Octopus Overlords

There are guys that have mobile repair shops that travel with code readers, but without money to pay them (assuming similar businesses exist near you), that's not very helpful. I'm not sure I'd spend money on buying one. I have zero mechanical skill so I always end up calling my guy and the last time I had an issue he had to tow my car from my driveway as it wouldn't start (something sensor in the engine tripped a fuse under the dash). F-ing cars.

Default wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 11:28 am

hitbyambulance wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2023 2:07 pm my son just moved into campus housing and he is upset his room is overlooking the busy avenue - any suggestions on cost-effective sound dampening options? (he says the ones he's looked into are expensive)

Harbor freight moving blankets over the windows and on the walls opposite the windows.
Recording studio approved for decades.

I saw someone suggest bubble wrap, flat part to the window. Makes sense for some trapped air insulation.

I don't think that would work.

Bubble foil insulation is a thing.

The general consensus seems to be that bubble wrap doesn't work well as a sound-proofing material because it doesn't have enough mass to absorb the sound waves.

Default wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 11:28 am

hitbyambulance wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2023 2:07 pm my son just moved into campus housing and he is upset his room is overlooking the busy avenue - any suggestions on cost-effective sound dampening options? (he says the ones he's looked into are expensive)

Harbor freight moving blankets over the windows and on the walls opposite the windows.
Recording studio approved for decades.

i figured moving blankets were the most cost-effective route. didn't know about putting them also opposite from the window. sent this on along with a link to purchasing them from Menard's (since that is probably closer to where he is)

We upgraded from a Queen to a King sized bed this weekend.

It’s like sleeping in an entirely different zip code!

Nicer.

Skinypupy wrote:We upgraded from a Queen to a King sized bed this weekend.

It’s like sleeping in an entirely different zip code!

California or regular king?

Sent from my SM-S908U1 using Tapatalk

I wish I had a CA KING bed. But my bedroom would be one big bed.

Pyperkub wrote: Sun Sep 10, 2023 2:02 pm

Skinypupy wrote:We upgraded from a Queen to a King sized bed this weekend.

It’s like sleeping in an entirely different zip code!

California or regular king?

Sent from my SM-S908U1 using Tapatalk

Regular.

Daehawk wrote: Sun Sep 10, 2023 2:20 pm I wish I had a CA KING bed, my bedroom would be one big bed.

ftfy

Our bed is a pair of twin XLs pushed together and sheeted/blanketed as one. This gives us the surface area of a King, but (since we’re actually on separate mattresses) means that we can each toss and turn a little with less disturbance to the other’s sleep.

I've got a queen, but now that it's just me, myself, and I sharing it? I'd gladly trade it for a twin XL, just to get back the two feet of space. And if I got rid of one nightstand and pushed it up against the wall, I'd add a total of four feet of usable space to my room, making it usable for so much more than it is now.

Good news? I had so many power outages last month that I was credited $14 on my electric bill as a "reliability" refund. Yeah?

If my internet even blinks I call and get a $10 credit...they call it an all day credit. Man if I was paying $10 a day I couldn't afford internet.

It was always fun giving a 1-day credit at Cingular.

Your plan is $39.99/month. Here's your $1.33 credit. Plus taxes and fees, of course.

Internet? My ISP tried to charge me $160 to come out and fix a problem with their last mile outside of my house and wouldn't back down until I said "fine, cancel my service and send me to a bill collector." The idea that even a 2 day outage would result in a credit is laughable.

Did someone send me a water hose from the future? Ive never seen a hose like it. Its stretchy..and the ends have pop on / pop off fittings. Ingenious. What year is it from? 2053? 2063? I know its not 2073 due to that law making it illega....nm.

Thank you to the person in the future.

EDIT: Must set up surveillance on new mailman. Somehow able to fit shipments in my mailbox that shouldn't fit.

Daehawk wrote: Mon Sep 11, 2023 1:48 pm Did someone send me a water hose from the future? Ive never seen a hose like it. Its stretchy..and the ends have pop on / pop off fittings. Ingenious. What year is it from? 2053? 2063? I know its not 2073 due to that law making it illega....nm.

Has the G20 banned water hoses by a certain date? I could believe it.

I get the impression that movie trailer thread is not for comments on the trailers or movies themselves. Is this correct? I don't want to mess with a neat and tidy thread.

Im not sure. Also all the ones I watched a trailer for on the last page were 2022. Theres are so many movies Ive never heard of or will never be shown near me.

GreenGoo wrote: Tue Sep 12, 2023 8:05 am I get the impression that movie trailer thread is not for comments on the trailers or movies themselves. Is this correct? I don't want to mess with a neat and tidy thread.

That's been my impression too. And it is a pretty neat and tidy thread.

Personally, I'd find it more valuable if there were commentary about the trailers. It doesn't do much for me now because I'm not going to randomly watch a bunch of trailers (what is this, the E! network from 1994?) and I can't really tell much about most of the movies from the title and the movie poster, most of which are pretty generic.

ImLawBoy wrote: Tue Sep 12, 2023 8:52 am Personally, I'd find it more valuable if there were commentary about the trailers. It doesn't do much for me now because I'm not going to randomly watch a bunch of trailers (what is this, the E! network from 1994?) and I can't really tell much about most of the movies from the title and the movie poster, most of which are pretty generic.

You are excused from enjoying the neat and tidy thread then.

