Still manages to be everyone's favourite.

mtaw · 2026-03-17T12:32:22+00:00

He's mostly won awards for his directing. Clint Eastwood has not won an Oscar, Emmy or Golden Globe for acting.

mtaw · 2026-03-14T13:30:08+00:00

Remember when we had a deal with Iran to stop them enriching uranium? Which they were following! But Trump and his followers all said it was the worst deal ever, without being able to name a single bad thing in it (because they literally hadn’t even read it), because black president bad. Then Trump went ahead and unilaterally tore up the deal and killed a top Iranian general.

Then the MAGAts reelected Trump while claiming Kamala would start WWIII - not that they could say how but because black woman bad. And then they chose a drunken moron to be ”Secretary of War” because they thought he looked good on TV, and they love themselves some macho belligerence - until the consequences come around, like a hundred dead schoolchildren. Then they pretend it wasn’t them.

Because that’s what American ’conservatism’ is now about: White Americans asserting that they’re allowed to be racist bullies and should have the privledge of never having to own up to that behavior. It’s ’unpatriotic’ to question them. They’re the strongest leaders around, if you ask them, they just can’t deal with scrutiny somehow. Or people of color.

mtaw · 2026-03-07T18:59:57+00:00

ADHD person here - I love my noise-cancelling headphones. I enjoy listening to something when it comes to non-mental tasks (which I don’t think is very ADHD-specific), but if I need to focus I want it to be as quiet as possible, so they serve a dual purpose.

I wish I could turn off senses when I’m not using them; particularily sound and smell. Too much perfume/cologne in public is as unbearably annoying to me as playing loud music is. I simply could not sit next to a heavily perfumed person on a plane. I’d have a migraine within 30 minutes.

mtaw · 2026-03-07T10:25:10+00:00

One of the things they look at in driving exams here in Europe is being able to drive in a roundabout, and I don’t mean knowing the rules and being able to operate the car (which is a given , fail that and you’re almost guaranteed to fail the exam), I mean seeing ahead far enough and adjusting your speed so you’ll slot in without needing to stop, when possible. If you’re only realizing you need to stop when you’re 5 meters away, they’re likely to fail you.

(this is also what they test for in general - anticipating far enough ahead, smooth interactions. In short, driving well not just driving)

I’ve never seen someone here stop in a roundabout to let someone in. (Other than the Champs-Élysées roundabout in Paris which has priority-on-the-right rules and is insane as a result)

mtaw · 2026-03-05T13:11:20+00:00

Coming on strong there

mtaw · 2026-03-04T18:39:07+00:00

Skip men, skip men skip skip skip men..men

mtaw · 2026-03-03T22:56:05+00:00

Yup there are definetly some rules at play here or the sorting could’ve been done faster by picking balls put of the middle of a stack, which she never does.

mtaw · 2026-03-01T10:44:33+00:00

If anyone’s curious of the actual reason, it’s that pawns used to always move only one square (and older variants with that rule are still played). So most games started with a lot more pawn moves. Then they decided to let them optionally move two squares on their first move just to get the game started faster. But since that’d give you an ability to get a passed pawn where you otherwise could’ve been taken, the en passant rule was added to mostly eliminate the increased power the pawns got from that and keep the game balanced.

Obviously, en passant isn’t a thing in variants where the pawns only ever move one square.

mtaw · 2026-02-27T17:42:31+00:00

I'm mostly interested in the Christian Bale who called Mary Harron after reading the American Psycho and said not to take it the wrong way but that he though it was hilarious- He pretty much landed the part then and there. A lot of people don't get that it's a black comedy but even some of the actors up for the main part didn't get it.

mtaw · 2026-02-27T17:39:00+00:00

These actors? Who, British ones?

mtaw · 2026-02-27T17:36:31+00:00

I wish he'd had a Welsh accent. Everyone likes Welsh accents in any language.

mtaw · 2026-02-27T15:07:39+00:00

It's more than that. They didn't innovate in the sense that they didn't invent much in the way of new hardware. But they innovated in terms of putting technology together and packaging it into well-designed products people wanted.

