I've rarely seen the internet unite against something it previously loved like it did for the duration of the airing of that season. Strongly recommend checking out some video essays about the...
I've rarely seen the internet unite against something it previously loved like it did for the duration of the airing of that season. Strongly recommend checking out some video essays about the final season to truly appreciate just how terrible it was.
I was ready to read all of the books after finishing the series but it honestly killed my motivation so much that I stopped consuming GoT content whatsoever afterwards.
I just want to say, don't let the show ruin the books for you. I also technically started with the show, having started the books after season 2 finished, and they are good books. But they also...
I just want to say, don't let the show ruin the books for you.
I also technically started with the show, having started the books after season 2 finished, and they are good books.
But they also made me barely bearable to watch the following seasons with, not because I'd spoil things, the opposite, the further the show went the more I was complaining about things being stupidly done.
GRRM is doing that well enough on his own. Everyone loves to (deservedly) shit on the last 2-3 seasons of the show, but what if it just got cancelled instead, and those seasons just didn't exist?...
don't let the show ruin the books for you
GRRM is doing that well enough on his own. Everyone loves to (deservedly) shit on the last 2-3 seasons of the show, but what if it just got cancelled instead, and those seasons just didn't exist? Nothing gets resolved, nothing explained. That's what the books are. They're a great story without an ending, which to me, is not really a story at all.
If you are okay without having anything resolved, all the power to you. But for me, with the exception of everything from Brandon Sanderson, I've stopped reading series that aren't done yet.
In all honesty, that's a fair concern. If you want to argue that grrm might never finish the books and that leaving you hanging like that ruins things, that's legit. Full stop. And on some level I...
In all honesty, that's a fair concern.
If you want to argue that grrm might never finish the books and that leaving you hanging like that ruins things, that's legit. Full stop. And on some level I certainly agree.
But that's a very different argument from "the show was bad so I can't read the books".
Ps: Personally I'm one of those extremists who shit on the last four seasons, sometimes I even shit on the fourth. Gods damned Dorne plot.
Naw, the show ruined the entire universe for me. books, shows, any and all of it. If you don't want your book series ruined by a tv-show, maybe don't let them butcher your story with their own...
Naw, the show ruined the entire universe for me. books, shows, any and all of it. If you don't want your book series ruined by a tv-show, maybe don't let them butcher your story with their own telling of it.
Alright, then don't read or enjoy the books any further, I'm not the boss of you. I'll continue enjoying the actually mostly solid lore and Fantasy-sensible plot of the books as well as that...
Alright, then don't read or enjoy the books any further, I'm not the boss of you.
I'll continue enjoying the actually mostly solid lore and Fantasy-sensible plot of the books as well as that worlds implementation in things like CK2 mods.
Thanks for the link, I stopped watching in season 6 and had no plans to ever watch the rest. Now I know I didn't miss much and why it felt artificial by the time I stopped watching. Wow, glad I...
video essays
Thanks for the link, I stopped watching in season 6 and had no plans to ever watch the rest. Now I know I didn't miss much and why it felt artificial by the time I stopped watching. Wow, glad I didn't waste anymore time watching any further.
Even though we know its not a good character trait and we feel bad about it I think we all secretly enjoy being a bit smug sometimes. For me that's manifest in never having watched any Game Of...
Even though we know its not a good character trait and we feel bad about it I think we all secretly enjoy being a bit smug sometimes.
For me that's manifest in never having watched any Game Of Thrones. Everyone was telling me to watch it but I knew it wasn't my cup of tea. I've had enough fantasy type stuff (whatever you'd call it) and I just didn't watch.
The ending of it has truly embedded a guilty smugness in me.
Right? How insulting. When the show first aired it was such a huge cultural phenomenon. We all suffered so much Fremdschämen from how horrible the ending season was that we're mostly going to try...
Right? How insulting.
When the show first aired it was such a huge cultural phenomenon. We all suffered so much Fremdschämen from how horrible the ending season was that we're mostly going to try to imagine it doesnt exist.
Anyway when did that train wreck "jump the shark" for you?
Just the absolute dumpster fire writing. Characters lost their traits and became different people, pacing was too long or short in certain scenes, decisions characters made were unreasonable, etc....
Just the absolute dumpster fire writing. Characters lost their traits and became different people, pacing was too long or short in certain scenes, decisions characters made were unreasonable, etc.
The part that really got me was Sansa. I had to stand up at one point and ace around, I was so annoyed with how her character changed.
For me, it was when they killed of Ser Barristan Selmy. Seeing a guy described as never removing his armor being killed by some rando with a knife was when I first went "Huh."
Anyway when did that train wreck "jump the shark" for you?
For me, it was when they killed of Ser Barristan Selmy. Seeing a guy described as never removing his armor being killed by some rando with a knife was when I first went "Huh."
I used to think rabbits were cute and appreciated the intelligence of crows, and then i built a garden. Crows will literally break the stems of your sunflowers and attack the flowers. Rabbits ate...
I used to think rabbits were cute and appreciated the intelligence of crows, and then i built a garden. Crows will literally break the stems of your sunflowers and attack the flowers. Rabbits ate all of my damn onions and now they're breeding like rabbits..
So the first item on the docket for 2024 planting season are building a fence(which I think I can do myself but may splurge to have it done 100% right with a fencing company) and hanging CDs around my smaller garden fence because apparently that scares crows away. I don't want to scare away the cardinals, bluebirds, and robins we have, but we'll see if it has the same effect on them.
And I'm making a scarecrow that looks like the terminator. I'm going to war.
Could you try paying the Crows with peanuts and encouraging them to attack the rabbits instead? Pay off your enemies to attack your enemies? Then when they've vanquished the rabbits, perhaps...
Could you try paying the Crows with peanuts and encouraging them to attack the rabbits instead? Pay off your enemies to attack your enemies? Then when they've vanquished the rabbits, perhaps they'll share in their fight milk.
If the crows are determined they'll ignore your CDs and scarecrow very quickly......far too smart. How distressing :( so disappointing to wait and care for plants all season to have them be...
