greylurk

[greylurk]

"Ok, ma'am that'll be $226.03."

I take my wallet out of my pocket and unfold it. It is empty other than a single moth that lazily flies out. The moth lands on the tap point of the card reader. There's a beat, and my payment is processed. The moth flies back into my wallet and I put it back in my pocket.

[greylurk]

How cool would it be if Jimmy Carter outlived Donald Trump.

Like to charge. Reblog to cast.🤞🏻🍀🧿🔮✨️

[greylurk]

#social-technology

Watching the “you will excel at what you measure” trap devour basic moral practice in real time is fascinating in a terrible kind of way

[greylurk]

[greylurk]

I fully understand that the preponderance of evidence is that George Lucas put absolutely zero thought into what Naboo’s culture was actually supposed to look like outside of what we see on screen, but as far as unintentionally effective worldbuilding goes, establishing that Naboo a. has a tradition of electing literal children as figurehead rulers of its planetary government, and b. apparently also has a tradition of assassinating these children with sufficient frequency that dressing up a bunch of other children as decoy targets has become standard operating procedure by the time of Padmé Amidala’s reign suggests that maybe the fact that this random backwater is a breeding ground for Sith Lords isn’t as unlikely as it initially appears.

[greylurk]

It's always a little weird to see people describe "Capitalism" as pretty much everything to do with money. Like, taking bills in my pocket down to the store to buy a bag of Takis isn't capitalism, that's just commerce, which has been around since Ea Nasir was passing off shoddy merchandise.

Capitalism is specifically owning machinery, devices and to a lesser extent real estate which are used by laborers to produce profit. Like unless you got that money in your pocket by selling something that your roomate made, and gave them less than what you sold it for, and used the leftover to go buy yourself some Takis, you're not a capitalist, you're just a laborer.

[greylurk]

Oh, I didn’t know that.

I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” on youtube, and browsing the comments several people mentioned …

Okay. The song is about the real sinking of the freighter the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior in 1975. And there’s a line in the song:

“In the Maritime Sailor’s Cathedral,

The Church Bell chimed till it rang twenty nine times,

For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald”

Which references something that the actual Maritime Church in Detroit did in honour of the ship’s crew. And I just found out in those youtube comments for his song that when Gordon Lightfoot died in May last year (2023), the Maritime Church rang those bells again, this time 30 times. Once for every man on the Edmund Fitzgerald, and once more for Gordon Lightfoot.

That’s … That is a memorial I would be proud to have earned. And proud to give. I do like that. A lot.

Apparently, the Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior also lit its beacon in honour of him.

Sorry. I’m having … extremely maritime sort of feelings over here. Songs and memorials, bells and beacons, and the ways we carry memory forward. That’s … that’s a good memorial. I like that.

[greylurk]

as a CSA survivor I honestly think that the number one way to prevent child abuse is to surround kids with adults who treat them with respect. partially because it means there are people for kids to turn to in times of crisis. but also it makes kids way less vulnerable to the magnetism of “wow this adult is the first person to treat me as a human being. better do whatever I can to keep their respect”

[greylurk]

please let me merge please please please please please please please please please please please please please please

[greylurk]

I ever tell you guys about my ethically dubious radio show back in college? The Mad Dad Hour?

[greylurk]

not ignoring canon nor strictly adhering to it, but a secret third thing (taking the small bits and crumbs canon barely spent time developing and running absolutely hogwild)

[greylurk]

states are states, news at 11

it’s easy to forget the United States is a federation of separate political entities most of the time. but our states aren’t provinces. they’re not just administrative divisions of a single State. they are, in fact, states, in the full sense of the word. more different from each other than neighboring nations in some parts of the world. like, belgium and the netherlands are less different than california and texas. if they weren’t part of the US, california and texas would probably be at war.

at times like this, though, as i hear that my state rallied round and elected good people across the board, i feel a kind of patriotism that isn’t for america, but for minnesota. i have mixed feelings about the USA, but my love of minnesota is whole and intense. the land of lakes is my motherland. the rest of the union is a mixed bag, and some of it’s pretty great, but none of it could ever be in my blood the way minnesota is.

i guess what i’m saying is, even when i feel really weird about being american, i’m proud to be minnesotan.

[greylurk]

Exactly... And the Enterprise was a research and exploration vessel primarily. How many research institutions suffer a 10% mortality rate over 5 years?

[greylurk]

According to my shoddy internet research, in the course of the original TV series 25 red shirt security personnel were killed on screen.

Interestingly, since the security complement of the Enterprise is 239, that means that under Kirk's leadership, the security forces of the Enterprise were literally decimated.

[greylurk]

more dnd campaigns with overtly fantastic plots. full on fairy tale bullshit. like something out of mythology or a fable. 

the party is tasked to retrieve the moon, which has been stolen from the sky. 87% chance the moon is also sentient. 

a color that was locked away by the gods for being too beautiful/terrible/powerful is released again and a dragon of that color now threatens the land. also because it’s new it’s in fashion and everyone who can get their hands on it is wearing this color and it’s starting to give you a headache. 

relieve the land of their drought by finding what happened to the rain and bringing it back. 

go wild. have fun

[greylurk]

“Cut the cloak-and-dagger and commit treason already. I’m too old for suspense.”

—

[greylurk]

It's easy to under estimate the value of experience for what boils down to trade work. With a lot of people scavenging wiring, solar panels, wind generators and methane digesters from the nearby dairies, I'd expect at least a few houses burning down because of bad wiring and people electrocuting themselves.

But yeah, the people most likely to survive the apocalypse (i.e. people living in sparsely populated rural areas) are perfectly capable of continuing their basic lifestyle without city dwellers basically at all.

Heck, if you cut out the major cities, my local rural electric coop probably has enough solar to power all of the rural homes indefinitely.

why is there no electricity after the apocalypse?

something people writing post-apocalyptic fiction always seem to forget is how extremely easy basic 20th century technology is to achieve if you have a high school education (or the equivalent books from an abandoned library), a few tools (of the type that take 20 years to rust away even if left out in the elements), and the kind of metal scrap you can strip out of a trashed building.

if you want an 18th century tech level, you really need to somehow explain the total failure of humanity as a whole to rebuild their basic tech infrastructure in the decade after your apocalypse event.

i am not a scientist or an engineer, i’m just a house husband with about the level of tech know-how it takes to troubleshoot a lawn mower engine, but i could set up a series of wind turbines and storage batteries for a survivor compound with a few weeks of trial and error out of the stuff my neighbors could loot from the wreckage of the menards out on highway 3. hell, chances are the menards has a couple roof turbines in stock right now. or you could retrofit some from ceiling fans; electric motors and electric generators are the same thing, basically.

radio is garage-tinkering level tech too. so are electric/mechanical medical devices like ventilators and blood pressure cuffs. internal combustion’s trickiest engineering challenge is maintaining your seals without a good source of replacement parts, so after a few years you’re going to be experimenting with o-rings cut out of hot water bottles, but fuel is nbd. you can use alcohol. you can make bio diesel in your back yard. you can use left-over cooking oil, ffs.

what i’m saying is, we really have to stop doing the thing where after the meteor/zombies/alien invasion/whatever everyone is suddenly doing ‘little house on the prairie’ cosplay. unless every bit of metal or every bit of knowlege is somehow erased, folks are going to get set back to 1950 at the most. and you need to account somehow for stopping them from rebuilding the modern world, because that’s going to be a lot of people’s main life goal from the moment the apocalypse lets them have a minute to breathe.

nobody who remembers flush toilets will ever be content with living the medieval life, is what i’m saying. let’s stop writing the No Tech World scenario.