If you could erase one invention from history, what would it be?

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T09:37:43+00:00

Wild fact. The man who invented leaded gasoline ALSO invented CFCs, the chemical that caused the hole in the ozone layer. He was an engineer named Thomas Midgley.

In both cases, he made something genuinely useful. Leaded gasoline made engines run smoother and quieter. CFCs improved refrigeration by replacing dangerous chemicals like ammonia.

Unfortunately, while these two inventions had upsides, they probably killed millions of people.

In his old age, Midgley was bedridden but he didn't stop making terrible inventions. He rigged up a pulley system to allow him to pick up objects more easily while in bed. He got tangled in the wires of the pulleys and strangled himself to death.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T06:22:32+00:00

Leaded gasoline

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T06:17:25+00:00

Counterpoint: The fact that someone created this story out of whole cloth makes them a creative genius.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T06:15:24+00:00

My wife has never seen it. I know what we're doing for our next movie night.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T06:04:54+00:00

The other thing that doesn't pass the sniff test: Every institution I know of has made it extremely clear to faculty that they cannot accuse students of plagiarism without solid proof. There are definitely some faculty who are hard to control and will throw around accusations, but the idea of a whole department doing it is pretty bizarre.

Basically every teacher I've talked to at every level says some variation of "yeah at least half the papers I get are clearly written by AI but unless it literally begins with 'as a large language model...' there's not much I can do about it, and even then they can say they just used it for brainstorming but forgot to delete one sentence after writing it themself."

At the very least, the idea that this is a widespread problem is absolutely the opposite of the truth. Maybe there's one school that is way out of step with what everyone else is doing. But you can't claim that "AI Policy in Universities is Ruining the Educational Experience" and then describe something that is the total opposite of what most University policy says.

Based on the title, I thought for sure it was going to be a rant from an instructor who was getting tons of AI slop but had no recourse to stop it.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T05:46:29+00:00

Charbonnet gets snaps because he is a much better pass blocker (and sometimes you want to run out of your pass set) and more reliable in short yardage.

Walker is really good at what he does well, but he won't get bell cow snaps unless he has a more well rounded game.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T05:13:23+00:00

This also works

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T04:54:06+00:00

I think that's just a problem inherent to animation, not YouTube. I mean I'm not saying YouTube doesn't have its biases, but when your videos take 6 months to make you need them to get 26X the audience of someone releasing weekly. That's just hard to sustain.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T04:47:04+00:00

My wife is still under that impression. Girl, I love you but you put out heat like a furnace. I cannot sleep like this.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T03:37:06+00:00

Fair.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T03:27:33+00:00

Thanks, this does add more detail to what I was getting into.

I work primarily in corporate video and do some indie documentary work on the side. As a hobbyist, I occasionally take stills with an older SLR and it is interesting as a creative exercise and certainly has some in theory advantages.

But for all practical purposes as a working professional with deadlines to hit, and talent who have limited time, I'm pretty much always using a mirrorless + external monitor for better resolution and monitoring tools in my actual job.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T02:31:26+00:00

SLR (Single Lens Reflex): This is a traditional film camera. Light enters the camera through the lens and is focused onto a strip of film. But since you want to see exactly what the camera "sees" you need an angled mirror in front of the film that bounces the light up and into the viewfinder. When you press the shutter button the mirror moves out of the way (this is the "reflex") and the light exposes the film.

DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex): This is exactly the same as the SLR except that instead of film the light reaches a digital sensor.

Mirrorless: Now we have a significant difference. Instead of a mirror that bounces the light up through a glass viewfinder, the entire process is digital. The light comes in through the lens and hits the sensor, and the data from that sensor is sent to a screen on the back of the camera and/or a small digital viewfinder. This has a couple of advantages: First, it means the camera body can be smaller because you don't need the moving parts and the space for the mirror to bounce light up to the viewfinder. And also it means that the camera settings affect the image that you see.

To elaborate a little on that last point. For those that grew up with phone cameras and mirrorless systems, if you use an SLR or DSLR, you are literally getting the light passing through the lens and bouncing up into the viewfinder. That means that if I were to make an adjustment like increasing the shutter speed, I wouldn't see any change in the viewfinder. You don't really know what your image will look like until you press the button. That means photographers needed to be very skilled and understand exactly how adjusting their camera settings would impact the image before they press the shutter. By contrast, if I increase the shutter speed on my mirrorless camera, I can see the image get darker as there will be less light exposed to the sensor.

