7/10. Too many multisyllabic words to be a Trump post.

I have a bit of schadenfreude around this. For years, people said Europe was fine, and didn’t need to invest more in their military. “No, you silly American, we are just fine with the military we have because we don’t go invading other countries.”

Now here we are. Thing is, I wasn’t even talking from the perspective of Europe becoming warmongers like us. I wanted Europe to be armed well enough to handle what the US has been doing, and the US can draw down its military. Then we could put that money into healthcare and schools and shit, but Europe would have to pick up the slack (and also Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan, and Australia). This is still a good idea.

Almost like they’re looking for an excuse to hang NATO out to dry.

That’s always fun. Some people will swear it can’t possibly work like that, but they have plenty of experience riding bikes. You wouldn’t be able to turn properly at speed unless you’re counter-steering, so they clearly have done this. The idea seems to be so incredibly intuitive that people don’t even realize they’re doing it, which is very interesting.

The idea behind clips is that you can pull up on the rising pedal instead of just following momentum from the other foot pushing down. It does work, but isn’t really necessary for commuter biking.

I got a used bike that had a hybrid pedal with a clip on one side and flats on the other. While the clip (heavy) side usually landed down, it didn’t always and it was weird to pedal with it. I just ride around on my bike, so I replaced them with cheap flat pedals and it’s fine. I also converted it to an e-bike, and I don’t need the extra pedal power.

It’s pretty common to bring up gyroscopes for this when people know a little bit about physics. It’s all over motorcycle forums, for instance.

As you say, it doesn’t work. Experiments have been done where they attach a counter rotating wheel to cancel out the gyroscopic effect, and while it’s a little wonky to ride, it works fine.

IIRC, we’re not 100% sure how bikes work just yet. Every time somebody comes up with a model that seems to be good, someone finds a counterexample that throws it in the bin. Even your explanation of bike trail isn’t all the way there; Razer-type scooters still work without trail on the front wheel.

It works on its own. If you push your bike along with a good run and then let go, it’ll stay upright until it slows down too much.

Learning to ride a bike is mostly about being confident enough to let the bike work itself out. It gets more stable as it goes faster, but it’s natural to be afraid to go faster when it already feels unstable at low speed. Then there’s a little bit to learn about countersteering, but most people figure that out without being told it’s even a thing.

I have seen SQL written by professional Oracle DBAs. What I learned is that I do not want to look at SQL written by professional Oracle DBAs.

One of the things they already did is build a database of people who can be stuck into appointed roles as sycophants. The people behind Project 2025 have said that database is useful regardless of Trump winning or not.

Gopher itself is spec’d out in RFC-1436. It’s not a particularly difficult protocol to implement. It’s easier than HTTP/1.1 (though not necessarily pre-1.0 versions; those are basic in an under-designed way, and I’d say the same about Gopher). I don’t know if that licensing fee claim holds up. People may have been worried about it at the time, but UMN never had a patent on it or anything, and RFC’s are public. If there were fees charged, it’d be the creators themselves charging them.

Truth, even though it still doesn’t make sense.

A while back, another team asked us to clean up some noisy logs, because it cost us $3k a year with our new logging provider. As we discussed it on a call, my boss pointed out that with the people we had on, that meeting cost more than $3k.

Cults work exactly like that. Not all members are going to be equally devoted.

Nah, saying you’ll do something to a pollster is different than actually doing anything.

Stochastic Terrorism means that out of 1000 people, 100 of them hate an ethnic group, 10 of them hate so much it rises to the level of violent rhetoric, but only 1 actually does violence. The good news is that MAGA is becoming deflated because Trump still doesn’t know what to do about Harris when his entire plan was about Biden. They’ll still vote for him, but being energized enough to do violence in his name is a different matter.

It never is. People don’t “slip up” that way unless they use it all the time when in private.

On delivery, not when they’re out in the field. Where would they even put a whole slaughtered cow? Especially with all the salt they’d need in pre-refrigerated times. Even with a wagon, that’s not an efficient way to bring food with you.

I have the most boring “this edible ain’t shit” story. Tried a bunch, and it knocked me off to sleep for a good 10 hours. I think they had a lot of CBD in them. They were sold as sativa. While research says there’s no difference between that and indica, I suspect things labeled as one or the other tend to have other things in them, like CBD, which makes them live up to their reputation. There probably is no difference when you prepare them all the same under lab conditions.

Don’t start like that. Do your research, and start with a low dose and work your way up.

Later, on stuff labeled indica, I started having light forms of ego death. Not the melting into the universe that you might get from proper hallucinogens, but more like a feeling of becoming part of my environment. My tolerance levels are too high now to get that sort of thing, though.

Are you under the impression that cowboys eat the herd they’re driving? No, those are for other people.

Cowboys were quite literally in the middle of nowhere with nothing but beans. What’s the British excuse? “Oh, my great grandmother cooked this in the blitz, and we forgot rationing ended decades ago”.

Zombiecide has entered the chat.

Cats in the wild tend to share food with their friends. They must think we’re some rude ass motherfuckers when we push them away from our own dinner.