Humor Random Comments Thread

[steph]

Its our real stone age heritage (not that Paleo diet bullshittery): Doing too intensive training feel to our body like we had been running away from a predator or beeing hunting ourselves, and our body in first place expects us to be running again soon, so refueling as quickly as possible is needed: Sugar, Fat, High protein. And as much as possible in a short time.

Can be done on the go as well. I used to do my runs basically 'dry(, only carrying phone, keys, headphones. That changed after a nasty hyperthermia event in summer to include a bottle of water (back in the day, I could take a route that went by, or had a natural spring on a hill as it's turnaround point, so I could refill it there and maybe pause and drink more water on really hot days. But it really is a case of giving the body what it needs asap. Nowadays, I drink some hydrate powder type of thing before running and it actually helps a lot with the run itself. I wouldn't imagine taking anything during my 7min/km 3-4km slogs nowadays, but back when I did run a marathon, I think it was the glucose pills and the hydration that actually made it bearable and manageable. I hit the wall harder during training than during the actual run. Usually I couldn't go past 30km 'dry', even while training for the marathon. Once did 35, but it was grueling. But add some fuel along the way and it all gets better.

Same goes for the bike runs. I sometimes do long cycling trips to the sea. We're talking 80km or more, but I leave at 9am and come back in the evening, so it's manageable. Of course, I used to bring water etc, but that's it. It was a good way to self-sabotage myself into some pretty exhausting stuff, since often enough I arrive there while having to pedal into the wind most of the time, then I stay too long for photos etc, and in the afternoon/evening, the wind dies down and now I'm also facing a long ,steady climb back. So, the trip back usually meant I pedalled on basically low-energy safe mode and ended up getting home at 10-11 PM etc, but actually bringing snacks and putting that hydration powder in water meant that I could actually keep a constant cadence and speed going back, even if not super-fast etc. And that change was noticeable in a timeframe of a week, so it wasn't a case of my legs adapting etc

 

[Arvil]

 

[jedidia]

I learned 3 new words from that. That's honestly not a very common thing to happen on one day...
Though the german translation would suggest that "importunity" is misapplied in this context. I guess I'd need to see a lot more usages of it to develop a feeling for its actual meaning. Big fat chance of that happening...
I do love how "to propound" is essentially a literal translation of the german word "Vorschlagen" (when considering that "pounding something" is synonymous with beating it). And "To vamoose" might be the phonetically most endearing word I've heard since "Shenanigans". At least if it's pronounced the way I'd expect it to be. For which in english there's obviously no guarantee. For all I know it could be pronounced like famous. Or poop. No telling...

It also strikes me as interesting that whoever drew that picture seemed to know the most common way spears were held (both palms in the same direction). You don't see that depicted often nowadays. A drawing depicting cavemen fighting a dinosaur is a really unexpected place to find historical details...

 

[Linguofreak]

I learned 3 new words from that. That's honestly not a very common thing to happen on one day...
Though the german translation would suggest that "importunity" is misapplied in this context. I guess I'd need to see a lot more usages of it to develop a feeling for its actual meaning. Big fat chance of that happening...

It is misapplied, though I had to double-check because it's rare enough that I don't have a great feel for its actual meaning.

I do love how "to propound" is essentially a literal translation of the german word "Vorschlagen" (when considering that "pounding something" is synonymous with beating it).

Actually not. English doesn't tend to mix Latin prefixes with native roots (with a few notable exceptions like "redo"), and "pound" with the meaning "schlagen" is a native Germanic root. It doesn't seem to have survived in other Germanic languages as a verb (a couple Low West Germanic languages have a related noun meaning "debris/fragments"), or in any High West Germanic languages at all (if it existed, the Standard German cognate would be something like *pfunen).

The "pound" in propound is actually Latin "ponere", and the German cognate is "proponieren". While "propound" is not nearly as badly used here as "importunity", of the words used in that comic, it's probably the second-worst fit. I've usually heard it used in the context of setting forth an opinion or ideology. Its meaning-space technically covers the usage seen here, but it sounds very weird.

On a bit of a tangent: I find it highly amusing that German treats the Latin infinitive ending in borrowed verbs as part of the root, resulting in two infinitive endings on the infinitive: "-ieren".

And "To vamoose" might be the phonetically most endearing word I've heard since "Shenanigans". At least if it's pronounced the way I'd expect it to be. For which in english there's obviously no guarantee. For all I know it could be pronounced like famous. Or poop. No telling...

The pronunciation is /væmus/, it's a corruption of Spanish "vamos/vamonos". It's quite amusing here because all the other words are high-register variants of what would more typically be used, whereas vamoose is very informal; it sounds just as silly in this context as "GTFO" (as an unexpanded acronym) would.

