Have never dipped tobacco, but I can do the motion you’re describing, if I pinch my thumb and middle finger together so that my index finger hits them it makes a pretty solid thwack sound
Can only do it with my right hand though, my left index finger just doesn’t go limp enough or have the same range of motion or something
Civilian side radio users, like fire, ems, or police, have a different one
911 dispatcher here- pretty much everywhere around me uses the NATO phonetics, except one neighboring county that I’m pretty sure doesn’t use any sort of standardized phonetics at all, or at least their officers and dispatchers and such can’t be bothered to use it.
Things aren’t totally standardized across the country though, different 10-codes (or no 10-codes at all,) different terminology, different phonetic alphabets, etc.
There’s some old timers around my county who have been around forever who tend to fall back into other systems from time to time, or people occasionally have a brain fart and have to spit out something different on the spot.
I’m pretty sure APCO at least strongly recommends using the NATO alphabet.
Even if they’re trained on the same data, and I suspect they are, why maintain 2 unfathomably large and probably very similar sets of data
It still might be doing it on its own based on its own internal logic
Like maybe it’s worked out that users who use miles expect the conversation to proceed in a different way than users who use kilometers and is tailoring its responses to fit those expectations.
Not that I’m ruling out that it’s something deliberately coded into it by a longshot, just kind of pointing out another possibility
But both options are terrifying when you think about them.
Camille Saint-Saëns- Danse Macabre
Communism takes this idea and applies it to all companies in all industries. ie, the government has oversight on all companies
Except Communism is supposed to be stateless, there wouldn’t really be any sort of central government to have oversight over anything.
I wish I still had it, but circa 2009 I was in high school taking a web design class, one of our projects was to design a website for an amusement park, being a bunch of nerds in a programming class, we had some pretty weird ideas for parks, mine was MemeLand
Off the top of my head
The front gate was a big circle being held open by 2 hands (goatse, if you’re not familiar I recommend not googling that)
There was a picture on the wall of shame at the entrance saying that Milhouse was not permitted (Milhouse is not a meme)
The tallest roller coaster was the Longcat
A leekspin Ferris wheel
A petting zoo full of cats, mudkips, badgers, and other meme critters
A chocolate rain log flume ride
The RickRollerCoaster
A dark ride “Queen Boxxy’s Castle”
There was a drop tower sort of ride sunken into a deep hole called THIS IS SPARTA
A gravitron ride sponsored by Blendtec
One of the food options available in the park was NONE Pizza with Left Beef.
Bawls was the only beverage option.
I made eagle a little over a decade before you did
I think there’s probably a few different aspects to this question that need to be answered.
Overall, I’m a big fan of the sorts of programs and methods that scouting uses. The idea of boys teaching/leading boys (or I suppose maybe it’s youths leading youths or something now that girls are part of the program, which I fully support btw) is huge and teaches valuable skills on how to work with others and how to be in a leadership role, how to work with other people and their strengths and weaknesses, how to give and take instructions, how to be a part of an organization, budgeting, etc.
It teaches and gives actual hands-on experience with a lot of valuable skills- first aid, cooking, tying knots, using tools, building and fixing things, etc. that a lot of people never bother to learn.
It gets kids out in nature so they can learn how to respect enjoy, and appreciate it.
It also gives them a lot of other opportunities to see and experience different things, different hobbies, different careers, different places, activities etc. and gets them off of their phones and other devices and outside being active.
It gets kids involved with community service and helping others, and helps teach them the roles they need to play as citizens of the world, their country and community.
And it’s a great opportunity to make friends, I’m not necessarily close to or even in regular contact with the rest of the guys from my troop, but I am close with some of them, and I’m confident that any one of the rest of them would gladly help me with anything I needed if they are at all able to. It’s also a great networking opportunity, a fair amount of my closest friends are fellow eagle scouts from other places, it’s something to bond over.
And in general, it helps make well-rounded, functional adults out of kids. There are of course other ways they can develop those skills, and have those experiences, I won’t say that scouting is for everyone, but for those who do match up with it, it’s a great way to get all of that experience in one place.
