*Arlo

But yeah, the movie was pretty bad. It’s based somewhat on real events but with a lot of made up shit thrown in that Arlo himself didn’t like. The real-life Alice actually just died a few weeks ago.

FYI, duck hunt was an NES game, which was an 8 bit console, the SNES was Nintendo’s 16 bit generation

On further research, you are correct. I’ve heard the thing about it being deductible for the business repeated enough that I thought it was true. Guess that’s just a reminder to always be fact-checking. I will be editing my comment accordingly. I do feel like the rest of my comment still has some value on how to determine whether it’s worth it or not.

Thank you for pointing out my wrongness.

How are we defining “worth it?”

Yes, the business can claim it as a deduction on their taxes. If it’s a business you like, maybe that’s a good thing, if it’s not then that may be a bad thing. Does the money that goes to charity outweigh whatever harm may come from that company paying less in taxes? I don’t know if there’s any good way to objectively say that.

You don’t really get much say in which charity that money goes to, it’s just going to whatever charity that company has chosen to partner with. Some charities can be kind of sketchy, not all of them are on the up-and-up. If it’s a cause you care about, you may be better off just donating directly yourself to a charity you trust.

Now your individual contributions doing this are really a drop in the bucket, let’s say you go to a store and donate at checkout 3 times a week, and since you’re rounding up to the nearest dollar, you’re donating a max of $1 × 3x a week × 52 weeks a year = a maximum donation of $156 dollars a year donated by rounding, probably going to several different charities, and realistically you’re probably donating about half of that unless you have some real OCD about your purchases being even dollar amounts, so probably about $78/year divided up among however many different charities the various places you shop at are involved with.

Now of course you’re not the only person making those donations at any given store, each store is probably making hundreds or thousands of dollars in donations between all of their customers rounding up their checks.

Unless you’re really struggling, you’re probably not going to miss the maybe $100 or so that get siphoned off from you making these donations spread out over a whole year.

Can you Deduct those donations from your own taxes? I’m genuinely not sure, my gut says no, but let’s say you can. Do you think that $100 or so + whatever other deductable expenses you have in a year are going to beat the standard deduction? If it does, then sure, feel free to save those receipts and try to add it all up, that sounds like more trouble than it’s worth to me, but maybe it’s worth it for your purposes, there’s a lot of different tax situations I won’t pretend to know for certain.

Are those charitable donations going to improve your life? That’s hard to say, I don’t know your life.

For the US, I’d say a pretty strong contender is Woodstock, NY, with a population of around 6,000, and of course famous for the music festival of the same name (even though the actual festival was something like 60 miles away in Bethel)

My friend and her husband got a switch back when it first launched, I had heard about this and so the next time I was over I asked if they’d licked one yet.

He said they hadn’t, and he also denied my request to lick one.

When he left the room, his wife got a mischievous look in her eye and asked if I wanted to lick one.

I of course took her up on her offer and tasted a cartridge while he wasn’t looking.

I asked if she had tried one, and of course she had.

They’re both cool people, but of the two of them she’s definitely my partner in crime.

It depends a bit on what you mean by “stealing”

If you were to break into the coke vault, hack into their computers, threaten or blackmail a coke executive, etc. in order to obtain it, those would all be illegal acts on their own.

But if you reverse-engineered the recipe yourself, or just happened to come across it in some legal fashion you could do pretty much whatever you want with it- publish the recipe, make your own cola and sell it (can’t call it “coca-cola” or “Coke” though because of trademarks and such,) try to sell the recipe to one of Coke’s competitors, etc.

Anyone with the recipe is going to have a hell of a time trying to do anything with it though because one of the ingredients is allegedly still coca leaf extract and coke is pretty much the only entity that is allowed to do anything with the stuff.

My friend forgot their umbrella at the office.

They nervously answered the phone.

They’re a lazy motherfucker.

I gave my friend a hug and wished them a speedy recovery.

Any of those sound unusual, or like they’re referring to more than one person?

Is not potato man, is secret police. Such is life.

It’s been a long time and I’m not sure of it’s current state, but some friends and I used to have a blast play Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator (I think there’s a couple other games out there now that are similar)

You kind of need the right setup for it to work well, a big TV or projector you can hook up to a computer and everyone needs their own laptop, etc.

