Yes, but his heightened senses borderline on superpowers

He’s also usually considered to be a street-level hero, he’s mopping up the gangster and ordinary (by comics standards anyway, around hells kitchen, but usually doesn’t go too far beyond that (varying by writer, storyline, etc. of course, nothing is absolutely so in comics)

His villains, overall, tend to be relatively run of the mill gangsters, assassins, etc. just dialed up to 11 because that’s what sells comics. Kingpin isn’t really out to take over the world, he’s just out to run a criminal empire. The hand is mostly similar with some magic thrown in. They’re not the biggest existential threats to earth or the marvel universe as a whole, daredevil is mostly just dealing with whatever crimes are threatening his part of New York.

Arguably, he does just as much good with a wider impact as a lawyer given the types of clients and cases he takes on.

I don’t think either are particularly exciting and I didn’t take pictures, but I’m proud of them.

After years of putting it off, I’ve finally cobbled together a gaming PC, it’s not a powerhouse, most of the parts are about 10+ years old salvaged from my wife’s upgrades over the last few years, and I still need to find a keyboard and mouse I like

I don’t really have space in my home for a desk, the spare bedroom/office is home to my wife’s computer and don’t really have room to squeeze in another, so I built it in a HTPC case, and it’s pretty damn cool playing on the 70inch TV with surround sound and the hue lights synced up to it

The other is the cabinets above our fridge. We got a new fridge that’s a bit bigger than our old one, and there’s a bit of a weird bump at the top that prevented the cabinets from swinging open fully.

So I moved the hinges to the top of the doors instead of the side, and added some gas springs so they stay open, they have enough clearance to open that way.

The measurements the springs came with to tell you where to mount them are total bullshit. Took a bit of trial and error to figure that out, but my cabinets now have DeLorean-style gullwing doors.

The general concept of Facebook I think is fine

I don’t have any problem with the idea of a website where you can go to share things with your friends, family, coworkers, etc.

For me, the biggest problem is that there’s way too many opportunities for you to interact with people you don’t have any real connection to.

Unless you have mutual friends, you shouldn’t see anything someone else is posting, sharing, liking, or commenting on. The only thing you should see from them is a name, profile picture, and a short bio when you search for them.

There shouldn’t be public pages for businesses, celebrities, etc. Everything you see on Facebook should be there because someone you actually know thought that it should be shared with their friends.

And if, for some reason there must be public pages, then you should only see what your friends are commenting on those pages, not complete strangers.

There shouldn’t be public groups that just anyone can join. Groups should be limited to people you’re actually connected to in some way. Not that you necessarily need to be friends directly, but you should be able to trace a clear line of mutual friends connecting any two people in the group together. There shouldn’t be a public “we love bowling” (for example) group that anyone can join, but if you started a bowling league and wanted to start a group for it, you might start with Jeff, Walter, and Donny who all know each other, then Jeff adds his friend Smoky who also wants to join, and then Smoky adds his friend Liam who adds his friend Jesús, etc. Jeff may not be directly friends with Jesús, but they’re connected by actual people so they can be in the same group. And Jesús and Jeff wouldn’t get to see anything each other do outside of that group because they’re not friends and don’t even have any immediate mutual friends. Their entire relationship is through the bowling league.

Want to talk to, follow, and share things with strangers? Go join a forum, get on Lemmy/reddit, use Twitter, start a blog, publish a book, send an op ed into the local newspaper, etc. That’s what those platforms are for. Facebook is for talking to people you know.

Friendica and other Facebook like platforms don’t really solve those problems, but since they’re smaller and less businesses and such are on them it kind of feels like they do.

That’s my 2¢ on the matter anyway.

The “language” that the n64 used was basically in a totally different language family than what PCs and later Nintendo consoles use.

Think of it as if the N64 spoke Japanese, while PCs speak Spanish. There’s a lot of things that don’t translate cleanly from one language to the other, you can’t just feed it into google translate and expect what comes out the other end to make sense, you’re going to need someone who understands both languages to go over it, rewrite some of it to make sure all of the nuance is coming through, add some asterisks and translation notes to explain some concepts that don’t really have a direct equivalent in the other language, etc.

Later Nintendo consoles spoke something more like Portuguese or maybe even Mexican Spanish instead of PC’s Castilian Spanish. They’re much more similar languages that translate more directly and some things may not even really need translation as long as both parties slow down, speak clearly, and maybe throw in some hand gestures here and there, and google translate will get you like 99% of the way there, without the translator needing to add as many explanatory notes.

All those translation notes are what the emulator is doing, and the N64 to PC emulator has to do a lot more interpreting than the Switch to PC emulator.

I know the things you’re talking about, basically a thread adapter to screw an off-the shelf oil filter from auto zone or wherever onto your gun, and the first shot punched a hole through the other side.

