devilbunny (u/devilbunny)

devilbunny commented on Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself jesperordrup.github.io/vo... · Posted by u/jesperordrup

CGMthrowaway · 4 days ago

Was looking for this comment. You articulate it well. Many people claim they "can't sing" but when they try it's clear to me they just have an underdeveloped muscle control

devilbunny · 3 days ago

> they just have an underdeveloped muscle control

I'm perfectly willing to grant that this is the usual case, but since I'm not interested enough in being able to sing well to dedicate a lot of effort to it, it doesn't matter. I probably wouldn't sing if I had the voice of an angel.

devilbunny commented on In Tehran lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/janua... · Posted by u/mitchbob

gambutin · 5 days ago

Isn’t that like everything else in life? We set very high standards and then measure people against them.

Which boss is perfect? Which dad is? Nothing and no one is.

But there are shades. Some are way closer to the bar than others.

I can list hundreds of governments that have not reacted to mass protests by killing unarmed civilians (their own people) by the thousand.

devilbunny · 5 days ago

If you want to have a philosophical discussion about whether that is really the "sole purpose of government", then I suppose we could have one, though frankly my interest in that isn't all that high.

That's a long way from asserting that it is, in fact, the sole purpose of government, which was what I objected to.

devilbunny commented on In Tehran lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/janua... · Posted by u/mitchbob

gambutin · 6 days ago

Asking questions usually helps to alleviate confusion.

What is it exactly you’re confused about?

devilbunny · 6 days ago

What government can you actually point to - not theoretical, but actually existing - which holds as its sole purpose the safety of all its people?

devilbunny commented on In Tehran lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/janua... · Posted by u/mitchbob

gambutin · 7 days ago

I think, as sad as it sounds, the exact number doesn’t really matter.

We know: We know: a government whose sole purpose is to protect its people has committed the mass murder of unarmed civilians. has committed the mass murder of unarmed civilians.

That’s all there is to know to make a judgement about what has happened.

devilbunny · 7 days ago

> a government whose sole purpose is to protect its people

I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a statement.

devilbunny commented on Old Insurance Maps – Georeferencing Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps on Modern Maps oldinsurancemaps.net/... · Posted by u/lapetitejort

lapetitejort · 15 days ago

Sanborn Fire Insurance maps document cities in extreme detail. Not only are the positions and shapes of buildings accurately mapped, but also rough outlines of the rooms, their construction materials, and even small details like if the building hired a night watchman. See downtown San Fracisco for example: https://oldinsurancemaps.net/viewer/san-francisco-ca/?sanbor...

devilbunny · 7 days ago

Also a major plot point in Peng Shepherd's novel The Cartographers. Not a marvelous novel (though it's far better than anything I could write), but entertaining enough and an easy read.

devilbunny commented on The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal frommers.com/tips/airfare... · Posted by u/donohoe

freeopinion · 8 days ago

Here we are specifically discussing the gold star on a USA driver license. When there is already the whole TSA kwikset fiasco in place. The gold star indicates that a person provided some pieces of paper that may be fabricated to a very busy DMV clerk. This is somehow meant to prove they would never do anything malicious.

Or... you could slip the TSA person a $50 and say "keep the change". Legally.

There is no risk in submitting false documents. They reject valid documents all the time. They don't report you to authorities when they reject your documents.

So neither avenue is like even a cheap lock. They are more like door knobs that keep the door closed until you twist the knob that is designed to be easy to twist.

devilbunny · 8 days ago

> no risk in submitting false documents

Except the risk you'll miss your flight, which in most cases is the screw that is turned.

My wife and I both have RealID driver's licenses. She had to get a replacement, and apparently the machines used to print them for mailing out later (as opposed to going down to their office and getting a replacement in person) are just ever so slightly off - so her license won't scan. She was given a surprising amount of harassment on a flight not long ago over this matter. She got me to take a photograph of her passport and send it to her so she could show it on the return trip - where her license again failed to scan. This is a fairly well-documented problem. Reports from all over the country have it, and it always seems to be certain license printers that just fail.

So now she carries her Global Entry card, which is otherwise only used for access to the expedited line for land and sea border crossings but is a valid RealID in itself, for domestic flights. It scans correctly.

devilbunny commented on Film students who can no longer sit through films theatlantic.com/ideas/202... · Posted by u/haunter

prhn · 11 days ago

I don't dispute the shortening of attentions spans, which seems to be directly related to new forms of entertainment young people consume.

However. Films across the generations are very different in terms of how they lay out a narrative. Watch any film before 1980 and you'll start to see a pattern that the pacing and evolution of the narrative is generally very, very slow.

Art is highly contextualized by the period it's created in. I don't really think it's fair to expect people to appreciate art when it's taken completely out of its context.

Lawrence of Arabia, for example. What a brilliant, brilliant film. Beautiful, influential, impressively produced. And really, really boring and slow a lot of the time.

If I were a film professor today, hell even 20 years ago, I would not expect a modern film student to sit through that whole thing. I think it's my job as a professor to understand the context of the period, highlight the influential/important scenes, and get students to focus on those instead of having to watch 4 hours of slowly paced film making and possibly miss the important stuff.

devilbunny · 11 days ago

In fairness, Lawrence's own book on which the movie is based, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, is a disjointed, rambling, and usually boring book. The high points are really good, but you slog through a lot to get there.

devilbunny commented on California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years latimes.com/california/st... · Posted by u/thnaks

bdamm · 22 days ago

California has already invested a lot into reservoirs. In fact, as a pilot, I recall noticing that nearly all lakes in California are actually man-made reservoirs. I doubt there is much room left for economically building more; all the easy ones have been taken, and more. Surely the cost benefit of just investing a lot into desalination must be getting close.

devilbunny · 22 days ago

> nearly all lakes in California are actually man-made reservoirs

This is sometimes true even in much wetter states, though. I recall being thoroughly surprised to find that out that Virginia (!) has only two natural lakes, one of which is basically just an open area (though a large one) of the Great Dismal Swamp.

devilbunny commented on The Myth of the ThinkPad innovintageblog.wordpress... · Posted by u/volemo

devilbunny · a month ago

The repairability and durability arguments should apply to HP and Dell business laptops as well, but they largely don't.

If I were getting a new laptop, I'd probably buy a Mac. But if I needed a Windows laptop, I'd buy a Thinkpad (one is currently my only Windows PC). It's not really upgradeable or modular (fixed RAM, SSD and battery not easy to change), but it is well-built and still pretty snappy despite being 6-7 years old.

devilbunny commented on Verizon outages reported across U.S. firstcoastnews.com/articl... · Posted by u/Scubabear68

Meekro · a month ago

Infrastructure in general seems worse than 20 years ago. Our talent for black-bagging dictators has never been stronger, though!

devilbunny · a month ago

20 years ago much less of the infrastructure of everyday life depended on an always-on network connection. Smartphones in particular were a relatively niche product. I didn’t even have a cell phone (and not because I was too young), much less expect it to work all the time.