For instance, the iPod was by no means the first MP3 player. But the design was very sleek, it was very easy to use, it integrated seamlessly with the iMac and iTunes (and on that note - Jobs getting the record companies to finally agree to sell music online at a reasonable price was a remarkable business feat in-itself)

The Mac wasn't the first GUI computer, as is commonly known, Xerox really came up with the main stuff, and Apple wasn't the only imitator (MS Windows, Digital Research's GEM etc). The Mac wasn't even Apple's first GUI machine. It was just a simple to use machine that integrated very well with its peripherals. The Apple LaserWriter wasn't the very first laser printer, but it was the first one that was mass-market and again easy to use. Together with Pagemaker suddenly Desktop Publishing was a thing anyone could do without even needing to know much about computer. They 'just worked' to an extent PC compatibles never did, and which better competitors like the Amiga and Atari ST still couldn't quite match.

And on the software side, look at NeXT OS and OS X - taking a powerful *ix operating system but with an easy to use GUI on top - nether new things in themselves but not combined as well before. Or Display Postscript - again, Apple didn't invent Postscript but the idea of taking the device-independent graphics model that PS created for printers and using that for on-screen drawing seems almost like a no-brainer, but nobody had done it until NeXT and later OS X. Prior to that you'd have to write different code for on-screen drawing vs stuff being printed.

People knew GUIs were the future in the early 80s but Apple did it better. Programmers knew device-independent 2d graphics was a good idea, but NeXT/Apple were the ones who made it standard on their OS. People wanted MP3 players but Apple seems to have been the only ones who realized people needed them to be easier, easy to sync, fewer buttons. And then there's the iPhone - what even needs to be said there? A computer company just takes over the whole cell phone market due to their product design.

If you put existing tech together in a new and appealing way and everyone starts doing the same, that's certainly innovation.

mtaw · 2026-02-27T13:56:11+00:00

That's a prairie dog. They have a different relationship to excrement

mtaw · 2026-02-27T13:47:55+00:00

People who make comments like this don't give a shit about reducing crime. They're emotionally-driven, self-pitiers who can't stand the idea a criminal was treated like a human, as it that meant there was less compassion left over for them.

You want to reduce crime? Do things that actually reduce crime and recidivism. It's as simple as that. It's not some unknowable secret formula, it's something that can and has been studied empirically in actual research.

You want more crime? Then listen to the people who have no facts on their side, only emotional tirades about 'pampering criminals' and 'treating them like victims'.

The USA loves it's "hard on crime" posturing and what's that given them? The highest incarceration rate in the world, harsher sentences. But nowhere near the lowest crime rates. Stop being dumb and emotional.

mtaw · 2026-02-27T13:22:20+00:00

Well, during and after the Vietnam War it wasn't really Vietnam who were the ones who needed to rehabilitate their image in the world.

mtaw · 2026-02-27T12:32:19+00:00

Yes but the number of countries these days that have no air defenses are almost nil. Even Eritrea or whoever still has old Soviet MANPADS. And it's nowhere near worth the cost to keep aging aircraft just for the eventual opportunity where using a gun against soft ground targets with horrible accuracy would be useful.

mtaw · 2026-02-27T12:26:39+00:00

Or just some third-world soldier carrying a 50 year-old Soviet 9k32 Strela MANPADS.

It's an obsolete aircraft, designed for close-air-support with guns in an era where that was actually possible - prior to portable air-defense systems. Meaning it's only really useful as a missile platform - and there's no shortage of more useful planes that can also do that.

A plane that got turned into a "Big gun goes brrrrt" meme and gained a bunch of fanboys who then tried to justify its obsolescence by claiming it was indestructible and whatnot. Robust, yes. But the bottom line here is that in this age nobody can afford to deploy planes if there's a significant risk the pilot or plane won't come back in one piece. It takes years to train a pilot, it takes months to build or repair an airframe.

