My namesake is a human librarian that was turned into an orangutan. All he says is “Ook” and can traverse the library stacks with great ease. He is happy.

I have a pretty strange knowledge set. I’m not super friendly, but I like to get high and link people to stuff. Just pretend I said only “ook”

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 17th, 2023

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  • An electrical ground is reservoir into which you can dump charge with altering its potential difference. A car, in and of itself, is ground for the small shocks that occur from static. The earth is a bit overkill here.

    Edit: I am about to use the word “safe” on the internet. Normal “don’t trust everyone on the internet” warnings apply.

    You are correct that connecting yourself to ground of the car is the same as connecting to the negative terminal. You should be safe doing so in a properly wired car.

    That is to say, unless you expect to be at different potential differences. When might that happen? In a lightning strike for example. You do NOT want to electrically connected to your car’s ground in a lightning strike. (You should be perfectly safe inside the car, not touching the car’s ground.) Your car is not a reservoir for that kind of charge.

    The earth can handle a lightning strike without a (measurable) change in potential difference. This is why fish are not cooked in lightning storms.




  • Because we elect people who promise things. Then incumbency bias takes over.

    (This is not US centric. There were a lot of promises in the 1920s worldwide, too.)

    Edit: The only solution I can see (and it’s regrettably too slow to tip back the suck gracefully) is routine, vigorous primaries. Do you see how bad those adjectives suck together, “routine and vigorous”? Plus primaries are a snooze-fest.

    I dream to see 60% engagement in primaries. And I mean for Congress. Was your congressperson challenged at the primaries? Yes? Did you weigh the arguments or just hope those primary voters know what they are doing?

    No? Were they perfect? Or did they know the primaries would not be engaging enough to unseat them?

    The establishment will say “no one comes out of a primary smelling pretty”. But people that come out of a primary should have their plans defended. The promises made should be what the people of the party like best, not what they think will run best against people who can’t agree with the party about who gets human rights. (See how I snuck in a both sides phrasing.)

    Sorry for being a bit of keyboard warrior.


  • I remember playing with qcad. It was awful, but it was the best FOSS CAD I found. AutoCAD was unrivaled from when I learned it in 1999 and remained that way until I had drifted away. I think I played with qcad around 2011.

    I found OpenSCAD about 3 years ago, and it knocked by socks off. I’d like to see how mature FreeCAD is now.

    In my high school, we had semesters. The first semester you took drafting, it was on drafting tables with Tsquare, triangles, compasses, and stuff. In your 4 years there, there were 8 semesters. You could technically take it 8 times. I think I took it four. So I had 3 semesters of autocad.

    2006 was an easy time for me to lose Windows. Do you remember how much worse Windows was back in 200*? Everything had viruses. There were TV ads promising they could get your computer running “like new”. Viruses were so common that people seemed to think computers slowed down with age.

    So I’m ignorant about FreeCAD, but FOSS is so powerful now I’m excited to check it out.