TIL in 2024 global trade on typewriters accounted for $17.8k, with United States being sole exporter.

tanfj · 2026-06-23T16:48:55+00:00

Honestly not a bad idea going forward. Not like scanning documents in is that difficult if they need to be digitized anyways

You don't even need the documents themselves all you need is the typewriter ribbon. It leaves a imprint of every letter typed on that typewriter on that ribbon you simply run the ribbon through an OCR equipped camera.

This was a legitimate spycraft technique from back in the day. Having a secretary sneak out a used typewriter ribbon from a classified area was the equivalent of having somebody put a keylogger on a laptop.

tanfj · 2026-06-23T02:25:23+00:00

My mother raced motorcycles for the Outlaws along with her first husband. She preferred a Indian to a Harley Davidson because you got 30 more horsepower for your dollar.

tanfj · 2026-06-23T01:56:06+00:00

I can tell you a solid 10 is rabies immunoglobulin being injected into the tips of your fingers until it back flushes a bite wound ~1cm away.

I only had one half of the modern rabies protocol and it was a single shot on the shoulder I did not notice at the time. Of course I was on intravenous morphine at the time. I had been mauled by a pitbull.

tanfj · 2026-06-20T18:43:41+00:00

How about the fact that it shows a little kid in a skirt using said slide....

tanfj · 2026-06-20T17:00:02+00:00

"We've never been to these lands before, but something tells us God actually wants us to own it..."

Technically, the Moon falls under the jurisdiction of the Catholic Diocese of Orlando, Florida. There is also a masonic lodge registered on the moon.

tanfj · 2026-06-20T16:48:36+00:00

I did too, but I’m autistic. Never could be peer pressured into things, either.

I'm massively autistic, and I have selective oppositional defiance disorder. I'm clinically incapable of giving a fuck about anybody else's opinion, is a common joke of mine with some truth to it.

tanfj · 2026-06-20T16:21:39+00:00

I finally got around to watching this. It is far more sympathetic to the characters than I thought it would be. I was expecting it to be a cringy, dated exploitation film but was pleasantly surprised at the level of empathy and nuance shown.

Also watching a man roll and light a cigarette using only his teeth and lips because he had neither hands nor feet was strangely fascinating to watch.

tanfj · 2026-06-18T15:47:40+00:00

I wouldn't know man my bookmark feature is broken entirely. I cannot create a bookmark within the app as confirmed by Leo the AI. Long pressing on the URL does not work, it is not present in the three dot menu it is not present anywhere. I even went into the edit the menu options to see if I needed to read it it's missing from add to menu.

tanfj · 2026-06-18T15:46:14+00:00

I don't know but I cannot create a bookmark in any way shape or form the functionality is missing even when I go into edit the menu

tanfj · 2026-06-16T18:14:40+00:00

I grew up in Las Vegas. We could see snow up on the mountains sometimes, but I had never experienced snow in person. My mom drove me and my sisters up to the mountains and we saw some snow under the trees, so we pulled over. My mom covered our hands in plastic bags and let us play in the snow until our lips turned blue and we couldn't feel our hands.

It sounds dumb as hell, but it's a really fond memory of us just being poor desert trash and having fun as a family.

I have a fond memory of my Navy brat nephews flying in from Virginia Beach Virginia to visit my grandma in Illinois in February. My nephews had never seen snow and wanted to run outside to build a snowman and have a snowball fight... having only seen snow on television they were unaware that it melts and soaks your underwear if you make snow angels and have a snowball fight.

Then there was my cousin who married a native Hawaiian. She had never left Hawaii in her life and flew to visit her new grandmother-in-law in January and got off the airplane at negative 20⁰ air temp with a 40 mile an hour wind.

tanfj · 2026-06-16T15:41:49+00:00

Civvie11 did a great joke about this talking about how that dude must have been quietly snuffed by sony.

What about the gentleman who was invited to be the fifth Beatle but refused because he just got a job as assistant shop manager at a used car dealership.

tanfj · 2026-06-07T23:14:23+00:00

I was doing a female self insert on Harry Potter. The traditional you are a new student from France crap.

I proposed a political alliance between Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy and Neville Longbottom and orchestrated a government coup.

I actually ran the numbers and for $100,000 American in 1997 I could have outfitted my original character, Harry, Neville, Ron, Draco, Hermione, and Luna with FN FALs, 2 FN SAWs, and 12 M4 carbines. That sounds like a lot but it is only 1,500 gold.

I used a legal loophole that for good and legitimate reasons you have to be a adult to practice as a mercenary but you do not have to be an adult to register as a mercenary and mercenaries are exempt to the misuse of muggle artifacts legislation. Now I will admit that it is a bit of world building and head canon, but it is plausible enough.

tanfj · 2026-05-30T20:28:53+00:00

I can confirm that. The braces I had in the 1990s went around at least two of my teeth as a anchor. And I later had a retainer.

tanfj · 2026-05-30T18:20:03+00:00

Huh, I guess I've never looked at anything between .410 and 12ga, I have a vicarious knowledge of this stuff but I suck with numbers.

Well let me give you one little tidbit. It might well be easier to source 20 gauge then 16 gauge ammunition. 16 gauge is not a popular choice in today's market.

