heavyboots

joined 2 years ago
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[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago

That would be the dumbest thing he could possibly do to himself. Honestly I hope he is smarter than that because Putin would turn him upside down and shake him until every last nickel falls out of his pockets, and put it all into the war effort against the Ukraine.

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

"Agreed" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting here. Like for values of a long, drawn out war and slaughter coast to coast with many, many broken promises…

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago

Nope, nope, nope. It's not like I was ever a Telegram fan, but never again, nope.

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Humorous rogue cyborgs aren't super common, alas. The tongue-in-cheek humor of it reminds me of Stainless Steel Rat a bit, and occasionally Larry Niven's stuff too. His Gil Hamilton character is pretty droll at times, and it comes through in some of his short stories about him. (For pure humor from Niven, try "The Flight of the Horse".)

You might try Strata by Terry Pratchett, which is a bit in both camps? It's a one-off, but a lot of fun. Can't say it has anything at all to do with rogue cyborgs though.

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

Egads, I was unaware that was as thing too. That's even stupider!

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I feel like that was an engineered perception based in a vocal group of idiots, TBH. I played the second game at launch and it rocked me to my core. The story was strong in my opinion.

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Pedro and Bella had good chemistry. Bella without Pedro? Not so much most of the time. Which is really frustrating because occasionally Bella shows a flash of brilliance and you’re like “OK, she can act.” But too many times Isabela has had to carry the scenes it feels like.

And Abby… I know they have said she doesn’t need to be physically jacked for the TV show, but I’m sorry, I am not really buying it. No offense to the actress they did choose, just not working in this particular role for me at all.

Having said all that, I am still basically enjoying Season 2? A lot of it is really well done, TBH. Just suffering from some unfortunate character dynamics that I think have disappointed a lot of viewers more than me apparently.

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

400 Boys was decent, I chuckled at Close Encounters and I did quite enjoy How Zeke Got Religion despite the whole WW2 bombers thing being pretty tired as a trope. The rest of them were pretty unmemorable, alas.

I was especially disappointed at Spider Rose? I don't know how that story didn't hit harder since Sterling is one of my favorite authors.

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean I’ve been using DuoLingo for like a decade (only paid the last 2 years) and it’s been very useful until now.

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I'll be looking for a new Spanish app when my subscription expires next year now, alas.

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

Honestly I have used Blue Sky and Mastodon and Mastodon feels a lot more elegant to me, personally.

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 36 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (33 children)

What I don't get is why anyone would ever choose commercial social media again given there are Activity Pub clones for practically everything now, where you aren't the product. So many people learned nothing from the ongoing Twitter debacle and the zillion Facebook privacy scandals apparently.

 

From the link, which is terribly presented…

Join Pima Animal Care Center’s clinic staff as they bring their mobile medical unit, Karen’s Karing Van, to Summit Park, 1800 E Summit Street, to provide FREE services on May 1, 2, and 3! (7am to 2pm)

Available services:

On May 1: Check-in beginning at 7 a.m. (40 spots available): Spay/neuter, vaccines, and microchips. Large-breed female dogs will get first priority; other pets will be accepted based on availability.

On May 1, 2, and 3: From 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. (150 spots available each day): Vaccines, microchips, and wellness exams.

Vaccines provided will be FVRP and rabies for cats and DHPP and rabies for dogs.

This event is for Pima County residents only. Cats should be in carriers and dogs should be on leash. There is no limit to the number of pets one person or family can bring, but please be aware that you will be waiting in line and only bring the number of animals you can safely handle in that scenario.

Please plan to arrive early and wait in line.

 

Just Bel doing Bel things. I nearly pulled something laughing at this one, though. 😹

11
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by heavyboots@lemmy.ml to c/printsf@lemmy.ca
 

Neal Asher has a new book out called Dark Diamond. The dedication page in it is quite frankly pretty horrifying.

Five years ago, I watched the two Falcon Heavy side boosters come into land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base. Honestly, it was like something in a game animation and seemingly too perfect to be believable. Others, I've seen landing on drone ships with names taken from lain M. Banks' Culture books. Just recently, I saw a huge booster for the Starship come down to be caught between two metal arms - y'know, they caught something the size of a skyscraper like a dropping stick - and that was an astounding feat of engineering. But these are not in isolation, since SpaceX, as of last month, has launched over a hundred rockets in 2024.

Meanwhile, the guy who brought this about, the guy who is aiming to make humanity multi-planetary by putting us on Mars, has a few other projects on the go, like building electric cars, burrowing tunnels under cities, putting up a satellite internet system and, perhaps the most important of them all, preventing the totalitarians of our world from killing free speech.

So thank you, Elon Musk, for bringing to reality, right before my eyes, those things I read and dreamed about as a teenager.

That… is a REALLY unfortunate, given Musk's apparent aspirations to be a Culture-level Bad Guy™. It's like Asher's paid absolutely zero attention to the fact that the Starlink is considered pollution on a massive scale, from an astronomy perspective and numerous environmental aspects. And that Elon's Boring Company is widely acknowledged to have been a ploy to stop Cali from approving light rail projects. And that his purchase of Twitter was in fact a splurge to destroy a free speech platform and bend it to be another disinformation platform instead. Yuck.

I should add that while I personally don't really enjoy Asher's books all that much to begin with, I was utterly unaware of his politics until now. I will strongly recommend against him going forward, much like I do with Orson Scott Card, despite an extreme fondness for some of Card's earlier works.

Do you guys worry much about the politics of the authors you enjoy, or is it more of a me thing?

 

Everybody get out there and enjoy! Looks like cooler weather ahead too, so should be a great day for it.

1
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by heavyboots@lemmy.ml to c/tucson@lemmy.ml
 

Tuesday was the last recommended day to mail ballots back, so if you mail it now, it might not arrive in time to be counted.

You can drop it at any polling place in the sealed, signed and dated inner ballot envelope. (Outer envelope is not required for this activity.)

Credit to u/SubGothius on Reddit; just cc'ing this info on here for anyone that needs it.

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