wjrii

joined 7 months ago
[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago

If we're ever gonna get Hondo, this is probably it. Knowing Lucasfilm, it'll probably be as a five-second end-of-season stinger though.

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 8 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

I agree the trailer looks fun. Goonies in space, plus a Jedi.

There's just been a certain cheap and rushed quality to recent Star Wars outings, both in writing and actual production values, that has made them a lot less enjoyable than they could be. I actually kinda liked the Acolyte and hope in particular that we see Manny Jacinto again, but I can't deny it was mostly just "kinda okay" and definitely seemed to squander its budget on cheap fake beards and fat toy lightsabers.

A breezy, fun story could handle that campy vibe a little better than ponderous end-of-galaxy stories, though. We need an infusion of charisma, too. I dunno. As always, I'm cautiously optimistic.

 

Did he do that?!?!?!?!?

Also, kinda burying the lede that the Wolfman-mask alien from the ANH Cantina scene will be an actual character.

Please don't let this suck...

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 10 points 11 hours ago

But you see, Maduro is an unhinged left-wing authoritarian, and trump is an unhinged right-wing authoritarian, so they're very different!

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 10 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

I'm sure he would say think you by cheeping sweetly, then hissing like an asthmatic snake.

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

I should make him pay rent!

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

I have an ortho I made, and I just couldn't get used to it. I've never had any keyboard-related RSI, and my "spider dance" typing is very much a hand-eye coordination task, so... ehhh. No neuroplasticity for it.

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I don't know of anything marketed as such, though some ortholinear POS terminals can be easily repurposed into big keyboards. The ortho users tend to be very interested in ergonomics, and one of the guiding principles there is minimizing hand movement (sometimes I personally think this goes a bit far; it seems to me that if it's good to move the rest of your body from time to time, it's good to move your arms and hands too). Most of them are quite small. The biggest size I've seen regularly is 75 keys in a 15x5 grid. Of course, ortho/ergo is also a very DIY-friendly space, so sometimes you see... outliers. LOL.

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 11 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

The lack of an endorsement is a big blow to Trump, who invited O’Brien to be the first Teamsters leader in the union’s 121-year history to speak at the Republican National Convention in July.

Sounds like O'Brien knows that he went a step too far in assuming a Trump win was inevitable and kissing the diaper.

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 20 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Yes, I work from home, but he's been to workplaces before, and nothing so boring as a simple office. My wife got him as a chick in college, and he still needed a little bit of syringe feeding, so for a week or two she took him to the restaurant where she was a server and got her manager to put him in the business office away from any food prep areas. I've known him since he was around 5, and I'm not entirely sure whether my being able to get him to fly to me made her jealous or made her love me more. Maybe both. :-)

He's finally, in the last year or so, visually showing his age just a bit, though he's still got the energy to molt and grow new feathers, and he's also still loud and an active climber, although he doesn't like to come out of his cage anymore, even when the door is open. "Flying" is also more "falling with style" these days, but he gets quite the attitude when he needs help to get back to the cage. I feel pretty good that we've still got a year or more with him, though you never really know with birds. I'm just glad his vain little self has decided to grace us with his presence for so long.

The best moment in our current house was the day a local hawk caught sight/ear of him through the cracked-open window, then perched on that black fence you can just see in the background, and finally lazily swooped in for an easy meal, only to thump into the "force field" of glass. Hawky boi was fine after a few minutes resting back on the fence, but I wouldn't have thought you could identify "WTF" as a bird emotion before that day. He's returned once, though he didn't try the swoop again.

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 19 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I don't know if he hates it, but it's definitely tied to something almost compulsive:

His mother urged him to go to college, but he dropped out of East Carolina University after two weeks. Instead of going to class, he spent most of his time on campus editing videos in his car.

“That’s all I ever talked about at school. I thought I was a freak of nature,” he told content creators and podcasters Colin and Samir in September. “People would tell me, ‘All you do is talk about YouTube videos. You’re too obsessed with YouTube. Get a life....’”

...In past interviews, Donaldson has said he studied the YouTube recommendation algorithm and other creators’ stats meticulously to come up with a recipe for making his videos popular.

 
[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

So this fairly counts as light reading, but my kiddo just finished the Amari YA series by B.B. Alston. It's basically Harry Potter meets Men in Black, but with an actually diverse cast. The main character and her family are from urban Atlanta. Super derivative of course, with it's chosen-one narrative and coming of age, but it's a page turner with fun universe-building, and I like being able to talk to my daughter about what she's been reading.

I'm also working through 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline. I understand some of the conclusions are a bit dated, but he's a well-known scholar in the field and it's very readable. Even if he's a bit dramatic about who did what to whom, it's real archaeology and not your Gavin Menzies conspiratorial nonsense.

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I find that I can read okay on phones, especially with a night-mode, but an e-Reader hits that sweet spot for an even nicer paper-ish screen and the intentionality of a book, while still having digital convenience. The intentionality may actually be the most important part for me: the Kindle means it's reading time. I also keep mine on airplane mode 99% of the time, so the battery lasts forever and I can almost treat it like a paper book.

 
 

I'm sure many of you know this one, but some of you may not, and the rest could always hear it again. Story itself is by Terry Bisson.

 

...maybe a little too on the nose with channeling Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey, there's some truly problematic stuff with the native Medusans that goes all but uncommented upon, there's some reactionary politics that may just be de rigeur for 20th century military sci-fi (I don't know... would be happy to be educated), and the characterizations are almost beside the point, I guess.

On the plus side, the world-building is starting out pretty meticulous in a satisfying way (except for Manticoran dates, which is there for good in-universe reasons, but Weber seems to be using it to be the one ongoing reminder that this the distant future and not exactly England in Space), there's a nice hyper-competence problem-solving ship's crew vibe that will feel familiar to Star Trek fans, and the descriptions of actual shipboard action are very engrossing. Stylistically, there's nothing to write home about, but it's clear prose and allowing for the aforementioned weak characterizations, there's nothing egregious either.

I am cautiously optimistic going forward, and if you had the budget (or could get an animated series greenlit), it seems to me that the universe and Honor herself could be spruced up and modernized into a really compelling space opera franchise that would be well-paced for TV.

 

If you use the right ink, the right plastic keycaps made for mechanical keyboards, and the right settings on your laser, you can effectively dye-sublimate any design you want.

https://pixelfed.social/i/web/post/699804325565108276

 

Donald Trump has already been president once, and has been outspoken about the policies he would support and enact if elected again in November.

He's promised mass deportations of millions of migrants and suggested the United States would not defend foreign allies from aggression in certain circumstances. He's vowed to eviscerate the federal bureaucracy and staff those career civil service roles with political loyalists, use law enforcement to target foes and painted a dire picture of America's future if he does not return to the White House.

In two wide-ranging interviews with TIME Magazine published Tuesday, Trump expanded upon that vision for a second term, which would buck traditional conservative viewpoints about the role of government and expand the powers of the presidency that he would then wield against a wide range of groups in America.

 

…to go with my hand-wired keyboard (or any keyboard). Numpad is “Masonite” hardboard I cut myself and painted with “textured” spray paint. I had the keyboard layout cut from aluminum by Xometry a few months back.

 

Hand-wired, 3D printed case, laser cut switch plate, “laser dye sub” keycaps, custom layout.

Posted this on a couple of communities a while back, but I just subbed here and this board has actually worked really well.

 

Hail corporate and all that.

With a garage full of cheap-to-not-cheap tools, many made by Stanley-Black & Decker, and many of those dremeled to use the same batteries because I specifically researched their brands and market segmentation, I'm a bit nonplussed that I was today years old when I figured it out.

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