Wolf314159

joined 1 year ago
[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I downvoted your comment because it's doesn't really add anything to the conversation, it's just aggressive virtue signalling.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Reminds me of a sci-fi story I read. A detective (wait was this in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, maybe? I don't remember, anyway) is looking for a person and asking around. I stead of carrying around a picture of the person they are looking for, they compare the person's features to a list of celebrities and just go around asking if anyone has seen someone that looks like that celebrity. Point being lots of people have surprisingly similar features and there really are "doppelgangers" out there.

But just try explaining that to some stranger that just caught you staring off into space directly at their face because they look like a person you had a crush on in college, only you're an old fart now and they don't look like that old crush would look now, but like the memory you have of them. "You look like someone I know" always sounds like a pickup line.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 1 points 3 months ago

Value was making value as you put it, long before rapid trading. Speculation and arbitrage are like the first two things that develop in any economy. Any entrepreneurial grade school child trading candy, baseball cards, pogs, hotwheels, or whatever the hot new thing is has probably seen both first hand.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 4 points 4 months ago

Somehow I think the national lab test company's lawyers have got them covered. This wasn't exactly a fly by night, no name company. Having in known third party send you a medical bill months later is pretty fucking common place. This was just one anecdote of many, not an isolated incident.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 43 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (9 children)

The best part is the random bill.

  • Go to the doctor. Get blood drawn.
  • Doctor send the blood to a lab for the test. Doesn't tell me who. I don't care who. It's their subcontractor, let them worry about it. *Go back to the doctor or get a call for results. Pay the doctor the standard co-pay. *Months later a random company sends me a bill. This is a company that I have never interacted with or entered into any contract with, for work that somebody else (presumably my doctor, but who the fuck knows for sure) asked them to do for them, sending the results to that other person and NOT to me.

The system is broken. If any other company subcontracted a part of their work to a third party, you as the client would reasonably expect that work to be paid through the original contract, not get a bill directly from the subcontractor. I didn't hire them, the doctor hired them. As far as I'm concerned, that's the doctor's subcontractor and their debt, not mine. I paid the doctor already.

Or another variant.

  • Go to the emergency room.
  • Get separate bills FOR THE SAME SERVICE from the hospital, the doctor, and somehow the hospital again but this time it's the emergency room (which is somehow separate with a different billing company).

The system is not just broken. It is designed to fleece us and train us to always accept whatever debt the institutions decide to levy on us without question.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 4 points 4 months ago

Mpd + a frontend of your choosing, I prefer ncmpcpp, will run on just about anything and is remotely controlled through apps or ssh. Mpd is great when the server is physically connected to the audio output device. I use it to remotely control a speaker connected server that can also run Plex (because I prefer plexamp for streaming and syncing to my phone, other android devices, and smart speakers). They both look at the same directory of a collection near 30 years in the making with hundreds of thousands of files and a wide array of formats.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 7 points 4 months ago

If I'm going to skin or peel the vegetable, I go with the cheap stuff. If I'm eating the skin then I go organic. I never buy the prewashed lettuce and salads when they are on sale because those have already started to go bad usually. And when it comes to things like berries, strawberries, tomatoes, and peppers I go with whatever looks like it will taste the best. Cheap blueberries for instance, absolutely do not hold up against the good stuff; life is too short for tart blueberries.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Think about how crazy attached that lady seemed for screaming for her bird from dawn to dusk. Now imagine that she is a parrot attached to you and multiply the crazy by 10. Now you want to travel and leave this emotional wreck with strangers in a strange place for a bit.

From what you've said in the rest of this thread, most parrots would not be a good fit for your lifestyle or level of experience. I guarantee that it will be traumatic for you and the bird. If you're still serious about pursuing this, then it is absolutely critical that your first step be to volunteer at a rescue or care facility of some kind for birds specifically. Get dirty, get bitten, get some training, get some experience, and get some contacts for help when things inevitably go sideways. You'll hear first hand all the stories about: someone's loved pet that turned into depressed wreck on their owner's death; or the parrot that was caged alone and never received any attention and went mad; or the malnourished parrot that was fed only seed; or the parrot that was bought as a gift and abandoned; or the family pet that permanently maimed and disfigured a child because of improper training and supervision.

I've known a few bird people and their unifying characteristic is a very high tolerance for noise, mess, chaos, bird shit, and emotional codependence. It takes a very special kind of person with a lot of extra time and space to care for parrots full time in a healthy way for either party.

Parrots do not make good pets. They can be kept in captivity, but they require specialized care by experienced and trained caregivers. They are a LIFETIME commitment that may very well outlive you, so don't forget to include them in your will.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 12 points 4 months ago

You were always only a few clicks away from some program that look liked it hadn't been updated since Windows 95.

That remains true for 10 and 11 too. For a quick trip back to 1995, just do something that you probably haven't done this millennium, change your mouse pointer. Instant nostalgia. Device manager in general hasn't changed much either.

I wouldn't even count that against them, working functionality shouldn't be changed without good reason, except that it exposes how much windows is a patch job on a fundamentally flawed design. If it were a boat or car, it would be more Bondo than metal at this point. Why are these dialogs so stuck in the past? Shouldn't it be a simple matter to have them use the latest design elements to at least look consistent, even if the functionality hasn't changed a bit.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website -1 points 4 months ago

The question is rude in this context. It's not rude to completely ignore rude questions.

Your rationalization sounds like some self centered manipulative bullying bullshit.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 1 points 4 months ago

Not the parent commentor, but I do something very similar with Tasker. Whenever my phone disconnects from one of a list of Bluetooth connections (like my watch or my car) or even if it just gets a solid jolt to the accelerometers, it goes into lockdown mode. This means the screen gets locked and biometrics can no longer be used to unlock it, requiring the entering of a PIN code to unlock.

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