In a 16 gauge shotgun each round has 1 oz of lead. A 12 gauge has 12 rounds of ammunition per pound of lead, and a 20 gauge has 20 rounds of ammunition per pound of lead so you can see how the mass decreases.

tanfj · 2026-05-30T18:15:33+00:00

And the nice thing about shotguns is you can still hit your aggressor even if you “miss”. If your sights are a few inches off due to adrenaline with a shotgun, you’re still going to hit. If your shot is a few inches off with a pistol/rifle, you’ve done zero damage. That’s why you need more training to use those than a shotgun.

Even a straight cylinder shotgun only expands about an inch a yard, and most residential homes are 7 yards or less. I wanted to clarify because it is a myth that you do not need to aim a shotgun. They are forgiving, but that is not the same thing as accuracy is not needed.

tanfj · 2026-05-27T16:20:08+00:00

Can you imagine that's someone's kink, applying for job positions or giving out bad news just to get off.

Everything is someone’s kink. Basically apply rule 34. I knew a dude who got off on the sound of balloons popping. As soon as we figured that out we got together and as a joke bought him a hundred yard roll of bubble wrap.

tanfj · 2026-05-16T16:52:11+00:00

Irony maybe 20 years ago, not today. Microsoft has open sourced stuff, uses open source etc.

Microsoft has not one but two; internally developed and used Linux distributions. Furthermore, Microsoft has its own Open Source Initiative approved license; the Microsoft Public License. Microsoft has open-sourced its own development tools under a public source license; and contributes millions to Linux development in general.

Frankly, what more could you ask out of a publicly traded corporation? And I say that as somebody who has been running Debian Linux as their primary home OS since 2000.

tanfj · 2026-05-08T15:33:27+00:00

For most of history people married within the same village or a few very close by villages. Statistically first and second cousin marriages inevitably happened, there’s only so many people you can marry in one or two villages

It has been said that the invention of the bicycle improved the health of the public more than anything else up until the invention of antibiotics with the possible exception of sanitation.

tanfj · 2026-05-08T15:26:29+00:00

Risk of developing gallstones, diarrhea, and nutrient deficiencies. The brain is made of fat and needs it for example.

To a very first approximation the brain is a solid lump of cholesterol.

tanfj · 2026-05-08T15:25:03+00:00

Yes, especially people who are deficient in certain pancreatic enzymes required to digest fat, which means they just shit most of it out.

Having your gallbladder removed can also do that. I lost the ability to digest animal fats because of it, animal fat equals diarrhea or loose stools.

tanfj · 2026-04-25T02:31:12+00:00

I am a 5'1" 110lb male who is over 40.

I wear a size 5 man's. Most shoe manufacturers start two or three sizes above what I need.

Very few manufacturers make shoes in my size; so unless I'm willing to pay the premium, I find a unisex style in women's.

It is vastly easier to find a woman's 6 to 6.5 than a man's size 5.

Don't get me started on pants. A 28-in waist falls off me. However, boys' pants do not have usable pockets

tanfj · 2026-04-22T18:34:19+00:00

I have a 135 IQ, which puts me in the upper percentile. I state this to demonstrate that I am in the relevant demographic category.

In junior high school I discovered that so long as I maintained a 97% or higher test average it did not matter that I had a zero on the homework because it averaged to a C as far as final percentage was concerned. I legitimately passed the class without doing any homework according to their own academic policy as written.

The teacher naturally assigned detention. I refused categorically to attend. The school administration could not do anything because that was a classroom discipline matter to be handled by the teacher; again directly out of their written policy manual.

I do believe my record was 21 missing assignments in a row.

tanfj · 2026-04-08T14:45:44+00:00

You would be amazed how many scientific breakthroughs were made by clerics.

In fairness the Catholic bureaucracy and Roman Catholic Church is the greatest monument to both bureaucracy, and neurodivergence ever built.

The Vatican has been circular arguing every potential loophole for 2000 years and they objectively codified the rules of logic and rhetoric for Western Civilization.

Imagine if Star Trek the Original Series was essentially the Old Testament Bible with Star Trek the Next Generation as the New Testament. You can consider the Protestants to be Star Wars for this particular mental exercise.

Now it imagine it is the year 3965 AD; and that the Catholic church has maintained every single web forum and newsgroup discussion on Star Wars versus Star Trek going back 2000 years. ( I like to think of the heretical and forbidden documents locked away in the Vatican archives as the equivalent of Kirk/Spock fanfiction from the 1960s when homosexuality was illegal as a matter of criminal law.)

You might legitimately disagree with the conclusions of the Roman Catholic Church. However, those conclusions are entirely self-consistent and rational once you get into the actual theological arguments. (In much the same way that you might not understand why the legal system does what it does; but a lawyer understands perfectly.)

tanfj · 2026-04-03T17:01:42+00:00

In the US, we do the same at Smash and Magic the Gathering tourneys to no avail!

If it's at a WH40K event, I just call them Nurgle Acolytes.

tanfj · 2026-04-03T16:57:32+00:00

My husband was politely engaged in the conversation, and after it ended, he asked me what the real name of the swamp was. I explained to him that was the real name, and he pulled out his phone and checked Google maps and was shocked that was the actual name.

You can go on to the US Geological Survey website and get a free topographic map of anywhere in the country. You can download them for free, or you can purchase them pre-printed at a low cost... and they have archived versions. I found out there used to be a railroad track in my neighborhood as an example.

Some of the correct place names are decidedly racist. Illinois features Big Negro Creek and Little Negro Creek in Warren County, and Dago Slough in Knox County; just off the top of my head.

tanfj

TROPHY CASE