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What it says on the tin.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If you google “amazon” the first 4 pages of results are only about the company. On the 5th page there was one result referring to the river. I didn’t find one result in the first 10 pages about the Greek warrior race. WTF Google?

Whereas if I google “Amazon River”, the first find is the river. And if I google “Amazons”, the first find is about the warrior race.

Weird. It’s like at the library, how dare they file “Astrology” before “Astronomy”. It’s a conspiracy.

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DavidM

Have you ever wondered why we call our portable phones smart phones?

DavidM wrote:

Have you ever wondered why we call our portable phones smart phones?

I know the answer to this one.

It’s “no”.

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lorcan_nagle

Arian had expressed concerns over pollution caused by commercial space flight in another thread. It looks like some companies are working to address that:

Can biofuels make spaceflight greener? UK space startups reveal plans for cleaner rocket launches

Rocket launches can inject huge amounts of soot into higher layers of Earth’s atmosphere, depending on their fuel, possibly contributing to climate change. A pair of British rocket startups now claim their rocket technology can reduce spaceflight’s environmental footprint by switching to renewable fuel.

Both of these startups plan to launch their rockets from different spaceports located in Scottish wilderness, and being green has been part of their pitch from the start. While Edinburgh-based Skyrora plans to fly their rockets using rocket fuel made from non-recyclable plastics. Their counterpart, the Inverness-based Orbex, is betting on biopropane, a natural gas made as a byproduct during biodiesel production.

Last week, Orbex released a study by experts from the University of Exeter in the U.K., which claims that the company’s bio-propane-powered rocket Prime, a micro-launcher, will produce 86% less emissions than a similar-sized fossil fuel launcher.

The comparison was made with launchers that burn RP-1, or Rocket Propellant 1, a refined form of aviation fuel kerosene. RP-1 is widely used by rocket builders all over the world. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 uses this fuel in both of its stages. The fossil fuel also powers Russia’s workhorse Soyuz rockets and the first stages of America’s Atlas V.

Most of the carbon dioxide emissions reductions achieved by Orbex come from the negative carbon footprint of the biofuel production rather than by the launcher emitting considerably less, according to the report’s executive summary. The company that supplies the biopropane, U.K.-based Calor, makes the fuel from a mixture of waste residues and “sustainably sourced materials”, according to Calor’s website.

However, most experts are not that concerned with the carbon dioxide emissions of spaceflight, simply because there are currently not that many rocket launches. In an earlier interview this year, Martin Ross, of the U.S. Aerospace Corporation, a leading expert on atmospheric effects of rocket launches, told Space.com that the space industry burns only about 1% of the fossil fuel consumed by aviation.

There is another component of rocket exhaust that climate experts are concerned about: soot. Rockets inject huge amounts of it into the otherwise pristine upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere, where it could trigger possibly far-reaching changes.

And here, technology such as Orbex’s biopropane-fueled Prime rocket could make a difference. The University of Exeter study says that the Prime vehicle, which is 62 feet (19 meters) long and designed to carry small payloads of up to 330 lbs. (150 kilograms) to low Earth orbit, will emit much less soot than a similar micro-launcher using RP-1. The company added in a statement that Prime “almost entirely eliminates” soot emissions.

Soot in the atmosphere can absorb heat and affect the temperature of the higher layers of the atmosphere — the mesosphere and the stratosphere. Orbex said in its statement that 120 rocket launches emit as much soot as the entire global aviation industry emits in a year.

Overall, a single Orbex rocket launch will generate a total of 15 tons (13.8 tonnes) of greenhouse gas emissions, which is equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of an average U.K. citizen, Orbex said in the statement.

Orbex expects to fly its reusable 3D-printed Prime rocket for the first time next year from the Space Hub Sutherland on the northern coast of Scotland. The spaceport recently received planning permission after winning a court case against a billionaire landowner who questioned its environmental impact.

Orbex’s counterpart Skyrora hasn’t launched its three-stage Skyrora XL orbital rocket yet either but has performed several successful test flights of their sub-orbital missile Skylark Micro, which reached the altitude of up to 17 miles (27 kilometers). In 2020, the company tested a small prototype of its engine, which runs on fuel made from non-recyclable plastics. According to the company’s website, the new fuel, called Ecosene, showed a 1- 3% better energy profile compared to RP-1.

Derek Harris, CEO of Skyrora’s Ecosene division, told Space.com that Ecosene comes much cheaper than RP-1, at about $2 per gallon.

“The plastics that we are using actually come from waste disposal,” Harris said. “We even get paid to take it, so feedstock is a negative value.”

Harris said the company’s experiments show the Ecosine-fuelled rocket engine, which uses hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer to burn with the fuel, produces about 40% less emissions overall, including carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, soot and sulfur.

Harris said the company hopes to fly its rocket prototype in late 2022 from a spaceport on the Shetland Islands north off the coast of Scotland.

Orbex and Skyrora are not the only ones pursuing biofuel. In February this year, American start-up bluShift Aerospace flew its first stage rocket prototype Stardust 1.0, which uses proprietary solid biofuel made from agricultural waste. The test rocket reached less than one mile in altitude.

Cool, now use those biofuels on airliners and they won’t have to harangue people anymore about taking an airline once a year on holiday.

It depends on the biofuels. In some cases they cause more harm than good as natural forest is cleared to plant them.

