Not quite as retro, but I recently built a gaming HTPC in a Silverstone gd09 case, and my friend described it as having strong “2003 [middle-to-upper-middle-class suburban town we grew up near] basement” vibes.

For reference, we’re from the next town over that was historically kind of a working class mill town, and we’re from townie families whose parents and grandparents worked in the mills and factories once upon a time. Same school district as that other town though so lots of friends from there. Circa 2003 we were probably hanging out in their finished basement rec rooms with a giant rear projection TV and watching stupid flash cartoons on the family desktop.

Yeah, fuck me for having an opinion on something I frequently find myself needing to use.

No, in an ideal world, a truck shouldnt be anyone’s primary transportation. Privately owned passenger vehicles in general should be a rarity and most people’s needs should be served by public transportation.

However, sometimes you need a truck, they do exist to serve the purpose of moving large or bulky things that you can’t with other vehicles, they’re not just for idiots to waste gas driving getting groceries or for idiots to go play in the mud. And people tend to develop opinions on the tools they use. I have a favorite hammer, I have opinions on computer operating systems, a preferred style of cabinet hinges, and opinions and preferences on countless other things.

And it happens that I like trucks. I don’t own a truck, it’s not a practical vehicle for my everyday needs, but I borrow them frequently from friends and family and rent them on occasion. And the maverick is my preferred truck for when I need one.

It goes through your phone’s data connection. That’s part of the reason we don’t get GPS info on all calls, no data, no gps. If you call from a deactivated cell phone that can only call 911 for example, since you don’t have data we don’t get that gps data(or your emergency contact or medical info if you’ve filled that out on your phone)

I work in 911 dispatch, so I have some relevant knowledge here

Cell tower triangulation is our bread and butter for locating a cell phone. It also kind of sucks.

With triangulation we get a set of latitude/longitude coordinates, a “confidence factor” which is a radius in meters around that point that basically shows you the potential error, and a “confidence percentage” which is how confident the cell provider is in that information (it’s 90% I’ve literally never seen it be any number other than 90%)

The confidence factor depends on a few different things- geography, how many cell towers the phone is able to connect to, if you’re inside/outside, etc.

The policy where I work is if it’s within 300 meters we can enter the call as normal and send cops, fire, EMS, or whoever out to look for the emergency if we get no other location info from the caller. More than 300m and it’s usually getting bumped down to an information call, cops will still go to check it out but even 300m is a pretty big area to have them check and can include potentially hundreds of houses, apartments, businesses, etc.

Usually we can get that 300m accuracy, but not always by a longshot, I sometimes see them in the thousands of meters which is basically useless. It also takes about 20-30 seconds to refresh so it’s not a live location, and if they’re, for example, in a moving vehicle, they can be a pretty significant distance away in 30 seconds, let alone in the several minutes it takes responders to arrive.

And once we’re off the call, we don’t get any further location updates. If we want to ping the phone again, that involves calling the phone company and faxing them paperwork or something like that (it’s handled by our supervisor so I’m not directly involved in that part of the process) I think it normally ends up taking like 10 or 20 minutes for us to get a ping that way, and then it’s only 1 ping at a time and they’re going to be spaced out about that far or further.

Handset gps based location is generally more accurate (although occasionally it does happen that it’s less accurate than the triangulation) but we don’t necessarily get it on every call, it’s still kind of a hacked-together system at a lot of dispatch centers and it doesn’t always integrate well with the other software. It does update much faster, and we usually continue to get updated locations from it for maybe a couple minutes after we hang up.

We don’t really have any way that I’m aware of to request a gps based ping on a phone we’re not on the line with.

I’m sure the feds have some back doors and extra tools at their disposal that we don’t have at a county 911 center, I really can’t speak to that. I doubt they’re able to get a much more accurate triangulation ping than we are, that seems like a pretty hard limitation of the technology to me.

I don’t think it’s so much that western social media “won’t allow” leftist content, you can certainly post it and share it, but the algorithms aren’t going to do anything to help it gain traction.

Pretty much all of my Facebook friends skew liberal, leftist, even pretty hardcore socialist and communist. They share their memes and post about politics, and I like and interact with that stuff in positive ways. The few political pages I follow myself are pretty much all left leaning causes- environmentalism, pages devoted to voting out Republican candidates in my local elections, LGBTQ rights, atheism, etc. and I actively block, unfollow, and when appropriate report (though of course the reports never seem to go anywhere) any sort of of homo/trans-phobic, racist, bullshit and any misinformation I come across.