It also strikes me as interesting that whoever drew that picture seemed to know the most common way spears were held (both palms in the same direction). You don't see that depicted often nowadays. A drawing depicting cavemen fighting a dinosaur is a really unexpected place to find historical details...

I'm going to estimate that the picture is at least a century older than the speech bubbles.

 

[jedidia]

The pronunciation is /væmus/, it's a corruption of Spanish "vamos/vamonos".

So the stress is on the first syllable? Ach, pitty, it would sound way cuter with the stress on the "moose"...

Actually not.

Yeah, I didn't think it was really. But it's kinda funny that it works as one...

I'm going to estimate that the picture is at least a century older than the speech bubbles.

I had assumed that it was an older image by default, but that old? Well, I guess it might explain why the artist might have known more about how to hold a spear and less about dinosaurs...

 

[Urwumpe]

Is there another way to hold a spear?

 

[MaxBuzz]

ancient man could meet an animal much cooler than a dinosaur
For example Dire wolf Smilodon Megatherium

 

[Urwumpe]

ancient man could meet an animal much cooler than a dinosaur
For example Dire wolf Smilodon Megatherium

Smilodon is wrong. Humans and Smilodon did in reality not share the same habitat, humans arrived much later in america, after the extinction of the Smilodon. Same for terror birds, though there is a possible overlap in Africa.

But we had huge elephants in Europe, that had been even larger than mammoths. And we hunted them. And butchered them professionally, including evidence of job training and specialization.

Straight-tusked elephant - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[jedidia]

Is there another way to hold a spear?

In popular media, I see them most frenquently held with rear palm facing inwards, front palm outwards. It's a grip that was used sometimes, most frequently in certain situations in single combat as far as I can tell, and it does feel somewhat more natural and intuitive at first. Until you have to hold the bloody thing at or over your head and thrust from the top, then it just falls apart horribly.

 

[Kyle_E]

So the stress is on the first syllable? Ach, pitty, it would sound way cuter with the stress on the "moose"...

I can't speak for other parts of the country but I have always heard it pronounced with the stress on the last syllable.

 

[Arvil]

It’s pronounced like ‘vah Moose’ with the accent on the moose, at least in my neck of the woods.

The part that actually caught my eye was the ‘Oh crap! It’s a Thesaurus!’

 

[Urwumpe]

In popular media, I see them most frenquently held with rear palm facing inwards, front palm outwards. It's a grip that was used sometimes, most frequently in certain situations in single combat as far as I can tell, and it does feel somewhat more natural and intuitive at first. Until you have to hold the bloody thing at or over your head and thrust from the top, then it just falls apart horribly.

Thats what I mean: If you just have to hold it, things might look different, but if you have to fight with it, youll stick to the hand placement that you need most of the time anyway. Also, I think the "amateur" placement is inferior, if you have to keep the spear in your hands while stopping an enemy/prey with it. It will simply push it out of your hand.

 

[Linguofreak]

So the stress is on the first syllable? Ach, pitty, it would sound way cuter with the stress on the "moose"...

No, I simply didn't mark stress.

 

[steph]

As they say... You"re born due to broken rubber, you die due to broken rubber' . Could have been true, had it happened earlier, on the expressway. Annoying part is that this one had several pressure losses before this (including one right after being installed) but the garage was like 'nah, all is fine, stuff like this happens. I think a change might be in order, I know someone who experienced brake failure after having his car serviced there . Oh well, at least I changed a tire for the first time in my life
Happened really close to my place, like 200m. Just slowly driving on it until home was quite tempting

 

[Urwumpe]

I would really look for a better mechanic there.

Pressure loss right after being installed is a no-go. You don't even look for the hole then. You take the tire carefully off the car and throw it into the bin.... and install a new one.

I once arrived when the new apprentice at the local village workshop was finishing work on my cars engine and was about to close the hood. Took me only a fraction of a second to notice, that three ignition cables had been in the wrong order and the forth one wasn't even properly plugged in. Luckily, I wouldn't even have made it out of the workshop that way.

 

[Evil_Onyx]

I once took a traction unit in to the vehicle maintenance unit(VMU) at work with two lights out. He changed the bulbs, no luck. He changed the fuse, no change, he then took a screwdriver to the junction box, all the lights stopped working. It got fixed the next day by the senior mechanic, the apprentice learned lots that day. The problem was that a wire had worked loose from its connection, the apprentice was looking at the wrong end of the wire...
Last week I found the same guy under a trailer trying to work out where a fault was in 100m of wiring, most of which is not easily accessible.
I tend to be forgiving towords our mechanics, but always check their work though.