Using waste product as these seem to is a good idea but I don’t know if you can scale that up to thousands of commercial flights a day as compared to one or two rocket launches a year.

garjones wrote:

Using waste product as these seem to is a good idea but I don’t know if you can scale that up to thousands of commercial flights a day as compared to one or two rocket launches a year.

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Todd, Dave, garjones

garjones wrote:

It depends on the biofuels. In some cases they cause more harm than good as natural forest is cleared to plant them.

Using waste product as these seem to is a good idea but I don’t know if you can scale that up to thousands of commercial flights a day as compared to one or two rocket launches a year.

We need to come up with a way to power planes with human shit. Can top up the tank in flight with passengers using the toilet.

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Todd

I remember a Wales Today story years ago (probably at least 18 as that’s when I moved away) where some guy in rural mid Wales had rigged his car up to run off excess cooking oil from chip shops. They couldn’t use it to cook again so would have to pay for commercial waste, he took it off their hands for nothing and had free fuel.

Sounds ideal but somehow the authorities got wind (apparently the exhaust fumes had a whiff of fish and chips about them, I’m not joking that was in the story) and he got stung with a huge bill for unpaid fuel tax. Nice job with him ending up converting it back to use fossil fuel as it wasn’t worth it.

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Ben, Todd, DavidM

People think the new Buzz Lightyear looks like a racist cop

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Ben, Todd

So, I’m in a WhatsApp group with a group of male friends (an off-shoot of sorts of a group that has our female friends in too – you can probably guess the reasons). It’s just titled “lads’ chat” because one of us kept getting confused between it and the other group that his girlfriend is in.

Anyway, last night, a few of them were talking about alcohol-free beers they’ve been drinking recently, which is actually kind of remarkable. I’ve been tea-total for yonks and got so much grief for it, to see them talking positively about AF beer was pleasantly surprising (not that I really give a damn whether they drink or not, but the antagonistic attitude to the mere existence of AF drinks, and abstinence from alcohol generally, always felt pretty pathetic to me). But another person in the group, seemingly as soon as they saw this discussion, changed the name of the group to “the girl group”. 🙄

Now, does the fact that I didn’t sunsequently change it to “fragile masculinity support group” mean that I’m exceptionally mature and self-restrained or just that I’m a coward?

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Rocket, DavidM, Ben, lorcan_nagle

Martin Smith wrote:

garjones wrote:

It depends on the biofuels. In some cases they cause more harm than good as natural forest is cleared to plant them.

Using waste product as these seem to is a good idea but I don’t know if you can scale that up to thousands of commercial flights a day as compared to one or two rocket launches a year.

We need to come up with a way to power planes with human shit. Can top up the tank in flight with passengers using the toilet.

You don’t have to even do that Martin, just use your local river.

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Todd

Martin Smith wrote:

a coward

This.

Been watching this comedian Steve Hofstetter… Pretty funny, his material is really very liberal, anti-conservative, woke, stuff. He says things against racist cops, politicians, etc. I find he is also on Twitter and gives some troll replies to the Fox News people, the politicians like Gaetz, Boeber, and Marjorie.

Interesting…. Most black comedians do a stand up about social issues, racism, life in “The Hood”, Hispanic comedians about immigrant issues, black comediennes about black women issues, the white ones about dating (Amy Schumer about Dating in New York, Whitney Cummings about men watching porn). They all pick on pop culture moments and people of the day: The Kardashians, social media, etc.

I still like Steven Wright and his odd takes but he is getting way up there and his better material is behind him.

Funny how what one comedian may say in Europe for example doesn’t really translate well overseas in the States and vice versa. It is all regional and cultural I would say.

Interesting about that professor part. We had a member here who liked languages…

I heard that usually when someone Australian says “yonder” (or some Australian slang/expression mixed in their speech), or someone from the Southern US say “y’all” (as in “How y’all doing?) that is tolerated and accepted, but sometimes when a person of color in the US says something in the AAVE (African American Vernacular English), in England MLE (Multicultural London English – some English with a mix of “patois” from the Caribbean Islands), or Hispanic immigrants speaking “Spanglish”, all of a sudden now everyone has a linguistics Phd, yell “That’s not real English!…It is broken English!” and go out of their way to “correct” the grammar.

The same has been said about the French “correcting” Haitians. (Come to think of it, some French have been anal about the pronunciation Americans give to words like “croissant” but I digress…)

What is it? … Is it all about being a linguistics warrior, or is a form of gatekeeping, identity politics, or …?

Al-x wrote:

some French have been anal

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Al-x wrote:

some French have been anal

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Rocket, Todd

I pre-order my iPhone the other day. I had to because of this chip shortage putting everything on back order. And.. I am forced to ship back my current phone a few days before to get trade in credit, so I will be without a phone for a few days in the future.

Exciting eh? 😂

Then there is this by Wozniak:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/apple-co-founder-steve-wozniak-says-he-can-t-tell-the-difference-between-the-iphone-12-and-13/ar-AAQbW6F?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

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Todd

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lorcan_nagle

[Al-x]

In the States, it has been called The Great Resignation. Apparently, a LOT of workers have left their jobs not just over the pandemic. Apparently it made them realize that they get called an “essential” worker, but the pay just isn’t going with it. They are in very thankless jobs, customer service with a lot of Karens, having to deescalate arguments and fights in stores. Also a lot of guys driving these huge trucks bringing supplies to major chain stores have left and there is a delay in supplies with many empty store shelves and this sort of thing.

