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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • jasondj@ttrpg.networktoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldIT support work be like
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    1 year ago

    That’s lame and easy to figure out.

    Switch to wireless mice. Maybe Logitech Unifying. Then one day pull all the dongles out and put them in a bucket.

    First person to figure out how to download and install the unifying software and re-pair their mouse without using it gets a bonus.

    But most people nowadays are lost without mice so they’d probably cycle through all the dongles on the laptop plugged into the projector and all move their mice until they figure out which is whose.



  • Don’t forget that when an amendment does get ratified, you’ve got to really nail it or else people will still be fighting over the verbiage.

    You’d think “keep it simple stupid” would suffice, but look at how we interpret this:

    A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

    IANAL, but I see a few things as I read it:

    • Militias must be well regulated. I agree.
    • Militias are necessary to the security of a free state. Sounds a bit dated but I don’t disagree.
    • The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Ok…so…is that “the right” can’t be infringed, or “the arms” can’t be infringed? Who are the people, and are they separate from the well-regulated militia? Because you can have a right to bear arms, but still limit what arms are available for civilian use. Non civilian use would be either military or para-military, the latter would be a militia, which ipso facto must be well-regulated, and as such there must be restrictions on arms because how are you going to regulate a militia if not its armaments? It’s not well-regulated if it’s a free-for-all. This is law. There are rules.

    Should I be able to buy a nuke? An ICBM? A tank? Live grenades? Where is the line drawn? When does it transition from “civilian hunting and defense” to “military fetishism” to “para-military/militia” to “military”. Because it must be somewhere. And I feel like there’s one group of those four that’s really being a stick in the mud over it.







  • I really dislike Home Depot after a series of huge customer service mishaps with me last year, and actively avoid going there now.

    Which is a shame because I have a lot of Ryobi One tools. They are perfectly positioned for weekend warriors…huge tool library, good batteries, affordable and of fairly decent quality (certainly well above “junk” and a good value for the money).

    Shame that is a store-exclusive brand.

    The worst part is I’ve bought into most of the cordless tools I’d really need. The day might come where I want a larger circular saw (mines only 5.5 and it is prone to binding if your technique isn’t perfect, and even then…) or find that some of the tools that I’m okay with having corded (like a jigsaw or an angle grinder) I now need a cordless replacement. At that point I’ll likely find myself buying into a better and more expensive battery system and, for quite a while, only having the one seldom-used tool for it.

    Now I’ve got a dead 4Ah battery and I’m on the fence as to rebuild it, buy a new one, or take it as an opportunity to start going into a new battery system.






  • We were in a weird spot after the Industrial Revolution but before globalism.

    Post WWII recovery changed that, when most of the developed world (sans America) was literally in shambles.

    I don’t think we’ll ever see another full out war between major powers. Capitalism and the all-mighty dollar will prevent that. But at the same time it will encourage proxy wars.

    Scarcity is a concern but again mostly for the smaller powers. More than likely it’ll be some sort of indebtedness between impoverished countries and their pimp nations backing them out of the proxy wars they created.



  • We have a two party system.

    We have the right, which is gradually shifting further and further conservative (really, let’s be honest now, at this point they aren’t conserving shit, they want regression). They market their platform primarily through fear.

    Then there is the left. It’s the big tent party and has also gradually been shifting right to the point where the critical mass of the party appears slightly right of center on the global scale. They market their platform primarily through empathy.

    I’m not saying which way is right, but I do have a good feeling of which approach is more beneficial to society and humanity as a whole.

    Statistically, there are significantly more people who place themselves on the left. Which makes sense, they are the big tent party after all. But that doesn’t matter in our federal elections, because most of them congregate in smaller population centers (and this helps with the empathy angle, they are regularly exposed to people of all walks of life, while primarily rural conservatives interact very little outside their comparatively small social sphere). The voting system gives two votes to every state, plus a share of the 435 that gets divided up based on the states population. Then most states give all of their votes to whoever won the popular vote in their state.

    Because of how the states tally their votes and break up their voting districts (because the party in charge gets to draw the maps), even a majority of people voting for one party can, and does, result in the state determining that the candidate with fewer total votes wins because they had won more districts. CGP Grey had a great video on this years ago, but using anthropomorphized animals as the presidential candidates, and talked about the strengths and weaknesses of our first-past-the-post voting system and on gerrymandering (the term for advantageously manipulating voting district maps).



  • There’s tons of talent out there and that’s exactly why Mozarts are a thing of the past.

    Music is so attainable to people [in the west], and that’s a great thing (not that it shouldn’t be more…I.e greater financing for the arts, especially in public K12). It’s so easy to access, learn, and record.

    That, and the media market is so fragmented. We still have pop and chart-toppers in the major genres, sure…but man, there is so much stuff out there.

    I don’t think there will be another Mozart. I don’t even think there will be another person we can compare to Michael Jackson, or Freddie Mercury, or Trent Reznor, or Whitney Houston, or any of the other modern legends. Simply because there are so many talented people and media, and the means to produce it, are so attainable.

    One of my favorite things to do now is to find the bands “similar to” a band that I listen to or enjoy that have fewer than 1k subscriptions/followers. Even below 500. There’s so, so many hidden gems out there, and some of it may even redefine your own tastes in music.


  • I mean, the President-elect must take the Oath of Office as stated in Article II, Section I , Clause 8 of the Constitution:

    Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: – “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”.

    So it is on there. But it’s really just a pinky promise between you and a higher power. Whether that be a deity, the government, society/the social contract, or whatever.

    There are two problems with this:

    1, president Trump did not believe in a higher power than himself. He may present as Christian or even a twice-a-year Christian, but make no doubts, he saw himself as the highest power, answerable to no one

    2, the president shouldn’t be answerable to no one. But the system of checks and balances is broken by a party-before-country half of Congress and a stacked and obviously biased and hyper-political Supreme Court (that has at least one seat stolen depending on how consistent you are in your beliefs. More if you think back to Bush v Gore…which is also why I hate people spouting for third parties. If half of the Florida Nader voters held their nose and voted for Gore, there wouldn’t have even been a question. Were their virtues worth the result that came of them? I say the same for the Bernie Bros who couldn’t hold their nose for HRC).