I don’t have the patience to keep it up for a long time but I barely get any scam calls after pushing the button to talk to someone and then just asking about the plot holes in their script. Like the one claiming there’s going to be a warrant for me, why does the guy need to ask for my name and other information? Why would revenue Canada (of anyone who isn’t a scammer of some sort) ever want any kind of payment in gift cards? I’ll use a tone of voice on the verge of laughter, too.

One time, after I asked, the guy just asked me why I even pressed the button to talk to a person and then hung up. Most of the time they just hang up. Sometimes the English option seems to only be there to make it seem more realistic for those who would pick the Chinese option because the call disconnects right after picking English.

Though more recently I’ve just been hanging up early in the recording when I do get the odd scam call. They might filter that, too, because even the volume of those calls stays low. Which makes sense because even just making the calls probably costs them something, even if it’s just pennies.

Well then you’re in luck because that might already be a feature of the model you have!

My routine when I walk into the room where my daughter is playing a game:

1. Identify the game she is playing.
2. Ask her how <activity in game she isn’t currently playing> is going. Like if she’s caught all the Pokémon when she’s playing Minecraft.

I’m not even trying to be subtle about it, but am still not sure she realizes I’m doing it deliberately. Either way, she corrects me with exasperation each time.

Or just start the cut in the long direction and slip the knife between the top and bottom flaps for the sides. Assuming whoever taped it didn’t add more tape perpendicular to the main length, though even then you just need to start a cut for each of them. Tip just needs to barely pierce it.

Yeah, I was thinking of Brandon Lee, but also In Burgess, though that one was a part of the movie rather than a filming accident. It’s a great movie and that scene is my favourite in the movie.

That scene taught me that even blanks shouldn’t be fucked with like toys.

With today’s video technology, I don’t see a reason to use real guns that can fire real bullets at all on movie sets. A realistic looking replica should be enough. Anything else can be added in post (like sounds or flashes) or acted (like recoil). It could have a mechanism to shoot empty shells out the side or otherwise behave like a real gun for everything other than being able to fire bullets or blanks (which can also be dangerous, though perhaps a blank shooting gun could be designed to mitigate those dangers).

I had to spend an annoying amount of time finding all of the settings to make it so that my windows machine would never wake up on its own, spread out over an even longer period of time because some of them aren’t easy to trigger on my own so it was a matter of trying something and then trying more things if I find it awake on its own again.

Even disabling the wake on mouse movement was a pain because it doesn’t properly label mice and keyboards and doesn’t have a global setting. I wanted to keep wake on keyboard but not have it wake if my mouse moved a nm because a butterfly flapped its wings too vigorously as it flew by the closed window.

After I installed Linux, I went to do the same thing there only to find it already had sensible defaults set.

I forget where I heard or read it, but there was an anecdote about a guy that worked for Toyota engineering in a department that would purchase competitor vehicles to disassemble them and see what they were up to, like what kind of innovations they were adding. They didn’t bother with chryslers because the most they’d gain was new ways to design a car to be difficult to maintain or repair.

My friend had an early 00s intrepid and would always bring up needing to remove the passenger tire and wheel well to replace the battery any time car maintenance was brought up.

Oh yeah, wasn’t he also like only a km or two from a settlement or something like that?

Tesla and DJT have lost similar amounts in the last month.

Even if the original question was asked in bad faith (not that I think this was the case here, but to address what you’re implying with this comment), responding with “go look it up elsewhere” doesn’t negate its effect for anyone reading. I believe it plays into those bad faith hands because it looks like you don’t want the question answered here to anyone already suspicious of the situation.

For depth of field, our eyes don’t automatically do that for a rendered image. It’s a 2d image when we look at it and all pixels are the same distance and all are in focus at the same time. It’s the effect you get when you look at something in the distance and put your finger near your eye; it’s blurry (unless you focus on it, in which case the distant objects become blurry).

Even VR doesn’t get it automatically.

It can feel unnatural because we normally control it unconsciously (or consciously if we want to and know how to control those eye muscles at will).

Which is kinda funny because I’ve recently started getting my old files off of burnt CDs older than that and was surprised to find that (so far) there haven’t been any noticeable degradation issues.

The pressed discs are supposed to be longer lasting than burned discs but evidently WB just went really cheap with their discs. Kinda makes me wonder if they didn’t just cheap out but deliberately did this to fuel a future format upgrade cycle or drive people to streaming even after purchasing their movies legally.

Though at least they didn’t make them install rootkits to try to prevent any disc ripping, whether it was related to piracy or not.

Tbf that could have been done by tenants who figured the landlord would use that damage to argue they should lose their entire deposit despite not costing nearly that much to repair properly.

Not that it wouldn’t be plausible that the landlord did it themselves or hired someone who didn’t know what they were doing but were willing to do it cheap, like Ricky.

I’ve been coming to the understanding that “bourbon” is like champagne in that it doesn’t describe a type of alcohol so much as alcohol of that type produced in a specific region (though with the caveat that there might be factors about that region that also means boubon is a distinct type of alcohol due to those factors). If that’s accurate, wouldn’t it mean that “the American bourbon industry” is redundant like “the French champagne industry” would be? All Bourbon is American.

The problem with imperialists is that they might say they are happy with whatever the current concession is on the table today but will still want to expand their power beyond whatever limits it currently has tomorrow.

It’s not like you can use that time freed by automating gear shifting for something else.

It’s a tool, yes, but personally, I like having more control over tools I use. I’d choose a cordless drill that I can set the torque control myself over one that doesn’t have that option.

Glass would also be better for heating it to melt crystals.

Depends on whether their ambitions concerning Taiwan are more about Taiwan itself or interrupting western chip dominance/production. I think without the second part, invading and occupying Taiwan would be more of a negative than a positive for China.

Yeah, I had a hobby in high school of test driving whatever sports cars they had at the various dealerships in town. I didn’t look like a bum but I was obviously a teenager. Worst case was the Mazda dealership that told me to come back another day before I could test drive a miata.

Most of them just let my friend and I take it out on our own, though the most expensive ones I drove were the WRX and Maxima (and the sales guy joined for both of those).

Actually, the worst was the Toyota matrix, where they didn’t let me drive it at all but ride while the sales guy was driving. But that was after they let us take a celica out, possibly even because of that car being used for joy riding, since I saw others taking it out, too.