…and warehouse workers too 😀
——————————–

Looking at a few job listings: When it is said either on the ad or actual interview about “multi-task”, it is just fancy wording that generally means being able to do 2-3 things at the same time. That should be a red flag. It has been said you should then ask about the department/office environment and workload. You may find some wording and body language from the interviewer that they are understaffed and you might wind up doing the job of two people and get paid for one. It is their way of cutting corners and being cheap. It’s why the office sometimes get a lot of additional temps and interns.

Watch out…

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Al-x.

Yesterday when I turned on my PC and checked out the Settings, the Windows Update notification said that Windows 11 was ready for me to download. So I did. Exciting eh?

I have only had it for a very short time, but it feels different. The Start icon is not in the corner like it has been all these years, and a few other changes. It will take some getting used to.

When was the last time you sent a fax?

Anonymous wrote:

When was the last time you sent a fax?

Actually, when it comes to handling sensitive information (medical charts, legal documents, personal financial info) a lot of companies in the US insist on sending items by fax rather than via e-mail for security reasons. Pretty annoying in this day and age, but our company has to maintain a fax number in order to deal with certain clients/customers.

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DavidM, Todd

njerry wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

When was the last time you sent a fax?

Actually, when it comes to handling sensitive information (medical charts, legal documents, personal financial info) a lot of companies in the US insist on sending items by fax rather than via e-mail for security reasons. Pretty annoying in this day and age, but our company has to maintain a fax number in order to deal with certain clients/customers.

I was managing a pretty large rightfax environment up until three or four years ago. And even then it’s still in the company, just all the teams using it were shifted to Poland.

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DavidM, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

When was the last time you sent a fax?

Early 90s. We used to take user support calls by fax in the days before everybody had email.

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Fax is still widely used in Japan for their own strange reasons so I did send a fax to them about 4 years back but it’s cheating a bit as I sent it from my PC using software rather than an actual fax machine.

Prior to that it would have been in the UK in early 2003, I remember the last fax process had ended in the office and they gave the machines away – I gave one to my girlfriend at the time which is how I can date it.

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garjones wrote:

I gave one to my girlfriend at the time

You romantic, you.

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DavidM, njerry

Al-x wrote:

In the States, it has been called The Great Resignation. Apparently, a LOT of workers have left their jobs not just over the pandemic. Apparently it made them realize that they get called an “essential” worker, but the pay just isn’t going with it. They are in very thankless jobs, customer service with a lot of Karens, having to deescalate arguments and fights in stores. Also a lot of guys driving these huge trucks bringing supplies to major chain stores have left and there is a delay in supplies with many empty store shelves and this sort of thing.

If the government can just take your job away, why the fuck would you put an effort into finding a new one?

I actually used to send a fax on a weekly basis until just a few years ago as I worked with a slightly old-fashioned publishing company that used to require final proofs for print checking to be sent that way.

I don’t miss it.

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Elizabeth Hurley in a bikini:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Elizabeth Hurley (@elizabethhurley1)

Chris Pratt in swimming trunks

 

Anonymous wrote:

If the government can just take your job away, why the fuck would you put an effort into finding a new one?

What do you mean? What are you talking about?

JRCarter wrote:

Elizabeth Hurley in a bikini:

Anonymous wrote:

Chris Pratt in swimming trunks

56-year-old Elizabeth Hurley is 14 years older than 42-year-old Chris Pratt. Just sayin’…

Wait…

That picture was Pratt years before he joined the MCU and had to get a personal trainer and so on.

He was in a TV show and was chubby on the show.

Then he went on to the movie Passengers with Jennifer Lawrence, then the MCU.

Hey… Google and Wikipedia are your friends and they are free….

I only posted the caption because I didn’t think the link would format itself the way it did.

Windows 11 will take some getting used to. I have to change a few settings to customize it, but I need time to do it.

—————————

How much salt do you take with advice you get from Google or anywhere else online. A grain… a pound… a mountain… What?

——————————

You know you are getting older when you walk into a room with a set purpose and when either you walk in or get distracted for a split second, you completely forgot the initial reason.

… and (since this is a comic book forum primarily) you draw inspiration from the aging Bruce Wayne in Frank Miller’s original classic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

——————————-

Speaking of Pratt and getting in shape…

I used the al-xism dating shape primarily to look your best when you are “on the prowl”.

Chris Pratt did Ok when he transformed his body, doing a movie with Jlaw, MCU etc. These MCU actors have elite personal trainers and enough time to get in shape in a few months for the movie. Very strict workout regimen, food intake, the works… I guess if we all had it like that we’d have arms like Chris Hemsworth in that pic. Maybe a big too big… Who knows?

Al-x wrote:

I guess if we all had it like that we’d have arms like Chris Hemsworth in that pic.

Maybe not quite. I think mother nature gave him a head start on most but either way we should be aware of the artifice.

Henry Cavill gave a revealing interview to the BBC a few years back that as Superman he was given two regimes, one with shirt off and one with costume on and they filmed in a sequence to emphasise that. So basically his shape in that movie is not something even he can replicate consistently.

Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique in the X-Men movies on the same show refused to reveal the regime she took part in to look good almost naked as she didn’t think it was healthy for other women to replicate.

We can all work out to look better but maybe not that good, they use a lot of tricks and it takes a lot of money to get a trainer in that way.

