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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • Getting started is closer to a tenth of that— the starter kit linked is $10 pre shipping from a brand that is generally considered overpriced in locksport. Buying locks is the expensive part but you probably have a couple of padlocks to start with. And for those £20, you can get the knowledge and basic skills to open the vast majority of locks.

    I’d personally recommend JimyLong’s starter kit if you can catch it in stock but hook and turner will work. Then don’t buy anything else until you know exactly what lock you want a thinner hook or different pick for; that set would open about any lock you can find in store. Spending £200+ to start out is more lockpick consumerism than an actual on ramp since you’d likely be bogged down by too many tools.





  • While I don’t care much about the subject, I do actually care about ineffective communication and how it presents. Indeed, I have made a few comments like that— specifically putting the reason a comment failed to communicate— in the hopes that at least one person will avoid that particular pitfall next time. I don’t do it as much as I’d like to because sometimes it’s hard to condense why a comment failed, but this one was pretty easy.

    For the sake of argument though, making quips would still be better than worthless comments like your original one even if they didn’t communicate something. Among every form of discourse, quips are vastly better liked than “not true but I can’t prove it” to everyone but the guy being called out.


  • Nah don’t care, that subject itself doesn’t affect or interest me. Just saying that you convinced no one and that your comment provided no value besides a few upvotes for me, which don’t even matter on this site. I also intended it more for others who might be inclined to do the same thing rather than you yourself.

    If you actually ever want to change minds or prevent the spread of misinformation (which I’m still not convinced it is because again, you provided no evidence and I still don’t care), it’s a good idea to actually elaborate instead of just saying “not true”. The only people convinced by empty comments like yours will be convinced the other way by the next evidence-free claim.

    Btw I genuinely don’t see how the info would change my life for the better so if you are gonna start trying now, just edit it into your og comment or something, I probably won’t be back in this thread again



  • If I were truly thrown into this scenario, my first step would be accepting likely death. Even if you maintain status quo and do no good, you’ll be killed by the next guy in line. There’s nearly no way to both satisfy the current oligarchs and maintain enough power to prevent being replaced by one of them. There is also no way out, as Russia has carried out assassinations in foreign countries. Not that you’d make it onto a plane.

    So I really would try to do all that. I’d tell them that whatever force got me there also gave me time to enact failsafes so that, if I disappeared, every property that every Russian billionaire owned would make unexpected contact with drones. Then I’d go ahead and post Putin’s files with every billionaire’s dirt and holdings hoping to start some fires they’d need to put out before coming for me. From there, an aggressive push towards democracy by appealing to the people in the hopes that they’ll back me, which might buy a little extra time.

    I think this secures a few hours. They won’t want to move against a complete unknown that suddenly became president. That’s enough to call Biden (allegedly to negotiate US withdrawal from Ukraine in exchange for election interference in Harris’s favor) and send him every bit of data on the military that I could. That might be enough deterrence to buy more time: “the US military knows everything now, so killing me might have consequences.” I’d CC several other NATO members, but for time’s sake Biden is probably the one to call.

    Maybe I could get some bodyguards that appear loyal to me, maybe not. But every bit of bluster I could muster, I’d throw it down out the gate, then start trying to fix the country before they call the bluff.

    Yeah, I still die quickly, but even a single step towards improvement is worth my life. An easy decision to make when it was forfeit the second I became president. Even if I failed miserably, merely dumping presidential documents would have been worth it. Perhaps it’d get the ball rolling.

    Edit: I missed the part where everyone loyal to Putin would be loyal to me. That opens up a ton of space to actually set up these failsafes or move against the oligarchs myself, as well as secure the Kremlin with men more or less actually loyal to me (by wiring them all a million USD on the spot with promise of more). Putin put down a rebellion from one of the most powerful oligarchs, so there might actually be a way to survive long enough to do many of the things on that list. I’d probably not dump the oligarch files and keep that on a disappearance failsafe then proceed mostly the same hoping to generate serious, potentially irreversible momentum before dying.




  • Mobile apps, no ads, and no widespread astroturfing. I still use Reddit for product recommendations, but even that has become mostly advertising (oftentimes the link will redirect several times so they get their money).

    I don’t like contributing ad revenue or engagement to a company I dislike. I find Reddit leadership morally reprehensible, and for the free market to work, I must avoid giving them money. Searching up products on ad-free RDX Reddit viewer contributes a view, but no engagement or ad revenue while coming at a very small cost to the company which I’ll accept.

    And honestly, as a person who finds some of Lemmy’s community to be a bit much, it’s still way better than the bottom of the barrel half AI trash Reddit is now. Lemmy reminds me of old Reddit, occasional insufferable behavior and all, and that’s way better than new Reddit. You miss a lot of the personal stories, but in turn you also read less made up or AI generated garbage.





  • Yeah, extremely saddening. I watch his father’s videos sometimes and they can be difficult.

    Techno’s death was a lot harder to hear about than I expected. I heard about it from a friend that I’d shared a video with and felt genuinely sad. I didn’t even know the guy or watch that many of his videos. I’ve watched dozens of them in the time since when I have nothing else to do and honestly, it’s the celebrity death I’ve cared about most.

    He was so young too. Probably younger than 90+% of this site. Such a tragic death.


  • I see it the other way, 8 was an alright movie if it was standalone and not part of SW. The things most people disliked are fine if it was some generic sci-fi action movie. “Jake Skywalker” is a nonissue if you don’t think he’s supposed to be Luke, the quippy lines were common, the weird bits like the Mary Poppins scene or the Holdo maneuver are acceptable in some other sci-fi movie. Wouldn’t have been a masterpiece, but it’s still relatively put together.

    9 struggled to be a film. Remove it from SW and it’s almost worse— 8 could feasibly be greenlit and released by lazy execs, but 9 would’ve been cancelled in production. Pacing was jarring to the point of feeling unfinished, plot was one of the least coherent in a mega blockbuster, and story conveniences were nauseatingly poor even if it wasn’t Star Wars. It feels like they just put something together real quick without the editors and it got leaked. None of it was serviceable. And god, not to repeat myself, but the pacing and story were horrid.

    Add it back to SW, and the Sith life transfer/dyad nonsense is as much an affront to Lucas’s story as TLJ Luke. Possibly more: sure, doing that to Luke was shit, but TRoS butchered basic Force principles. It’s like a bad DM fucking up a pivotal NPC vs fucking up the entire game system.

    I dislike both of them nearly equally, but I could probably watch 8 again. 9 is like an indecisive amateur’s attempt at Lego Star Wars machinima, down to poor editing and an inability to order scenes. Didn’t see another movie so sloppy until Thor: Love and Thunder.


  • I’m not a YouTube guy; I only follow one channel I found during the Covid lockdowns, this kid called Technoblade who was low key while being really good at the game Minecraft. They worked together sometimes. Didn’t make Mr Beast seem very cool.

    From what I’ve seen, he just inserts his loud personality into things by throwing money at people. It was never “hanging out with Mr Beast”, but “Mr Beast is giving out money”. Those guys are generally bad people, I cannot think of an exception.



  • I have to say I am too. She’s had a few incidents of odd speech patterns; if not this, the poor soundbites like weirdly explaining things (“Russia is a country” or “do not come”). Trump’s word salad is so normalized that he won’t be scrutinized for it. There will probably be sexist comments on it as well.

    I hope she gets new speechwriters and a bit of training on what to say instead. It’s probably a lot to hope that she can quickly override this pattern, given it’s likely something she’s done all her life, but her duties as VP are relatively minimal and the campaign can afford speech training. She’s better than Trump either way, but being consistently on point would be useful