Things I’m less a fan of, and a lot of this is going to come back up in the rest of this comment as well
The BSA is a somewhat conservative organization. “God” is in the scout oath, and technically there’s a religious requirement to be a member. There’s also definitely a patriotic and semi-militaristic aspect to it, lots of saluting the flag, reciting the pledge, uniforms, etc.
The BSA does have ties to the military, the NRA, and other organizations I don’t particularly care for, and the national organization where the overall direction and policies are set so those grievances I have basically come down from there.
They’ve been slow to change with the times, it took far too long to allow LGBTQ scouts and leaders, the religious requirement needs to go, girls probably should have been included in the program from the beginning, etc.
They definitely mishandled the sex abuse issue for far too long.
The current leadership are spineless cowards who have shown willingness to give into the current administration.
But a lot of that is happening at arms-length from the day-to-day scouting experience, which brings me to…
A lot of your scouting experience will vary depending on where you are in the country. My local council was pretty cool, others not so much. They actually tried to allow gay scouts back in the 90s but were made to stop by the national organization. Overall they made a solid attempt at insulating us from the worst of national’s bullshit.
Not that they were perfect, there’s definitely room to criticize how they handled the sex abuse issue at their level as well, there were some instances in my area where that happened,
My troop was pretty great. We had no abuse issues. We paid some lip service to the religious requirement but it was never really harped-on. My leaders had pretty diverse political philosophies running almost the whole political spectrum. One of them was, if not quite openly gay, didn’t exactly try very hard to hide that fact. He was also very active at our district and council level, so again, locally they were pretty willing to bend the rules when it made sense.
And I think that’s something important I took away from it- that some rules should and others should not be bent. I actually first learned the term “plausible denial” from one of my leaders. They absolutely never compromised on policies that could put us in any danger. Part of the policy was 2-deep leadership, where no youth should ever be alone with an adult leader, and they absolutely kept to that without exception.
And when we did something stupid and dangerous, they would absolutely read us the riot act.
But the BSA has some weird rules about, for example , things like paintball, airsoft, and I think even laser tag, basically anything where you’re pointing a “gun” at another person. So if we found ourselves somewhere where that was an option, our leaders would say their piece about the BSA not permitting that activity, and then make sure to be nowhere near that activity so they wouldn’t see us if we chose to ignore that stupid rule.
And they knew their scoutcraft inside and out, and made sure we did as well. As I got older, I started to appreciate that they were basically just scouts who also got older. You could see that little mischievous glint in their eyes when they got to set something on fire or so something fun with an axe.
But not all troops are created equal, some are kind of eagle factories that forscus more on just rushing kids through the requirements to get eagle over actually putting on a good program. Some get byble-thumpy, or weird in other ways. Some just lack resources, money, equipment, knowledge, membership, etc. to put on a good program.
The girl scouts can actually put on a really cool program. I’ve seen girl scout troops that went far harder than my own troop did. When I did northern tier (a boy scout program canoeing in northern Minnesota/Canada) we crossed paths with some girl scouts doing a similar program, who were going further and longer than we were, and had heavier gear than we did. I’ve seen girl scouts backpacking along the Appalachian trail, some of their service projects put ours to shame.
But most girl scout troops, unfortunately, aren’t that. And a big part of it is that a lot of the troops are kind of temporary.
My troop is coming up on its 100 year anniversary in a year or two, and still going strong. Some of the leaders and committee members have been involved in the troop since before I joined, there are some 2nd and I think even 3rd generation eagle scouts whose father and grandfather earned eagle from the same troop. They have a garage full of gear, generations of experience on how to run a scouting program, money in the bank, a library of just about every merit badge book ever written, 2 offices dedicated to their own exclusive use in their charter organization’s building (a very liberal Lutheran Church with a gay pastor) and if all the leaders were to drag out every canoe, kayak, row boat, fishing boat, etc. they owned, it would probably put some countries’ navies to shame.
Not to mention ongoing recruitment efforts in schools and such. We had new kids joining every year even as older kids were aging out of the program.