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DavidM, Ben

That’s good of Lawrence not to spread it around to avoid imitators, because it isn’t healthy a lot of the time. I remember Hugh Jackman talking on, I think, Graham Norton once about the prep he had to do for shirtless scenes as Wolverine and it’s borderline self-abuse.

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Todd

Martin Smith wrote:

That’s good of Lawrence not to spread it around to avoid imitators, because it isn’t healthy a lot of the time. I remember Hugh Jackman talking on, I think, Graham Norton once about the prep he had to do for shirtless scenes as Wolverine and it’s borderline self-abuse.

Yeah, Robert Pattinson has said one of his conditions for signing up for The Batman was that he didn’t have some crazy routine.

On Twilight, they originally planned on replacing Taylor Lautner after the first movie, because the character in the book goes under an insane transformation, but Lautner bulked up ridiculously, on his own, in order to keep the part:

He was only sixteen at the time.

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Ben, Todd

Martin Smith wrote:

That’s good of Lawrence not to spread it around to avoid imitators, because it isn’t healthy a lot of the time. I remember Hugh Jackman talking on, I think, Graham Norton once about the prep he had to do for shirtless scenes as Wolverine and it’s borderline self-abuse.

Is that the one where he talked about drinking gallons of water and then having to suddenly completely dehydrate himself for the day before shooting? It sounded crazy.

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Ben, Todd

Yeah, that’s the one.

How Chris Pratt became the internet’s celebrity punching bag

This link is about Pratt as well, but it is not so nice regarding what he tweeted:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/entertainment-celebrity/this-chris-pratt-comment-about-wife-katherine-schwarzenegger-is-facing-serious-backlash/ar-AAQko93?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

My view on reading that is mainly what the fuck is wrong with people? I’m fully on board for ‘woke’ ideals but I am not for language police really.

They jump straight into “Pratt hates his ex gave him a disabled kid”. Let’s be honest, that could be inferred but it’s not very likely. He is human and has his flaws but I doubt he thinks that or sent ‘healthy’ as some barbed comment to shit on his kid and anyone disabled. The first thing people ask me in most conversations is ‘everyone ok?’. I will accurately apply we’re all healthy. I’m not inferring I’d hate my kids and wife if they weren’t.

I have sympathy with people that just sack off social media because they aren’t really interested in what anyone believes or thinks but tripping people up for clicks.

 

JRCarter wrote:

How Chris Pratt became the internet’s celebrity punching bag

Wait, he’s Garfield too now?

Mario, Garfield, Steven Universe. I’d ask if he’s saying yes to every voice acting role coming his way, but he didn’t so What If?

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Todd

So many streaming services, so many shows and movies to binge watch, and too little time.

How do you guys do it? How many hours straight can you binge watch?

Personally, I realize that as entertainment it is secondary and I am under no obligation to even watch it all.

Same with comics and trades…

What say you?

I believe I am under obligation so I am currently watching 8 shows on a bank of TVs while working through a pile of trades.

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DavidM, Al-x, Dave, Bruce

[Bruce]

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Bruce.

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Al-x, Todd, Dave

Al-x wrote:

So many streaming services, so many shows and movies to binge watch, and too little time.

How do you guys do it? How many hours straight can you binge watch?

Personally, I realize that as entertainment it is secondary and I am under no obligation to even watch it all.

Same with comics and trades…

What say you?

I don’t have any streaming services, the only tv I watch is from Dutch public broadcasting which I can watch for free on their website. I don’t feel like I’m missing out.

 

I haven’t bought any comics in ages either.

 

 

I know of someone who watched a whole season of Game of Thrones (about 11 hours) in one day/sitting.

Also, in the States where there are US footballs (about 4 hours each) some start at 1pm and don’t finish watching 3 games until midnight.

Personally, my limit is about 3 hours tops. I can’t even sit in the theatre for a 3 hour movie like the LOTR movie or even Avengers Endgame.

I have to move on and do something else…

———————————-

Interesting thing I always knew but now I pay more attention to it:

It is very simple and obvious but in psychology, it is said (behavioral observation, whatever…) that generally, you wouldn’t do something over and over again as a habit unless there was a payoff of some kind. Some enjoyment, something that feeds whatever in your brain receptor that gives you a good feeling. So, what is the payoff?

I am trying to apply that to fitness. It has been said that once you see results on the body and feel better, you will do it more.
But it takes time before you see results in the mirror. I need patience.

————————————-

I see others mimicking my writing style and using my al-xism material…. I have to shift gears and change a little. This way I will be a “happening kind of guy” again.

[Al-x]

garjones wrote:

I believe I am under obligation so I am currently watching 8 shows on a bank of TVs

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Al-x.

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Dave, Todd

Easy answer Al – you be selective and accept doing some things mean you can’t do other things.

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Todd

[Al-x]

Oh wow man… 😂

Setting priorities is easier said than done. Especially for multitaskers and those who think they are.

The key word is self-discipline…

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Al-x.

[Al-x]

How Kal-el got a TV set up like that on farmland…

————-

So… set priorities… exercise more until it becomes a habit with results, be more happening, no soda… List goes on and on

——————

What is the payoff of posting in forums? The answers you get and the discussion that ensues. Also the socializing as it always has been even back to the days of CB radio and ham radio.

———————-

These newsfeeds try to get you addicted to pop culture clickbaiting. Look at this young celeb starlet in a two piece on the beach…

I won’t even get into Instagram… yet.

