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Cake day: June 26th, 2023

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  • Back in the good-ish days of reddit, they had ads that I actually appreciated. They were clearly labeled as ads and had a different color, were at the top of the feed only, so once you scrolled past the first one you were done, and we’re essentially just sticky promoted posts, so they had comment sections.

    You could find honest reviews of the products in the ads. Shills we’re identified and down voted into oblivion, so the real shit tended to land on top. It encouraged advertisers who actually had quality products on offer and who understood their audience. They were the only online ads that ever led directly to me buying a product.



  • There’s a mix that’s designed to work with rim fire and other lower-velocity stuff. It’s not as powe4ful, but is more-easily triggered.

    A dumb friend put some in a chewing tobacco tin and launch it from a skeet launcher to shoot with a shotgun using bird shot. I personally would not be that close to anything I was blowing up, even with a plastic shell.






  • This is at least an area where I’ve seen improvement in many denominations. The Episcopal Church in particular has gotten pretty hard-nosed about its sex abuse training. I was volunteering for a food drive and they made me take a 6-hour course along with any other volunteers who hadn’t been through it because children may be present and they have instituted strict rules.

    The training had video confessions of people who had used church activities as a way to become “trusted” sonthey could abuse children. They talked about what they did and how they used their positions of trust to grrom their victims (e.g. “accidentally” touching kids while playing to gauge their reactions).

    They then make crystal clear that the rules they have are not optional, or meant as an attack on the adults either. An adult roughousing with kids or talking with a distressed kid alone is most-likely not a rapist. We all understand that, so when someone says “hey - make sure to leave the blinds open with talking to Kelley” or “Steve - we can’t play flag football with the kids” it isn’t an accusation. It’s a reminder that we’re there for the kids and we all follow the rules so that if someone evil does show up they can’t engage in probing through “harmless fun”. If anyone can’t respect those rules they’re not allowed to participate.

    The one exception we had for the “no touching” rule when I worked for a Methodist church was for a specific teenager who was usually very sweet but had developmental issues that would occasionally lead to extreme behavior, including occasional violent outbursts. For him we had a few specific adults that had special training (and waivers) that were allowed to restrain him. We also made one of his parents accompany any activity he was involved with. I only had to physically intervene one time when we were bowling and he took a ball into the parking lot to attack cars.


  • I work in municipal development and we have 20 new “developers” a week trying to get us to buy their permitting apps. All of them are willing to offer us an exclusive discount as an early adopter, and the few I’ve had meetings with haven’t even been able to tell us what backend databases the apps use or understand that there’s a difference between an Amending Plat, Site Development permit, and a Building permit.

    And I have to fight the mayor every time because he’s all aboard with the AI hype. He tried having all the city ordinances and decelopment manuals re-written by GPT to make them easier to understand, and we had to get the city attorney to explain that not only was it idiotic, but that it would cost a couple hundred grand just to have his firm go over everything and explain the specifics of how dumb it was, and that if a code re-write is needed (and it is), they should spend that money hiring a firm specializing in code review.

    The slop apps are out there - they’re just all being pitched to governments and CEOs that have infinite faith in anything that will make people more expendable.









  • I’d be careful about saying you “got” it. You got a glimpse of it.

    I remember going into a segregated laundromat in 2005 in Alabama. It wasn’t legally segregation, but they absolutely had a black and a white laundromat, and I (white dude) went into the wrong one and felt very uncomfortable with all the looks I was given. I was eventually approached and told to leave and go to the white one, which happened to be much nicer, of course.

    I thought at the time that I suddenly understood it. But black people deal with thay every fucking day, and I do not “get it” because of 10 minutes of racial discomfort in my 20s.