Dumb things being crowdfunded.
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@Erufael yeah... at least the ones with flashing lights, you know for sure.
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@Jaloopa said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
I like it when a police car is in the slow lane at 69 and nobody dares to overtake, or just crawl past
Until that guy blasts past at 85.
@Tsaukpaetra said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
The problem is otherwise they remain under the law.
True, but often they'll respond in an expedited manner to a call or something, but not flip the lights on (for several reasons, trying not to disrupt traffic too much, not wanting to get suspects' attention, etc). I'm not sure what the actual legal allowance is for that (if there is one), but... don't assume the cop's doing the speed limit, cause it might get you in trouble.
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@sloosecannon it depends on the state. In some states they're allowed to speed when responding to a call without lights or siren. In other states they're allowed to speed when they have their flashing lights activated; in others it might be the siren, or both the flashing lights and the siren.
But if you think you see a cop who is speeding or breaking traffic laws without a good reason (i.e. you don't believe they are responding to a call) you should probably call the police department and let them know so that they can duly ignore your complaint. If enough people call to complain about a particular officer's driving, they might be arsed to pull his car's GPS, and if his driving is truly egregious they might give him a short paid vacation to remind him that they reward good cops for good behavior and bad cops for bad behavior.
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@anotherusername said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
If enough people call to complain about a particular officer's driving, they might be arsed to pull his car's GPS, and if his driving is truly egregious they might give him a short paid vacation to remind him that they reward good cops for good behavior and bad cops for bad behavior.
To be fair, his sergeant might chew the officer out for making the sergeant put down the donut and do work.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
If you are stopped on the highway DO. NOT. EXIT. YOUR. CAR!
When I was moving from CA to PA, I was out in the middle of nowhere, somewhere between Las Vegas and Utah, when I saw a big line of cars stopped up ahead of me.
This was stopped stopped traffic. We all got out of our cars and started talking with each other etc. for the better part of an hour.
One guy had a quadcopter drone with a camera. He flew it up as high as he could and didn't see any end to the line of stopped cars down the road.
One guy said he'd heard on the radio that everything was blocked off because of a semi truck catching fire down the road. (Quadcopter guy didn't see any rising smoke anywhere.)
It's not like we could go anywhere, with traffic stacked up in front of us and behind us, on a miles-long stretch of freeway in the middle of nowhere, so we just hung out and talked for an hour or so.
Eventually the dam seemed to break: people ahead of us started driving off at normal-ish speeds, so we got back in our cars and kept going. About 3 miles down the road I saw a few emergency vehicles by a burned-out pickup truck (not semi) and, for ultimate factor, an exit a few hundred feet further down the road.
If that truck had made it another quarter mile, they could have routed everything through that exit and avoided the clog altogether!
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@Erufael said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
Thats what drives me nuts about holidays and vacations: is the school speed limit in effect then or not?! I normally just play it safe myself, I know how the local law enforcement is around here...
Around here it's generally "25 mph while children are present." That makes it pretty straightforward.
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@Polygeekery said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
tinfoil hats being crowdfunded
To shield EM radiation, you only need a net with holes smaller than the EM wavelength.
So for harmless sources like WIFI (6-12 cm wavelength), you just need a normal metal net.So it could look like this (but made of metal of course). It is feasible to make it fully cover your face without compromising vision. (That does not make the idea any less stupid of course).
But if you want to protect against the actually dangerous high frequency radiation like x-ray, you would rather need something like this:
I guess it is a challenge to build a fashionable lead hat though.
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@masonwheeler said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
@Erufael said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
Thats what drives me nuts about holidays and vacations: is the school speed limit in effect then or not?! I normally just play it safe myself, I know how the local law enforcement is around here...
Around here it's generally "25 mph while children are present." That makes it pretty straightforward.
Sadly, rural Upstate New York is not like that. :/ That would make it so much easier!
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@Adynathos said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
I guess it is a challenge to build a fashionable lead hat though.