The basic idea is- picture the bridge of the enterprise (or your starship of choice) you’ve got a bunch of people with their own consoles responsible for different aspects of the ships operation, the helm, engineering, weapons, etc. That’s what you’re doing.

I think at some point they added support for support fighters and such to accompany the main starship so if you have more people they have something to do.

We also made up a couple extra positions, like a captain who didn’t really have his own console, he just got his own chair front and center and a fancy hat and gave out orders.

My dog likes to steal things when we’re out of the house and leave them on the stairs or on our bed.

She’s not a breed that’s known for having a particularly soft mouth, their claim to fame is probably the opposite if anything (malinois) so it’s kind of impressive when I find an avocado or a martini glass somewhere unexpected without even the slightest bruise.

We joke that they’re her “emotional support objects.”

Thank you, I think the whole situation around the falklands/malvinas is pretty interesting.

A few years back I remember stumbling into a conversation on Reddit about them and realized I didn’t really know much about them, not a topic that’s covered in much detail if at all in American schools. Pretty much all of my knowledge of it was from a few passing references from British media, and nothing in depth at that, just that such and such person/character had been in the war and that’s about it. So I decided to do a little research on the matter.

I figure there’s probably more than a few people who are similar boat as me who could use a quick primer on the situation, so I try to spread that knowledge when I can.

So here’s a little brief history of the falklands that I’ve posted before that people seem to usually enjoy. I’m no historian or anything of the sort, so take my thoughts on this for what it’s worth (and I am certainly biased being an American, don’t exactly get a whole lot of Argentinian history books to study, and most of the Spanish I know is food-related, so if someone wants to enlighten me more on the Argentinian side of things, I welcome the education.) I’m aiming as much to keep this fun and light-hearted as I am for historical accuracy.

In general my understanding is that the British were the first people to land there, didn’t really do much with it at that time, and pretty much just said “finders keepers” then left.

Maybe worth noting, there were no indigenous inhabitants there, so that’s probably about as ethical as colonization can get.

Then France showed up and set up shop since the British weren’t doing anything with it. Britain came back and also set up shop, and it’s not totally clear if either of them even knew the other was there. France eventually decided to fuck off, and let Spain have their bit of the Falklands.

Spain and Britain coexisted for a while, had some scuffles, but more or less worked things out. Eventually Britain pulled out to focus on other things but still considered their “finders keepers” claim to be valid.

Spain eventually pulled out as well, so for a little while no one was really doing much of anything with it officially.

Argentina (technically Buenos Aires at the time if we want to split hairs, I’m going to just use Argentina and Britain to keep the sides easy to follow) comes along, and decides it’s theirs, since they split off from Spain they figure they get the falklands as part of the package since Spain was claiming ownership at the time, although Brittain was still holding to their “finders keeps” claim, Spain and later Argentina basically just countered with “losers weepers” and this is basically the root of the whole conflict.

Put a little more professionally, basically Britain’s claim is they were there first and that claim has always been valid whether they were doing anything with the Islands or not. Argentina’s claim is that Brittain pulled out they left the islands up for grabs, and since Spain was the last country trying to do anything with them, it belongs to them since they’re laying claim to Spain’s former holdings in the region.

Argentina gave some German dude permission to set up a colony for them there to fish and hunt feral cows. Eventually he gets into a fight with an American navy captain over fishing and hunting rights, Captain America kicks their ass a bit and declares the colonial government disolved, and pretty much continues on his merry way. Argentina tries to get things there started back up again but never quite gets their shit back together in the Falklands. A little while later the Brits come back around, still claiming finders keepers, and take charge of everything again, and this time the colonies stick and continue to grow. Argentina spends the next hundred years or so muttering “this is bullshit” to themselves.

Around the 1960s, Britain starts talking about decolonizing, it was kind of all the rage among the European colonial powers at the time, and Argentina gets excited thinking they’re going to finally get the Falklands. Britain even quietly floats the idea of giving them the islands, figuring the Islanders would just kind of accept that decision if it was made, and running these islands from halfway around the world was getting kind of expensive. Turns out though that pretty much everyone on the Falklands is pretty damn happy to be British subjects (sort of a novel experience for Britain, historically not many British colonies have been happy to be British colonies, hell, half of Brittain proper sometimes isn’t too happy to be part of Britain) and don’t really want to be part of Argentina, which made things a bit complicated, and Britain needed some time to figure things out.