Also those adapters are legally considered a silencer and you still have to jump through all the same hoops to get one.

That’s not the thing I’ve been getting advertised to me on Facebook as an oil or fuel filter

The things I’m getting are a long thin metal tube with baffles inside and threads on one end that look basically like a textbook silencer/suppressor

I also see them getting advertised as “solvent traps” for gun cleaning, which I suppose is marginally better than they’re advertising it for some sort of firearm use, but I know a silencer when I see one.

Also if you’re using so much solvent that you have it oozing out the barrel while you’re cleaning the gun and feel like you need some sort of device to contain it, that’s a pretty sure sign that you’re using way too much solvent.

Unless maybe you’ve just pulled a Soviet surplus Mosin Nagant out of a crate and need to clean 50 years of caked-on cosmoline off of the whole damn rifle. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mosin with a threaded barrel though.

And I can’t think of any good reason that trap would have a hole at both ends, kind of seems like that defeats the stated purpose of trapping the solvent.

The rules vary from one state to another, But usually there’s a requirement for there to be evidence that the child is in imminent danger before they can issue an amber alert.

I work in 911 dispatch, we have plenty of custody dispute situations where someone takes off with the kid where we don’t issue an amber alert, that’s saved for times where the person who took them is deep in a mental health crisis, or has made some kind of threats, etc.

Often it is custody or some other kind of domestic situation related, but that applies for most child abductions in general

Barely a day goes by that I don’t get at least one call for some kind of child custody dispute, but I can probably count the amber alerts we’ve issued in my 6 years here (during my shift anyway) one one hand with fingers to spare.

when a child is involved in a crime near you.

The specifics vary a bit from one state to another but AMBER Alerts are normally reserved for abducted children, usually with some additional requirements like sufficient reason to think the child is in immediate danger of death or injury, and enough of a description of the child and/or the abductor to be able to identify them.

Al Qaeda has always been pretty clear on their Intentions in Iraq, in 2005 they specifically outlined a 4 stage plan

Step 1: expulsion of US forces from Iraq
Step 2: establish an Islamic Caliphate in Iraq
Step 3: extending the jihad to surrounding countries
Step 4: “the clash with Israel”

So yes, they were in opposition to the US occupation, but that was more of a means to an end, not exactly altruistic Iraq freedom fighters. And around that same time they were also carrying out attacks on Iraqi tribespeople and clashing with nationalist insurgents. Yes they got somewhat more extreme over time, but like you said a lot of that can be attributed to them growing in power, and arguably dealing with the US occupation was more pressing to them at the time so that’s where most of their resources went.

And step 3 definitely seems to be in line with expanding operations into Syria.

Al-Julani did serve between 2003 and 2006 in AQI/ISI

Which brings us back to the root of our disagreement

We’re in agreement that he was part of ISI. I think we’re also in agreement that ISI became ISIS

So do you consider ISI/AQI to be substantially different enough organization from ISIS to be worth drawing a distinction?

To me, I’d consider the distinction to be similar to quibbling over whether a software engineer worked for alphabet vs google, or Facebook vs meta. It’s essentially the same organization with most of the same leadership, goals, methods, etc. just with some restructuring and a name change. A useful distinction if you’re talking shop about the specific details of their structure and operation, but for the average layperson having a casual discussion on Lemmy they can be generally understood the be the same organization.

Again, you can really get into the weeds here about which group splintered off from where, and what name they were operating under at what time

ISIS evolved from ISI (Islamic State in Iraq,) which was also often also known as al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)

Al Nusra started as an offshoot from ISI/AQI who went to establish an Islamic state in Syria around the outbreak of the civil war in 2011 with the authorization and backing of ISI/AQI (and later ISIS) leader al-Baghdadi. al-Julani had already been active in ISI for several years at that point when he went to Syria.

By 2012 they had officially established themselves as al Nusra, and kind of started doing their own thing pretty quickly and regarded themselves as a separate affiliate of al Qaeda instead of a subsidiary of ISI, but that seems to be how ISIS regarded them. Regardless of what its status was formally, I think it’s pretty safe to say that al Nusra can trace its lineage at least partially to ISI.

In 2013 baghdadi tried to bring al Nusra formally under his banner and rebranded ISI as ISIS/ISIL (the S or L being al-Sham, the Levant, or Syria, al Nusra basically would have been the Syrian branch if things had gone according to al-Baghdadi’s plan) but al quaeda opposed that merger and like you said, al nusra continued to regard themselves as an al quaeda affiliate, and one separate from ISIS. This is where the conflict between all nusra and ISIS began and part of the split between ISIS and Al quaeda

Terrorist organizations aren’t exactly doing things by the book with notarized contracts and such. It’s a tangled web of shaky alliances and different cells operating mostly independently with lots of internal conflicts. There’s a lot of room for interpretation here, but I feel pretty comfortable simplifying things down to saying that al Nusra began as an affiliate or offshoot of the terrorist group that would later become ISIS.

