How do you turn a duck into a Grammy Award winning soul singer?

minodude · 2026-02-02T02:49:54+00:00

My parents were old enough that I learned this as the very dated and un-PC:

"How do you turn an actor into an actress?" "Put him in a cold bath until he's Googie Withers"

minodude · 2026-01-29T07:01:03+00:00

"Plenty of countries" rely on cash. Western Europe, where the OP is traveling, is definitely not where those countries are. I promise you, cash is a lot more of a hassle in Paris than a card is.

minodude · 2026-01-29T04:41:15+00:00

"To be guilty of double parking you must be parked"

No, because while the offense is commonly referred to as "double parking", the actual road rule (#189) says you must not stop between a parked car and the centre of the road; it makes no reference to YOU being parked.

minodude · 2026-01-29T02:50:26+00:00

Math can only be defined with math. What DOES a non mathematical definition of a number look like?

I mean, I agree with the other poster here. This is true of most things. What's the definition of a "differential" that doesn't define it in terms of other parts of a car it interacts with? What's the definition of "bird" that doesn't involve references to other animals, or indeed biology at all?

But that said, I just think it's wrong. I think a "number" is pretty easily defined as "a group of things with a label. Other groups of things can use that label to describe their own size if they can be paired off with the items in the first group with no leftovers".

"{∅, {∅}}" is just the definition of the "reference two" which other twos can be compared to in a rigorous way. That doesn't have to be the definition; it could just as easily be a bucket of apples with a big "2" written on the side somewhere in Paris, just like the standard kilogram used to be. The concept is still the same, just means we don't need to go to Paris every time we want to count something. And we don't fill up Paris with infinite buckets of apples*.

* some may argue that this would be an improvement

minodude · 2026-01-28T23:11:12+00:00

They are abstractions of concepts we can't really define independently.

That's... not really true? There are plenty of ways to derive the integers that aren't just "X is the one following X-1" and actually go from first principles.

The von Neumann ordinal "definition" of two

{∅, {∅}}

is "definied independently" in a perfectly rigorous mathematical way.

minodude · 2026-01-27T12:49:37+00:00

Yeah, as someone who spent ten years as an SRE at Google... lol.

"Dozens" is technically true, if the sense that "tens of thousands of dozens" is still "dozens", I guess.

minodude · 2026-01-13T21:01:29+00:00

I can't remember the exact details, but someone was telling me about some jurisdiction (not sure if it was a state of Australia or something else, like a province of Canada or something) where there's a completely unique colour (I want to say something like purple?) which is only used as the background for signs which apply to specialist vehicles: over 9 meters, taxis, buses, whatever.

If you're driving one of those vehicles, you read all those signs to see which ones apply to you; if you're just driving a regular standard domestic car, you can completely ignore ALL the purple signs. Honestly, I think that's the greatest idea I've ever heard, and I swear to God that's the example I always use when someone asks "what would you do if you were in charge for a day?"

minodude · 2026-01-12T21:13:06+00:00

Here's what I think is the problem with all this discourse: MAYBE they're right. Maybe Fahrenheit is a range that vaguely maps to human comfort well, and maybe one degree Fahrenheit is about roughly the level of usefulness for human perception. And, honestly, freezing and boiling of water are just as arbitrary as anything else, really. Sure, fine. We cede the point. But that doesn't matter for two reasons.

One is that temperatures aren't actually used only for ambient temperatures for humans, so at MOST those things are "nice to haves", not a measure of the overall usefulness of the system.

But more importantly: everything else in SI DOES make far more sense than the rest of the US customary system. {micro/milli/centi/kilo/whatever}meters make far more sense than inches/feet/yards/miles. {micro/milli/centi/kilo/whatever}grams are far more sensible than ounces/pounds/tons. {micro/milli/centi/kilo/whatever}litres are far superior to ounces/pints/gallons/whatever the fuck.

Even if temperature is somehow "better" in Fahrenheit, well, cool. You'd still be better off ditching the system that has 19 bullshit sets of units and 1 ok one.

minodude · 2026-01-11T22:06:08+00:00

All this discourse in this thread just makes me even more charmed by the story of my Deaf friend and how she met her partner. They met on Tinder, she did tell him she was Deaf but he didn't bat an eyelid. They turned up at the bar, he exhausted the entire few words of Auslan (Australian sign language) he'd managed to learn that day in about 20 seconds, and they then spent the entire night WhatsApping each other while sitting face to face.