If the crows are determined they'll ignore your CDs and scarecrow very quickly......far too smart.
How distressing :( so disappointing to wait and care for plants all season to have them be ravaged before you can enjoy them.
I once went strawberry picking and they had a hawk on duty 🤩 gorgeous and handsome and no more bunnies and crows. The owners say sometimes it will take down and tear up a fluffy bun bun near customers with small children......
My dad grows both produce and flowers in his garden up in Anchorage, Alaska and has lost many of both to moose. He really has no solution to work around it and just has to accept his losses.
My dad grows both produce and flowers in his garden up in Anchorage, Alaska and has lost many of both to moose. He really has no solution to work around it and just has to accept his losses.
So I just had surgery yesterday and the lump turned out to be benign!!! It's going to be a pain to recover, with some inconveniences, but it could be so much worse. It's a huge relief.
So I just had surgery yesterday and the lump turned out to be benign!!!
It's going to be a pain to recover, with some inconveniences, but it could be so much worse. It's a huge relief.
Congratulations! It always takes time for the full ramifications of a test result (good or bad) to really hit me. If it’s good news, it takes me ages before I can fully, completely relax and...
Congratulations! It always takes time for the full ramifications of a test result (good or bad) to really hit me.
If it’s good news, it takes me ages before I can fully, completely relax and contemplate how the future will or won’t change for me. If it’s bad news, I think it takes a while before the denial wears off and I appreciate just how upsetting it is.
All that to say: I’m glad it’s good news! This must be a huge relief for you :)
I am so happy to hear that! We're benign tumor buddies! I remember thinking it was so cool to be out of school for two whole weeks, my poor parents must have been stressed beyond belief. I sure...
I am so happy to hear that! We're benign tumor buddies! I remember thinking it was so cool to be out of school for two whole weeks, my poor parents must have been stressed beyond belief. I sure hope the recovery goes well for you! Make sure to treat yourself to something too, heaven knows you earned it.
I'm getting pretty excited to run a game for Pathfinder 2e again. And I don't believe it would warrant a whole post for it if anyone is interested, I have applications open!
I'm getting pretty excited to run a game for Pathfinder 2e again. And I don't believe it would warrant a whole post for it if anyone is interested, I have applications open!
Oh I'm so excited for you!! I wish I could count on my work schedule to be dependable during 10-2pm. I have such fond memories of tabletop rpg groups......I played some 4th and 5th and a tiny bit...
Oh I'm so excited for you!! I wish I could count on my work schedule to be dependable during 10-2pm.
I have such fond memories of tabletop rpg groups......I played some 4th and 5th and a tiny bit of Pathfinders, but my DMs were always pretty rule flex types.
This is a fantastic idea and I hope you and whoever signs up have a wonderful campaign!
Four hours is a little longer than my experience, are you leaving it like that just in case 3 hours runs into over time or fully using 4? Also whens the application deadline?
Thank you, It's been a bit since I had a consistent group so here's for hoping! Yeah I was pretty heavily a D&D 5e player/DM and a new system re-invigorated me for sure, i've gotten a few lifetime...
Thank you, It's been a bit since I had a consistent group so here's for hoping!
Yeah I was pretty heavily a D&D 5e player/DM and a new system re-invigorated me for sure, i've gotten a few lifetime friends from the hobby and it's probably one of my favorite things about it, also a sure fire way of keeping in touch with people.
Interestingly I've always ran and played in 4 hour long games. I really enjoy roleplaying, and combat can take a good chunk of that time, especially since there are still quite a lot of people migrating to the system from D&D 5e and combat understandably takes longer. So it's always worked I suppose?
Application deadline would likely be next Wednesday, the 26th of July. I try to make it a quick fill out, so no one has to stress over a pseudo job interview, lol.
I am a mere week from finishing up this big, long-running behavior experiment that will hopefully be the last experiment that will take this long up until my defense. I've been going pretty...
I am a mere week from finishing up this big, long-running behavior experiment that will hopefully be the last experiment that will take this long up until my defense. I've been going pretty non-stop at it and I appreciate the rhythm and structure it's provided, but man I am just so ready to be done.
Thanks so much! It's so great to see a light at the end of the tunnel, even if it's several months away. I would like to visit some friends I haven't seen in a while and just kind of relax without...
Thanks so much! It's so great to see a light at the end of the tunnel, even if it's several months away.
I would like to visit some friends I haven't seen in a while and just kind of relax without having the itch of research woes in the back of mind, even if it just for a little bit. I'm also holding off on playing Tears of the Kingdom until I get most of the experiments done for the dissertation, so I'm looking forward to getting sucked into that.
Why is coca cola a tag for this post? Anyway since someone else posted the mechanical watch post I fell quite deeply into that black hole, so thank you, mysterious member who deleted your post...
Why is coca cola a tag for this post?
Anyway since someone else posted the mechanical watch post I fell quite deeply into that black hole, so thank you, mysterious member who deleted your post
I've been watching a lot of watch service videos and even some high end reviews. I think I love the mechanical aspects of it, not the luxury or brand or even long standing famous brands.
Gearing up to open up and paetially servicing my first humble Seiko 5 probably towards the end of the year. So far I've done simple stuff like batteries and straps but I've also got some junkers to tear apart and reassemble. Not touching the escapement or the mainspring box (forgot name) barrel though.
I've been obsessed with mechanical watches since I first realized such a thing existed in childhood. The idea that a thing on your arm, completely un-powered by any batteries or electronics can...
I've been obsessed with mechanical watches since I first realized such a thing existed in childhood. The idea that a thing on your arm, completely un-powered by any batteries or electronics can just tell you the time relatively accurately using only metal gears and a spring, perpetually, just confounded and fascinated me, and still does. I only own a few and none of them are expensive, but any time I'm wearing a watch, it's an automatic.
Hold on. Is this fancy "mechanical watch" you're all talking about just one of the old wind-up watches I grew up with? I assumed it was some fancy modern device. It's amazing how this works across...
The idea that a thing on your arm, completely un-powered by any batteries or electronics
Hold on. Is this fancy "mechanical watch" you're all talking about just one of the old wind-up watches I grew up with? I assumed it was some fancy modern device.