I’m just about the furthest right of anyone on my Facebook, and I’m still pretty far left. I have a few hobbies and interests and such that tend to skew right-wing, like hunting, fishing, guns, etc. but I don’t really interact with any pages relating to any of that on Facebook, don’t post about those things, etc. and the way I approach and interact with those sorts of activities is very different than the way most conservatives do.

If you looked at my ads and recommendations though, you’d think I was some kind of truly insane redneck. Gun stuff, weird Christian tradwife quiver-full homesteader shit, very thinly veiled racism, homophobia, etc, muscle cars and big trucks (I think muscle cars are stupid, I do like trucks but not the big lifted monster trucks that it’s always showing me, I think a stock maverick is pretty damn close to perfect)

The only left wing stuff I see is stuff my friends are sharing themselves, and mostly it’s stuff they’ve posted themselves and not shared from anywhere else on Facebook. Their stuff’s mostly not getting taken down, but it’s not getting promoted to any wider audience by the algorithm.

My use case is a little unusual, my PC is hooked up to my tv and gets used for watching some movies and TV and such in addition to gaming

I’d like it to have some sort of slide out keyboard, a scroll wheel, and a trackpad or trackball so that it’s more useable for general PC navigation, and maybe some media control buttons-play/pause, skip, etc.

I’d also like volume controls, and if I dare to dream big maybe an IR blaster to control my TV and AV receiver with some power and input buttons.

I think a trackball instead of a right stick would be nice for precise aiming but sometimes I’d like it to act like a joystick so maybe some kind of sensor ring around the edge of it to detect when my thumb is at the edge to keep it moving that direction like a joystick or maybe both a stick and a ball

6 face buttons instead of the now standard 4. I emulate some retro games and it would be nice for N64 and Genesis games. Mapping those buttons to a joystick or shoulder buttons or whatever just doesn’t feel right, and I’d probably come up with some macros or something to map them to for other games

However it’s implemented, I’d want to be able to have 4 controllers connected at once, and the ability to play and charge at the same time

Some sort of charging dock or at least wireless charging built it would be nice

And if we really want to get wild with it, let’s make it split in half with the necessary sensors and speaker and such for Wii and switch emulation and to use as VR controllers

Trying to cram all of that into an affordable, usable, attractive controller is probably a pipe dream, but that’s my theoretical ideal

Depends a bit on what you want to consider a “weasel”

The weasel family (mustildae) is pretty diverse, we don’t necessarily call everything in that family a “weasel” but that distinction is somewhat arbitrary.

It includes all manner of critters from the Least Weasel (yes, that’s seriously what someone decided to call the smallest weasel) that can be as small as about 4½" in length and weigh about an ounce or so

Up to Giant Otters that can reach about 5’7" in length or Sea Otters that can weigh about 100lbs

And in between you have some things like badgers and wolverines

It’s not something I’d generally consider to be one of my kinks, but I remember one time noticing a girl I know has somewhat more prominent than average canine teeth. Not ridiculously exaggerated vampire fangs or anything, definitely within the range of normal variation of the human species, but towards the upper end of that range, just a tiny bit longer and pointier than most.

And that did something for me. Like the primal reptilian part of my brain was saying “yesss, now there’s a female you can go and hunt mammoths with”

It surely didn’t hurt that she is otherwise very conventionally attractive, but in that moment it wasn’t the great tits, ass, pretty face, blue eyes, long blonde hair, etc. that caught my eye, it was those carnivore teeth.

She’s also been an on-again/off-again vegetarian as long as I’ve known her, and has expressed some interest in hunting, so I think her own lizard-brain also seems to have some strong thoughts on the matter.

I was asked to officiate my friend’s wedding a few months back, I’m no writer, and I wanted to do a bit better than just a generic wedding ceremony for them

So I fired up chatgpt, told it I needed a script for a wedding ceremony, described some of the things I wanted to mention, some of the things they requested, and it spit out a pretty damn good wedding ceremony. I gave it a little once over and tweaked a little bit of what it gave me but 99% of it was pretty much just straight chatgpt. I got a lot of compliments on it.

I think that’s sort of the use case. For those of us who aren’t professional writers and public speakers, who have the general idea of what we need to say for a speech or presentation but can’t quite string the words together in a polished way.

Here’s pretty much what it spit out (Their wedding was in a cave)

Cell Phone Reminder

Officiant: Before we begin, I’d like to kindly remind everyone to silence your phones and put them away for the ceremony. Groom and Bride want this moment to be shared in person, free from distractions, so let’s focus on the love and beauty of this moment.

Giving Away the Bride

And before we move forward, we have a special moment. Tradition asks: Who gives this woman to be married to this man?

[Response from Bride’s dad]

Thank you.