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@PleegWat That one looks rather more like plastic than like metal, though.
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@sloosecannon said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
don't assume the cop's doing the speed limit, cause it might get you in trouble.
I have a friend who was ticketed for speeding while following a cop without lights and sirens. The cop was not responding to anything, just driving. My friend was most upset that the cop didn't accept his excuse. He even consulted a solicitor. He was told it's legit, pay the fine.
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@another_sam said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
@sloosecannon said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
don't assume the cop's doing the speed limit, cause it might get you in trouble.
I have a friend who was ticketed for speeding while following a cop without lights and sirens. The cop was not responding to anything, just driving. My friend was most upset that the cop didn't accept his excuse. He even consulted a solicitor. He was told it's legit, pay the fine.
Yeah, I mean, it's a dick move, but it's totally legit. It's up to the officer's discretion if he pulls you over for doing something illegal, regardless of whether he was as well.
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@Jaloopa said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
@mott555 said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
rather than match speed with the other trucks, they try to pass each other which takes 10 miles
I thought they did that because they draft to save fuel, and take it in turns to be the one breaking a trail
You confused them with birds
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@sloosecannon said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
don't assume the cop's doing the speed limit, cause it might get you in trouble.
Yesterday, I was rolling along at 62mph on a 65 highway (152, CA central valley). But I was towing a trailer, so my speed limit is 55mph. Cop passed me. I just kept steady. And then tweaked my cruise control down by 2 as he passed...
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http://acculturated.com/boy-dolls/
Positioning themselves as the boyish alternative to the American Girl juggernaut, these boy toys are “properly proportioned, high-end dolls that each have a corresponding book about overcoming some kind of adversity.”
Because nothing says, “Fun play time!” like a story about overcoming adversity!
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@boomzilla said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
properly proportioned
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@anotherusername said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
@boomzilla said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
properly proportioned
@boomzilla said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
high-end dolls
Sounds like a Good Time...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
Sounds like a Good Time...
Slate agrees with you...
Enthusiasts of PC toys are praising the venture as groundbreaking . . . for feminism, if not for boys. Slate’s writer imagines how awesome it will be when kids figure out that they can dress their Boy Story dolls in their sister’s American Girl doll clothes—oh yes, and make them have sex with each other:
“Mason and Billy seem to provide a world of opportunities that most little boys have missed out on: having doll slumber parties; punishing dolls for running away (getting lost) by locking them in the closet for days; making Mason and Billy have sex with each other like we all (?) did with our Barbies in their Barbie Dreamhouse hot tub. . . Billy can gallivant about his bayou in Samantha’s pink party dress. Feminism has won!”
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@boomzilla said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
making Mason and Billy have sex with each other like we all (?) did with our Barbies in their Barbie Dreamhouse hot tub
What have I been missing out on?!?!
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@boomzilla said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
Because nothing says, “Fun play time!” like a story about overcoming adversity!
All stories are about overcoming adversity. Most playing involves some sort as well, from make believing that you've beaten up a powerful ninja to getting past a difficult part in a video game
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@Jaloopa said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
powerful ninja
@Jaloopa said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
a difficult part in a video game
...
...
I... I changed my mind about trigger warnings, can we add some?
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@boomzilla said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
Because nothing says, “Fun play time!” like a story about overcoming adversity!
It's all about the word choice, apparently: Narrative conflict is the heart of any well-told story.
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@masonwheeler said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
@boomzilla said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
Because nothing says, “Fun play time!” like a story about overcoming adversity!
It's all about the word choice, apparently: Narrative conflict is the heart of any well-told story.
QFT.
Slice-of-life fics are great and all, but they're not that interesting if nothing happens...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
they're not that interesting if nothing happens
Particularly good writers can get away with just the quality of the descriptions and dialogue, but that's like the book equivalent of arthouse cinema.
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@dkf said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
Particularly good writers can get away with just the quality of the descriptions and dialogue, but that's like the book equivalent of arthouse cinema.