——————-

We spoke about society being a Patriarchy with its “Male Gaze” (like Trump commenting that Heidi Klum “was no longer a 10”)

It is no wonder then, that some women try to use (or “weaponize”) their looks to get ahead, more money, etc in this capitalistic world.

It’s been said that the only industries where women on the whole make more than men is in fashion because it deals with aesthetics.

—————-

I don’t know… @davewallace said he wanted me to bring up something and really engage in it, not just toss up and watch like I used to do. He was right all along.

I brought up that TikTok thing and now I might bring up racial ambiguity/ blackfishing in pop culture.

I don’t want to waste my time. If you want a few posts on it or not. You all decide…

Carry on and go in peace…

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Al-x.

My wife has the TV on throughout a given day as background noise while she does other things like knitting, baking, etc. My feeling is, if a show is not worth my full attention, why bother watching it? And because I want to pay attention to what I watch, I typically only watch one film per evening, or two episodes of a series, so that I can spend the rest of the evening doing something else.

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DavidM, Dave, Al-x, Todd

Nope, not happening. 😏😜🐶 pic.twitter.com/L8HQvDYi1c

— Fred Schultz (@fred035schultz) November 6, 2021

(forum cuts off part of the video, click on it to see the whole thing)

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Todd

Arian… Fellow

We played chess years ago.

Anytime you want a game…

So I heard a clip on the radio today, part of an interview with Kevin Smith.

So, Kevin Smith went to Vancouver Film School (he dropped out after 4 months figuring he knew enough and tried to get funding for Clerks) and is giving back with the Vancouver Film School Kevin Smith Ambassador Scholarship.

CFOX did an interview with him, and asked him how it came about attending Vancouver (and I can’t find the source, so this is from memory).

“I told my parents that I’ve been accepted and going to Vancouver Film School.

They said: ‘Why Vancouver?’

Well, they’re right above us.

‘Huh?’

Yeah, there’s New York, then Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vancouver.
At this point my mom is looking at me like she’s raised the stupidest idiot.

‘No, Vermont is above us. The only thing in common is they start with a V.
Vancouver is in another country. Canada. And not the Niagara Falls side, it’s way, way over on the other side.’

What? No wonder I was accepted. I honestly had no idea. If I did I probably wouldn’t have bothered filling out the form.
As it was, I did, got accepted and went, and this got me to making Clerks.

You see kids? A little ignorance can go a long way!”

Chess? Not global thermonuclear war? Next you’ll be wanting a cuppa.

Actually, Anders and I played two games.

I won the first one and on another occasion he won.

We split.

Maybe we should leave it at that.

Although I found it fascinating to play someone almost halfway around the world from me.

Al-x wrote:

Actually, Anders and I played two games.

I have zero recollection of this, but there are a lot of things I don’t remember so that’s not entirely unusual. Was it a long time ago? Are you sure you mean me?

Sorry for not remembering it, don’t take it personally. Internet things. :)

I think he means me. We played two games

Sounds like Al made the same mistake here as he did in his second chess game – he didn’t check the person he was playing against.

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njerry

I’m up for another game if Al likes it but I don’t know where we can do that. I don’t facebook anymore.

Maybe an app that allows for remote matches would be the easiest way.

Huh, the board deleted my last two replies. Maybe it doesn’t allow the link I used. It is l i c h e ss. o r g, remove the spaces. We can play there, choose “play with a friend” and send an invite.

Al-x wrote:

Windows 11 will take some getting used to. I have to change a few settings to customize it, but I need time to do it.

Does anyone else remember Microsoft saying “Windows 10 is the last version we will ever produce”?

Al-x wrote:

How Kal-el got a TV set up like that on farmland…

Why does he even need it? He could sit in a dark room and still see and hear all that.

DavidM wrote:

Al-x wrote:

Windows 11 will take some getting used to. I have to change a few settings to customize it, but I need time to do it.

Does anyone else remember Microsoft saying “Windows 10 is the last version we will ever produce”?

I remember not believing them when they said that.

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DavidM

DavidM wrote:

Al-x wrote:

How Kal-el got a TV set up like that on farmland…

Why does he even need it? He could sit in a dark room and still see and hear all that.

What if he sits in a room with LED lights? He famously can’t see through LED, right?

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DavidM, Sean Robinson

[Al-x]

Anonymous wrote:

I have zero recollection of this, but there are a lot of things I don’t remember so that’s not entirely unusual. Was it a long time ago? Are you sure you mean me?

Sorry for not remembering it, don’t take it personally. Internet things. :)

Sorry….

It was Arjan I played.

I saw Anders name and I typed Anders at the time.

Proof that I am getting old. 😂

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Al-x.

1 user thanked author for this post.

[Al-x]

How Ozymandius got his residence/complex setup like that in one of the poles… Wasn’t it Antarica?
Where did he get the wiring and foundation to build it all?

———————————-

we should bring back the “Say something nice about another member” thread. It was cool.

———————-

As for those actors getting in shape for those movies… It is true…They can’t sustain that shape in the long run. Like competitive bodybuilders, they keep themselves in relative shape and when competition rolls around, they get more strict and take their workouts up a notch or two just for the contest.

JLaw was right about not promoting the regimen she had. A lot of impressionable young women would most likely try to do it and damage themselves, like they do in mimicking those Victoria Secret models in this past and now those Instagram women. Very unrealistic beauty standards for the common young woman to try to attain.

————————-

As for my avatar. It is the evil Sutekh, the last of the powerful Orions. From the Tom Baker Dr. Who stories namely “The Pyramids of Mars”

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Al-x.