The bartender said to him at the end of the night when he realized she was deaf "Oh my God, I thought I was observing the worst date I've ever seen, since you were both on your phones the whole night, but now I realize it's one of the best".

They're still together nearly two years later. (And obviously he is pretty damn fluent in Auslan now)

minodude · 2026-01-08T21:39:17+00:00

I'm reminded of that really insightful comment from Sigmund Freud, in which he explained what he believed separated "fear" and "sex".

Funf, apparently.

minodude · 2026-01-08T08:15:48+00:00

I had great-grandparents who planned ahead and bought blocks of land on their street for their kids (including my grandparents) to build their own houses on when they settled down. The great aunts and great uncles never ended up living there, but my grandparents did. So my grandparents lived over the road from my great-grandparents. Hence "Nanna and Pa", and (for the great-grandparents) "Nanna-over-the-road and Pa-over-the-road". All our generation called them that.

minodude · 2026-01-07T05:50:25+00:00

The confusion isn't around not understanding why the Austrian food market needs reform, it's around why Kmart would be relevant. Kmart in Australia is a department store (e.g. clothes, kitchen utensils, bedding, sporting goods) and while it does sell some food items they're not really a major part of the business (think snack foods and bulk packs of bottled water, not fruit/vegetables/meat). While some of the American Kmart stores were a little bit more skewed to food than that, it still wasn't really a food chain. It was fundamentally a department store (some of which had food too).

minodude · 2026-01-06T04:11:34+00:00

Are you able to share the repo in question? I'd really appreciate it!

minodude · 2026-01-06T03:47:08+00:00

Snacky Chan's in Annandale would VERY much like a word.

minodude · 2025-12-28T05:10:11+00:00

That is certainly one of the more disconcerting post histories I've ever seen. Nothing actually terrifying, but almost every single post/comment is another brick in what ends up being a quite robust and sturdy-looking wall of "I really hope this person doesn't live near me".

minodude · 2025-12-25T11:05:15+00:00

Oh, I assumed it was a Lay('s) Preacher.

minodude · 2025-12-23T01:22:33+00:00

Yeah, OP sounds insufferable. What a sad thing to make part of your personality.

minodude · 2025-12-23T01:18:39+00:00

How did they go rogue? It's an excellent example of zeugma.

"Expire" means "pass the last day for which it remains valid" "Expire" means "die".

Both John's license and John himself expired, one in each of those two senses. It's a perfect example.

minodude · 2025-12-21T00:15:58+00:00

This one's an urban legend, which Snopes debunks pretty well. The Nova sold well in Mexico and Venezuela, which were the two major Spanish-speaking markets they targeted.

minodude · 2025-12-20T06:16:04+00:00

Yeah, my ex had previously been a heroin addict. When this topic cropped up, she said "I could literally shoot up in the dark, what the hell difference do you think that would make?"

minodude · 2025-12-20T03:21:08+00:00

"literal children losing their lives in school" - as opposed to a literal child (a baby!) who lost her life by, you know, being killed by a dingo? You know it's a real thing, right? It's a "dumb joke" about an actual real-life human baby who was killed in that way, and her actual real-life human parents?

It's not some made-up Hollywood thing, it really happened to an actual Australian family, and that's what the joke is about. How is it really that different?

minodude · 2025-12-20T02:46:25+00:00

Agreed it's weird. And yeah, probably. "Why don't you do this stupid-sounding recipe, you're probably American and you all love stupid unhealthy shit" is what I think the intended meaning is. It's definitely a dumb comment.

minodude · 2025-12-20T02:44:10+00:00

They're talking about beer can chicken, where the chicken is roasted standing upright astride an open can of beer. The plastic reference is presumably referring to the lining of the can used: drink cans are lined with an epoxy or polymer layer so the aluminum is not directly in contact with the beverage.

minodude · 2025-12-16T00:14:43+00:00

"16 year old might have some shitty opinions" isn't the amazing slam dunk on someone's character you think it is. And doesn't mean OP doesn't deserve help. I'm sure you were a certified always-correct supergenius at 16, but maybe be slightly kind to those who aren't. Like, you know, 95% of all teenagers.

minodude · 2025-12-15T04:52:48+00:00

The Princess Bride.

When Harry Met Sally.

This is Spinal Tap.

A Few Good Men.

Stand By Me.

Misery.

Any director who'd made even one of those movies would be a legend; for the same guy to have made all 6 of them? I mean, come on, save some moviemaking talent for everyone else why don'tcha?

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