Greeting

Welcome, everyone. We find ourselves here in this remarkable setting—surrounded by the quiet strength of these ancient walls, a fitting place for Groom and Bride to declare their love. The cave, much like marriage, is carved out over time—through patience, care, and sometimes a little hard work. And yet, what forms is something enduring, something that stands the test of time.

Today, we’re here to witness Groom and Bride join their lives together in marriage. In this moment, we’re reminded that love is not about perfection, but about commitment—choosing one another, day after day, even when things get messy, or difficult, or dark. And through it all, we trust in love to guide us, just as God’s love guides us through life’s journey.

Declaration of Intent

[Officiant turns toward Groom and Bride]

Groom, Bride, you are about to make promises to each other that will last a lifetime. Before we continue, I’ll ask each of you to answer a very important question.

Officiant: Groom, do you take Bride to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?

Groom: I do.

Officiant: Bride, do you take Groom to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?

Bride: I do.

Exchange of Vows

Officiant: Now, as a sign of this commitment, Groom and Bride will exchange their vows—promises made not just to each other, but before all of us here and in the sight of God.

[Groom and Bride share their vows]

Rings

Officiant: The rings you’re about to exchange are a symbol of eternity, a reminder that your love, too, is without end. May these rings be a constant reminder of the vows you have made today, and of the love that surrounds and holds you both.

[Groom and Bride exchange rings]

Officiant: And now, by the power vested in me, and with the blessing of God, I pronounce you husband and wife. Groom you may kiss your bride.

[Groom and Bride kiss]

Officiant: Friends and family, it is my great honor to introduce to you, for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. [Name].

I pretty much just tweaked the formatting, worked in a couple little friendly jabs at the groom, subbed their names in for Bride and Groom, and ad-libbed a little bit where appropriate

I don’t think it’s really a schwa, at least not the way I say it

A schwa kind of comes from the back of your mouth like you’re saying “uhh…”

When I say possible, that last sound feels more like it’s the little burst of air from the b sort of fading into the l sound

Then again I’m no linguist so I could be out of my depth trying to really describe the noises I’m making, and I’m not very well-equipped to separate how I talk from more general American English (I’m from Philly, and we have more than our share of little linguistic quirks, after all, we pronounce “water” as “wooder”)

If we inverted the last letters of “possible” to “possibel,” that wouldn’t really match how we pronounce it

I’d probably try to read it as something like “possi-bell”

But our actual pronunciation is more along the lines of “possi-bull” not exactly, and I feel like different dialects might maybe lean more towards the last syllable being more like bill, ball, or boll, but I can’t really imagine any dialect where the pronunciation would match a “bel” spelling.

It’s sort of an unintentional half vowel sound that just happens after making the “b” noise, and not really something we’re intentionally trying to put into the word.

Linguists probably have some specific terminology for it, but I’m no linguist.

I’m sure kermit drew some inspiration from Lorne and probably many other people that Jim knew

I kind of think of Kermit as almost a stock character.

I’m sure someone with some sort of Clown College degree (meaning actually professional clowning education, not something goofy and useless like, you know, a Harvard law degree or what-have-you) could probably chime in about how Kermit exhibits some aspects of one or more of the stock Commedia dell’arte characters or something along those lines.

Unfortunately that sort of high-level comedic theory is beyond my education, but I’ll do my best

He’s the everyman, the straight man, he’s you

He’s the embodiment of when your friend was supposed to come pick you up a half hour ago and they’re nowhere to be found and not answering their phone

Or when you’re trying to schedule your next D&D session but 2 people have scheduling conflicts you’re trying to work around, one guy ghosts you and you’re not sure if he’s coming or not, another wants to bring 3 friends and a dog for some reason, and the last one is just blowing up the group chat with his insane homebrew magical gunslinger succubus character idea and their 14 page backstory.

He’s you when you’re the only one who did their part of the group project and you’re fumbling your way through the presentation you cobbled together on your lunch break

He’s when your girlfriend is upset with you and you don’t know why

Or when you look around and it seems like everyone around you is an idiot, an asshole, or maybe just clinically insane.

And he puts up with it because despite all their flaws and quirks, these are his friends and he wants to spend time with them and help them to achieve their dreams, and they all feel the same about him, and he’s not perfect himself, he’s got his own weird bag of insecurities and neuroses that he carries around with him. He yells, he loses his patience, he can’t always get a word in edgewise, he runs around flailing his arms and screaming like we all want to do sometimes, he gets depressed and thinks that everything is fucked, but with a little help from those crazy assholes he loves he pushes on and usually things work out alright in the end, even if they didn’t quite go according to plan.

How many times a day do you personally go pee? Is 4-5 times really that excessive? I think that’s probably on the low end of what I normally do. I wouldn’t expect my dog to go much less than that, especially since there’s often a pretty long stretch when we’re at work where she doesn’t get to go out.

Walking and taking your dog out to pee is part of what you signed up for when you got a dog, and you need to do that a few times a day.

On top of just the basic biological needs to pee and for exercise, you also need to consider the sort of social aspect of dogs marking their territory. That’s part of being a dog.

Honestly at 6 years old he may even start needing to go more. Just like humans can get incontinent with age, so can dogs, and your boy is approaching or already well into middle age depending on his breed. And he’s probably pretty set in his ways at this point, he’s used to going out 4 or 5 times a day to pee, it’s going to be an uphill battle training that out of him. Not impossible, but difficult.

I take my girl out a minimum of 4 times a day, and if the weather’s nice and we’re not busy it might be 2 or 3 times that many, some of those might just be a quick potty break and not a full walk, but no matter how many times I can pretty much guarantee that every time she goes outside she’s going to pee.

I suggest investing in some warm slip-on shoes and a jacket that you keep by the door with his leash, and maybe make your walks longer when you do go out.

I don’t think either are particularly exciting and I didn’t take pictures, but I’m proud of them.

After years of putting it off, I’ve finally cobbled together a gaming PC, it’s not a powerhouse, most of the parts are about 10+ years old salvaged from my wife’s upgrades over the last few years, and I still need to find a keyboard and mouse I like

I don’t really have space in my home for a desk, the spare bedroom/office is home to my wife’s computer and don’t really have room to squeeze in another, so I built it in a HTPC case, and it’s pretty damn cool playing on the 70inch TV with surround sound and the hue lights synced up to it

The other is the cabinets above our fridge. We got a new fridge that’s a bit bigger than our old one, and there’s a bit of a weird bump at the top that prevented the cabinets from swinging open fully.

So I moved the hinges to the top of the doors instead of the side, and added some gas springs so they stay open, they have enough clearance to open that way.

The measurements the springs came with to tell you where to mount them are total bullshit. Took a bit of trial and error to figure that out, but my cabinets now have DeLorean-style gullwing doors.

The general concept of Facebook I think is fine

I don’t have any problem with the idea of a website where you can go to share things with your friends, family, coworkers, etc.

For me, the biggest problem is that there’s way too many opportunities for you to interact with people you don’t have any real connection to.

Unless you have mutual friends, you shouldn’t see anything someone else is posting, sharing, liking, or commenting on. The only thing you should see from them is a name, profile picture, and a short bio when you search for them.

There shouldn’t be public pages for businesses, celebrities, etc. Everything you see on Facebook should be there because someone you actually know thought that it should be shared with their friends.

And if, for some reason there must be public pages, then you should only see what your friends are commenting on those pages, not complete strangers.

There shouldn’t be public groups that just anyone can join. Groups should be limited to people you’re actually connected to in some way. Not that you necessarily need to be friends directly, but you should be able to trace a clear line of mutual friends connecting any two people in the group together. There shouldn’t be a public “we love bowling” (for example) group that anyone can join, but if you started a bowling league and wanted to start a group for it, you might start with Jeff, Walter, and Donny who all know each other, then Jeff adds his friend Smoky who also wants to join, and then Smoky adds his friend Liam who adds his friend Jesús, etc. Jeff may not be directly friends with Jesús, but they’re connected by actual people so they can be in the same group. And Jesús and Jeff wouldn’t get to see anything each other do outside of that group because they’re not friends and don’t even have any immediate mutual friends. Their entire relationship is through the bowling league.

Want to talk to, follow, and share things with strangers? Go join a forum, get on Lemmy/reddit, use Twitter, start a blog, publish a book, send an op ed into the local newspaper, etc. That’s what those platforms are for. Facebook is for talking to people you know.

Friendica and other Facebook like platforms don’t really solve those problems, but since they’re smaller and less businesses and such are on them it kind of feels like they do.

That’s my 2¢ on the matter anyway.

The “language” that the n64 used was basically in a totally different language family than what PCs and later Nintendo consoles use.

Think of it as if the N64 spoke Japanese, while PCs speak Spanish. There’s a lot of things that don’t translate cleanly from one language to the other, you can’t just feed it into google translate and expect what comes out the other end to make sense, you’re going to need someone who understands both languages to go over it, rewrite some of it to make sure all of the nuance is coming through, add some asterisks and translation notes to explain some concepts that don’t really have a direct equivalent in the other language, etc.