It's amazing how this works across generations. I grew up with wind-up watches. In my childhood, they were more common than battery-powered watches. To me, they're normal. Battery-powered watches were the newcomers. I remember the advertising about how they were "powered by quartz" (or some such rubbish). [Sidebar: I just did some quick research. No wonder I think quartz-powered watches are new: these were invented around the time I was born, give or take a year or two. They were still new during my formative years!] But, decades on, battery-powered watches are so common that wind-up watches are now considered the anomaly.
What! How old are you?! That's so cool you witnessed all of the quartz crisis era, the rise and fall of quartz. Now it's killed by the apple watch and other wearables, and mechanicals are making a...
What! How old are you?! That's so cool you witnessed all of the quartz crisis era, the rise and fall of quartz. Now it's killed by the apple watch and other wearables, and mechanicals are making a very modest comeback
There's wind up, as in, you gotta turn the crown to power it, then there's automatics, where it has a half-moon shaped weight inside so when you wear it it winds up the spring.
And Seiko has a bunch of different hybrids: wind up the crown to your chemical battery; pendulum that charges a chemical battery via a capacitor; and eventually the spring drive.
My favorite watch has something they invented call the auto relay: I have ADHD and very frequently misplace my watch. Regular automatics would run out of spring stored energy by the time I find it in a day or two. The auto relay goes to sleep and stops ticking after 72 hr of no movement. It remembers how much time has elapsed though. Within four years, if you pick it up again, it'll spin and move time forward to the correct time.....it always makes me feel so nice to not be punished for my ADHD, that my watch has been sleeping and waiting for me.....
You don't have to act as if I'm some figure out of ancient history, even if I was born in the last millennium! ;) I'm just a middle-aged Gen-Xer. Not quite a pre-industrial peasant from the Middle...
What! How old are you?!
You don't have to act as if I'm some figure out of ancient history, even if I was born in the last millennium! ;)
I'm just a middle-aged Gen-Xer. Not quite a pre-industrial peasant from the Middle Ages (but close!).
There's wind up, as in, you gotta turn the crown to power it, then there's automatics, where it has a half-moon shaped weight inside so when you wear it it winds up the spring.
Oh, yeah. I remember those watches that were marketed as "self-winding". They weren't as common as the manual wind-up watches. And, then, as I say, quartz watches took over the market. And then digital watches came along when I was a teenager (and then rightly got left behind as fashions moved on).
Lol sorry that was rude of me. I just assumed that quartz has been around forever..... but you're right I remember seeing ads when I was young that specifically point out quartz watches as a...
Lol sorry that was rude of me. I just assumed that quartz has been around forever..... but you're right I remember seeing ads when I was young that specifically point out quartz watches as a feature. So we're basically the same age I was just being a dolt.
Example, tons of watch stores were like this. The red sign in the middle row is adverising "Octo quartz watch" and the one next to it in green is "Tugaris watch", by which they would mean manual wind up mechanical. Even the "self winding" automatics would be tagged as a feature....
some of the wind ups were amazingly tiny as well. And then we just got over the Fossil super huge craze a handful of years ago. The amount of changes we've seen in our lifetime is pretty crazy
Did you ever get a digital? Original calculator Casio or maybe even a GShock?
Like I said, I did some research. The first electric watches were invented in the 1950s, and the first quartz watch was made in 1969. So, for middle-aged people like us, quartz watches were new...
I just assumed that quartz has been around forever.....
Like I said, I did some research. The first electric watches were invented in the 1950s, and the first quartz watch was made in 1969. So, for middle-aged people like us, quartz watches were new technology! :)
Did you ever get a digital? Original calculator Casio or maybe even a GShock?
I had a digital watch, back in the day. Not a calculator watch. Just a boring plain digital watch. Then I grew out of that fad. :) I think analogue clocks and watches just look better. And then I stopped wearing a watch at all, when I realised that I was carrying around two time-keeping devices with my smartphone in my pocket. But a couple of years ago, I decided to start wearing wristwatches again, purely for aesthetic reasons. Nothing fancy. Just cheap colourful battery-driven watches.
There was also an awful fad around the digital timeline by the Swatch people where they make these plastic hunk-a-junks that were made to be disposable: they couldn't be serviced at all, not even...
There was also an awful fad around the digital timeline by the Swatch people where they make these plastic hunk-a-junks that were made to be disposable: they couldn't be serviced at all, not even a movement swap, and the battery hatch sucks. This was probably one of the first disposable fast fashion plastic garbage, in 80s-90s and they're still at it.
I think analogue looks better too :D and yeah....it's a little sad that they're nearly completely redundant now that we all have phones 24/7..... Do you look at the watch often for time or mostly as a piece of fashion or jewelry?
Oh, I use my watches to tell time. That's an old habit, from decades ago. But my choice to start wearing them again was purely aesthetic, not functional. The Swatch watches were so cool!
Oh, I use my watches to tell time. That's an old habit, from decades ago. But my choice to start wearing them again was purely aesthetic, not functional.
I've worn a watch basically daily since I was 14 (so over 20 years now) and on occasions where I haven't worn a watch I've noticed I was missing sort of an ambient knowledge of what time it was....
Do you look at the watch often for time or mostly as a piece of fashion or jewelry?
I've worn a watch basically daily since I was 14 (so over 20 years now) and on occasions where I haven't worn a watch I've noticed I was missing sort of an ambient knowledge of what time it was. It was so second nature for me to check it that I didn't really think about or register that I was checking it. I just sort of always knew the time (give or take a few minutes) unless I was doing something that put me way in the zone.
Now I largely wear an Apple Watch day to day unless I'm going "out" (i.e. any occasion where I get dressed up). Some of the features, like automatically unlocking my devices, Apple Pay, or checking texts without reaching for my phone are hugely convenient. But as an article of jewelry I'm kind of over it. It was nice when it was new, but it's boring to me now in a way I'm still not bored with much older timepieces I own. I almost wish I could have a much smaller device without a display that I could wear alongside a "real" mechanical watch instead.