That is literally false

Yes and no

When we’re dealing with terrorist organizations like ISIS, things aren’t always totally clear-cut, there’s always going to be groups merging and splitting off, alliances between different groups being made and broken, people switching sides, internal power struggles, name changes, etc.

So yes in the sense that he was not specifically part of the organization known as ISIS when it was known as ISIS

However, al-Nusra Front was at least very closely tied to or even a part of ISI, and ISI would later essentially become ISIS (or ISIL, IS, Daesh, whatever you want to call it)

Personally I’d consider making a distinction between ISI and ISIS to be uselessly pedantic hairsplitting. And depending on how you regard the relationship between ISI(S) and al-Nusra Front, I think it’s fair to say that he was either part of or at least very closely-allied with them.

Now as of right now, al-Sharaa/al-Julani seems to be doing an alright job as leader of Syria all things considered, he could certainly be doing a lot worse. But it’s still a new and evolving situation and it’s hard to say exactly what his intentions are/were, how his thoughts, beliefs, and allegiances have or have not changed. It could be that his actions with ISI were part of a means to this specific end to be a decent leader for Syria, it could be that over the years he has genuinely had a change of heart from being a jihadist, or it could be that the current situation is just a facade to keep international heat off of himself while he consolidates power in Syria and once he has he’ll go right back to full-on islamist extremism.

I hope for the best, I’m not really qualified to offer much of an opinion on him beyond that, and I suppose only time will tell.

There’s going to be a lot of bias when you try to go off of people you know

Personally, I’m pretty hard-pressed to think of anyone in my circles who doesn’t read at least a couple books a year.

And not everyone who reads necessarily does it when you’re around and may not talk about the reading they do for any number of reasons like they’re just not interested in talking about books, are embarrassed by the books they read, etc.

It kind of sounds like that article is about the “hey Siri” feature getting activated accidentally, like if it picks up something that sounds similar to the trigger phrase and starts recording

Which is still a big security/privacy issue, but not exactly the same as if they’re just turning the microphone on whenever they want to listen to you and serve you ads

Overall, I tend to just be happy to be watching anything star wars. None of the movies are that deep, I’m just in it to watch space wizards with laser swords flying around in space ships with robot sidekicks battling evil. As long as most of those boxes get checked, I’m pretty happy with any star wars media, and in my mind I’m right back to being a little kid watching Star wars for the first time. Anything more is just icing on the cake.

Now I can absolutely rank them and admit that some of them are better movies than others, and the sequels and prequels definitely drop the ball on that in a lot of ways

And while on the whole, the sequels and prequels aren’t great movies (arguably the OT aren’t even great movies if we’re being totally objective) I think that in a lot of ways they do a better job at universe building by dropping hints at other parts of the galaxy that we don’t get to explore right then and there, they just do a shitty job of following through on them and tying them together into a coherent narrative.

I think that just about any part of episode 8 for example could have been expanded out into a pretty cool movie or show, there was a lot to work with there, they just didn’t work together as the same movie

The force dyad thing between Rey and Kylo is pretty fucking cool

Casino heist or spycraft movies are a pretty tried and true movie formula, I probably would have saved it for something like a Solo movie, or maybe Andor. The stuff about the military industrial complex profiting off of selling weapons to both sides could work for either of them. Han is from Cornelia, where the arms dealers are building a lot of these battleships and such, and it’s also established that he’s a gambler so a casino makes sense for him, or Andor could work well with the gritty political side of things.

Fucking broom kid! Let’s get more non-jedi non-sith force sensitives

Finn was just criminally underutilized all-around

The Holdo maneuver was pretty fucking badass

You can argue about how the bombing run doesn’t make sense from a physics perspective, or was tactically stupid, but it was a cool scene nonetheless

I could go on, I think you could build out a pretty decent movie, show, or at least an episode or two of a show from any of those ideas if they just committed to the idea

I’ve had a mix of different vaccines, but slightly more moderna than the others

My first dose was moderna and was the only one I had any real noticeable symptoms besides a sore arm. Mostly fatigue and chills.

It was a bummer though, I worked overnight at the time, I went and got it after my shift, probably at around 8 or 9 AM, went home feeling fine and went to sleep, woke up in the afternoon still feeling alright, then a couple hours later it hit me. I pretty much kept to my normal night shift schedule on my days off, so I was up most of the night feeling like shit.

By the time I was ready to go to bed in the morning I was feeling better. If I had been on a normal schedule and had gotten the shot first thing in the morning I probably would have slept through the worst of it and wouldn’t have noticed anything.

