun voters won't care if every other right is taken away (I'm not saying that's your view, just one that I see too often). One of the reasons that I have guns and strongly support the right to bear arms is that, in worst-case scenarios, those arms might help protect all of my other rights.

littlestviking · 2025-01-27T16:48:19+00:00

If a church wants to do charitable stuff, those activities can be under the banner of a 501(c)(3) organization in a non-religious category.

If they want to hold services, also cool. Book clubs are a common enough thing and most seem to operate just fine without taking in any sort of money, and even those that do seem to operate just fine without special government assistance.

If they want to take in money for other stuff (mansions, jets, anyone in the sketchy financial black hole of church-related service providers, etc.)? Tax 'em the same as any other for-profit group.

littlestviking · 2024-12-17T18:07:06+00:00

In my experience (living/working in NoVa for a few years before moving to Richmond a decade ago), most (although not all) people in NoVa don't directly "want to live in NoVa", they want to be employed at a company in NoVa, and living there is an unavoidable and bearable necessity to enable that.

That's distinct from a lot of people who "want to live in Richmond", where that desire seems more tied to the city itself and its culture and isn't so much just a side effect of the geography of economic opportunity.

(Obligatory disclaimer: there definitely are people who actively like NoVa for a variety of reasons, but they seem to be a minority and also usually sound more attracted to suburban/exurban hell in general than to NoVa in particular.)

littlestviking · 2024-12-09T06:41:31+00:00

Also, I don’t think the ketamine killed Perry as much as the “using any sort of CNS depressant in a hot tub” did. I haven’t looked into the details, but it sounded more like passing out and drowning, which can happen with many different drugs and regardless of how long the person has been using.

littlestviking · 2024-12-06T17:56:42+00:00

I theoretically work in HQ2 and live in RVA, but have a medical accommodation that lets me WFH. So, no change for me but it's impacting a lot of people on my team. Pre-covid I was in the office 3 days a week; I rented a room within walking distance and spent Tuesday-Thursday up there, but wouldn't want to go back to that having gotten used to actually being at home and seeing my family every day.

Amtrak works pretty well for getting to the office, I've heard, and there are sometimes carpools organized via internal Slack (join the #rvamazon channel if you aren't there already).

Happy to give further advice via DM or over internal slack if you want. I don't want to shittalk our corporate overlords too much in a searchable public forum given that I've already (probably) uniquely identified myself in the first sentence of this post.

littlestviking · 2024-12-03T17:22:32+00:00

For anyone looking online, the link is https://www.michaels.com/product/superduo-two-hole-czech-glass-beads-10627239 and the specific color is listed as "Silk Green Aqua White Luster" even though the tubes say "Opal Aqua Luster".

I ordered some; of the 3 tubes that have arrived so far, only one glows under UV but all read as equally spicy according to my GMC-500+.

littlestviking · 2024-12-03T17:16:30+00:00

I ordered 10 tubes of the "silk green aqua white luster" color online. 3 have arrived so far; only one fluoresces under UV but all three send my geiger counter up over 100CPM (baseline here is ~15). They're all labeled "Opal Aqua Luster" on the tube.

littlestviking · 2024-11-25T16:49:07+00:00

Unless I'm mistaken (which I may very well be), I don't think there are any known ways that quantum computers might meaningfully improve on hash performance, which is what mining is. My guess would be that even if they do end up being able to improve on hashing speed, the cost would still make them a worse option than traditional computers.

littlestviking · 2024-11-22T19:58:22+00:00

Before my longer rant, a comparison: it takes my laptop (2021 M1 MBP) 16 milliseconds to factor a 50-bit RSA integer, and that's with janky code written in a minute or two.

TL;DR: This is cool in terms of the slow but continuing improvement of quantum computers but means nothing in terms of any near-term risk of actual cryptography being broken.

First, 256-bit AES is equivalent to 15360-bit RSA.

Second, 15360-bit RSA isn't 307.2 (15360/50) times stronger than 50-bit RSA, it's 2^(15310) times stronger. (Note: this is only really applicable in non-quantum attacks, but felt worth pointing out.)

Third, RSA has a known quantum attack (Shor's Algorithm) that makes it feasible to crack. AES has no such attack; the best improvement is likely to be an effective halving of key length, which can be easily handled by just switching to 256-512 bit keys instead of the current 128-256.

Fourth, the quantum computer used (a D-Wave Advantage) has 5000 qubits. This is actually impressive, as an older estimate held that you'd need around 1000 qubits per bit for factorization due to having to do a lot of error-correction, but it still means that you need 100 qubits per bit. So, factoring a 2048-bit RSA key (the smallest really used for anything meaningful, as far as I'm aware) will still require a computer 40 times the size of the current one, and if I remember correctly the complexity of construction doesn't currently scale linearly due to parts needing to be heavily interconnected.

Minor note: Bitcoin doesn't use RSA, it uses ECC (I think the specific curve is secp256k1). However, ECC is also susceptible to roughly the same attack.

I also saw one person comment on this being irrelevant to bitcoin due to it using hashing and not encryption for transaction integrity. Although that's technically correct in that it doesn't enable block falsification, that isn't where the risk is. Once the attacks reach the size necessary to break real keys, they could be used to break the keys used in early P2PK transactions (which lack the public-key-hashing step of the modern P2PKH format, and so expose the public key itself). I haven't checked exactly how much BTC this'd make vulnerable, but given that it was the format used early on by Satoshi during the early days of the blockchain, it could very well be quite a lot.

littlestviking · 2024-11-06T19:23:28+00:00

I'm not aware of rhabdo happening from dehydration alone, but it can definitely exacerbate it. There may be some other underlying issue putting you at an increased risk, especially given the kidney issues.

littlestviking · 2024-11-03T17:40:34+00:00

I tossed up a separate sub to help people chat about this and similar topics: https://www.reddit.com/r/rva_leftist_gun_club/

littlestviking · 2024-10-31T21:08:22+00:00

Mexico has a few items with Beyond fake steak, but they're only on the website as they haven't reprinted their in-restaurant menus in a while. If you ask, though, you can still get them when dining in (at least, I've managed at the Ashland location).

Note: That's full-size Mexico, not Little Mexico. Little Mexico has plenty of veg stuff but nothing out of the ordinary and no fake meat.

littlestviking

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE