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Da5id Weatherwax

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Everything posted by Da5id Weatherwax

  1. Da5id Weatherwax
    Remember that the "height" in the appearance editor understates your actual av height. Measure it with a prim scaled from your head to your toes you can be as much as 25% taller than you think you are. There's also something about mesh - when I upload something that an avatar is supposed to use. I'm scaled to my RL "prim height" but when I upload a mesh in "RL scale" it reports its dimensions accurately in the editor but I still have to scale it up by a little bit for it to look right with my avatar. oh, and on the subject of "big butts" I have been WAITING for somebody to give me an excuse to post this for your entertainment and sleepless earworms...
  2. Da5id Weatherwax
    half a dozen years ago I faced a choice. I was in a bad state employment-wise, would have had to move out of the local market to get a new job in my field anywhere near my usual salary range. (When you refuse to do something unethical and prove that it WOULD have been both unethical and illegal, the VP whose pet project you just shot down in flames in front of the board will try to destroy you by any means possible, thanks to a reorganisation when my boss left to pursue other opportunities, I ended up reporting to her, so "it was written" as they say). I had finally lost the battle to keep my house, my retirement funds had gone from "adequate" to "nonexistent." I had several thousand left but when they ran out I'd have been homeless if I stayed in the USA. On the other hand if I used up those remaining funds moving back to the UK I would have a place to live in, the support of my family and at least some breathing room. So I moved. Got lucky enough to establish myself in the local music scene and make that my primary career until COVID hit and required me to take a low-end "day job" to keep the lights on when all the venues closed. It's working out ok. The point being, deciding to move is a big thing. BUT... If you do decide to do it, make that decision before you get to the point that it would be hard - or even impossible - to do so without ending up completely destitute at your destination. And do it without regrets. In another world, I'd be contemplating a comfortable retirement in the upper midwest about now. If the price of that had been that I participated in something that would have cost THOUSANDS of Americans their homes and exposed the company I worked for to unthinkable liability, I'm glad I'm in this world not that other one.
  3. Da5id Weatherwax
    oh do NOT get me started on "peeves with the fridge." Two weeks, payday hits and there will be an order placed to replace mine! It sucks, frosts up like there's no tomorrow and is about as efficient as a chocolate teapot. I've put up with it long enough and it's gone.
  4. Da5id Weatherwax
    Indeed. Nothing in anything I said should be construed to preclude the involvement of a person with the duty to speak for the patient in the best interests of their health. They are required to "stand in the patients shoes" and separate any of their own wishes and judgements from their advocacy.
  5. Da5id Weatherwax
    @Rowan Amore - without getting into deep waters that might get our toes nibbled on by the moderators that lurk in the depths, let me simply say that if anyone apart from the patient and their doctor is involved in a medical decision, or if the doctor involved is considering any factor other than their clinical knowledge and judgement, then something is badly wrong and stinking like yesterday's fish.
  6. Da5id Weatherwax
    There's where we differ a little I think. For me, each puzzle is a battle of wits with the person who compiled it. The ones I love most are where I'm pitting my wits against a puzzle author I've battled before, sometimes victorious, sometimes defeated, but I know their style, I'm starting to read their "tells" and discovering the chinks in their armor. When I catch a re-used clue (VERY rare for a good puzzle author) my only thought is "Gotcha!"
  7. Da5id Weatherwax
    loved that movie First thing I look at is the pseudonym of the puzzle author. One or two of them I have learned how they think and can gain a (slightly) quicker insight into how their clues break down and where each individual piece might be going.
  8. Da5id Weatherwax
    One of my occasional pleasures when I lived in the USA too. Back here in the UK it's back to The Times cryptic that used to be the mutual amusement in the "cabal of London commuters" on my regular morning train to the office. (woe betide the n00b who wandered into that carriage and took one of the "regulars" seats) There were guys in that crew who would solve the whole thing in five minutes and spend the rest of the journey looking insufferably smug at the rest of us. Their penance was to be the designated runners for the coffee supply at a particular station.