Girl scout troops kind of tend to form from scratch when the girls are daisy or brownie aged, and tend to be just that one group of girls until they all either age out or quit.
So you lose out on the older kids helping to run the program and teach and lead the younger kids, because they’re all pretty much the same age.
And, at least 20 or so years ago, it could be hard to find an existing troop to join if you wanted to. I know there were some occasions my troop wanted to extend invites to other local organizations to take part in events we were doing, other troops are easy to find, the BSA has a website where you can find a local unit, their meeting schedule and contact info. At least back then, there wasn’t anything comparable for girl scouts, and even when we tried reaching out to their council we couldn’t get that info. If you didn’t already know who the local girl scout troops were and how to get ahold of them, you were SOL.
And you also don’t get those years and generations of built up knowledge and resources to pull from, which is part of why so many of them are so dependent on cookie sales to fund their program (not that there isn’t valid criticism of how the cookie money gets distributed and used)
And, a lot of times, the leaders tend to be the girls’ moms, and the sad truth is, a lot of women didn’t get the same opportunities to learn outdoors skills that a lot of men do, which further limits what they can do.
I’ve also heard, but can’t confirm, that some of their adult leader training is a bit excessive. Like there might be a training you have to do to take the troop camping, and another training if you want to have a campfire, and still another if you want to go on a hike or go fishing, etc. and I also remember hearing that you have to pay for all of those classes. Take that with a grain of salt, because I don’t have any firsthand experience with that.
But overall, when it’s run well, I do like what I’ve seen of the girl scout organization, and I like their values a little better than the BSA, they’re a bit more liberal.
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Long story short, I like the overall aims and methods of scouting. I have a lot of criticism of the organization overall. If I had kids, I’d hope they’d want to be in scouts but I’d also be a little choosey about which troop they joined.
I have you tagged as “thinks people can’t ride bikes”
So not sure you have a whole lot of room to talk there
Apparently there used to be Halloween packs of Pokemon cards that my friend would give out for trick or treaters, I don’t know the details if they were cheaper or smaller than a regular pack or just Halloween-themed, or what exactly their deal was, I just know that they’re a thing that exists
By they couldn’t get their hands on them this year. I don’t know if they discontinued them, or if someone snatched them all up, but in either case I’m pretty sure the current pokemon card investment bullshit is to blame.
And I think that’s a real shame, it sounds like a fun thing to give out or at least have as an option for the kids that are into pokemon, and probably appreciated by kids who maybe have food allergies and such and cant really enjoy the candy everyone else is giving out.
Some sort of Europa probe perhaps? Drill a hole through the ice and slurp up some of that liquid water underneath.
…solar punk…
I’ve been reading it as slurp-nik in my head
I find that there’s a pretty wide range in matcha quantity, and the stuff that’s actually really good is going to cost an arm and a leg, and it’s probably become a victim of its own popularity, to satisfy the demand they’re just importing more lower quality matcha.
The first time I tried it was probably like 15 years ago, I grabbed a little tin from a fancy grocery store on a whim that I think I remember costing about $20 and probably had less than an ounce of powder in it. And that stuff was really good. I then got a bigger bag of cheaper stuff somewhere and it tasted like straight-up swamp water. Most of what’s out there now that you’ve probably tried is somewhere in between. I don’t mind it, but it’s not good enough for me to want to seek it out, and the good stuff is hard to find and probably even more expensive these days.
And to make matters worse, I don’t think there’s really any official standardized grading or labeling for it, so it’s kind of hard to figure out what you’re getting, you might see things like “Ceremonial grade” thrown around, but that’s pretty much just a meaningless marketing term.
Almost Human
It wasn’t exactly breaking new ground, the writing and such wasn’t the greatest, but it was all good enough, and better than a lot of other shows out there, and I was definitely enjoying it enough to see where they went with it in season 2
Years later after I met my wife, I discovered that she felt the same way about it.
And I have a sneaking suspicion that someone at Quantic Dream felt the same way too and that’s how Detroit: Become Human came to be.
You may want to reconsider using “whoresons” as an insult while trying to defend sex workers. Kind of sends a bit of a mixed message.