Between the all-mechanical watches and the quartz ones there were electrified watches with a tiny tuning fork, the Bulova Accutron. That was the first big splurge of my life, sometime in the mid...
Between the all-mechanical watches and the quartz ones there were electrified watches with a tiny tuning fork, the Bulova Accutron. That was the first big splurge of my life, sometime in the mid '60s, super exciting to get. It hummed a gentle A note iirc. A few years later I mislaid it for months, then found it by hearing it one quiet night; it had gotten rolled up in a stored carpet. Later I mislaid it permanently :-(
Noooo it's gone!! Well the good news is that they made a new one in 2020 and a relaunch Astronaut one this year https://www.accutronwatch.com/products/2sw8a002 Other wiki trivia I just learned:...
Noooo it's gone!!
Well the good news is that they made a new one in 2020 and a relaunch Astronaut one this year
The Bulova Chronograph Model #88510/01 is the only privately owned watch to have been worn on the lunar surface. There are images of Scott wearing the watch, when he saluted the American flag on the Moon, with the Hadley Delta expanse in the background. The watch shows "significant wear from exposure while on the Moon, and from splashdown and recovery." In 2015, the watch sold for $1.625 million at RR Auction in Boston, which makes it the one of the most expensive astronaut-owned artifacts ever sold at auction and the one of the most expensive watches sold at auction.[13]
That is so so so cool thanks for sharing this!!!
I hope you find it again amongst some older forgotten corner of your stuff......very sad to lose a beloved watch, especially one that's so amazing and steeped in history and personally meaningful. must have cost a total fortune when it came out.
$1.625 million! I should've taken mine to the moon too (and not lost it ofc.) When I got it "as worn by astronauts" was one of the advertised features I think. Mine cost about £350 in Edinburgh;...
$1.625 million! I should've taken mine to the moon too (and not lost it ofc.)
When I got it "as worn by astronauts" was one of the advertised features I think. Mine cost about £350 in Edinburgh; I'd just inherited a big lump, now as lost as the watch. Around the same time I bought a lovely gold antique pocket watch which chimed the hours; later that got stolen. But I love my $12 plastic Casio, a worry-free device that does exactly what's needed!
oh there's much to be said for the cheap ones that fear nothing :D there's a story of this monk who lives in the desert, who decided to own nothing that could get stolen. He'd leave all his...
oh there's much to be said for the cheap ones that fear nothing :D
there's a story of this monk who lives in the desert, who decided to own nothing that could get stolen. He'd leave all his belongings outside of his cave and if they're still there in the morning, he'd keep them until the next night. : ) When people gave him nice things, he would enjoy some and immediately share it with others before the day's over, or leave it out to be taken by whoever needs it more than he does. Folks who felt bad taking things one day would come back and drop it off for someone else to take the next day.
:) I'd love a little neighbourhood "take a watch leave a watch" library... not a $1.6 m one though hahaha
no, sorry, the passage is eluding me. But there are so many stories like this....choosing the path of poverty and living peaceably in tough times is a very strange calling to modern people like...
no, sorry, the passage is eluding me. But there are so many stories like this....choosing the path of poverty and living peaceably in tough times is a very strange calling to modern people like you and I, and maybe it was strange in any age, but the Desert Fathers managed it with struggle. : )
Thanks. The boarding school I went to was run by Benedictine monks, most of whom were exemplary, so I was fortunate in seeing how renunciation and simplicity are valuable; during my last year...
Thanks.
choosing the path of poverty and living peaceably in tough times is a very strange calling to modern people like you and I
The boarding school I went to was run by Benedictine monks, most of whom were exemplary, so I was fortunate in seeing how renunciation and simplicity are valuable; during my last year there one monk I knew well, one of my favorite teachers, went off to be an anchorite.
Yeah I know exactly how you feel. It's a human engineering marvel, that's still understandable completely. A friend says if we ever experience logistical collapse or emp attack or something,...
Yeah I know exactly how you feel. It's a human engineering marvel, that's still understandable completely. A friend says if we ever experience logistical collapse or emp attack or something, automatics and mechanical watches will be the only way to tell time. Lol if we ever get that bad off I want to be able to service them.....not that I'll have any spare parts or lubricants or cleaning fluid left though.... So maybe we'll have until the last one dies.
I saw today that the rolex authorized dealer in Vancouver is hiring watchmaker apprentice: $30/hr no exp required, benefits, etc.
I'm long past the age of starting a new career but still gives me a little ....I don't know.
Not quite. There's also sundials and water clocks, which humans have been using for millennia. And hourglasses. Even candle clocks! And, of course, mechanical town clocks (like the famous Big Ben...
if we ever experience logistical collapse or emp attack or something, automatics and mechanical watches will be the only way to tell time.
Not quite. There's also sundials and water clocks, which humans have been using for millennia. And hourglasses. Even candle clocks!
And, of course, mechanical town clocks (like the famous Big Ben in London) have been around for centuries.
I'm fairly certain we can still fabricate parts for clocks, esp bigger ones with no fancy moon phases or anything :) even if their precision isn't as good or last as long.... So maybe personal...
I'm fairly certain we can still fabricate parts for clocks, esp bigger ones with no fancy moon phases or anything :) even if their precision isn't as good or last as long.... So maybe personal wearable time pieces. Although if it gets that bad then maybe we would care less about what time it is: wake up with the sun and work until sun down. We wouldn't have any central time to sync to anymore anyways.
The Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge also has a nice clock collection, including a decimal clock with the day divided into ten hours of one hundred minutes, as introduced by the French...
The Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge also has a nice clock collection, including a decimal clock with the day divided into ten hours of one hundred minutes, as introduced by the French Revolutionary Government in 1793.
I've started doing jigsaw puzzles again recently. The most recent one I did, I did it outside-in, and the outside was endless blue sky. And I didn't really prioritize the edge, I did it top-down....