Dave wrote:

Maybe an app that allows for remote matches would be the easiest way.

Hey, why not have Arjan and AL-X meet at Dave’s house for a chess match

1 user thanked author for this post.

Todd

[Al-x]

So…

What should I write about? My starting Thought Provoking Threads are pretty much behind me. I don’t usually talk about pop culture and celebrity gossip, but when I do I try to highlight the underlying social issue like that Tiktok dancing thing from before. I might briefly get into the Kardashians and their pop culture strategies to stay relevant (although this weekend Astroland concert stampede with 8 deaths may mark the end. It was the rapper Travis Scott, the father of Kylie’s children at the center of it all. Now you know they will go after him and SUE because Kylie’s a billionaire.)

I will just go with the flow and change my writing. I can see my grade teachers with their red pen correcting me now. 😂

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Al-x.

A few months ago, Flint Dille (writer on Visionaries, Transformers, GI Joe etc) sold off a load of old documents. These included some Visionaries scripts and a series bible. The new owner has shared them with The Sunbow and Marvel Productions Script/Storyboard Archive and I’ve been going through them, starting with the series bible, for the Prysmos Wiki (a Visionaries wiki I do).

There’s lots of interesting info in there because as well as early takes on concepts in the animated series, it’s got some production design documents from Hasbro included. So there’s working names for characters, unproduced accessories (lots of pretty cool shields), different holograms for power staffs etc. It’s a real treasure trove.

And then in amongst those I made a pretty horrible discovery.

This is Mortdred.

In the series he’s the bootlicking valet type guy of the main villain Darkstorm. He’s coded as being gay: He’s camp (voiced by Jonathan Harris off Lost In Space), very devoted to Darkstorm, a bit of wimp most of the time. He’s described in the bible as “a ruthless dandy” and “the
flamboyantly-dressed dandy”. It’s not egregiously OTT – I’d say it works in the show – and it’s not necessarily negative in the overall effect, but it’s not a stretch to see the intention of the character being gay within the bounds of kids TV standards of the time. Like Smithers was early on in the Simpsons.

In the show he doesn’t have a magical power (beyond his animal totem of the beetle) as most of the other characters do, for a variety of reasons that mainly boil down to the fact his toy came with a vehicle. He’s not alone in that. But those characters were originally intended to have powers the same as everyone else. Mortdred’s was the power of Decay, which ultimately was given to Darkstorm. I thought that was an interesting little quirk of the design process.

Oh and his working name is in the bible too. “Grid”. Bit odd, but I didn’t think much of it until I was tweeting about these wiki updates a few minutes ago. Originally had the power of decay, was called Grid… oh fuck, it is an AIDS “joke”, isn’t it? GRID was one of the early names proposed for AIDS when it was still being identified: Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. AIDS paranoia was rampant around 86/87 when Visionaries was designed, almost all of it was homophobic and it extended to some idiots being terrified of even being touched by a gay person. So Hasbro designed a gay character under the name GRID with the power to kill people with his touch at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

It really was a different time.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Todd, lorcan_nagle

Al-x wrote:

Kylie’s

This is Kylie for me:

The one with some talent.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Todd

Martin Smith wrote:

A few months ago, Flint Dille (writer on Visionaries, Transformers, GI Joe etc) sold off a load of old documents. These included some Visionaries scripts and a series bible. The new owner has shared them with The Sunbow and Marvel Productions Script/Storyboard Archive and I’ve been going through them, starting with the series bible, for the Prysmos Wiki (a Visionaries wiki I do).

There’s lots of interesting info in there because as well as early takes on concepts in the animated series, it’s got some production design documents from Hasbro included. So there’s working names for characters, unproduced accessories (lots of pretty cool shields), different holograms for power staffs etc. It’s a real treasure trove.

And then in amongst those I made a pretty horrible discovery.

This is Mortdred.

In the series he’s the bootlicking valet type guy of the main villain Darkstorm. He’s coded as being gay: He’s camp (voiced by Jonathan Harris off Lost In Space), very devoted to Darkstorm, a bit of wimp most of the time. He’s described in the bible as “a ruthless dandy” and “the
flamboyantly-dressed dandy”. It’s not egregiously OTT – I’d say it works in the show – and it’s not necessarily negative in the overall effect, but it’s not a stretch to see the intention of the character being gay within the bounds of kids TV standards of the time. Like Smithers was early on in the Simpsons.

In the show he doesn’t have a magical power (beyond his animal totem of the beetle) as most of the other characters do, for a variety of reasons that mainly boil down to the fact his toy came with a vehicle. He’s not alone in that. But those characters were originally intended to have powers the same as everyone else. Mortdred’s was the power of Decay, which ultimately was given to Darkstorm. I thought that was an interesting little quirk of the design process.

Oh and his working name is in the bible too. “Grid”. Bit odd, but I didn’t think much of it until I was tweeting about these wiki updates a few minutes ago. Originally had the power of decay, was called Grid… oh fuck, it is an AIDS “joke”, isn’t it? GRID was one of the early names proposed for AIDS when it was still being identified: Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. AIDS paranoia was rampant around 86/87 when Visionaries was designed, almost all of it was homophobic and it extended to some idiots being terrified of even being touched by a gay person. So Hasbro designed a gay character under the name GRID with the power to kill people with his touch at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

It really was a different time.

