Random Rants: --... ---.. Don't expect others to convert it for you.

[Ferocitus]

Success: Simple path-solving experiments with slime-moulds I bought online.
Failure: Long-term stasis experiments abandoned after my wife threw out the petri dishes I had stored at the back of the fridge for over a year.

 

[choxorn]

Of course!

An additional benefit is that we can then finally force the inferior Vancouver to change their name.

We can just change both of them. The one in Washington can be "Good Vancouver," and the one in BC can be "The other one."

 

[Cutlass]

Were it not for the laws of this forum, I would slaughter you.

 

[cardgame]

My brother's been to Canadiancouver, but I forgot his judgment on the city. It was either pretty chill or vastly overhyped.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

One of my penguins got lost in the mail.

 

[Samson]

To the great surprise of no-one, it has been revealed that whatsapp is a security nightmare, and allows 3rd parties to install spyware on your phone without the user doing anything. Human rights activists have been caught with this.

Seriously, I have no real obvious "enemies" and I do not use whatsapp because of privacy concerns. When your risk profile includes irritating governments who in their right mind thinks that a closed source application from a company who's whole MO is selling your personal data is a good thing to use for communication?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

The weather services are getting the temperature horribly wrong here for some reason. They've been over 6 degrees lower than all of the actual thermometers I come across IRL.

It was 28 degrees here yesterday. It's way too early in the year for this.

Where are the thermometers placed?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Why would a funeral home care what the temperature is?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

One is maintained by a funeral home with one of those big road-side signs, one is in a Samsung phone with a real temp sensor, and one is just your average digital wall thermometer. The three IRL thermometers show(ed) the same temperature.

The weather services and the thermometers usually match up, maybe off by one or two degrees.

Yeah but where are they? Indoors? In direct sunlight?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

:shrugemoji:

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Rant: Feeling really wobbly today. Might be low pressure.

 

[Takhisis]

To the great surprise of no-one, it has been revealed that whatsapp is a security nightmare, and allows 3rd parties to install spyware on your phone without the user doing anything. Human rights activists have been caught with this.

Seriously, I have no real obvious "enemies" and I do not use whatsapp because of privacy concerns. When your risk profile includes irritating governments who in their right mind thinks that a closed source application from a company who's whole MO is selling your personal data is a good thing to use for communication?

Don't you already live in cameraland?

 

[Samson]

Don't you already live in cameraland?

Indeed I do, and the overt necessity of fear of the surveillance state that comes with living in cameraland is probably a contributory factor in my distrust of surveillance organisations.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

This game is mean. I deleted two of the flareon tasks and one immediately popped up afterwards.

Only completed one task...

Ugh that sucks. I meant to tell you not to delete those tasks, Flareons have popped up all of a sudden in the last 2 weeks for me and that coincided with Flareon-related tasks.

I think you're right about the game just not logging any steps when you are above a certain speed. Two weeks ago (before I bought the Ranger), I logged a lot of km's during my bike rides because it was slow going, having to stop or slow down every few feet. This weekend (with the Ranger), I just took off and went as far as I could as fast as I could go. I got to the border of Tustin and could see the massive blimp hangars there but my km's barely budged. I'm actually quite a bit upset about this.

I do have adventure sync logged on, btw, which is how I get any km's at all anymore because it picks up that I'm walking around when I go about my normal day. I know the game isn't meant to be an exercise tracker but it was useful for that up until now.

Edit: I found a web tool that lets me trace a route in google maps to calculate distance. I did about 20 miles / 32 kilometers this weekend alone on my bike and less than half of that was logged.

 

[Takhisis]

Indeed I do, and the overt necessity of fear of the surveillance state that comes with living in cameraland is probably a contributory factor in my distrust of surveillance organisations.

Just so that you know (a lot of people apparently don't) Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp are all owned by one huge parent company and Zuckerberg's minions are trying their best to integrate the three so that when anti-trust action takes place it is simply impossible for the three businesses to be run separately.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I'm trying to work on something but my mother decided we needed to spring clean RIGHT AWAY and keeps threatening to throw out my stuff if I don't come help her sort through it RIGHT AWAY. Can't even wait an hour or two for me to finish what I was working on.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I told her I would do it when I'm finished. But that's not good enough. Her time is more important than mine, I guess.

She also has a crapload of antique books in a trunk, and keeps them for no other reason than they're antique and "might be worth money." But then she has them all smooshed up and stored in a way that damages them. I told her we should find someone to find out how much they are worth and she yelled at me.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

She also has a crapload of antique books in a trunk, and keeps them for no other reason than they're antique and "might be worth money." But then she has them all smooshed up and stored in a way that damages them. I told her we should find someone to find out how much they are worth and she yelled at me.

What kind of books are they? How old?

Unless she has her eye on that trunk all the time, it might be an idea to try to find out anyway if they're worth something before they get wrecked to the point where they're worthless (someone once tried to sell me 4 books in the Golden Amazon series for $60; even if his copies weren't falling apart, I wouldn't pay more than $1 for any of them - since I got the two we already had for less than 50 cents). A book is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

 

[H4run]

Some old book can be really expensive, I had seen a a compilation of essays made by Indonesian President Soekarno printed 1964 was sold in a Indonesian book retail for like $100, I had a copy of it at my dormitory taken from my parent book's collection but ugh the dormitory keeper promised to send it back to me but she never did.

I just have a quick look in an online shop, the price of that book now reach more than $6000 (Rp 90 million), I don't know if the seller is trolling or serious but I bet now the cost already multiplied

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

There was a bible from the 1800s and a few very racist history books. And some sort of weird lecture-y fiction that was published by a religious society.