I've started doing jigsaw puzzles again recently. The most recent one I did, I did it outside-in, and the outside was endless blue sky. And I didn't really prioritize the edge, I did it top-down. Also I didn't know what the picture was of. Not even like, solved without looking at the image, but I straight-up forgot what the picture was of. I'm a bit proud of that puzzle solve. (Recently I've been doing low-piece-count puzzles that are difficult for other reasons such as confusing connectors or being mostly endless sky so it was only 300 pieces, but still. About 250 of them were blue sky with just a mild shading gradient from top to bottom.)
so what's the strategy here, just pick up pieces of approximately the correct shade of blue and rotate until something fits? :) i've never approached a jigsaw like that before
so what's the strategy here, just pick up pieces of approximately the correct shade of blue and rotate until something fits? :) i've never approached a jigsaw like that before
It was only 300 pieces, so I pulled out every piece that had blue on it, and sorted it by gradient left to right, dark to light, which fit on the table. Then I just started solving within each...
It was only 300 pieces, so I pulled out every piece that had blue on it, and sorted it by gradient left to right, dark to light, which fit on the table. Then I just started solving within each gradient. When I started getting getting stuck, I used the fact that it's a painting, so I knew the brush stroke direction, to orient the pieces vertically (though they could be upside down). That got me a lot farther. Eventually, I did have to prioritize edge pieces within the endless blue and start placing them together, and a lot of my "islands" slotted into them.
I also had n o idea how tall the puzzle would be, nor which way right-side-up was. So that confused me a bunch, there was a "false corner" in the left-hand side where there was a whimsy piece shaped like an airplane, and its wing became part of the edge and the puzzle continued below it. Surprise!
This style of solve is a LOT harder than the normal way because the border between normal and 'sky' is easy to solve if you do it regularly....but if you do it this way, it's equally as hard as the sky part. Plus, that border gives you a lot of foundation to work off of doing it the normal way, but the sky way, you start from nothing lol. I don't think I'll do this again any time soon but I'm glad I have the pics on my phone to show off the meme.
Got a piece of glass in my foot yesterday... And it was only a slight problem! I wasn't even sure what it was at first, it was so small I couldn't even see it, only feel it. It took me a couple of...
Got a piece of glass in my foot yesterday... And it was only a slight problem! I wasn't even sure what it was at first, it was so small I couldn't even see it, only feel it. It took me a couple of tries to figure out exactly where the pain was coming from, at one point I thought a small dark line on my sole was an offending splinter. I grabbed my tweezers, and squeezed in a wide area around the painful spot (there wasn't even any blood, so "wound" sounds inaccurate) to attempt to push the intrusion back out, and after doing this a couple of times I felt a click as the tips hit the glass. I still couldn't really see it, but I managed to pluck it out anyway. In my hand, it was amazingly tiny, and clear, so no wonder I couldn't make it out when it was inside me.
So when people say about going barefoot, "but what about broken glass?", well... This is about how it goes! The only pieces that can actually get me (because I watch where I'm going) are so small they don't even draw blood. Is it annoying? Yeah. Am I going to stop because of it? Nah.
Oh man. I once had a piece of glass in my foot...for about a month. I could feel it there, I knew it was there, but I was an idiot college freshman, and when I went to the health center to say...
Oh man. I once had a piece of glass in my foot...for about a month. I could feel it there, I knew it was there, but I was an idiot college freshman, and when I went to the health center to say "what do I do about this" they looked at me like I had no idea what I was saying and said "broken calluses hurt you know." So, I didn't know how to get my foot xrayed or whatever so I could get the glass out. Eventually it came out while I was in the shower so the skin was softer. Bam! Pain gone.
imo the moral is, yep, going barefoot is fine, but college health centers are not fine.
All the nostalgia posts is making Tildes feel like a retirement website. It's like all the cool kids and teens are on an alternative internet (tiktok and discord for example) and we were all left...
All the nostalgia posts is making Tildes feel like a retirement website.
It's like all the cool kids and teens are on an alternative internet (tiktok and discord for example) and we were all left on the dusty old HTML internet yelling at clouds.
I recently finished watching Game of Thrones with my boyfriend as I have never watched it before. What a shit last season and ending lol.
I've rarely seen the internet unite against something it previously loved like it did for the duration of the airing of that season. Strongly recommend checking out some video essays about the final season to truly appreciate just how terrible it was.
I was ready to read all of the books after finishing the series but it honestly killed my motivation so much that I stopped consuming GoT content whatsoever afterwards.
I just want to say, don't let the show ruin the books for you.
I also technically started with the show, having started the books after season 2 finished, and they are good books.
But they also made me barely bearable to watch the following seasons with, not because I'd spoil things, the opposite, the further the show went the more I was complaining about things being stupidly done.
Ahhh, nostalgia.
GRRM is doing that well enough on his own. Everyone loves to (deservedly) shit on the last 2-3 seasons of the show, but what if it just got cancelled instead, and those seasons just didn't exist? Nothing gets resolved, nothing explained. That's what the books are. They're a great story without an ending, which to me, is not really a story at all.
If you are okay without having anything resolved, all the power to you. But for me, with the exception of everything from Brandon Sanderson, I've stopped reading series that aren't done yet.
In all honesty, that's a fair concern.
If you want to argue that grrm might never finish the books and that leaving you hanging like that ruins things, that's legit. Full stop. And on some level I certainly agree.
But that's a very different argument from "the show was bad so I can't read the books".
Ps: Personally I'm one of those extremists who shit on the last four seasons, sometimes I even shit on the fourth. Gods damned Dorne plot.
And yet, the above.
Naw, the show ruined the entire universe for me. books, shows, any and all of it. If you don't want your book series ruined by a tv-show, maybe don't let them butcher your story with their own telling of it.
Alright, then don't read or enjoy the books any further, I'm not the boss of you.
I'll continue enjoying the actually mostly solid lore and Fantasy-sensible plot of the books as well as that worlds implementation in things like CK2 mods.
Oh man the mod scene for Got related medieval games is unironically fantastic. Need to play that mount and blade mod again soon.
There's two big ones for that, actually, if you didn't know.
There's the ACOK and the AWOIAF.
Both have their pros and contras imo.
Thanks for the link, I stopped watching in season 6 and had no plans to ever watch the rest. Now I know I didn't miss much and why it felt artificial by the time I stopped watching. Wow, glad I didn't waste anymore time watching any further.