Haven’t had any real symptoms from any of my subsequent doses, the last one I got a couple months ago maybe left me feeling a little fatigued, but it’s hard to say because I got it at a time when my sleep schedule was kind of fucked up from some other stuff and I’d been really busy so I might have just been the normal kind of tired.

I don’t think that most of the big tech companies are listening to your microphone (I’m not ruling it out entirely, and I’m certainly there are some smaller sketchier companies that are doing it)

But I think most of the time most of the time they don’t need to

They know what ads you’ve seen on your phone/computer, what you’ve been googling, the websites you’ve visited, where you’ve used your credit card, what shows and movies you watch, and where you’ve been (from gps locations, or from what wifi networks and Bluetooth devices you’ve been near or connected to) and what ads, playlists, stores, products, etc. you were exposed to while you were there, and of course who you talk to and all of that same information about those people.

That’s all going to influence the things you think and talk about, they probably have a pretty good idea what kind of conversations you’re going to have well before you do.

And don’t get me wrong, that’s creepy as fuck.

I think most of it comes down to people not even realizing how much data about ourselves we put out there and all of the ways it can be collected and used to build a profile about you.

And honestly I think they can probably get better data from that most of the time than from trying to filter out background noise and make sense of what you’re talking about through your microphone.

Couple different kinds of notes, but I think this covers most of my use cases

I use google keep for small reminders, things I want to look up later, grocery lists to share with my wife, etc.

I keep a couple field notes notebooks around in my car and bag for things I want to make a physical note of, especially things I need to sketch out (I am no artist by any stretch of the imagination but I’m a capable DIYer and I sometimes need to sketch out the thing I’m building/fixing) while I’m out and about before I forget about them. I like the size of them, and the dot grid lends itself well to the kind of notes and sketches I use them for.

I also have some sketches of the rooms in my house in those books, list of some furniture dimensions, so when I’m out shopping with my wife and she asks “do you think this will fit in our dining room?” I can tell her definitively yes or no.

It also has a list of the bulbs, tires, wiper blades, air filters, etc. that our cars use, so I can reference them quickly while out shopping, it’s quicker to just flip to the back page of my little notebook than to try to look it up on my phone from the aisle at AutoZone or Walmart.

I also have a rite in the rain notebook I keep with my tools, it’s fairly rugged and waterproof, mostly ends up getting used for scribbling down a list of stuff I need to get from the hardware store in the middle of a project. Went with that one because I’m pretty likely to be using it when I’m wet or dirty, outside in the mud, under a leaking sink, etc. while I’m halfway through a project.

I keep another one of those with my camping supplies.

I have a pad of graph paper at my workbench, I like it for sketching things out, same as I like the dot grid in the field notes books, but this one doesn’t have to travel around with me or pull double duty for written notes, so I could go bigger and cheaper

We also did our kitchen cabinets in blackboard paint, so my wife and I can leave notes to each other on there, mostly reminders to empty the dishwasher and such.

Also worth noting another key issue with car exhaust in a confined space is carbon monoxide, you’ll feel the CO2 build up and make it difficult to breath in your environment before it does any damage, the CO on the other hand will kill you quietly. CO breaks down relatively quickly in the environment by reacting with other substances in the air, so it’s not really a long term pollutant concern.

There’s also other chemicals and particulates, but they’re mostly going to be at lower concentrations that aren’t going to kill you in a hurry, but may contribute to longer term cancer risks and such, but that’s a little harder for people to wrap their heads around. You won’t immediately die of cancer in your garage from breathing exhaust but it might give you cancer years or decades down the line.

Did you miss where I addressed that by pointing out how generators, batteries, solar panels, and vehicle mounted radios exist?

You realize that if you call Texas you can also reach someone locally.

A lot of ham equipment can be run off of batteries, generators, solar power, vehicles, etc. for some hams, that’s even a big part of what interests them- going out into the woods or other remote areas to see who they can make contact with from there.

There are official policies in place for ham radio operators to work with local emergency services. ARES & RACES, for example. I know that my $20 baofeng can even be used directly on some emergency frequencies (depending on what sort of radio system they’re using)

As an example of how it might work

If cell and landline phones are inoperable, you might instead have volunteer ham operators posted at various places around the community- probably schools, government buildings, hospitals, recreation centers, etc. places where people might gather, where aide is being distributed, that might have backup generators, etc.

And you also have them or professional radio operators at police/fire/ambulance stations, 911 dispatch centers.

Someone having an emergency would let the local ham operator know and have them relay the info to the station or dispatch center so they could send help

Less efficient than just calling 911 of course, but better than nothing.

I work in a 911 dispatch center, we have a small room full of ham equipment that we can send out or use for these sorts of situations (luckily we’re not in an area prone to major natural disasters, so it’s rare that we ever have to use it if ever, but we’re prepared if it ever happens)