That’s not a bad spread. Should probably add that it’s back bacon, and not streaky bacon that the yanks eat.
That’s not a bad spread. Should probably add that it’s back bacon, and not streaky bacon that the yanks eat.
A lot of people see it as needlessly dragging a conflict on, but NATO (probably) knows what it’s doing, and has had plans for scenarios like this for years. Russian escalation in the region isn’t exactly new, and it’s the sort of campaign that NATO as a group will define its legitimacy on.
I’m sure that if both sides wanted to hurt the other they’d do so, NATO especially so - but to both sides it’s ultimately a game. NATO will flirt with weapons, and Russia will throw citizens at the problem and use grief/loss to restore the “fatherland”. It’s why I don’t see an end to the conflict for as long as Putin is in power.
I imagine you get these questions all the time, but how did you get into stand-up, and how did you get the guts to get up on a stage and try to be funny?
I love the idea of stand-up comedy, but I’ve been to a few open mic nights and it almost always seems like drunk people showing off, people that are hilariously unfunny, or people in the crowd that try to shit on anyone remotely trying to entertain.
I don’t like weed. I’ve tried it throughout my teens, but left it there.
With that said, it’s amazing to me that we’re still having the same conversations around drugs. Decriminalise EVERYTHING! Ensure what is on the market is clean, drive the costs down to remove criminals from the market, and dedicate every police force to protecting those on the bottom rung of the drug ladder.
I read a book from a former officer a while back, where he’d spent two years working on infiltrating a drug network. It was successful, and they not only shut down a major network of drugs, but arrested around 100 people, and removed tons of illegal weapons from the market, and arrested several people in the network known to police for being involved in several murders. They believed that the drug market in the UK during this time had been disrupted “for three hours”. That was all it took for another gang to take over, and apparently it’s those successes that cause a lot of people to leave drug enforcement - after all, what’s the point?
There almost seems to be zero benefit to drug criminalisation, other than “old conservatives hate it”.
While I don’t agree, I used to spend a lot of time on /r/OnePunchMan. OPN is kinda a gag anime in that it plays on many stereotypes to comedic effect. One of the main characters is a woman that is very petite and didn’t grow up, and is also one of the most powerful heroes - alongside her sister who…did grow up.
The reason I mention it is because that sub is 90% suggestive fan art of the girl that the show literally points out looks like a child. It’s a trope on the “sexualised minor” thing, but they’re fucking falling for it again! When you call them out for noncing, they argue “she has adult features” or “she’s in her twenties”.
In-game currency and microtransactions are fine, as long as the app can pay out for the same service/item. If I can buy a sword for $5, I can also sell that sword to the app developer and get $5 back. If I can pay $1 to skip a level, I can redeem $1 for beating said level.
Well, they’re dead, so not much else outside of that.
It goes to show just how effective the brainwashing is, though. So many people were afraid of what is essentially science fiction. If we could inject nanobots into someone to control their mind and body, holy shit we’ve made one of the craziest scientific breakthroughs in a century! They were so afraid they ignored the fact that they were incredibly ill and tried to leave on the assumption that they had been attacked.
Japan are not world-class. They’re a solid team, but despite being ranked in the top 20 they’re probably still considered weaker than many of the teams below them.
With that said, I always have a soft spot for countries that push players that play domestic football outside of Europe and in their own country. I’ve been on a Japan kick since Yu Hirakawa joined Bristol City on loan.
The COVID denial was strong in so many people. I remember some stories where people would go to the hospital with extremely low oxygen saturation, be told that they have COVID, and for them to go into a blind panic about getting microchipped or tortured by experimental government treatment, and immediately discharge themselves - only to drop dead pretty much immediately after they left.
IMO more people should be critical of the systems and tools that they use instead of shitting on the tools that others choose to use.
We do assume too much of our tools, but many people here are guilty of assuming that other OS’s are broken in ways that do not reflect the average customer experience.
Be that as it may, the man has influence and it would be incredibly foolish to discount this because he’s a fucking moron. Sadly, the world is full of extremely incompetent billionaires, and they hold a shocking amount of influence over the world, whether it’s through collusion on layoffs, enforcing RTO in tandem, cutting green initiatives within a month of each other, etc.
Several reasons:
Generally speaking, how is Mastodon any better than Bluesky? How is Lemmy any better than Reddit? If you can’t answer that in a way the average person gives a fuck about, what’s the argument for using them?
Alongside the story for “donating to science”, by proxy that donation can also be extended to other industries, like the arts.
There have been several stories of people donating their bodies to science, with the provision that their skull be used for Hamlet, or other shows where a bone may be used as a prop. I believe there was a story around a Polish pianist dedicating his skull to solely be used for a production of Hamlet, with David Tennant using his skull in the show.
