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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • My mother is 84 years of age, and will turn 85 this October. She is the most requested substitute teacher in all 6 districts that she substitute teaches in, to the point that the teachers have a group chat, and a database that allows them to coordinate their days off so that my mother can cover for them.

    From 2020 to 2023 she was known to her students as “Ninja Grandma,” because she had hair the same color that the YouTuber Ninja had at the time. She’s switched to green for the last few years, and said that purple is coming up.

    You are NEVER too old to be yourself, and if your kids are embarrassed, then they aren’t too cool for school.


  • What unhinged take has Hatsune Miku ever made? She seems pretty tame in all the shows that I have seen recordings of. Like basically a barely left US liberal, which tracks for Japanese politics. AKA kinda moderate right wing.

    She doesn’t seem extremist enough to produce an unhinged tankie or fascist talking point.

    The old guy is 30/70 IMHE. Sometimes some shit comes out of old guy’s and gal’s mouth that you just want to smack them for even considering such an extreme, and more likely than not wrong according to the very evidence they are citing, either directly or not, take. More often though, the people that tend to say incindiary shit in public don’t make it that long in life. Either someone smacks them in a way they can’t tank, or their blood pressure smacks them in a way they can’t tank.




  • I think Garfield uses the same, or similar, rules as Calvin and Hobbes. In C&H only Calvin can consistently “hear” Hobbes. The adults and Suzie can only “hear” Hobbes when he says something so obvious that even they would think of it.

    Garfield seems to have similar rules. Garfield can talk to all other animals just fine, except possibly Odie. The only reason Odie is an exception is that Odie seems to never actually “talk” other than the occasional barking episode. Odie also completely ignores, or cannot hear a thing that Garfield is saying.

    But then you get to the humans in Garfield who can sometimes “hear” what Garfield is saying, though normally not the most aggressive stuff he says. I have always maintained that the humans could hear everything that G says, they just ignore most of it.



  • I don’t know if you’re joking or not. I do know that sort of thing does happen in reverse, and likely happened in this case.

    When I was just a wee podling, my father got a job offer from CalComp when I was but a few days old. He was going to be one of their Software Engineer Consultants. They hired a couple of Business Consultants in the first few months of his contract. Those consultants came back to the company with the following report after only two months of looking into the problem.

    [Sic]“Your issue is that you have one major competitor in your field that actually produces an inferior product, but charges 3 times what you are charging. If you increase your price by at least 3.25 times, you will sell these digitizers and tablets faster than you can currently make them. The issue is that corporate consumers are looking at your price point and thinking it is a sub-par cheap product, when you are actually creating a superior product and not padding your profit margins the way Wacom is.” [Sic]

    Obviously I’m far oversimplifying, but that was the bare bones of their report. CalComp went from looking at bankruptcy to being an industry leader for the rest of the '80s and early '90s.

    I cannot prove it, but I suspect this is the sort of result that business consultants not only dream of, but expect is possible in every case they look at.

    My father stayed there for almost the entire 24 month contract that he signed, solving the issues they hired him for after 18 months, at which point he somehow got hired to do the computer graphics on Wargames, and then Tron. I still don’t know why he gave up on the movie industry after that, other than the fact that they didn’t give him another contract immediately.

    Him working on Wargames allowed 2 year old me to visit the set and play hide and seek using the W.O.P.R. with Matt Broderick, Ally Sheedy, and John Wood. Fun fact: the W.O.P.R. is actually a refrigerator box with Christmas lights that a toddler sized person can easily hide in. Though it doesn’t provide sound dampening. Visiting that set also caused me to lose bladder control when MB pulled me out of the box and put me on his lap. I technically peed (my pants, and his) on Matthew Broderick.

    Him working on Tron allowed 3 year old me to go play games with Jeff Bridges, Peter Jurasik, and Bruce Boxlightner. As a Bab 5 fan, I so wish I could remember any of that.