I’m as fascinated by those shuttle comparisons as anything else!
On the face of it, I wouldn’t have guessed that the space shuttle’s power output was measured in gigawatts, nor that the space shuttle’s output is on the same scale as an entire country’s steam power output (in 1896, sure… but still!)
I’ve been moved out for 25 years 😂
I just hoped that my family would take advantage of me offering up my server for them to stream from.
Same here. I initially had high hopes that my family would take advantage, but apparently my parents would rather bug my siblings monthly for their Hulu/Netflix/Max/Disney+/Prime logins than install Plex or Jellyfin lol.
Honestly, I get it. If you have a relatively small stash of media, say a couple TB worth, you can pretty easily say "well I watched this movie, so I’ll delete it and make room for the next. When you get into the 10’s of TB range, the mindset has switched from it being a dynamic, temporary library to a repository. And it becomes easier just to plug in another 10-20TB drive occasionally, rather than trying to curate thousands of movies and shows.
I can see both sides though. There’s certainly something to be said for being deliberate about the media you consume–and therefore only needing enough storage for your immediate viewing plans. I’m not quite into the 100TB range with my library, but I definitely have moments where I feel like having so many options makes any given option seem less appealing.
One thing I’ve noticed in discussing dreams with my wife is that experiencing the dream first-hand with all the context, emotions, and sense of having “been there” goes a long way toward making a dream feel more realistic or believable.
There have been many times where I’m explaining a dream that felt (and still feel) totally plausible and coherent, but in trying to describe it to someone else, I realize just how unrealistic certain aspects are. Its like trying to explain the plot of an absurdist comedy or something like that.
There’s probably an allegory in there for individual perception and lived experiences vs objective reality, but I’m not feeling quite articulate enough to type it out… 🙃
I used to deliver for papa johns many moons ago. We had one guy who ordered the same thing every Saturday afternoon at about 4pm. I forget the exact details… it was something normal like a pepperoni & mushroom, but then add literally 5x extra anchovies on the entire thing. A typical large was about $12 in those days, and his pizza would be north of $25.
I hated getting that run because my car would smell like fish oil into the next day, but the dude tipped well so it was cool.
Not sure, how old I was, probably 10-12. This one isn’t so much classic nightmare, but left me extremely unsettled for weeks and still gives me the heebie jeebies when I think about it.
In my dream I was at an event for returning space shuttle astronauts who had just landed. Apparently there was some major problem during reentry, and most of the crew didn’t make it, but one had barely survived. When they brought out the surviving astronaut for an interview or whatever, the dude was literally just a naked human nervous system in a NASA spacesuit. Where his head would have been was the classic anatomy textbook image of just the brain with eyes floating in front of it, supported by a spinal cord. No bones, no muscle, unable to talk or anything. I remember the head was gently bobbing from side to side a few inches, and every so often the “head” would just rapidly spin around a few revolutions, then stop and continue bobbing eerily.
This is pretty much exactly what the dude looked like in my dream https://img-new.cgtrader.com/items/2443319/bd71a87570/large/nervous-system-and-dura-matter-3d-model-low-poly-fbx-gltf.jpg
The dumbest thought I ever had while high was that I convinced myself I had two brains, and that one brain could predict the thoughts of the other brain before it thought them.
That’s hilarious! Honestly, I rather enjoy that sensation of temporarily being… not stupid… but willing to uncritically entertain stupid ideas.
Problem is, by the time they’ve failed the test, the opportunity for them to learn the content is largely passed.
The purpose of school is to educate and teach thinking skills. Tests are just a way to assess how effectively you and your students are achieving that goal. If something (in this case easy access to AI tools in the classroom) is disrupting that teaching/learning process, sure it’s useful to detect that through testing, but I’d doesn’t do anything really to solve the problem. Some fraction of kids are disciplined enough to recognize that skating by on classwork will lead to poor test results and possibly retaking classes, but generally those aren’t the kids you need to worry about anyway.
I also thought I’d miss Hulu and Netflix a lot more than I do. What used to irk me so badly was how utterly shit Netflix is when you just want to sit down and find something new to watch. Their front page would be list after list of things like “Hot New Comedies” “Best Independent Films of 2025”, “Classic Action Flicks” and somehow it always felt like the same 30 or 40 movies randomly shuffled together. So I’d spend 15 minutes scrolling through the same slop in different orders, get frustrated and search for a movie that I remembered wanting to watch, only to find that it was on none of the services I was subscribed to, and cost $8.99 for a single watch of a 20 year old movie.
We had been Netflix subscribers since the very start when they delivered discs through the mail. Kinda sad how they went from having virtually anything you could think of to watch (and having a halfway decent recommendation algorithm to boot!) to where they are today.
It sounds super obvious, but i never thought to cook hasbrowns in the bacon grease… Mostly because I’m fully converted to making bacon in the oven these days.
Definitely going to give this a whirl next time we’re doing breakfast.
Whorf
I think I think i read that fanfic back in the 90s… co-starring Long-Luc Dickhard and Chestly Crushher?
Right after too-salty popcorn, this is one of my go-tos when watching a movie–especially with a peaty scotch.
This was one of the first that came to my mind as well. It wasn’t till a couple years ago that I learned it was a cover, and I really can’t decide whether I prefer APC’s or Failure’s version.
There is a live recording of Thirteenth Step, where they play it much closer to the original, and it’s the absolute best of both worlds IMO.
Honestly, as long as it’s easily DIY upgradable (accessible speaker mounting locations, standard DIN panels, etc) I am all for this. Most OEM audio systems are stupidly overpriced and suck complete donkey balls compared to what you can get for a few hundred bucks at Crutchfield and install in an afternoon.
For the last 20 years or so, most factory audio systems are so integrated into the rest of the electronics that they can be an absolute nightmare to upgrade unless you are a pro, which means you get the worst of both worlds: garbage audio, AND a steep upgrade path.
Just speaking for myself here, but as someone with only basic literacy in networking and almost zero prior experience with Linux or Docker, I found Unraid extremely straightforward to spin up–especially with the numerous guides floating around on Youtube. I started out with a used SFF PC that cost about $120 and a few drives I had lying around, and was up and running with basic NAS functionality in an afternoon.
I’ve mucked up a few things trying to do something more advanced without fully reading up, but I haven’t had a single hiccup with Unraid itself.
1.5 years later, and I’ve got ~80TB worth of refurb enterprise drives and hosting several media and other storage services, and I don’t see myself outgrowing it anytime soon.
Proton VPN absolutely does support port forwarding, just not on the free tier.
100%
I’ve tried explaining this concept to people in my life who insist on considering context when deciding whether to use their turn signal. But about half of them seem stuck on this idea that moving their fingers a few inches is a task that justifies a cost-benefit analysis each time.
I don’t get it, man…
Thats what I thought too. The reality is still fucked up, but I don’t feel one iota of bad for people getting scammed for using an app to snitch to ICE.
Good call! Wife and I watched that one on a whim, thinking it would be a good “bad” movie to watch while having a few drinks and were pleasantly surprised!
You probably need be at least familiar with RPG/fantasy tropes to fully enjoy it, but it definitely felt like it came from a place of love and self-awareness, rather than the cynical cash-grab I was expecting.