This is the same company that named a Middle Eastern country “Carbombya”.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Todd, lorcan_nagle

JRCarter wrote:

This is the same company that named a Middle Eastern country “Carbombya”

well, that was the Sunbow/Marvel side and this would be the Hasbro side, I think. But yeah, hair splitting aside, very different times to now, where Cobra Commander isn’t allowed be in his hood because it’s too vaguely KKKish.

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Todd, JRCarter

[Al-x]

I got my new iPhone last week.

I know I went overboard in getting the deluxe model.

I won’t use it for all those photography extras.

But I got it (overkill) because I can!!! 😂

—————————

I mentioned Travis Scott before and his relationship with Kylie of the Kardashian clan.

More news that may be their end:

https://people.com/music/travis-scott-and-drake-named-in-750-million-lawsuit-brought-by-victims-of-astroworld-festival/

EDIT: As of Nov. 19th the lawsuits have risen to $2B:

https://www.complex.com/music/2-billion-dollar-lawsuit-filed-against-travis-scott-astroworld-fest-organizers

Well, Kylie is worth $1B on her own, so there’s that…

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Al-x.

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Todd

Leaving for Portugal tomorrow! Last time I was abroad (Denmark doesn’t count, it’s just next door) was when I visited Parker, I believe. Looking forward to this.

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DavidM, Todd, njerry, lorcan_nagle

I went to pub quiz last night. Drank too much and am rough as shit as a result. Thankfully today is a staff training day and I don’t have any pupils to deal with.

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DavidM, Todd, garjones, Martin Smith, Dave

Turns out we actually won the quiz last night. I’d forgot about that- further evidence that I’d drunk too much.

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Rocket, njerry, Martin Smith, Todd

Calves are ridiculously cute

Little baby.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/uS67xWFlNz

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden_) November 20, 2021

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Todd

This Thursday is Thanksgiving in the States.
All these channels have these little tips on proper etiquette at the family reunion and dinner table conversations.For example how to field nosy personal questions from a blunt relative, if/when the conversation turns to politics and social issues.
Can’t really tell them all to just f*c/m off. Or can you?

Then the next day it is Black Friday and it is off to the races…

In college I studied Economics. It was 2 aspects micro and macro. Micro dealt with price theories and market structures like perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly and so on. Macro dealt with studying an economy as a whole the Gross Domestic Product, unemployment, inflation, what the government can do, what the Fed can do, economists like Keynes and his theories, etc…

Thing is, all this is economic theory under capitalism. Capitalism and free market theory has indoctrinated students into the notion that competition and rivalries ensure production of the best product in quality and market efficiency.

Take what you will of what I said above.

Yet very little is said about other economic approaches such as socialism. Now, I am not on a quest to be a socialist, but I am just saying that it is not there in economics. Maybe political science or sociology.

Since this is the Random Thread, I’d like to randomly wish my fellow Murricans a safe and Happy Thanksgiving Day!!

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Rocket, Sean Robinson

Al-x wrote:

Yet very little is said about other economic approaches such as socialism. Now, I am not on a quest to be a socialist, but I am just saying that it is not there in economics.

I actually think it’s a very interesting area because in truth it’s often too obfuscated by ideology for people to analyse it correctly.

As we’ve said ‘socialism’ is often what people want it to mean but we all exist in a mix of capitalist and socialist constructs.

Market forces as a theory for efficiency works well on a very basic level. If you have a high street with 3 shoe shops they need to keep prices down and/or quality high plus give a pleasant service to compete with each other.

The main issues come as the inevitable eventual outcome of market forces is monopoly. The guy who was best at selling shoes buys the other two shops out, now he has lost the incentives of before as he has a captive market. These are some of the issues we are facing with tech giants and supermarkets, they dominate a market completely.

In the UK after the second world war the people of the UK decided to make health services publicly owned, they remain the only country in the OECD that owns the hospitals and directly employs all the staff. Now that isn’t the best health system in the world but it by far the most efficient, it has the best outcomes from the lowest spend. So contrary to market theory removing the profit motive made it more efficient, not less. In fact as recent governments have tried to introduce some market and private elements it has increasingly become less efficient with more money spent on admin than treatment.

The telecom market though became more efficient and cheaper when it was moved from public to private hands.

So basically all the right solutions are clearly in the middle, it’s regulated capitalism, market forces where they make sense. Unfortunately too many people make a mess of it because they don’t view economics pragmatically but as a religious belief.

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Ben, Al-x

I was actually born on the U.S. Thanksgiving (B-day for me this year is Sunday the 28th).

Kinda nice when it come around back to Thursday and I get to lounge around and watch football.

As it is I’ve been taking off Black Friday regularly for a while now.
Fun as fuck to have drinks and online shop.
Then it’s a surprise when the package shows up and I wonder what I got!

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Rocket, DavidM

We were talking upthread about streaming services, binging, and using that watchlist feature to organize all the shows you want to catch. I and everyone else have way too many.

I want to catch:

The Wire
Breaking Bad

Then a few things like Cobra Kai on Netflix Dec. 31st, the latest Matrix movie on HBO Max, the Mandalorian and the Hawkeye show on Disney+, some Star Trek DISCO, and so on.

Then there are the video games. I am still at 1-2% on every level in Avengers, have yet to really get into the Star Wars Jedi and Rogue games, and I plan to get the Guardians game when it goes down in half (possibly) on Black Friday.

Sound like a lot?