And then every once in a while you get strong descriptions and dialogue and a strong plot, and it's truly epic.
RIP Robert Jordan. You will be missed.
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@masonwheeler said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
@dkf said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
Particularly good writers can get away with just the quality of the descriptions and dialogue, but that's like the book equivalent of arthouse cinema.
And then every once in a while you get strong descriptions and dialogue and a strong plot, and it's truly epic.
RIP Robert Jordan. You will be missed.
I don't miss the braid tugging and the straightening of skirts.
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@Rhywden *shrug* Every writer has their own quirks. The strength of the story itself was enough to make stuff like that worth looking past.
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@Rhywden said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
I don't miss the braid tugging and the straightening of skirts.
Yeah, I prefer hair pulling and pushing up of skirts.
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@masonwheeler said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
@Rhywden *shrug* Every writer has their own quirks. The strength of the story itself was enough to make stuff like that worth looking past.
I don't know. While I'm sad that Jordan passed on, the later books before Sanderson took over were really trying at times.
I mean, Mat's "escape" had to be the slowest escape ever and got precisely nowhere in the books. There were whole chapters (one might even argue, books) where nothing of consequence happened.
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@Rhywden I once heard someone describe the series as "like Final Fantasy: the first six installments got off to a great start. Then 7 was stupid and pointless, 8 was absolutely horrible, 9 was amazing and possibly the greatest thing ever, and after that nothing really noteworthy happened."
(This was before Sanderson, of course. Pretty much everyone agrees he really improved things when he took over. Although I once heard him say something along the lines of "I hear from a lot of fans how much better they like my version of Mat. I count that as a failure, actually, because I wasn't supposed to be writing a different version of him.")
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@masonwheeler said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
RIP
Robert JordanIain M. Banks. You will be missed.FTFY
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@blek You beat me to this one. Good call.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOhh1zFvXs4
"Here's an idea: Let's install water wheels in urinals so people can charge their phones while they use the restroom."
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@Polygeekery said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
"Here's an idea: Let's install water wheels in urinals so people can charge their phones while they use the restroom."
You're just taking the piss there…
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Most stuff being funded by VC capital are dumb too
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@dkf realistically the amount of electricity out of a water wheel isn't going to charge a phone but collectively it might just reduce the electricity bill for the lighting a tiny amount.
Don't want to pee in the dark...? Pee more!
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@Arantor said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
realistically the amount of electricity out of a water wheel isn't going to charge a phone
Maybe we could harvest the energy of falling turds?
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@Luhmann nah, that'd be a shitty technology.
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I'm not sure if this was crowdfunded, but it's so fucking stupid it just must have been. It's a device that you stuff in your underwear so it can pretend to track your breathing and spam your phone with notifications like "You seem distressed, time to clear your mind?", which is so very much not creepy, I bet less than 50% of the people who were ever involved in this project are child molesters. Half the page reads totally doesn't look like a fucking cult pamphlet. "Over 50 million minutes of calm discovered!"
The one single testimonial on the page also totes doesn't look like there's a hidden plea for help embedded in it somehow. "Spire is one piece of wearable technology that actually benefits you. It's not just there to look pretty or cute or for a novelty. It's there to help you. Utilize it and it will benefit you." - yes, please, I beg of you, utilize it, it will benefit you and they won't sacrifice my child to Belzebub.
Edit:
Spire offers a solution to a very real problem of forgetting to breathe properly.
Apparently, someone was paid actual real world money to write this sentence.
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@blek
They have a future in QA blogging!
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@blek said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
cult
Belzebub
forgetting to breathe properly
It is a tool for hidden daemonic agents - tells them when their human disguise is lacking.
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@dkf said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
@Polygeekery said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
"Here's an idea: Let's install water wheels in urinals so people can charge their phones while they use the restroom."
You're just taking the piss there…
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@blek said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
Spire offers a solution to a very real problem of forgetting to breathe
Very important.
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@another_sam said in Dumb things being crowdfunded.:
Plop