Low stakes small scale idle curiosity question for the network engineers here: Why does my router (edit for clarity: ADSL router-modem) take so long to connect to the internet? I don't mean a full reboot of the system, just <disconnect> <reconnect>. It takes about 5 minutes. Feels like I could reboot my phone and connect to wireless internet faster than a simple hang-up-redial cycle on a wired connection.
To my naive mind the process should consist of authentication over what is effectively LAN, and then connection/access to the WAN, like connecting to a network switch but with many more users. My little consumer grade network switch doesn't take 5 minutes to start up, it's been a long time since I rebooted it but if I had to guess I'd say it takes less than 30 seconds from a cold start, and reconnecting after pulling the cable and replugging it takes less time than sitting back down. What processes are actually happening?
5434a
1mo ago
Apparently at least one risk is scalding when hot water is used to set the braids, causing injuries bad enough to require hospital admission.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468912222000062
That article notes some other injuries that read like they're more in line with simply pulling the hair so tight that it either comes out or damages the scalp.
The picture that emerges is of people wanting to give their young daughters a cool hairstyle, baulking at the price of a hairdresser, trying to DIY it at home and either spilling boiling water on their kid or more likely letting a full head of hair that's freshly loaded with boiling water fall back onto the kids neck, shoulders and chest.
The article is about the UK but in America you have the issue of any resulting hospital bills to consider on top.
Reading around the topic of cosmetology there's also stuff about hairdressers being more prone to reproductive issues like low birth weight and premature ovarian failure due to exposure to toxic chemicals.
Even as a reasonably intelligent person who would be naturally wary of boiling water or less immediate risks like chemical burns I wouldn't have intuited that hair styling could contribute to ovarian failure.
5434a
1mo ago
Me too but the conspiracy theory isn't about pollution or frogs. The conspiracy theory is that I wouldn't be gay if the government would leave me alone.
5434a
1mo ago
Degree of veracity aside (a small motte in a giant bailey) Alex Jones essentially doesn't care about pollution or about frogs, or about gays. His call to action isn't that we should lobby our governments to fund environmental monitoring agencies, it's that we should send him $200 for a one month supply of proprietary pressed corn starch pills. If anything the gayer the frogs get the more money he can make.
5434a
1mo ago
I haven't been following it but other than the comments here that's the only story I've seen about this, and The Telegraph isn't the kind of paper to shy away from reporting whether someone is trans.
5434a
2mo ago
I'm curious what the social perceptions are, whether saving your own brass is seen as normal and expected, or unusual and miserly/prepper-y, or whether the other customers offering to collect it for you are like the firing range version of squeegee men or something more like safety conscious hosts who just want to keep the range running smoothly.
If you went to an unfamilar range that didn't have a rule that all spilt brass is forfeited what would the normal etiquette be?
5434a
2mo ago
What's the status quo for reusing the spent cases? Are they valuable enough that it's assumed people will want to collect them other than maybe the big spenders who let the range keep them as some kind of tip? Or are they so cheap/un-reusable that they go for scrap? Or something else?
As a Brit the nearest thing I have in my experience is finding a giant pile of obviously worthless spent plastic shotgun shells in the woods.
5434a
2mo ago
10 months seems on the short side. Are you taking good care of your pans? The first result for "what ruins non stick pans" suggests 5 years expected life.
If you don't fancy cast iron you could get a stainless steel pan and a suitable metal scrubber.
5434a
2mo ago
I've only read the first Flashman book but it was his unlikeability that made it so enjoyable. The character's utter lack of apology for being so unabashedly self-serving provides a lot of fun.
5434a
2mo ago
Maybe Operation Mincemeat? Wikipedia tells me there have been multiple books and films based on it. I watched the BBC TV programme based on Ben Macintyre's book.
5434a
2mo ago
There are still rare flashes of the old (dot) Reddit. Floating among the river of bravery posts on /bestof recently was this post where an industrial press mechanic answers a question about the shapes on the lids of tin cans.
It feels like that sort of thing used to happen frequently on Reddit. A small insight into some overlooked aspect of modern culture brought to the fore and given a human voice. Of course given the medium much of that was tech adjacent, like a '90s games dev popping up to explain how they exploited the hardware in a console to pull off a novel graphics effect, but also these more unexpected interactions that only happened because Reddit's userbase was so big and broad.
It's a shame that AMAs which began with people like that mechanic (or a pathologically upvote addicted biologist) inadvertently hijacking a thread to spontaneously answer people's questions on a slow work day were formalised and turned into cynical PR appearances for attention starved celebrities.
5434a
2mo ago
major subreddits [...] have all decided to ban links to X/Twitter
The cost is that those subreddits are largely composed of Twitter links and screenshots. Unless the whole ecosystem can coordinate a move to BlueSky they'll be left with little to offer their users. On the other hand coordinating a move to BlueSky is already clearly an item on the establishment agenda so Elon has effectively scored a big own goal here by providing such an exploitable rallying point to them on a silver platter.
5434a
2mo ago
It's a while since I read The Whole Earth Discipline, it was published in 2009 so I'm not sure whether that counts as properly up to date, but the author Stewart Brand is Bay Area hippie royalty and the book is vocally pro nuclear as well as pro genetic modification and pro urbanism.