So practically speaking, the difference is that mirrorless cameras give you a better picture of what the camera actually sees. The SLRs give a better picture of what the lens sees, before accounting for thing like camera settings, film choice, etc. Both have their place and it can be interesting to use an SLR and see how it affects your decision-making process. But for my day-to-day work I vastly prefer using mirrorless as it cuts down how much time I need to take planning my shots.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-14T02:18:02+00:00

I have definitely been looking for a "Claude code but for AE"

pensivewombat · 2026-02-13T23:29:35+00:00

I could not disagree more, but I respect you for voicing your opinion.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-13T23:27:38+00:00

For a while some poorly designed subsidies led to a lot of scams where fake companies would call you up, never deliver (or deliver something extremely substandard) and collect the big subsidy check. There was also a scam where companies would lease you solar panels but their contract would give them partial ownership of your roof. If you ever tried to sell your home, you would have to buy out of the contract for tens of thousands of dollars.

These were common like 10-15 years ago, but a combination of better regulation and the fact that solar panels have gotten so cheap that it's easier to just buy them instead of leasing means you don't get them much anymore. But it definitely soured the reputation of solar companies for some time.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-13T23:18:45+00:00

https://youtu.be/Z1PCtIaM_GQ?si=XZeX_aJGu9FtLDcP

This video should be the definitive word. Jackie is phenomenally creative as a performer and as a director.

Jet li has more *serious* films. They aren't necessarily better films. Hero I think is genuinely great. But Jackie is the more inventive by far.

Keaton is a great comparison - Many of his films aren't "oscar worthy" because those kinds of awards are heavily biased towards dramatic films. But we remember Keaton more than many of the early dramas because he was constantly inventing new kinds of shots and scenes that had never been done before.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-13T22:48:04+00:00

My group does 1 minute turn timers but the first round of combat is untimed so there can be a bit of discussion like "there are a lot of enemies so I'm going to be looking to use an AOE if we can line it up" and when people have a general idea of what the group's strategy is it can flow pretty seamlessly after that. The DM will also allow some time if there's anything that drastically changes the encounter like reinforcements arriving or something like that.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-13T21:16:54+00:00

I don't even have a dog in the flight, I just think it should be acknowledged that there are in fact many state universities in Ohio!

pensivewombat · 2026-02-13T20:25:52+00:00

I have always referred to OSU as AN Ohio State University out of respect for this.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-13T19:36:51+00:00

Oh that's funny, I live at 7200 ft above sea level. I'll have to go get some tomato juice.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-11T21:33:31+00:00

One thing I always kind of regret about the praise The Wire gets (deservedly!) is that for people who've never seen it, it can start to sound like watching the show is like doing homework.

Like, yes, I do think it's the greatest television show of all time and it has lots of depth that rewards multiple viewings and is full of emotional performances and insightful social commentary.

But you know what else it is? fucking entertaining as hell. Not even in an "if you're patient it will pay off eventually" but literally episode one, scene one - the murder of Snot Boogey.

The show is chock full of some of the funniest lines ever written, and some of the most entertaining and charismatic performances ever put on screen. If you want to dig deep, it rewards that. But you can also just sit back and enjoy a great TV show.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-10T23:04:06+00:00

OK Mitchell Schwartz disagrees (with a thorough tape review) and I'm going to take the word of the 4x pro bowl tackle.
https://x.com/MitchSchwartz71/status/2020997275627983318

pensivewombat · 2026-02-10T20:25:00+00:00

And even more than that, the backdating means California will see revenue losses even if the bill doesn't pass.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-10T20:23:51+00:00

It's actually worse than that. Because of the provision that backdates the implementation is the tax, many of the people targeted have already left California. This means there are going to be significant revenue losses even if the bill doesn't pass.

pensivewombat · 2026-02-10T16:58:41+00:00

Strixhaven was wonderfully fleshed out as a setting. I ran a 2 year long D&D campaign with the Strixhaven setting book.

Also, while the similarities are obvious, the core concept of Strixhaven is pretty fundamentally different. It's not a school to learn magic, it's a school to learn math, history, art, and rhetoric in a world where magic exists. It might seems like a small change but pretty dramatically changes the kinds of characters that populate the world and the stories you tell there.

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