I kinda like the raw data like that.

I poke my head in there from time to time to see if trailers have shown up for any films I'm interested in, or - very occasionally - something's poster looks so interesting that I give it a watch. Personally, I'd find commentary valuable. I doubt the PostBot's trailer subroutine would even notice if we discussed what has been so kindly provided.

I certainly don’t mind comments about the trailers if one piques your interest. Once I’ve seen the film, I generally quote it and move to Whatcha Watching.

If there’s something I can add that makes the thread more useful, I’m certainly open to suggestions.

I occasionally see something and want to comment on it, but the pristine nature of the thread made me believe there was an unspoken (or spoken, I just missed it) that the thread is just for videos and discussion occurs elsewhere.

Like unknowingly traipsing across a sand garden only to hear outrage and groans at the beauty I've destroyed.

People have and do comment in there occasionally. But usually along the lines of "I'm looking forward to this one". More thorough discussions generally happen elsewhere.

My goal is to now reply to every trailer with whether I have heard of it or not. Spoiler: it will mostly be not. Additional spoiler: I am not doing this.

I love seeing articles about how intelligent birds are because it suggests that dinosaurs would eventually have achieved space flight.

Holman wrote: Wed Sep 13, 2023 11:30 am I love seeing articles about how intelligent birds are because it suggests that dinosaurs would eventually have achieved space flight.

Indeed, why leap to that preposterous assumption? Dinosaurs have been around for a really, really, really absurdly long time. The following graph is perhaps somewhat dated, considering -- thanks to birds -- the dinosaur timeline arguably extends all the way up to the present day. But it serves as a useful illustration of the unfathomably longer period of time they've been around vs. hominids like us:



And yet, during that vast quantity of time, they never evolved anything even remotely equivalent to the intelligence of hominids and great apes, so how does this suggest they would eventually have achieved space flight? If anything, it seems to suggest quite the opposite.

And I understand trying to fit a triceratops into a space helmet can be a real bitch.

Anonymous Bosch wrote: Wed Sep 13, 2023 2:47 pm

Holman wrote: Wed Sep 13, 2023 11:30 am I love seeing articles about how intelligent birds are because it suggests that dinosaurs would eventually have achieved space flight.

Indeed, why leap to that preposterous assumption? Dinosaurs have been around for a really, really, really absurdly long time. The following graph is perhaps somewhat dated, considering -- thanks to birds -- the dinosaur timeline arguably extends all the way up to the present day. But it serves as a useful illustration of the unfathomably longer period of time they've been around vs. hominids like us:



And yet, during that vast quantity of time, they never evolved anything even remotely equivalent to the intelligence of hominids and great apes, so how does this suggest they would eventually have achieved space flight? If anything, it seems to suggest quite the opposite.

Cuz birds is dinos and birds is smart.

There are plenty of potential inheritors of the world once we finish wiping ourselves out. Birds are possible - but the lack of manipulative tools puts them a step or two below some other contenders (other primates, octopods.)

Humans (actually less than one pixel) have a great deal of assumptions about what was giong on dozens and hundreds of million years ago. but how many times have Humans (actually less than one pixel) been absolutely positivly sure about their science, and then later found out they were completely gobshittingly wrong?

For example, if dinosaurs in their vast intellegence had built their civilisations from recyclable materials, or indeed literally any material that takes less than 65 million years to decompose, how would we Humans (actually less than one pixel) even know about it? Hope that an entire dinosaur library was somehow encapsulated in a bead of amber?


What if the dinosaurs had it all figured out? Life, the universe, and everything? During those hundreds of million years they sorted themselves out and transcended, before they left they cleaned up the planet, making way for the next generation of species to evolve. All we are digging up now if the remains of the last few caretakers, and a couple of hermits who didn't agree with transcendance, and wandered off to die in the dirt somewhere.

I mean, they had the time to do it didn't they?

Jaymann wrote: Wed Sep 13, 2023 2:52 pm And I understand trying to fit a triceratops into a space helmet can be a real bitch.

Blackhawk wrote: Wed Sep 13, 2023 3:55 pm There are plenty of potential inheritors of the world once we finish wiping ourselves out. Birds are possible - but the lack of manipulative tools puts them a step or two below some other contenders (other primates, octopods.)

I've read that cephalopods are doomed to be held back by being in a poor environment to harness fire and everything that comes with that.

Unagi wrote: Wed Sep 13, 2023 6:09 pm

Blackhawk wrote: Wed Sep 13, 2023 3:55 pm There are plenty of potential inheritors of the world once we finish wiping ourselves out. Birds are possible - but the lack of manipulative tools puts them a step or two below some other contenders (other primates, octopods.)

I've read that cephalopods are doomed to be held back by being in a poor environment to harness fire and everything that comes with that.

Yes, fire is foundational to our technology. One can imagine a species leapfrogging to electricity without steam engines or metal, but it would be extra hard to do. And an aquatic species ain't gonna get electricity, either.

The universe might be filled with species advanced in the arts, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, and similar feats of mental prowess without ever developing technology, but we'll never meet or detect them unless they're lurking on Titan, Europa, Ganymede, or one of the other solar system moons, and even then we'd be hard-pressed to recognize their smarts.

It's more likely that a species without technology will never get much beyond basic survival skills, since those higher mental pursuits are something of a luxury requiring safety and comfort.