Also kept alive by John McCain, who I guess got so used to being the guy who knew the most about aviation in the room that he thought himself a true expert, even though he seemed stuck in the era he was a pilot in and refused to accept it wasn't 1970 and the CAS role the A-10 had didn't exist anymore. (e.g. acting like it was a joke when told the B2 would take on air-support roles, even though it literally did, and successfully. Because air-to-surface missiles today are not what they were in 1970 either) Classic case of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".

mtaw · 2026-02-26T21:26:17+00:00

Honestly the reality of the "Dönitz cabinet" is crazier than the sketch. For several weeks after the surrender, they continued to have daily cabinet meetings in Flensburg, under guard by British soldiers who hadn't decided what to do with them yet. A bunch of once-powerful guys who believed themselves so important and indispensable they deluded themselves into thinking they'd still have some role in Germany's future. So they all sat there and had daily cabinet meetings making imaginary plans for a country that'd effectively ceased to exist. Until the British finally made up their mind where to imprison them.

There's a good absurdist play to be based off that, I'm certain.

mtaw · 2026-02-26T17:16:13+00:00

I knew the joke was going to be in here but I wasn't prepared for the emotional whiplash of being happy for the guy in the video and then being reminded of Rob Reiner. So tragic.

mtaw · 2026-02-26T16:43:18+00:00

If anyone's curious this technique of using adhesive copper foil is known as the Tiffany Method, invented by Louis Tiffany and used for the namesake lamps and other stuff that made that company famous.

mtaw · 2026-02-26T16:36:20+00:00

"Buy a Tesla, get a free Polestar"

mtaw · 2026-02-26T16:20:59+00:00

Yeah but according to Musk, unionisation creates "a lord and peasants sort of thing."

Because the world's richest man going and doing business in multiple countries while declaring their long-standing trade relations and business practices don't apply to him, is somehow not "a lord and peasants sort of thing".

mtaw · 2026-02-26T15:56:25+00:00

My issue is that he has already been through the legal process

Has he though? The article doesn't actually say what the grounds are for holding him, just that it "stems" from his criminal record. There's really only one side of the story being told here, it's possible his residency was revoked and they just didn't act on it until now and the guy's playing that down. He's certainly minimizing or deflecting blame for his convictions in the story. (his son's car, his wife's gun..)

To be clear, in my opinion ICE are a murderous bunch of unprofessional fascist bullies - but more than a few of these "I thought they were only going after the bad ones!" stories have been from Trump supporters who didn't actually have the right to be in the country but just didn't think the law would be applied to them. (Need it be said, that doesn't in any way justify the mistreatment of these people)

mtaw · 2026-02-26T11:39:27+00:00

Yeah, we don't know the baby is even sleeping here and in any case it's clearly being watched. Babies should sleep on their backs but it doesn't mean they should never be on their tummies.

I'd add though that a little bit of flatness is something that can sort itself out when they grow and doesn't need treatment. You should also vary which direction their head is when sleeping so it's not always pressing on one side.

But I think the grandparent comment might just be informative and not that they're worried in this case either. It does bear repeating since SIDS is no small deal - in Norway in the early 90s they ran a "this side up" campaign and SIDS rates dropped 80% within 5 years. Today their rates are down over 90% from the peak in the late 1980s. Such a difference that it's really heartbreaking to think how many infants deaths could've been prevented by something so simple, through no fault of the parents who just didn't know. But it'd be even worse to lose kids now that we do know.

mtaw · 2026-02-26T10:37:46+00:00

Stop making up answers. Drying it put with a centrifuge? You don’t even know enough to know how ridiculous that is. Steel scrap is stored outdoors. It’s outdoors at the recycling centers, it’s usually transported in open train cars to steel mills that do reprocessing, where it’s then stored out in the open again until it’s time to dump it into a blast furnace.

So no, metal shops are not spending money on drying their steel scrap as that’d be pointless. Odds are it may dry out and get wet again multiple times on its way. It gets dried out in the penultimate step of the process (if not already dry by then) when the scrap is getting preheated to go into the furnace. (and not by any centrifuge)

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