Oh thank you, I'll check out that video!
Even though we know its not a good character trait and we feel bad about it I think we all secretly enjoy being a bit smug sometimes.
For me that's manifest in never having watched any Game Of Thrones. Everyone was telling me to watch it but I knew it wasn't my cup of tea. I've had enough fantasy type stuff (whatever you'd call it) and I just didn't watch.
The ending of it has truly embedded a guilty smugness in me.
Right? How insulting.
When the show first aired it was such a huge cultural phenomenon. We all suffered so much Fremdschämen from how horrible the ending season was that we're mostly going to try to imagine it doesnt exist.
Anyway when did that train wreck "jump the shark" for you?
Just the absolute dumpster fire writing. Characters lost their traits and became different people, pacing was too long or short in certain scenes, decisions characters made were unreasonable, etc.
The part that really got me was Sansa. I had to stand up at one point and ace around, I was so annoyed with how her character changed.
For me, it was when they killed of Ser Barristan Selmy. Seeing a guy described as never removing his armor being killed by some rando with a knife was when I first went "Huh."
I used to think rabbits were cute and appreciated the intelligence of crows, and then i built a garden. Crows will literally break the stems of your sunflowers and attack the flowers. Rabbits ate all of my damn onions and now they're breeding like rabbits..
So the first item on the docket for 2024 planting season are building a fence(which I think I can do myself but may splurge to have it done 100% right with a fencing company) and hanging CDs around my smaller garden fence because apparently that scares crows away. I don't want to scare away the cardinals, bluebirds, and robins we have, but we'll see if it has the same effect on them.
And I'm making a scarecrow that looks like the terminator. I'm going to war.
LOL - what a battle. I have read about the incredible intelligence of the crows and others in the corvid family.
Good luck with your set up.
Could you try paying the Crows with peanuts and encouraging them to attack the rabbits instead? Pay off your enemies to attack your enemies? Then when they've vanquished the rabbits, perhaps they'll share in their fight milk.
If the crows are determined they'll ignore your CDs and scarecrow very quickly......far too smart.
How distressing :( so disappointing to wait and care for plants all season to have them be ravaged before you can enjoy them.
I once went strawberry picking and they had a hawk on duty 🤩 gorgeous and handsome and no more bunnies and crows. The owners say sometimes it will take down and tear up a fluffy bun bun near customers with small children......
My dad grows both produce and flowers in his garden up in Anchorage, Alaska and has lost many of both to moose. He really has no solution to work around it and just has to accept his losses.
Beatrix Potter was the true Satan.
This made me chuckle. Reminds me of the "Redundant Adjectives are Redundant" memes. :-)
Example: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/110/741/motivatore1237928fd809e7e3cdec04b97facffad4561319.jpg
So I just had surgery yesterday and the lump turned out to be benign!!!
It's going to be a pain to recover, with some inconveniences, but it could be so much worse. It's a huge relief.
Congratulations! It always takes time for the full ramifications of a test result (good or bad) to really hit me.
If it’s good news, it takes me ages before I can fully, completely relax and contemplate how the future will or won’t change for me. If it’s bad news, I think it takes a while before the denial wears off and I appreciate just how upsetting it is.
All that to say: I’m glad it’s good news! This must be a huge relief for you :)
I am so happy to hear that! We're benign tumor buddies! I remember thinking it was so cool to be out of school for two whole weeks, my poor parents must have been stressed beyond belief. I sure hope the recovery goes well for you! Make sure to treat yourself to something too, heaven knows you earned it.
I find it gratifying and also inconvenient that the Repo Man soundtrack is unavailable on Apple Music.
I'm getting pretty excited to run a game for Pathfinder 2e again. And I don't believe it would warrant a whole post for it if anyone is interested, I have applications open!
Oh I'm so excited for you!! I wish I could count on my work schedule to be dependable during 10-2pm.
I have such fond memories of tabletop rpg groups......I played some 4th and 5th and a tiny bit of Pathfinders, but my DMs were always pretty rule flex types.
This is a fantastic idea and I hope you and whoever signs up have a wonderful campaign!
Four hours is a little longer than my experience, are you leaving it like that just in case 3 hours runs into over time or fully using 4? Also whens the application deadline?
Thank you, It's been a bit since I had a consistent group so here's for hoping!
Yeah I was pretty heavily a D&D 5e player/DM and a new system re-invigorated me for sure, i've gotten a few lifetime friends from the hobby and it's probably one of my favorite things about it, also a sure fire way of keeping in touch with people.
Interestingly I've always ran and played in 4 hour long games. I really enjoy roleplaying, and combat can take a good chunk of that time, especially since there are still quite a lot of people migrating to the system from D&D 5e and combat understandably takes longer. So it's always worked I suppose?
Application deadline would likely be next Wednesday, the 26th of July. I try to make it a quick fill out, so no one has to stress over a pseudo job interview, lol.
I am a mere week from finishing up this big, long-running behavior experiment that will hopefully be the last experiment that will take this long up until my defense. I've been going pretty non-stop at it and I appreciate the rhythm and structure it's provided, but man I am just so ready to be done.
You're nearly there!! You can do this!
What are some of your planned "after I'm done" things you look forward to doing?
Thanks so much! It's so great to see a light at the end of the tunnel, even if it's several months away.
I would like to visit some friends I haven't seen in a while and just kind of relax without having the itch of research woes in the back of mind, even if it just for a little bit. I'm also holding off on playing Tears of the Kingdom until I get most of the experiments done for the dissertation, so I'm looking forward to getting sucked into that.
Why is coca cola a tag for this post?
Anyway since someone else posted the mechanical watch post I fell quite deeply into that black hole, so thank you, mysterious member who deleted your post
I've been watching a lot of watch service videos and even some high end reviews. I think I love the mechanical aspects of it, not the luxury or brand or even long standing famous brands.