Argentina gets kind of impatient with all of this, and eventually decided “fuck it, we’ll just take them ourselves.” Britain cannot abide Argentina’s inability to wait patiently in the queue and was starting to really wrap their heads around the idea that the Falklands would rather stay part of Britain, and so we get the Falklands war.

Britain wins, Argentina goes back to muttering to themselves, and that pretty much brings us up to the present day.

You need to do yourself a favor and go get yourself a proper frying pan/skillet. It doesn’t need to be an expensive or nice one, but if you don’t have one that can fit a few hot dogs, your kitchen is way under equipped.

What you’re most likely looking for is amateur (ham) radio. The exactly regulations will vary by country, usually there’s some sort of testing/licensing required (at least if you want to transmit, you can listen without a license)

I didn’t look too far into it but it looks like the app you linked is basically a tool to let you use your phone as a controller for other radio equipment. You’d probably need to be licensed to actually use it, and there’s a good chance the equipment needed is pretty pricey. Ham equipment can kind of run the gambit from handhelds that run from about $20 up to thousands of dollars depending on what you want to do with it. You’re probably better off starting with some more standard equipment before you start trying to rig together other stuff controlled by an app.

There’s a lot of info out there for free on the internet and plenty of books have been written about how radio, so there’s a lot of resources out there to learn from, or if there’s a radio club in your area (there usually is) you can show up to a meeting and ask some questions.

Assuming you’re in the US (different countries again have different laws) there’s a few other radio options if all you want is to talk to people who are local to you. You can get a CB radio (think Smokey & the Bandit or truckers talking to each other) some places have more or less people actually using CB radio. The range and capabilities are more limited than a lot of ham options, but you can usually count on a few miles of range, and sometimes it’s nice to get a heads up from truckers about traffic issues and speed traps and such. I personally like to use them with friends in different cars when we’re on a road trip.

There’s also FRS radios, you can pick them up pretty cheap at Wal Mart, pretty basic walkie talkies.

Many of those FRS radios are also GMRS radios, there’s a GMRS license needed to use the GMRS capabilities, not test, just a licensing fee, so that’s something to be aware of.

MURS radios also exist, I honestly don’t know too much about it, but it’s another free, no-license radio service you can use.

Each of those have their own limitations and restrictions on what you can do with them, but in probably 99% of cases you’re probably not gonna run afoul of the law if you don’t try to modify the radio or do something obviously stupid and use it in a way that’s not interfering with other people’s uses.

If you have enough people, bulldozers, and money to throw at the problem, sure.

Does Israel have that available? I can’t really say.

Some of the things that would factor into how many people, bulldozers, and money you’d need to do so

How big of a city?

What kind of construction are we dealing with?

How much are we willing to ignore worker safety and such?

How much of that city has already been partially demolished by other means the time the bulldozers get there?

How bulldozed does it need to be? There’s a spectrum here that goes from something “crashing a bulldozer into every building enough times to make it unlivable” to “everything completely leveled, and all the debris cleaned up, neatly pushed into piles, loaded into trucks, buried, etc.” Do we need to bulldoze the entire city? Or just most of it? Or maybe just enough that pretty much every block is looking pretty wrecked? Or maybe just all of the structures and we can leave parks, parking lots, streets, and other open spaces intact?

Do we have to be picky about using specifically bulldozers? If the end result is essentially the same, you could also use excavators, guys with sledgehammers, cranes, wrecking balls, explosives, airstrikes, artillery fire, etc. there’s plenty of other options to work into the mix if we don’t limit ourselves to just bulldozers.

I’m a 911 dispatcher

Was once at a party where a motorcycle crashed right outside.

By the time I got outside, 911 had already been called, my friend was already performing CPR. I know he’s been trained, so I let him keep at it, made sure he was doing it right, counted with him to keep time, and basically repeated the same CPR script I’ve given over the phone countless times and stood by in case he got tired and needed me to take over.

