They want them because they’re being lazy/cheap. No, seriously. They’re called widowmaker cords for a reason, but inevitably some muppet with two plugs and some wire will come up with the brilliant idea that one of these will work for.

One really sneaky and dangerous place these get made are generator backfeed cheater cables for houses. You see them in RVs, Xmas lights etc too, but generator backfeeds are super dangerous because they’re also juggling two potential power sources. A backfeed is where a house/building is disconnected from the grid just by flipping off the main panel breaker, then it’s “backfed” by a generator going into another breaker in the panel. Usually, without any type of safety interlock to keep the mains voltage off when the generator is on, or vice versa.

Afaik, this is illegal per housing code almost everywhere that I’ve seen, but still every now and then some yahoo thinks “wait, if I make a two-ended cable and put a receptacle on the house, I can remove the generator easily without any of the expensive safety crap!” And then grabs a live male plug when they fuck up and didn’t shut off the generator or mains voltage…

Electrified double-sided dildo sex, no less!

Photo for reference (sorry, reddit link): https://www.reddit.com/r/recycling/comments/1dg9gnm/is_this_true/

Fun trivia in case you didn’t know: that’s a domino’s advertisement printed on their pizza box in which the box claims to “dream of being another box.” It’s actually horrible for the recycling stream. Essentially every legitimate recycler explicitly states that grease- and cheese-contaminated cardboard is not allowed to be recycled because it degrades the quality of the recycled product and causes messes at recycling facilities.

So basically, this dream is a manufactured corporate lie and belongs exactly where we see it.

(Well alright fine, if you need good news, the good news is that in some areas while they still don’t belong in recycling bins, pizza boxes can go in your green bin compost. Although this is heavily dependent on where you live and what type of compost stream is used there. Don’t assume it’s ok to recycle or compost without checking, and never trust the packaging labels!)

For those unaware: -196°C (-320°F) is the approximate boiling point of liquid nitrogen. Call it creative marketing I guess!

And yes I used to do lots of charpy impact testing hence that knowledge is engraved in my brain forever. DBTT gaaang

I have a foot pedal button assigned to mute my microphone.

(And no, I don’t stream or anything, purely a QoL thing 😆)

Oof, yeah I’m pretty picky about some keybinds and games that lock down keys can be almost unplayable.

Helldivers 2 doesn’t let you remap interact to F (which is the only muscle memory interact key I can use) and I haaaaate that so much. I had to get a workaround just to fix it.

Hmmm, for some reason the first thing I thought of was “www.customgiantdildos would sound better than www.giantcustomdildos because of how the words flow.”

Yet another victory for manged ⁠☆queeromacy☆

Ah shit, that reminds me I need to go get killed by the airstrikes of internet randos in helldivers again. 10/10 game

“Too broke to play PC” is a vanishing argument IMO. People have been saying that forever, to be fair, but given how bad Xbox and Playstation have gotten I don’t anyone who’s actually into gaming purchasing a new one today. Maybe used, that might make sense if it was really cheap.

A budget gaming PC can check out at slightly over 600 now. PcPartPicker has two recommended builds priced right at 600, though honestly there might be even cheaper ways to arrive at that level of perfromance. Compared to 300-400 for the less garbage Xbox, and there’s not much argument to lock someone into the xbox’s ecosystem vs something you can upgrade for much less.

Now I think it’s a different matter if it’s a hand-me-down or given for free. There’s no reason not to do that.

I gave my last console away and got a friend of mine into gaming, then helped them build a decent PC when they actually wanted something new.

The US Navy hates this one simple trick!

Hmmm, I’ve never noticed what you mentioned on my recent phones. That said you should test a newer android yourself before making a purchase!

More of my personal experience… I have a Pixel 7 XL and a work Iphone which (edit) is an Iphone 12. Generally they are the same in terms of having no scroll lag or input lag at all. But, there is some lag on both when they are overheated, especially on the Iphone if I put it on a higher power charger (I trickle charge both when I can).

From a design perspective the biggest difference I notice is that my Pixel feels significantly smoother because of the 120hz display, and just the larger display in general. While I said neither of them have much lag, the Iphone feels noticeably less speedy. That said, I’m sure if you compared my Pixel to a high end Iphone results would be flipped. My work isn’t shelling out for whatever pro max stuff they sell (and neither would I!).

Beyond that, I can’t offer guidance. In my personal experience the Iphone UI is so frustrating that I can’t judge which one performs “better” or not, because only the Android feels comfortable to me. Between that and the lack of labels in some places (like the pull-down settings menu) it is impossible for me to daily drive the apple.

Tipfenestrating.

NYT crossword for me (just because it’s there next to wordle, not specifically because I love nyt or anything)

Also has the cool added side effect of raising my blood pressure and make me feel progressively more stupid as the week goes on. I don’t even try the Friday ones anymore.

What’s really happening here is that advertisers can use the Reddit Ads Manager to create normal user posts and then pay to make them appear prominently on the site and in the app as promoted posts, aka adverts.

Look it’s not exactly revolutionary or new, google search has been littered with promoted ad results for years. But I still hate it. Fuck off, reddit. No respect intended. Icky. So glad I stopped using it.

For those like me who automatically pictured an industrial fruit/vegetable farm (i.e. only plants) when reading the title “factory farming,” don’t worry. I believe they are concerned about industrial animal farming.

100%. Honestly after growing up borderline right-wing, self-reflection was one of my main tools for personal and political deconstruction. That and good parents. Anyway, very little stood the test of “why am I doing this, and is it what I really want” when I stopped and looked more than 3 feet in front of my own dumb face. That and realizing I’m hopelessly queer lol.

Of course, self-reflection opens the door to a whole lot more than just politics. I get the sense that, if they started self-reflecting without guidance, the first thing they’d be scrambling for answers about would be why they believe in whatever random religion they were born into. There’s a whole lot of fervent people that are one solid reflection away from crying over a toilet on a Monday at 3AM because they’d accidentally deconstructed their faith and can’t ctrl-z the issue (not a joke, just an observation/personal experience).

For all of our sakes I hope you’re right.

Then again, underestimating regressive politicians leaves us with a massive blind spot. You can bet they’re counting on that while they lie to literally anyone who will listen about how “evil” progressives are.

Holy shit, I didn’t draw up the situation of travelling while married as a problem but you’re absolutely right. It’s already getting extremely tricky to figure out what places are OK or no-go for trans and NB people, this is just going to make things so much more fucking worse.

Atlanta for example is a massive air travel hub. What if Georgia doesn’t uphold same-sex marriage? What about international travellers who are married abroad?

JFC. These idiots.

Personally I am increasingly uncomfortable feeling the “need” to apologize to regressive people about feeling hurt or insulted. They are entirely responsible for their actions.

They are also not sorry that they are pushing the majority of people (women, LGBTQ+, basically anything non-cis-white-men) into a second class or even subhuman status.

I realize that most people are only open to changing themselves when their feelings are not threatened and when they’re feeling understood. But what we’re talking about here, I don’t know the right word, but “accidental” or “unintentional” are not part of it. If regressive leaders like trump or desantis or whoever get elected then we’re talking about borderline genocide done on purpose. I don’t see how we can come back to acknowledging the feelings of bigots at that point.