  9. Da5id Weatherwax
    Peeve: Forum reaction buttons dont include a "hug" option.
  10. Da5id Weatherwax
    It's the cafetiere that gathers dust in my place unless my mother's visiting and needs to brew some of her disgusting decaf. Otherwise the deLonghi "fountain of bean-to-cup wakefulness" gets the water tank refilled and the tray full of spent coffee plugs emptied every morning... and rarely lasts long enough between brews to shut itself off. It just so happens that the button for a "double long" will just about fill the average coffee mug. My previous 'spro machine died right around the time everything was being locked down in the first COVID wave and a local department store flogged off all their ex-display stuff at a monstrous discount. I got this one for about 20% of list price
  11. Da5id Weatherwax
    /me grins at @Rolig Loon, cranks the espresso machine to 11 then refills @Cinnamon Mistwood's and @Silent Mistwalker's coffee cups with the high-octane stuff. And I'll pre-emptively peeve on myself for "folks who ignite chaos just to see what will happen"
  12. Da5id Weatherwax
    They are exercising their right under the first amendment to say publicly whatever they want to. The rest of us have the right to say "that's disgusting" or "what a kook" or - as happens quite often in the USA - turn up and "counterprotest." In a moderately sane society the relative numbers involved would usually make the kooks and extremists back down and go away. Some geological and political areas of the USA, I'm afraid, aint quite that sane and things can get ugly. The various rights and freedoms enjoyed by US citizens and lawful residents are enviable around the world, but in exercising them so many people forget that they are also free to take the consequences of doing so and scream "oppression!" when those consequences land.
  13. Da5id Weatherwax
    Language has burred in recent years, it seems, with "protest" being considered equivalent to what, back in the day, we used to call "a demo" To protest is to make one's objections known. Going to your MP is every bit as much a "protest" as taking to the streets in a noisy demonstration. You're showing up and making your position clear to those in power which is the mission of every activist ever. Traditionally, taking to the streets to demonstrate has always been the last resort. Other routes were followed first. Sometimes, those other routes were pre-emptively closed and things simmered to the point that demos exploded as the first outward sign of a protest movement. Today, I think, several governments (with enough history behind them to really know better) have either been pre-emptively closing off protest avenues other than the public demonstration, or paying only lip-service to protests received through those other channels - smile, nod, say something nice and then forget about it. Maybe dust it off in the form of a campaign promise sufficiently vague that it can be cleanly discarded right after the election. This always happened, of course. However, in our highly connected societies of today it's a lot harder for governments or other power structures to make it happen without being publicly caught at it. I think this is more the reason why "social media" seems to be "influencing young people to think that protesting is ok as a first resort." - and I'm reading your "protesting" as "demonstrating"because that seems to be how you meant it, if I'm wrong I apologise in advance. When social media makes it clear that other avenues of protest have been rendered ineffective, the demonstration is all that remains.
  14. Da5id Weatherwax
    That's what makes it such a hard question to answer.
  15. Da5id Weatherwax
    That, @Rolig Loon, is a more honest answer than I've heard from a lot of folks I've posed the question to. Respect, even if we might not agree on one point or another
  16. Da5id Weatherwax
    That's a question I've heard a lot. It wracks the mind of many a responsible person who feels the need to take care of their nearest and dearest even above their own self-interest. It's a valid question, and each of us can only answer it for ourselves. But if I may rephrase it a little.... "Should I still hold to that 'universal principle' even if it means that me and mine will need to sacrifice to do so?" The simplistic answer is, of course, that you should - accepting the personal sacrifice for the greater good. I do not feel that the simplistic answer is adequate though. It discards many proximate and sincere concerns that many people feel. It's an absolute moralism that discards any personal consideration of the situation you and yours might be facing. Each of us must answer that in the way that seems best to us, weighing the sacrifices that might be demanded of us against the effect our actions might have on generations yet unimagined, which may well be the descendants of the people in the forefront of your mind as you grapple with this question. The bottom line is simply this. Whatever you decide to do are you ok with how your children will look at you when they learn you did it? Will you still like the person you see in the mirror the morning after you did it? If you KNOW the answer to those questions, your decision is already made. If there's the slightest doubt in your mind you probably need to think on it some more.
  17. Da5id Weatherwax
    In the course of my life, the one thing I've discovered is that that "fundamental belief" is shared by people across the political spectrum. Folks tend to disagree about precisely where that line should be drawn though. It's a point of agreement though, one we can build upon.
  18. Da5id Weatherwax
    I do hear you, and you speak truth. It has never ceased to amaze me the risks that others have taken to be part of movements I've been involved in. And the ways in which they shrug it off as "just something I had to do." I will never denigrate somebody who felt that those pressures required them to keep their heads down and keep quiet, for their own safety or for their families. But when everything else is taken away, in modern democracies at least, there always remains the vote. When you can't be on the streets, you can at least be in line for ballot box even if you leave the other two boxes to somebody else.
  19. Da5id Weatherwax
    "Feeling deep political peeves" is, I think, important for us all, as human society. Matters of policy, of the direction in which the society we live will move, these are things that mean something, not just to us standing here part of the discussion but also to our hopes for our children and for their children. I'm an old fart, I've been an activist since I was around 12. I've grown up with the holes ripped in my own family by two world wars, including the grandfather I never met, because after lying about his age to enlist in big mistake #1, he was invalided out after the Somme with a couple of lungfuls of mustard gas. He survived to marry his childhood sweetheart and have three fine sons, but he didnt see any of them marry and have children of their own. But even beyond being completely unwilling to countenance a "future world" in which folks forget the lessons of that history and so my daughters children have to repeat it, my fundamental belief is this - there is a level beneath which it is utterly immoral, completely evil, to allow any of our fellow humans to sink - no matter how they got there. Without judgement, without even questioning any "lifestyle choices" that may have brought them there. You don't let them fall below that, you catch them and you hold on. And you lift them up. If a "political viewpoint" puts anyone else in a situation that you would protest about if it put your brother, your sister, your son your daughter, your mother or father there... Then don't you owe it to your own humanity to protest about it when it puts somebody you're not related to in that position?
  20. Da5id Weatherwax
    That's ok, I understood you as a kid when your voice was done with a slide whistle, I can manage to make some sense of it now
  21. Da5id Weatherwax
    I'm a scientist (among other things). False hope isn't in my shot locker. "Woo" I've only got for those that share my faith and want to hear it. Scientific opinion: We're not Fed yet, but we're DAMN close. So how about getting out and campaigning for what you believe in, for what you want for your kids and their kids.. That's how YOU do your part to fix it.
  22. Da5id Weatherwax
    I confess to favouring John Steed over the Penguin
  23. Da5id Weatherwax
    You might need a border wall to your south. Get America to pay for it.
  24. Da5id Weatherwax
    I know exactly where that was thank you very much. I also know which corporations have been so far successful in skating out of their legitimate responsibility and accountability for it. And the pols who enabled them to do so. And I want them. I want them in front of a court where their lies and corruption can be laid bare. And then I want the people at those corporations heads to go to jail. Just to put the cherry on the top I want them, after their sentences are "served" to emerge without a pot to piss in, to be in exactly the same situation as the poorest of the poor they shafted. And then to gasp out their last breaths, forgotten and alone, either on the streets or in some mould-infested, so-called "care home" without anyone caring a single ***** how they met their end. Most of that, I'm not going to get. Wont stop me campaigning for it though.
  25. Da5id Weatherwax
    pro pro tip. The spike at the end of the parasol is case-hardened steel
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