Where does all the time go?

https://patch.com/new-york/upper-east-side-nyc/east-side-doormans-claim-dead-residents-fortune-challenged?utm_term=article-slot-1&utm_source=newsletter-daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

This story reminds of the story from the mid 70s (or was it the 60s) of a driver who picked up a hitchhiker and the hitchhiker said
he was the reclusive Howard Hughes.

I wonder how much of a case this doorman has.
————————————————————————-

garjones wrote:

I actually think it’s a very interesting area because in truth it’s often too obfuscated by ideology for people to analyse it correctly.

As we’ve said ‘socialism’ is often what people want it to mean but we all exist in a mix of capitalist and socialist constructs.

Market forces as a theory for efficiency works well on a very basic level. If you have a high street with 3 shoe shops they need to keep prices down and/or quality high plus give a pleasant service to compete with each other.

Some good points there. The whole BA liberal arts curriculum has been criticized over the years that it trying to make the students so woke and so on.

Al-x wrote:

The whole BA liberal arts curriculum has been criticized over the years that it trying to make the students so woke and so on.

There was an interesting interview on Maher a week or two back with a business leader. He said he’d spent the last decade lecturing that all the market needs is engineers. Post pandemic he was crying for designers and artists for web marketing, can’t get them and their rates are sky high. Nobody will be building retail spaces in the next ten years, they’ll struggle to fill what exists. Demand always changes and fluctuates.

As lawyers are replaced by automated contract programs and accountants are replaced by AI that arts degree just levelled up.

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Todd, Ben

garjones wrote:

As lawyers are replaced by automated contract programs and accountants are replaced by AI that arts degree just levelled up.

Ok… We have been through this before.

You mean that “Shark Tank” guy who was on Maher?

Very briefly, the liberal arts term came from the ancient Greek Hellenistic time when only those rich enough not to work every day spent their time learning different subjects and philosophies.

Universities were initially to have students be rather enlightened to many schools of thought. Over time the whole college experience got tied with getting a good job afterwards, getting connections if you go to an elite school that sort of thing.

Now BA’s are nice but on job interviews (in Manhattan) it is about doing the office work and so on and can you do it. Masters are more concentrated on the major and to really do psychology, sociology, economics, and other majors it is best to follow up with the masters.

Parents ask their kids about majors and when they say English lit, {Philosophy, History, or Art, some parents say “What are you going to do with that? Get into a major more hands-on and office related like accounting, computers, etc.

As for the job market and labor research, it was Maher who reported on his show that a lot of US degrees these days aren’t really in the tough STEM classes that might lead to a shortage of born American engineers and so on in the future.

I am not making this up. Just saying.

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DavidM

Know where people learn to work in an office? In an office.

Or that was the way of it, now it’s possibly more likely to be that you’re learning hybrid working, along with everyone else.

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Todd

I think it was Jim O’Hara who once said many college degrees should be re-evaluated. He said a lot of them don’t need to be 4-year degrees and would be better as 2-year degrees or even a 1-year certificate. On a practical level, I would say the bulk of office jobs really don’t need a 4-year degree. College can teach you some fundamental theories and concepts but you will learn more actually working in an office and performing real tasks.

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Rocket, DavidM, Al-x

The thought of leaving school, doing just one or two years of uni, then entering the working world just sounds downright depressing.

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Martin Smith

Well I think you need more time for certain studies….obviously you can’t become a medical doctor in 2 years. Also if you do something like philosophy you probably need longer to develop critical thinking skills. For certain other subjects I agree 2 years may be enough.

Bruce wrote:

The thought of leaving school, doing just one or two years of uni, then entering the working world just sounds downright depressing.

What’s more depressing is the current reality of getting a 4-year degree and having a debt that will take decades to pay off because said degree isn’t getting them a decent paying job to pay off said debt.

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Rocket, DavidM, lorcan_nagle, Al-x

Todd wrote:

I think it was Jim O’Hara who once said many college degrees should be re-evaluated. He said a lot of them don’t need to be 4-year degrees and would be better as 2-year degrees or even a 1-year certificate. On a practical level, I would say the bulk of office jobs really don’t need a 4-year degree. College can teach you some fundamental theories and concepts but you will learn more actually working in an office and performing real tasks.

Ohara was right. The office will not ask you questions about your term paper on the Shakespeare plays or about 18th century European history. Most offices care about mostly how fast and efficient you are at getting office duties done. Things like typing speed (55wpm is the going rate), your knowledge of Word and Excel, how you can handle the phones, are a plus.

Todd wrote:

What’s more depressing is the current reality of getting a 4-year degree and having a debt that will take decades to pay off because said degree isn’t getting them a decent paying job to pay off said debt.

Yes… When the economy is slow/stalling, no one is really hiring, you will get the stories of a waiter who has a masters and biding his time for when things pick up.

The 4 year degree is getting to be a myth. To do 125 credits in 4 years is a lot. More students are having to take on a 5th year, or a few Summer classes to get to 30 credits a year. BA’s these days are a dime a dozen and doesn’t really make you stand out on interviews unless you went to a prestigious school like in the US, the Ivy League or the West Coast Stanford. Like I said before, most BAs are mostly liberal arts classes. The Masters is more focused and advanced. Many are starting to realize that it may not be worth it to get a BA in an expensive school like an NYU or so given all the debt. It may be more efficient to go to a public university for the BA and if you want more, then concentrate your masters in a more costly private university.

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Todd