Even longer than that.

But gas means money, so fuck anyone and everything else that might get in the way.

Why did I mentally read that as “almonds” with an s at the front?

You’re mostly right with the depth of field being the big difference but the image being darker is not a function of aperture (f-stop) directly, but rather overall exposure. At the same ISO setting, two identical shots in the same lighting would be the same brightness with truly equal exposure: the reduction in aperture (increasing to m the f-stop number to a higher value) would be compensated for with an equivalent decrease in shutter speed (in simple terms, constricting the hole lets in less light, so we leave the hole open longer to let in the same amount as before).

In the example, if the scene is darker it’s because the exposure changed, not just because of the aperture.

Additionally, the number is shown as a fraction because it is a fraction. The “f” in the value (f/2.8) is a variable that stands for “focal length”, that being the focal length of the lens being used. So, for example, a 50mm lens set to f/2 would have its aperture set to a 25mm diameter. (50/2)

The reason the numbers are strange numbers and non-linear in scale is because they correspond to aperture diameters that let in either double or half the amount of light from the stop next to them. So adjusting from f/2 to f/2.8 cuts the amount of light in half (I think this is basically doubling or halving the area of the circle of the aperture).

This is why a one stop change at lower values (bigger openings) has a much smaller numeric shift than a one stop change at higher values: adding or subtracting diameter of a larger circle adds or subtracts much more area than the same diameter change to a smaller circle. That’s why one stop goes only from f/2 to f/2.8 on the wide open end, but on the closed down end, one stop goes from f/11 to f/16.

I can’t think of any metals or anything that there would be enough of in river water to hurt you

We’re talking about rivers like the one in Cleveland that they caught on fire?

Twice?!

IDK what’s in that but I’ll leave my cup for you haha

The Rock, Sean Connery

I love this!

I also thought Matrix, but Neo would be Gonzo and Morpheus would be still played by Laurence Fishburne.

Oh man, I feel like the energy between the Muppets and Viggo Mortenson would make me pick him instead.

Animal could play Gimli, Sam the Eagle is Gandalf.

My favorite summary and comparison of two movies was something along the lines of:

"In The Muppet Christmas Carol, Michael Caine plays it absolutely straight, as if there were no Muppets at all, and as if he were completely surrounded by nothing but classically trained professional actors…

…in Muppet Treasure Island, on the other hand, Tim Curry plays it as if he himself were a Muppet."

My Encarta 97 CD-ROM had a game where you went through rooms of a castle answering trivia questions to move on.

A company I used to work for touted their profit sharing program as a major incentive when I was hired. Basically, any profits over X% in any giver quarter, a portion of the profits beyond X were shared proportionally with the employees. Simple and effective.

Well my first quarter there apparently I was not included because I hadn’t worked there the full quarter. Okay, whatever. The next quarter I did indeed get a modest bonus, nothing crazy, but nice.

After that, the market surged and we were working on what would definitely be one of our best quarters in years. Well the ownership saw that and at our quarterly recap meeting, they announced “upgrades” to the bonus formula: going forward, they’d share an even larger percentage of profits over X%…but now instead of X being a fixed percentage, it was a variable moving target that they would set at the beginning of each quarter based on projections.

Projections that, by the way, they didn’t share with the class until halfway through each quarter.

Conveniently, from there on out, their projections were always so accurate that the bonuses basically completely went away.

The second-to-last straw for me was one quarter when the market was really bad, yet our people worked hard and somehow in a down market, our company surged against the tides and had an amazing quarter. We were all proud of our work and looking forward to that bonus.

Well in the fucking meeting where they gave out the bonus, they announced that it was such a unique situation that they revised their projections a second time, once at the midpoint of the quarter…and again just two weeks ago. For me, that meant that a bonus roughly estimated to be about $1,500 ended up being a check for $33.

I was so tempted to just throw the check in the trash on my way out of that meeting.

Thus I refreshed my resume and started looking. Found a great role in government work and began the months-long pre-employment process. In the quarter that happened next, morale was utterly shot and our company had a down quarter. We still did well, mind you, and better than our competition and the market in general, but we only had slight growth (in a quarter where many competitors had contraction). Of course we missed the pie-in-the-sky projection and got no bonus that quarter.

Then, as it worked out, I was set to give my 2 week notice, and my boss scheduled my annual review for that exact day.

Went in, was told I was doing a great job, helping the company, blah blah blah…but that in the next year moving forward, they wanted me to take half the workload of another worker they’d recently terminated and didn’t plan to replace. Additionally, the new ERP system, that I’d been asking to be trained on for months…well they weren’t going to train me on it, but instead, I’d be expected to learn the old system, to help pick up the workload of other employees as they learned the new system. So my workload was set to more than double, while not getting the training I’d requested (not even like paid courses, just let me sit in on the meetings and have access to the material)…and of course in this market, the best they could do for me was a 1.3% annual raise. Boss said he was sorry and wished he could give me more of a raise but even he was only getting a 6% raise.

Then he asked if I had any feedback for him before we wrapped up and it felt incredible to say, “Yeah, well…I’m not going to be doing any of that extra work you just told me about, because two weeks from now I’m not going to be here anymore. Consider this my 2 week notice.”