Gearing up to open up and paetially servicing my first humble Seiko 5 probably towards the end of the year. So far I've done simple stuff like batteries and straps but I've also got some junkers to tear apart and reassemble. Not touching the escapement or the mainspring
box (forgot name)barrel though.I've been obsessed with mechanical watches since I first realized such a thing existed in childhood. The idea that a thing on your arm, completely un-powered by any batteries or electronics can just tell you the time relatively accurately using only metal gears and a spring, perpetually, just confounded and fascinated me, and still does. I only own a few and none of them are expensive, but any time I'm wearing a watch, it's an automatic.
Hold on. Is this fancy "mechanical watch" you're all talking about just one of the old wind-up watches I grew up with? I assumed it was some fancy modern device.
It's amazing how this works across generations. I grew up with wind-up watches. In my childhood, they were more common than battery-powered watches. To me, they're normal. Battery-powered watches were the newcomers. I remember the advertising about how they were "powered by quartz" (or some such rubbish). [Sidebar: I just did some quick research. No wonder I think quartz-powered watches are new: these were invented around the time I was born, give or take a year or two. They were still new during my formative years!] But, decades on, battery-powered watches are so common that wind-up watches are now considered the anomaly.
Wow.
What! How old are you?! That's so cool you witnessed all of the quartz crisis era, the rise and fall of quartz. Now it's killed by the apple watch and other wearables, and mechanicals are making a very modest comeback
There's wind up, as in, you gotta turn the crown to power it, then there's automatics, where it has a half-moon shaped weight inside so when you wear it it winds up the spring.
And Seiko has a bunch of different hybrids: wind up the crown to your chemical battery; pendulum that charges a chemical battery via a capacitor; and eventually the spring drive.
My favorite watch has something they invented call the auto relay: I have ADHD and very frequently misplace my watch. Regular automatics would run out of spring stored energy by the time I find it in a day or two. The auto relay goes to sleep and stops ticking after 72 hr of no movement. It remembers how much time has elapsed though. Within four years, if you pick it up again, it'll spin and move time forward to the correct time.....it always makes me feel so nice to not be punished for my ADHD, that my watch has been sleeping and waiting for me.....
You don't have to act as if I'm some figure out of ancient history, even if I was born in the last millennium! ;)
I'm just a middle-aged Gen-Xer. Not quite a pre-industrial peasant from the Middle Ages (but close!).
Oh, yeah. I remember those watches that were marketed as "self-winding". They weren't as common as the manual wind-up watches. And, then, as I say, quartz watches took over the market. And then digital watches came along when I was a teenager (and then rightly got left behind as fashions moved on).
Lol sorry that was rude of me. I just assumed that quartz has been around forever..... but you're right I remember seeing ads when I was young that specifically point out quartz watches as a feature. So we're basically the same age I was just being a dolt.
Example, tons of watch stores were like this. The red sign in the middle row is adverising "Octo quartz watch" and the one next to it in green is "Tugaris watch", by which they would mean manual wind up mechanical. Even the "self winding" automatics would be tagged as a feature....
some of the wind ups were amazingly tiny as well. And then we just got over the Fossil super huge craze a handful of years ago. The amount of changes we've seen in our lifetime is pretty crazy
Did you ever get a digital? Original calculator Casio or maybe even a GShock?
Like I said, I did some research. The first electric watches were invented in the 1950s, and the first quartz watch was made in 1969. So, for middle-aged people like us, quartz watches were new technology! :)
I had a digital watch, back in the day. Not a calculator watch. Just a boring plain digital watch. Then I grew out of that fad. :) I think analogue clocks and watches just look better. And then I stopped wearing a watch at all, when I realised that I was carrying around two time-keeping devices with my smartphone in my pocket. But a couple of years ago, I decided to start wearing wristwatches again, purely for aesthetic reasons. Nothing fancy. Just cheap colourful battery-driven watches.
There was also an awful fad around the digital timeline by the Swatch people where they make these plastic hunk-a-junks that were made to be disposable: they couldn't be serviced at all, not even a movement swap, and the battery hatch sucks. This was probably one of the first disposable fast fashion plastic garbage, in 80s-90s and they're still at it.
I think analogue looks better too :D and yeah....it's a little sad that they're nearly completely redundant now that we all have phones 24/7..... Do you look at the watch often for time or mostly as a piece of fashion or jewelry?
Oh, I use my watches to tell time. That's an old habit, from decades ago. But my choice to start wearing them again was purely aesthetic, not functional.
The Swatch watches were so cool!
I've worn a watch basically daily since I was 14 (so over 20 years now) and on occasions where I haven't worn a watch I've noticed I was missing sort of an ambient knowledge of what time it was. It was so second nature for me to check it that I didn't really think about or register that I was checking it. I just sort of always knew the time (give or take a few minutes) unless I was doing something that put me way in the zone.
Now I largely wear an Apple Watch day to day unless I'm going "out" (i.e. any occasion where I get dressed up). Some of the features, like automatically unlocking my devices, Apple Pay, or checking texts without reaching for my phone are hugely convenient. But as an article of jewelry I'm kind of over it. It was nice when it was new, but it's boring to me now in a way I'm still not bored with much older timepieces I own. I almost wish I could have a much smaller device without a display that I could wear alongside a "real" mechanical watch instead.
Between the all-mechanical watches and the quartz ones there were electrified watches with a tiny tuning fork, the Bulova Accutron. That was the first big splurge of my life, sometime in the mid '60s, super exciting to get. It hummed a gentle A note iirc. A few years later I mislaid it for months, then found it by hearing it one quiet night; it had gotten rolled up in a stored carpet. Later I mislaid it permanently :-(
Noooo it's gone!!
Well the good news is that they made a new one in 2020 and a relaunch Astronaut one this year
https://www.accutronwatch.com/products/2sw8a002
Other wiki trivia I just learned:
That is so so so cool thanks for sharing this!!!
I hope you find it again amongst some older forgotten corner of your stuff......very sad to lose a beloved watch, especially one that's so amazing and steeped in history and personally meaningful. must have cost a total fortune when it came out.
$1.625 million! I should've taken mine to the moon too (and not lost it ofc.)