Later Nintendo consoles spoke something more like Portuguese or maybe even Mexican Spanish instead of PC’s Castilian Spanish. They’re much more similar languages that translate more directly and some things may not even really need translation as long as both parties slow down, speak clearly, and maybe throw in some hand gestures here and there, and google translate will get you like 99% of the way there, without the translator needing to add as many explanatory notes.

All those translation notes are what the emulator is doing, and the N64 to PC emulator has to do a lot more interpreting than the Switch to PC emulator.

I know the things you’re talking about, basically a thread adapter to screw an off-the shelf oil filter from auto zone or wherever onto your gun, and the first shot punched a hole through the other side.

Also those adapters are legally considered a silencer and you still have to jump through all the same hoops to get one.

That’s not the thing I’ve been getting advertised to me on Facebook as an oil or fuel filter

The things I’m getting are a long thin metal tube with baffles inside and threads on one end that look basically like a textbook silencer/suppressor

I also see them getting advertised as “solvent traps” for gun cleaning, which I suppose is marginally better than they’re advertising it for some sort of firearm use, but I know a silencer when I see one.

Also if you’re using so much solvent that you have it oozing out the barrel while you’re cleaning the gun and feel like you need some sort of device to contain it, that’s a pretty sure sign that you’re using way too much solvent.

Unless maybe you’ve just pulled a Soviet surplus Mosin Nagant out of a crate and need to clean 50 years of caked-on cosmoline off of the whole damn rifle. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mosin with a threaded barrel though.

And I can’t think of any good reason that trap would have a hole at both ends, kind of seems like that defeats the stated purpose of trapping the solvent.

Al Qaeda has always been pretty clear on their Intentions in Iraq, in 2005 they specifically outlined a 4 stage plan

Step 1: expulsion of US forces from Iraq
Step 2: establish an Islamic Caliphate in Iraq
Step 3: extending the jihad to surrounding countries
Step 4: “the clash with Israel”

So yes, they were in opposition to the US occupation, but that was more of a means to an end, not exactly altruistic Iraq freedom fighters. And around that same time they were also carrying out attacks on Iraqi tribespeople and clashing with nationalist insurgents. Yes they got somewhat more extreme over time, but like you said a lot of that can be attributed to them growing in power, and arguably dealing with the US occupation was more pressing to them at the time so that’s where most of their resources went.

And step 3 definitely seems to be in line with expanding operations into Syria.

Al-Julani did serve between 2003 and 2006 in AQI/ISI

Which brings us back to the root of our disagreement

We’re in agreement that he was part of ISI. I think we’re also in agreement that ISI became ISIS

So do you consider ISI/AQI to be substantially different enough organization from ISIS to be worth drawing a distinction?

To me, I’d consider the distinction to be similar to quibbling over whether a software engineer worked for alphabet vs google, or Facebook vs meta. It’s essentially the same organization with most of the same leadership, goals, methods, etc. just with some restructuring and a name change. A useful distinction if you’re talking shop about the specific details of their structure and operation, but for the average layperson having a casual discussion on Lemmy they can be generally understood the be the same organization.

Again, you can really get into the weeds here about which group splintered off from where, and what name they were operating under at what time

ISIS evolved from ISI (Islamic State in Iraq,) which was also often also known as al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)

Al Nusra started as an offshoot from ISI/AQI who went to establish an Islamic state in Syria around the outbreak of the civil war in 2011 with the authorization and backing of ISI/AQI (and later ISIS) leader al-Baghdadi. al-Julani had already been active in ISI for several years at that point when he went to Syria.

By 2012 they had officially established themselves as al Nusra, and kind of started doing their own thing pretty quickly and regarded themselves as a separate affiliate of al Qaeda instead of a subsidiary of ISI, but that seems to be how ISIS regarded them. Regardless of what its status was formally, I think it’s pretty safe to say that al Nusra can trace its lineage at least partially to ISI.

In 2013 baghdadi tried to bring al Nusra formally under his banner and rebranded ISI as ISIS/ISIL (the S or L being al-Sham, the Levant, or Syria, al Nusra basically would have been the Syrian branch if things had gone according to al-Baghdadi’s plan) but al quaeda opposed that merger and like you said, al nusra continued to regard themselves as an al quaeda affiliate, and one separate from ISIS. This is where the conflict between all nusra and ISIS began and part of the split between ISIS and Al quaeda

Terrorist organizations aren’t exactly doing things by the book with notarized contracts and such. It’s a tangled web of shaky alliances and different cells operating mostly independently with lots of internal conflicts. There’s a lot of room for interpretation here, but I feel pretty comfortable simplifying things down to saying that al Nusra began as an affiliate or offshoot of the terrorist group that would later become ISIS.