Just doesn’t feel right to carve up an Ottoman Empire for Thanksgiving.

I think their argument is that the tax revenue is still owed, whether it’s collected or not. So the IRS could absolutely get back on track post Trump and pursue these unpaid taxes.

Mysterious ways, I tells ya!

Y’know… I’d have found all this “coconuts floated from Asia to the Caribbean” stuff pretty far fetched…

But not two years ago I was fishing, and a goddamn coconut floated right down and bumped me in the leg.

In the Monongahela River.

In Pittsburgh.

Anyone who thinks tariffs will do anything at all positive for the American working class is absolutely clueless.

All they do is make prices jump for consumers. It doesn’t put domestic goods at an advantage because the domestic producers of those goods increase their prices artificially to achieve parity with import pricing.

So prices go up for the consumer with the extra money going to either:

1. For imported goods, to pay the tariff, a tax, to the government, which in this case wants to use that tax revenue to offset tax cuts for the wealthy.

or

2. For domestic goods, it’s pure straight profit for the unethical corporations who are price gouging their domestic customer base. They’re not giving the consumer a break on price and they’re not sharing the profits by giving employees raises. Hell, they’re not even taking advantage of the competitive advantage to ramp up production and create jobs. They’re just pocketing that extra cash for doing exactly what they’re always doing…passing it on to, you guessed it…the wealthy.

Which is why we need an update to the tax system to add brackets to cover the entire range of income, then redefine them based on percentages off the median, with the highest bracket set at 95% or more for the highest 5% of earners.

There’s a lot of flawed logic on all sides.

And that’s not even accounting for the inherently deeply complex and illogical stuff that goes along with dating too.

When I was actively pursuing online dating years ago, some of my best dates were the one and done dates where we both seemed to know early on that we probably weren’t interested in each other as long term partners but were mature enough to acknowledge that without taking it personally and enjoy a much more relaxed rest of the date. On one of those occasions, my date even suggested that while I wasn’t a good match for her, if I were interested, she’d give her roommate my number, thinking we’d be better.

In the end it never happened, but it just shows that just because one or both halves of a date may not want a second date, that’s not a failing of either one, necessarily.

I def agree about the level of happened that is going on here, but in defense of this fictional date: while it’s not always good to judge a book by its cover…if I’m being honest with myself, I’d have a certain image in mind and a certain reaction if I met someone at a party and just in conversation, not even a date, asked what they were into and the response was “anime and one specific video game”.

I mean, I wouldn’t stop talking to them, but I’d certainly have preconceived notions that I’d be very surprised if they were very inaccurate.

And it’s not so much that it’s wrong, as that it gives me insight into the type of person I’m talking to. And honestly, if I were looking to date, and this person matched my preferred gender, appearance, etc…well…an answer like that would certainly be a “yellow flag” and a clue that I may not be so compatible with this person, based on others I’ve met with similar interests.

Mind you, it certainly doesn’t justify any rudeness, but it’s a coffee date. She owes OP nothing. And while she could have been nicer, limiting conversation and politely excusing herself at her earliest convenience isn’t the worst thing she could’ve done.

I just first want to say kudos for having a well reasoned point that you’re defending with logic, patiently and consistently, with respect for all.

That’s rare on the Internet, and Lemmy in particular, which is severely prone to the group generally deciding on one “right” position and mercilessly punishing dissent.

All that said, I think I broadly agree with you, and further, think that all of this DEI stuff is essentially “affirmative action for a new generation”.

It’s so hard to nail it down and defend it because (it seems) proponents don’t like to explain so much of how it works (and how it works differently from not incorporating it), and rather tend to answer with what it accomplishes. In theory at least.

The problem, of course, being that this subtly shifts the criticism and defense from DEI itself to its goals.

You can say “DEI means that the company is better by getting the best employees and also helps historically disadvantaged demographics get better jobs” without at all describing how that happens, and suddenly disagreeing on the merits of DEI gets misconstrued as “companies should only hire white guys and maintain the status quo”, at which point they’re more easily targeted with ad hominem and lumped together with true bigots and racists.

Regarding the issue itself, from everything I’ve seen, DEI should be less “this is an initiative we’re doing and have a team on it and track it’s metrics” and more just, “We’ll hire the best person for the job.”

Because ultimately, anything other than “We’ll hire the best person for the job.” means, by definition, “We’ll pass on the best person based on their, or the other candidates’ race, gender, religion, etc.”

If that means an overwhelmingly white male workplace, that’s a social indicator, not a problem for the company to fix. Also, hypothetically, what’s the desired end goal in terms of workplace diversity? To match the local area as closely as possible? If so, what happens when the most qualified candidates happen to be overwhelmingly from a minority? Are they going to start hiring less qualified white guys to balance it out? They shouldn’t. But they also shouldn’t hire a less qualified woman just because they only have one other woman in the whole building.

Ultimately, the only extent I could see a DEI policy actually having merit and being worth talking about would be something sort of like the Rooney Rule. A company saying, “For any position we post, we’re committed to interviewing at least X candidates from historically underrepresented minority demographics. We may still end up hiring a white guy…but this will ensure that we don’t get so used to seeing nothing but white guys that we forget to look elsewhere.”

It’s also not their place to level the social playing field, yet here we are.