Preparing for the worst is not a bad idea. If the situation turned sour, I’d love to be in a big group of people prepared for that. But if I did show up like that, I would’ve been 1 of a small handful with that level of preparedness. It wouldn’t have mattered. By far, the most important thing for these protests to be successful is for people to show up in huge numbers. If people feel like they need to be ready for war, they won’t show up and the protest won’t be as impactful. I’d rather have 10s of thousands showing up in funny costumes carrying instruments and noisemakers than a couple hundred with gas masks.

Reddit has a bunch of “call-and-response” sort of trigger words and phrases, along with canned responses to a situation, repeated in-jokes, etc which made a lot of the site feel bloated and samey. Definitely the comments are much sparser here but there’s none of that. Anytime I Google something and check a reddit thread for answers, I’m shocked at how easily any thread can turn into some blown up debate about something stupid. In general that doesn’t happen here.

On the other hand, this is a pretty leftists-only echo chamber which narrows perspective. I went to the no kings protest today. If you believe Lemmy, I should have brought thrifted clothes, a 3M respirator, milk of magnesia, a first aid kit, heat resistant gloves, etc. really what I needed was an energy drink because I got tired. Lemmy can get pretty up it’s own ass about the aesthetics of revolution.

The 2nd option is likely the goal. Inflaming tensions and overreacting makes the administration look like it’s tough on crime to his base. Escalating a peaceful protest into a conflict can easily be spun into “the good guys are fighting the violent illegal criminals”. The people that elected Trump want a strongman dictator and he’s happy to show them that. Even the politically apathetic might see the conflict as “both sides went too far”.

American Werewolf in London

The title alone makes it sound like a cheesy 80s goofy movie…and it kinda is. But the practical effects are right up there with The Thing. It makes you invested in the characters and the main conflict is really tough. It’s more dark and gritty than you would expect, especially near the end. The werewolf transformation scene has some of the best practical effects in film. It’s stomach churning.

Wait…the movie is based on the ride, not the other way around?

Maybe I’m paranoid but it also seems very insecure. I’ve been to some restaurants where they have the menu as a qr code and you even pay for your food from the website. What’s to stop a bad actor from creating a fake version of your website and stealing card data? They just need to create a qr sticker and put it on top of the one on the table.

I have 3 of these units since last summer. Should I be cleaning them out? Pardon the ignorance. I’ve never owned a window unit before and I won’t have one after this summer.

I would imagine some sort of heat pump is being used to transfer the heat from the electronics to the radiators. I still wonder how they’re dealing with the heat.

The 4 basic rules of gun safety:

1. Treat every gun as if it’s loaded
2. Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire
3. Don’t point it at anything you aren’t ok destroying
4. Be sure of your target and what’s behind it

More people should know these rules.

I used to be an engineer in a manufacturing plant in South Carolina. At the time, South Carolina was booming. People were moving in from all over the country due to lower housing costs. However, the plant I worked at had a labor shortage at the same time that they had huge demand. We had something like 7 new production lines in various stages of installation all at once. The issue was so acute that we were constantly running overtime and still would have to expedite orders to prevent shutting down the customer. We cancelled the twice-a-year shutdown week several times in a row, deferring needed maintenance. A facility had recently broken ground next door with plans to hire 4000 employees in a couple years.

What did my employer pay the much-needed line operators? $15/hr. For $15 you can work 6 or 7 days per week or you could work at Chick-fil-A. The company was breaking it’s back in order to avoid paying people more. Rather than lowering the workload in any smart way, they just squeezed the people they had harder. I quit for that reason.

Hey our names are similar

Spy Kids 3D

Oh man I haven’t thought of Jericho in a minute. I used to watch that after The Unit.

I’ve also noticed an increase in using “had [done]” instead of [did] in places I wouldn’t expect. I’m sure a linguist could break that down more thoroughly.

It does sound a little weird. I usually just say balls

Yeah that’s accurate. Or just “bearing balls”.

A steel ball is not a ball bearing. A bearing is something that bears load and allows for motion, usually rotation. There are sleeve bearings which are just one material or journal bearings which have pressurized oil to separate the spinning shaft. A ball bearing is an assembly with rolling elements (balls, rather than rollers). Those steel balls are just called balls. The whole assembly is called a ball bearing. I used to work in bearing manufacturing and they were just called balls.

Kei trucks are extremely useful if you’re only ever going to move it around in a city. I wouldn’t want to get on a highway in one of those. To me, this looks like the closest analog to a kei trucks that would still work in the US.

They make it sound like not having stamping is helping them by not requiring expensive machines and a factory with a high ceiling. I’m betting they’re outsourcing the stamping. I’m also betting that they won’t ever deliver a truck.

Definitely not cast. Some suspension parts are cast but most car frames are made from stamped sheet metal welded/bonded together.