 

[Urwumpe]

I once took a traction unit in to the vehicle maintenance unit(VMU) at work with two lights out. He changed the bulbs, no luck. He changed the fuse, no change, he then took a screwdriver to the junction box, all the lights stopped working. It got fixed the next day by the senior mechanic, the apprentice learned lots that day. The problem was that a wire had worked loose from its connection, the apprentice was looking at the wrong end of the wire...
Last week I found the same guy under a trailer trying to work out where a fault was in 100m of wiring, most of which is not easily accessible.
I tend to be forgiving towords our mechanics, but always check their work though.

My car had a similar problem in the past weeks. It reported that a light bulb has failed, which it really had, and required check, and kept on doing so after I fixed the light and it was working again.... After I ran out of good ideas, I left it to the professionals.

The mechanic I showed the car was as confused as I was.

Solution by the senior mechanic: Car required a firmware upgrade.

 

[steph]

It sounds dumb, but I was fooling around with the now famous Chat GPT AI and I kept getting it to crash by bragging about how 'it' won't ever experience human things like savouring a beer etc ). Still on the waiting list for the Bing. It's a pity, I was hoping to poke around while it's still unhinged
Buuut, the thing knows how to write code. Asked it to design an app that involved object avoidance via the main camera feed for the Mavic Mini, using the DJI SDK, and it started pouring out lines. It stopped short of giving me the whole code, because ' drones can be dangerous' etc, but anyone who knows to code might have had an idea about how the rest would look anyways. Note that, for the Ryze Tello , it absolutely gave the whole code in python, so it 'knows' the difference between that and a quad that can maybe carry some load and go for miles.

@GLS in the video thread gave me an idea to ask it to make mods for Orbiter. That it can't, as in it can only output text, but it could write code, so I asked it to code the aerodynamic handling for the X-33 , based on similar aircraft . This is what it wrote. Perhaps someone who knows coding might shed some light on the quality of it, my coding experience is limited to Pascal, unfortunately.

// Define the X-33 class
class X33: public VESSEL
{
public:
// Constructor
X33(OBJHANDLE hObj, int flightmodel);

// Destructor
~X33();

// Flight model override function
void clbkSetClassCaps(FILEHANDLE cfg);

// Flight model update function
void clbkPreStep(double simt, double simdt, double mjd);

private:
// Private variables for spacecraft dynamics
double mass;
double fuel;
VECTOR3 CoM;
VECTOR3 CoP;
VECTOR3 thrust_vector;
double thrust_magnitude;
double Isp;
double Cd;
double Cl;
double As;
double Ar;

// Private functions for spacecraft dynamics
void update_dynamics(double simt, double simdt);
void compute_forces_moments();
};

void X33::compute_forces_moments()
{
// Calculate current dynamic pressure
double v = length(vel);
double q = 0.5 * rho * v * v;

// Calculate lift and drag coefficients
double alpha = atan2(vel.z, vel.x);
double Cl = Cl0 + Cl_alpha * alpha;
double Cd = Cd0 + Cd_alpha * alpha + Cd_beta * beta * beta;

// Calculate lift and drag forces
double lift = q * As * Cl;
double drag = q * As * Cd;
VECTOR3 lift_vector = lift * normalize(cross(vel, CoP - CoM));
VECTOR3 drag_vector = drag * normalize(-vel);

// Calculate thrust force
VECTOR3 thrust_vector = thrust_magnitude * normalize(orient * thrust_direction);

// Calculate total force and moment vectors
VECTOR3 force_vector = lift_vector + drag_vector + thrust_vector;
VECTOR3 moment_vector = cross(CoP - CoM, force_vector);

// Set forces and moments on vessel
SetForce(force_vector);
SetMoment(moment_vector);
}

 

[GLS]

@GLS in the video thread gave me an idea to ask it to make mods for Orbiter. That it can't, as in it can only output text, but it could write code, so I asked it to code the aerodynamic handling for the X-33 , based on similar aircraft . This is what it wrote. Perhaps someone who knows coding might shed some light on the quality of it, my coding experience is limited to Pascal, unfortunately.

Seems OK after a quick look... it's missing the actual numbers, and it used VESSEL instead of VESSEL4, but on the other hand it wrote comments, so that already makes it better than 95% of programmers...

 

[Urwumpe]

Actually, if you read carefully over it, a mandatory callback function for VESSEL2 (or newer) is missing and the function snippets are loose ends that are never called. Also it uses a very weird and likely useless definition of propellant handling and thruster definitions.

The clbk* functions are not called by Orbiter if it is VESSEL.