When I got it "as worn by astronauts" was one of the advertised features I think. Mine cost about £350 in Edinburgh; I'd just inherited a big lump, now as lost as the watch. Around the same time I bought a lovely gold antique pocket watch which chimed the hours; later that got stolen. But I love my $12 plastic Casio, a worry-free device that does exactly what's needed!
oh there's much to be said for the cheap ones that fear nothing :D
there's a story of this monk who lives in the desert, who decided to own nothing that could get stolen. He'd leave all his belongings outside of his cave and if they're still there in the morning, he'd keep them until the next night. : ) When people gave him nice things, he would enjoy some and immediately share it with others before the day's over, or leave it out to be taken by whoever needs it more than he does. Folks who felt bad taking things one day would come back and drop it off for someone else to take the next day.
:) I'd love a little neighbourhood "take a watch leave a watch" library... not a $1.6 m one though hahaha
So sad you lost both musical watches :'(
Nice monk! Live lightly on the earth.
I've heard many monk stories but that's new, do you know his name?
no, sorry, the passage is eluding me. But there are so many stories like this....choosing the path of poverty and living peaceably in tough times is a very strange calling to modern people like you and I, and maybe it was strange in any age, but the Desert Fathers managed it with struggle. : )
Thanks.
The boarding school I went to was run by Benedictine monks, most of whom were exemplary, so I was fortunate in seeing how renunciation and simplicity are valuable; during my last year there one monk I knew well, one of my favorite teachers, went off to be an anchorite.
Yeah I know exactly how you feel. It's a human engineering marvel, that's still understandable completely. A friend says if we ever experience logistical collapse or emp attack or something, automatics and mechanical watches will be the only way to tell time. Lol if we ever get that bad off I want to be able to service them.....not that I'll have any spare parts or lubricants or cleaning fluid left though.... So maybe we'll have until the last one dies.
I saw today that the rolex authorized dealer in Vancouver is hiring watchmaker apprentice: $30/hr no exp required, benefits, etc.
I'm long past the age of starting a new career but still gives me a little ....I don't know.
Not quite. There's also sundials and water clocks, which humans have been using for millennia. And hourglasses. Even candle clocks!
And, of course, mechanical town clocks (like the famous Big Ben in London) have been around for centuries.
I'm fairly certain we can still fabricate parts for clocks, esp bigger ones with no fancy moon phases or anything :) even if their precision isn't as good or last as long.... So maybe personal wearable time pieces. Although if it gets that bad then maybe we would care less about what time it is: wake up with the sun and work until sun down. We wouldn't have any central time to sync to anymore anyways.
If you ever find yourself in London, I recommend visiting the clock collection at the British Museum. Those old machines are super cool.
The Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge also has a nice clock collection, including a decimal clock with the day divided into ten hours of one hundred minutes, as introduced by the French Revolutionary Government in 1793.
Seeing who is paying attention ;)
I've started doing jigsaw puzzles again recently. The most recent one I did, I did it outside-in, and the outside was endless blue sky. And I didn't really prioritize the edge, I did it top-down. Also I didn't know what the picture was of. Not even like, solved without looking at the image, but I straight-up forgot what the picture was of. I'm a bit proud of that puzzle solve. (Recently I've been doing low-piece-count puzzles that are difficult for other reasons such as confusing connectors or being mostly endless sky so it was only 300 pieces, but still. About 250 of them were blue sky with just a mild shading gradient from top to bottom.)
so what's the strategy here, just pick up pieces of approximately the correct shade of blue and rotate until something fits? :) i've never approached a jigsaw like that before
It was only 300 pieces, so I pulled out every piece that had blue on it, and sorted it by gradient left to right, dark to light, which fit on the table. Then I just started solving within each gradient. When I started getting getting stuck, I used the fact that it's a painting, so I knew the brush stroke direction, to orient the pieces vertically (though they could be upside down). That got me a lot farther. Eventually, I did have to prioritize edge pieces within the endless blue and start placing them together, and a lot of my "islands" slotted into them.
I also had n o idea how tall the puzzle would be, nor which way right-side-up was. So that confused me a bunch, there was a "false corner" in the left-hand side where there was a whimsy piece shaped like an airplane, and its wing became part of the edge and the puzzle continued below it. Surprise!
This style of solve is a LOT harder than the normal way because the border between normal and 'sky' is easy to solve if you do it regularly....but if you do it this way, it's equally as hard as the sky part. Plus, that border gives you a lot of foundation to work off of doing it the normal way, but the sky way, you start from nothing lol. I don't think I'll do this again any time soon but I'm glad I have the pics on my phone to show off the meme.
That is impressive.
Got a piece of glass in my foot yesterday... And it was only a slight problem! I wasn't even sure what it was at first, it was so small I couldn't even see it, only feel it. It took me a couple of tries to figure out exactly where the pain was coming from, at one point I thought a small dark line on my sole was an offending splinter. I grabbed my tweezers, and squeezed in a wide area around the painful spot (there wasn't even any blood, so "wound" sounds inaccurate) to attempt to push the intrusion back out, and after doing this a couple of times I felt a click as the tips hit the glass. I still couldn't really see it, but I managed to pluck it out anyway. In my hand, it was amazingly tiny, and clear, so no wonder I couldn't make it out when it was inside me.
So when people say about going barefoot, "but what about broken glass?", well... This is about how it goes! The only pieces that can actually get me (because I watch where I'm going) are so small they don't even draw blood. Is it annoying? Yeah. Am I going to stop because of it? Nah.
Oh man. I once had a piece of glass in my foot...for about a month. I could feel it there, I knew it was there, but I was an idiot college freshman, and when I went to the health center to say "what do I do about this" they looked at me like I had no idea what I was saying and said "broken calluses hurt you know." So, I didn't know how to get my foot xrayed or whatever so I could get the glass out. Eventually it came out while I was in the shower so the skin was softer. Bam! Pain gone.
imo the moral is, yep, going barefoot is fine, but college health centers are not fine.
All the nostalgia posts is making Tildes feel like a retirement website.
It's like all the cool kids and teens are on an alternative internet (tiktok and discord for example) and we were all left on the dusty old HTML internet yelling at clouds.