EMS shows up, as they’re running over with their equipment they tell my friend to get the guys shirt open, he starts undoing buttons, I tell him to just pop them, a couple lost buttons are the least of this guys problems, and every second counts.

I’m 99% certain this guy was dead the moment he hit the ground, but regardless of what the outcome was (I’ll probably never know and am OK with that, I’m used to that from my job, after I hang up with my caller I often don’t get much if any follow-up on how a call turns out,) if you’re going to crash a motorcycle and go into cardiac arrest, short of doing it outside an ER, you can’t do much better than the house with a 911 dispatcher and counting myself and my friend who was doing CPR, no fewer than 4 eagle scouts.

There were a handful of bystanders pulled over not doing much of anything but standing around. I got the impression that they were already there not being particularly helpful when my friend started doing CPR. Looked like the kinds of guys who fancy themselves to be real rugged tough guys, driving big trucks and whatnot. The bystander effect was on display there. I’m pretty sure one of them was the person who called 911, which means they didn’t really check on the guy, because if they had they would have been on the phone with one of my coworkers getting CPR instructions and doing it themselves. Remember that people don’t usually rise to the occasion, they fall to their level of training.

It seems like OP is probably pushing a bit of an agenda here (maybe a good one, maybe a bad one depending on where you land on the whole Israel situation, I’m not gonna go into that right now) but in case you’re just out of the loop

There’s recently been some incidents in Lebanon where pagers and radios have been exploding. Not just defective Samsung Note battery bursting-into-flames exploding, but packed full of actual explosives, detonating, and killing people exploding

Long story short, Israel intercepted a shipment of these devices going to Hezbollah, and planted remote triggered bombs in them.

And some people are concerned about this, and probably rightly so, first of all these pagers have caused some collateral damages, killing and hurting bystanders. Secondly, we don’t exactly know how widespread this has been- are there other people out in Lebanon or other parts of the world walking around with literal bombs in their pocket? What if those devices get lost, stolen, sold/traded in? What if the target had been onboard a plane or something when the pager detonated? What if the bomb doesn’t go off as intended- is it gonna go off in a trash truck, recycling facility, or incinerator when they decide to get rid of it?

I consider myself to be a fairly tech literate person. Not a professional, but better than average. The guy my family comes to to troubleshoot computer problems, basic working understanding of programming and networking but not nearly enough to do it professionally.

I think you’re shooting too high on some of these.

Basic hardware is good, but don’t spend too much time on it or go into too much detail, just kind of basic overviews. Boot chain is probably pushing it, but basic overview of operating systems is good.

I probably wouldn’t go so far as having them install their own Linux distro, that feels like you want to take a week of your class time to troubleshoot all the potential issues that come up, if you do it on school computers you’re probably looking at a nightmare getting that cleared by your IT department, and if it’s their personal devices you’re probably going to catch an earful from some parents for messing up their/their kids computer.

I do think it’s a good idea to have some computers running Linux for them to use so they can see what it’s like, and probably some macs too, I’m not an apple guy but there’s a lot of them out there and people should be at least a little familiar with both.

I don’t know what the current state of things in schools is, but you can certainly hand out some flash drives, but there’s a decent chance they already have some. I know over a decade ago when I was in high school pretty much all of us were already carrying around flash drives.

Programming is good to introduce them to, python is a solid choice, but unless these are kids who are pretty sure they want to go into computer science I wouldn’t go too deep. It’s not a particularly useful language for actual usage but I think that BASIC still has a useful role as a way to teach the fundamentals of programming to people in an accessible way to see if they may want to pursue it further. I know programmers hate it, but visual basic is also kind of satisfying because it makes it pretty easy to crank out something that looks like an actual finished product.

I’d keep networking pretty straightforward. Network stack and OSI are probably a little too high level to go into, but basics about WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, routers, switches, firewalls, etc. are good to know.

Basic typing and general computer use are probably something a lot of kids could use some work on. A lot of kids these days have a lot less experience with keyboard and mouse computer use thanks to smartphones and tablets. Don’t shun the touchscreen devices though, they’re more powerful than a lot of people give them credit for, and since that’s the way technology is trending figure out how to push the borders on what you can do with them.

I haven’t, but I live in PA, so we have scrapple which sounds pretty similar.