An official annotated online version is available at https://discipline.longnow.org/DISCIPLINE_footnotes/Contents.html
5434a
2mo ago
Playing a game is a great suggestion, it offers a pleasant distraction and a shared focus for something external to the relationship. Having nothing but updates on how each other's life is going can get a bit monotonous so building up some shared activities will help prevent falling into that.
5434a
2mo ago
5434a
2mo ago
It's a bad metaphor. There's a house, a master, his tools, and the objective of dismantling. Whatever those stand for either the tools are powerful enough to produce a house and defend it from attacks to unseat its master and dismantle it, or they're not. Metaphors-lawyering about which bits are powerful and pertinent or not, and when, and how, for who, all just undermines the metaphor.
It's a counterculture koan. It's purpose is to make you think about The System and sound wise while doing it.
It's ironic that by analysing the phrasing we can neutralise the text. The very tools that the writer used to build this house...
people would pick up location based hobbies
Kind of a tangent but I think there's a widespread problem with people ignoring their locale and imitating the activities of other locales. People who live in the mountains want to be surfers, people who live in the city want to keep a farmyard menagerie, people who live surrounded by pine forests want to make mahogany furniture, etc.
Instead of people grouping around the opportunities that are present and available you end up with people separating and going to lengths pursuing aspirations that aren't present or available. That's fine in moderation but it can diminish the base until there's not enough people to sustain the local activities that require that kind of group.
I feel it's parallel to how people continuously opt for breadth of experiences, whether that's foreign travel or high cuisine or multiple partners, and then lament a lack of depth in their lives when they come to a rest.
5434a
2mo ago
https://novelfull.com/forty-millenniums-of-cultivation/chapter-2771.html
Can you give us a small sample of the better translation for comparison?
5434a
2mo ago
There's a risk of conflating serious danger with personal discomfort and using the first to justify the second, and also a parallel risk of using the second to dismiss the first.
In the first case you end up avoiding everything that isn't immediately pleasant and personally gratifying, and in the second case you fail to avoid a dangerous situation because you haven't given it the chance to prove your intuitions wrong right.
It's not without merit but I think the advice to "trust your fear instinct" is another one of those messages that is more likely to appeal to and reach the wrong audience and reinforce their fearfulness rather than attenuating their fearlessness.
5434a
2mo ago
This is why I hate the whole idea of "grading on effort." You either got the right answer or you didn't. You either accomplish a goal, or you don't. How much effort you put in is completely and totally irrelevant!
That's exactly why I suggested goals that are trivially attainable, but ironically I suspect you dismissed them because they're too easy and thus not worth the effort. I'll explain my reason why:
If you never achieve your goal despite your efforts it means you were pursuing an unachievable goal, which is a failure and a tragedy and waste, and that's naturally very depressing.
I've read numerous books and articles on depression, and the best explanation I've found wasn't that it was a chemical imbalance, or a lack of daylight or physical exertion. It's that depression is a natural reaction to the repeated failure to achieve a goal. The feedback of failure is what alters the chemicals, and generates the low mood that influences a person to withdraw, whereupon they end up getting less daylight, less exertion, less socialising, etc etc. This is actually rational. Your biological substrate is compelling you to stop wasting its energy on something you/it demonstrably can't achieve.
You can force that away by tinkering with antidepressants and forcing yourself out there, and maybe that kickstarts the process, but it's skipping the most important step which is letting go of, or at least setting aside the goal that you repeatedly failed to achieve and recalibrating your ambition towards something more attainable. Then you have a new reason to get up and get going, because then you can get a successful outcome, and when you get the outcome you get the sweet conscious satisfaction plus the accompanying unconscious mood boosting chemicals. Or maybe you fail again, and the cycle resets, and you try something different until you find something that does deliver success.
Which means nothing if I don't actually get there
TLDR Go somewhere else, get somewhere else, and discover whatever the meaning is of getting there instead of the meaninglessness of not getting where you're not getting.
5434a
2mo ago
I've looked this up before and it has something to do with the Old Reddit Redirect addon.
https://old.reddit.com/r/bugs/comments/15p1ctt/why_does_clicking_any_image_on_reddit_open_the/
https://old.reddit.com/r/RESissues/comments/1bitxq1/stupid_question_why_do_i_get_routed_to_the_nice/
Second link has a suggested userscript patch.
[ping @FCfromSSC @SteveKirk ]
5434a
2mo ago
There are many alternatives.
You are asking about how to deal with demotivation. The implication is that you require some motivation to alleviate the feeling that you're too old and everything is pointless.
You have existing goals and you are losing time. You can choose to advance toward your goals or you can choose to remain static.
ending it all.
Stop thinking about ending and think about completion. "I'm stuck on level 7.2 and Mario has stopped moving. Should I throw my Nintendo in the bin?" No, just plug the controller back in.
Last chapter of Castles of Steel, never thought I'd find WW1 naval warfare interesting enough to read a 900 page book about it. Never thought that so much naval warfare would involve two giant fleets hiding as far away from each other as possible either, or that when they did meet they could spend the whole day trading 12 inch shells and still sail home largely intact.
Thanks to @netstack for the recommendation. Definitely not a book I would have started without seeing his posts about it.
More options
Context Copy link