TSA (obviously) isn’t a thing outside of the US. Airport security does suck, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it is when flying to America.
If flying during a quiet period, with all the right checks and few queues you can get through security in 5 mins. When it really fucking sucks is when it’s busy, something airports should be able to deal with easily.
We can do that while we’re waiting at the bar for our next pint.
Combat Sports.
I got bored of the gym, so I decided to take BJJ. Grappling is really fucking hard, as in you have no clue what you’re doing, and no idea how to stop someone from fucking you up on the ground. It’s one of those sports that you can spend six months doing and barely get a feel of wtf is going on.
Two years later, I was somewhat capable, and got my blue belt. I then noticed that I was actually pretty good compared to the white belts. Things started to make sense, and while I got absolutely fucked up by everyone else, the positions made sense. I’m now a purple belt, and the other day I did an iminari roll and a rolling guillotine on a white belt during a spar, just because I could.
In the middle of this, I started doing MMA. Striking is also hard, especially when you mix with wrestling/grappling. I came in as the guy that was fucking useless with striking, but when we took 45 mins to do some grappling the coach was wondering why the new thirty-something idiot was tapping everyone. Eventually we found my level, and he gave me some solid pointers on how to work on my striking to bring it up to level with my grappling.
All in all, combat sports seem pretty scary, but getting into it is just a matter of turning up and giving it a try. You’ll feel like a useless idiot for months, but before you know it people will be asking you wtf you just did to them…right after you had had the same conversation with the person that’s better than you.
Someone I don’t really know all that well, last spoke at school, has an autistic niece. She lost her toy and was distraught, so her aunt put up a post on Facebook to say it was discontinued, and to ask if someone could locate a second hand one somewhere. I’m not really sure why, but I felt bad for her and thought that maybe I’ll use my Google-fu to help.
I did a reverse image lookup, found the original manufacturer, looked up one of the main execs, found their contact details against their personal domain, and asked them if they could help out. They said they’d be happy to help, and I said as a gesture of good will that I’d pay for the new toy - perhaps several so that she’ll always have one if it were to break.
After speaking to the owner, I had paid for several toys for an autistic girl I had never met - probably around £500 worth. The exec went a step further and flew to the UK to give her and her aunt the toys, probably for some good press. I never told the aunt it was me, and I told the exec to keep it between us. They put out a press release where I was referred to as a “mystery hero”, and said that for her they would resume that line of toys, with her receiving a custom version with her name attached. To their credit, he said her aunt and mother kept asking who the person was so they could thank me, but they stayed firm and said that it was up to me to reveal myself.
So, for £500 I made an autistic girl and her family happy, and got a nice photo of the workers with a note that said “thank you”. That money was supposed to go towards car repairs, but I decided that a month of walking and leftovers for lunch to make someone happy was worth it.
It was OnePlus. The OnePlus 1 was the best phone on the market at the time, and lasted beautifully. The same was true for the OnePlus 6, which lasted up until I got the Pixel 8.
It was the last time that OnePlus and Oppo made great phones without compromise, because right after laughing at Google for ditching the headphone jack they did the same thing! They had some success, and sadly, started compromising.
Even today, I miss features from my OP6. The screen gestures are a feature I would pay extra for on my Pixel. Today, I genuinely cannot think of a good company releasing Android phones. For years, picking an Android phone has been an exercise in calculating how many features you can afford to live without for an extortionate price.
One of the two bosses didn’t turn up for work one Friday. On the weekend, we all received a call that he had died.
Monday was horrible. We had new starters that came into an office full of people crying, and people from our HQ joining to set people up with any counselling.
The worst part? We had deadlines to meet, and clients didn’t give a fuck that the person responsible had died. One large client outright said to me on the phone on that first Monday “that’s sad and all, but I don’t really give a fuck, have it done by end of day”. To HQ’s credit, after I had told them they asked me to stop what I was doing (had already delivered the work) and our CEO called them and told them we were to terminate our contract with them. One woman I worked with, a Project Manager, was repeatedly brought to tears by clients checking on work or trying to sort out meetings with a guy that was in a morgue. I was able to power through, up until the day of his funeral when we all went to the pub after and saw his children playing without a care in the world.
Initially, it brought us all closer together, but within three months people started to leave - and by the end of the year the HQ decided to just close the office entirely, firing everyone that was still there.
I hate to say it, looking back, but this gave me without question one of the best answers for behavioural interviews in tech, since I ultimately ended up having to help deliver everything and onboard people in a stressful scenario. Knowing the guy, it’s what he would have wanted.
My daughter to be happy.
Also, for her to manage a single night with solid sleep, so I’m not replying to threads about happiness on Lemmy at 5am. That would also be nice.