Damn, you know your vampire law!

I’m neither a Rick nor a Morty, but I think you can look at the biographies of historical figures who’ve been considered “geniuses” and deduce that R&M isn’t too far off base. It may be a sort of survivor bias: it may be that only genius and successful people have had difficulties; or, maybe idiots have just as much depression only they don’t get famous. All we have are examples like DJT for the dumb-but-successful-and-not-struggling-with-depression category.

I really should have a statistic to back this up, but it seems common for “high IQ” people to have issues. My personnel theory is that we’re all on the spectrum: that humans have a band in which we can function normally, socially, but the higher you climb on the “intelligence” scale, the more you edge into what we’d diagnose as autism and start to struggle with issues resulting from either being unable to integrate with society, or being persecuted by it.

I have absolutely no evidence for this theory, of course. It’s just a theory formed after reading biographies of so many notable geniuses who’ve struggled with drug abuse and depression. Depression is the big one; it must get awfully tiresome being surrounded by (relative) idiots.

I don’t take the theory very seriously; however, among my high school close friend group, the unquestioned smartest one, who went on to get a doctorate in math, checked himself out with a shotgun in his early 30’s. He’s the only suicide we’ve had, and I’ve often wondered how much his intelligence factored into it.

Finally, I’ll end with this quote I one read, for which I can no longer find a source and which I have no reason for believing is based at all on any evidence; but which I’ve always found funny:

Philosophers look outside themselves for truth.
Mathematicians look inside themselves for truth.
Psychologists say philosophers tend to be more happy than mathematicians.

It does if you do it a lot and then resell it. Which is what happened to a bunch of people in the days of Napster, and is exactly what these fuckers are doing.

Arrests? Like for other copyright violators?

Oh, lordy. This is a fight I really hope happens. Meta vs the combined DMCA lobby.

Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease

Ooo, this is a good one! Accupressure Boy, able to relieve minor aches and pains, and cure headaches.

That would be a perfectly B tier power.

Yeah, she was a high point. I can’t see a whole Domino film, but she’s hilarious as a supporting superhero. It helped that the actor sold it well; so nonchallant in the most extreme situations.

Hers was definitely A-tier, though. She was more like a Teela Brown - the Universe simply was not going to allow anything bad to happen to her, unless it was ultimately for her own good.

IIRC the LOC has a copy of every book published in the US… I need to re-verify that, but I believe that was one of the info bits I gathered from my last visit. I don’t retain knowledge very well when I glean it whilst gaping at architecture.

No. I had jumped to BT long before Apple* first dropped the hole. I hate cords; I hate the tangle and snagging. It’s another lever with which to break a connection on the circuit board, and another ingress for water.

I know audio is better over cords, but I don’t hear the difference, so the convenience won for me.

• I just discovered that my phone sometimes autocorrects “Apple” to “asshole.” Fun.

Are you a transplant?

Things in Australia that can kill you, or make you want kill yourself, also include:

• Jellyfish
• Regular fish
• Octopuses
• The fucking trees – not one but (at least) two different species!

Ruairidh: “Rory”
Featherstonehaugh: “Fanshaw”

Exactly. Unless things have changed dramatically, one or two years of a foreign language is a requirement in high school, and there are more opportunities in lower K-12 these days from what I hear. However, you’re right that this is not especially helpful without some immersion, and the practice of trading your kids to a foreign family for a year is far less common. Then, after K-12, opportunities to practice greatly diminish.

The German mother of a good friend moved to the US West coast when she was a young adult, married, and had my friend. She never lost her German accent. When I was in my early 20s, I had the opportunity to live and work in Germany for a couple of years, and when I came back, I was fairly fluent - enough to pass as a native from a “different region.” I visited my friend when I returned, and tried to have a conversation with her mother in German; she sadly informed me that she had forgotten most of her German, and could no longer converse… there are few opportunities to speak in German on the West coast, and even native language skills attrophy if unused.

In a related annecdote, when I first returned to the states, I’d sometime fail to remember the English words for the odd thing, like “trash can.” All I could remember was the German word for it.

All thay has gone away. Years later, I can barely hold basic conversations in German. Maybe some people have an ability to retain language skills without practice, but I believe it’s far more common to lose fluency you once had.

Perhaps the easiest (and most flashy) is a wooden table top. Wedge the cap onto the edge, and the smack it with your palm. This method is widely discouraged, especially on your host’s dining room table, as it usually takes a small chunk of wood off the edge and damages the table.

Like the Dutch, Germans have an impressive lexicon of commonly-known ways to open beer bottles without a bottle-opener.

If the internet has taught me anything, it’s taught me to never swim in Australia. In freshwater, crocodiles will eat you. In the ocean, sharks and saltwater crocodiles will eat you.

If you can’t swim, bring desthly afraid of water is a good survival instinct.

After an incident of near-drowning as a toddler, my parents prioritized swimming lessons in my childhood. I can never remember not being able to swim. However, when I was in the military, there was a survival swimming section where you had to get in a pool with full clothing and a weapon, and swim a length. You were supposed to keep the weapon above water at all time. So you’re doing a side-stroke with one arm holding a 7lb weight above water, in long-sleeved shirt and pants (I recall being grateful no boots or socks). Most of us California boys made it; lots of people didn’t make it with the rifle the whole way, or tapped out without getting anywhere at all. The point is, near the end, when I was exhausted from fighting the water, and it was starting to get hard to keep my head above water, I felt an unexpected panic rising. I can easily believe that if it had gone on much longer, the panic would have taken over and years of swimming experienced would go out the window, and I’d have ended up thrashing futiliy in the water like the guys who dropped out at the start.

Drowning is a singularly frightening experience.

It seems most USB controllers now support both protocols, so you could mix and match, I suppose. I’m used to Z-Wave, so that’s what I buy, but if I could only find something in Zigbee, I’d try it. The dongle I’m using now does both.

I went Z-Wave years ago based on some arbitrary feature (the Zigbee network size limitation, I think?) and have been very happy (and cloud-independent). However, Z-Wave device do tend to be more expensive, and it can be challenging to find some devices. Smart Z-Wave bulbs seem to have disappeared from the market, for instance.

“Fosters discussion” is an interesting way of presenting most of what goes on at hexbear. Name-calling and abuse is not “discussion.”

So it’s a hi-tech designer one… fancy! How’s the blade?

This is the most important feature of a utility knife: being locatable.