BubbleMonkey

Are you also upset when they do a donation drive and have a pre-article header literally asking for money?

I have a collection of over 80k ebooks. I got most of them in huge download packs decades ago, and removed duplicates. it’s a surprisingly small folder.

I did the math on it long ago and it would take more than 200 years, reading an average of one full book a day, every day, to get through them all.

So I’m happy just knowing that if I get through some of them, it’s better than none of them. Time is limited, make the most of it by doing what sparks joy, and not worrying about what you didn’t get to.

You absolutely must, if you own such a gem, refer to it as the peamobile. Both because it is gloriously whimsical, perfectly matching the aesthetic of the vehicle, and because it just sounds fun in that funny innuendo sort of way.

What I don’t get is how anyone can sleep with anything other than blackout curtains. Even the ambient light from street lights and stuff is too bright for me.

I mean I know people do it, I just don’t understand how.

Keep in mind that all of these could be more or less stopped if there was any real desire to do so.

But there isn’t.

https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/phone-companies-can-filter-out-robocalls-they-just-arent-doing-it/

The nice thing about it is that this isn’t actually heating an area, it heats you and the mattress/blankets around you, basically making a microclimate in your sleepy cocoon. Very very efficient, even if your electric rates aren’t great (mine really aren’t either, but it still barely touches it, they just don’t use a lot of electricity). I put my heated pad under a padded pad to help retain and even out the heat, and it helps a lot.

Happy to help either way! So here’s some more info!

https://electricado.com/how-much-electricity-does-heated-mattress-pad-use/

Most of the below comes from that link-

60-100 watts is roughly average energy use, but you can get lower, and smaller pads will use less.

Energy Cost = (Wattage x Usage Hours) / 1000 x Electricity Rate

For example, let’s assume your heated mattress pad has a wattage of 75 watts, you use it for 8 hours per night, and your electricity rate is $0.12 per kWh. The calculation would be as follows:

Energy Cost = (75 watts x 8 hours) / 1000 x $0.12 = $0.072 per night

For one mattress pad for a 30-day month with the above assumptions, it would run you a whopping $2.16/mth.

Yeah, I’m basically built for tropical environments. I’m cold at 75 unless I have a sweatshirt on. And I still wear that big fuzzy bathrobe through most of summer (I don’t have AC, and never have, but I do have dehumidifiers for when it’s really warm, and that’s generally enough).

Heated mattress pads on my bed and couch, mostly. And a heated chair pad when working. They cost a ton less to run than filling a drafty space with gas-warmed air, and are mostly sufficient. A month of both of the big pads being constantly on, on high, barely touches my electric bill, but my gas bill for heat… I keep it that cold because that’s still around $200 usd/mth. If I bump it to 65/18.3, it shoots up to the $350-400+ range. And since I’m not actually comfortable at 18.3 either (26-33/80-90 is about my sweet spot), might as well just keep it at 15.6 and save the money :)

So those, and fuzzy socks, fuzzy pajama pants, and a fuzzy bathrobe. Maybe a high-heat pad here and there, if I’m feeling luxurious or my back hurts. A friend of mine does something similar, but uses heated vest and socks to take the warm along with (rechargeable ofc).

I really enjoy coconut oil as a rough weather gauge.

I cook with it a lot, but prefer it to be in liquid form for easy measure (which only happens in the warmer bits of summer here), so in winter, I keep a jar of it on top of a particularly warm heat vent.

I keep my place at 60f/15.6c in winter or it costs a fortune to heat. When it’s relatively warm out, the heat doesn’t kick on often enough to melt it, but when it’s real cold/windy the entire thing will be liquid.

Researchers gave some ants stilts, so hey why not spider flip flops?

FOR SCIENCE!!!

https://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects/tiny-stilts-some-ants-amputated-legs-others-heres-why.htm

Edit to add: you could totally put flip flops on these cute paws!!!

Oh that’s a game?

I just do it because I have no idea what they are talking about… ;)

The human brain is fascinating in its ability to play through hypothetical scenarios for preparedness. Nobody has much of a clue how we do it either.

Prepare some side quests to give a potential mate, obviously. Then stand around in a light beam and wait.

ETA:

Well that’s disappointing. But I did a bit more looking and at least it looks like it needs to be actively plugged into something to get information out of. This model year/trim package doesn’t really have, like, stuff? Just Bluetooth, and looks like that’s not useful for anything but audio.

Definitely wish I could entirely disable it, but… is what it is I guess, and at least it’s not phoning that info home, or sending to anyone else.

This is what I found from 2014, so before every car was a full service internet infotainment spyware system on wheels.

https://www.edmunds.com/car-technology/car-black-box-recorders-capture-crash-data.html

How would someone go about finding out if their older car has this?

I have a 2012 Honda civic coupe and I can’t find anything about telemetry, but I doubt that means anything.

If you think your insurance company isn’t selling your data to other companies, you are in for a surprise.

My insurance company, for example, requires so many permissions for their app, just to show my insurance coverage. I refuse to use it because they don’t need my contacts, calendar, use details, phone information, location, network status, and whatever else they are asking for. They have no use for this information, so why would they collect it? Oh right, because they are greedy and consider customers to be multiple revenue streams.

Part of the privacy policy for using the app is agreeing to be a product for them. Hard pass. I give them more than enough money considering they have never paid out a single fucking penny for anything (tho we’ll see how I feel tomorrow when the adjuster comes out to inspect the storm damage to my roof - probably the same.)

If a scammy company like insurance is doing a thing, you can bet they are not being benevolent. They are taking whatever you give them and it will fuck you eventually.

Do you consider carbon neutral/negative(or at least as close as possible) to be environmentally friendly? What about sustainable agricultural practices?

If yes, I bought some coffee from Tiny Footprint coffee, which claims to be carbon negative, allegedly gets coffee from smaller local growers (you can pick the growing conditions you like, so like I got a bunch from women-owned farms), and they are actively trying to restore the areas where they source coffee. Also it’s packed in wax coated paper, and I believe you can buy bulk if you like.

It’s not cheap, and the roasts tend lighter than you’d expect (so imo a medium brews like a light), but it’s really good coffee.

And yeah, I live kinda close to a coffee roaster and it doesn’t smell great at all. If you have a garage, a cheap used oven set up out there might do the trick.

That fucker must have lived in my house with his shitty ideas.

I have a plethora of overhead lighting options that just makes you go “fucking why, though???”. Seriously the place is ancient and used to have gas lamps and a coal chute, so all retrofit, most rooms have two light switch panels with 4-8 switches - the tiny bathroom has 8 switches on 3 panels ffs, but kitchen and living room have -5 panels each- for the overhead lights. Fucking absurd. (And don’t even ask about my breaker box… absolute nightmare. Since stuff is wired into whatever they felt like, the master bedroom shorts out the kitchen 🫠)

I really want to get someone in to rewire… remove all that crap.

Warm lighting fucks up the apparent colors of my walls and makes them look quite sickly, because the colors I have don’t mix well with yellow (ime, most bright colors don’t mix well with warm lights, and my colors specifically are mostly in the blue/purple/red side of the color wheel), so you are incorrect.

It’s all about balance; cool lights don’t need to be as intense for the same apparent lumen result. Or, you know, get a shade. I don’t even own any warm lights anymore, but the only real clue is that my walls are the correct color at night…

Ungh the electricity in wires is killer.

Sometimes it oscillates with my tinnitus, which is super fun…

Then mix that with a brain that MUST process all lines of conversation and various other sensations around it, and you’ve got a recipe for quick overwhelm, and nobody has a clue why I’m suddenly edgy af.