Rock and roll. I’ve seen bad things happen when someone decides it’s a good idea to modernize a PC based CNC control. (I hate PC based controls). They get their own little fence to live inside where it’s always 1999.

The moral calculus of bombs is a truly fucked up thing.

If the JDAM is driving a single conventional warhead, it is more ethical than a cluster bomb.

It is common for some of the cluster bomblets to not detonate creating unknown minefields that persist for decades. A single bomb only goes off once.

(This is the ethics of the bomb, not the conflict they’re used in)

Yup. I’m teaching my son CAD/CAM with a 3d printer, low level programming and electronics with Arduino, he helps with mechanical and electrical repairs. Linux with the home server. Fishing, hunting, and camping. Wasn’t ready this year for steers or chickens but hopefully will next year. Wife is teaching him how to cook, (I’m a decent cook, but she is amazing). Simple sewing. Basic carpentry. And so on.

School isn’t going to teach him much of this, but we will.

At least the lathe isn’t running punch tape.

Don’t upgrade or mess with the control. Disconnect from the network if it’s on it. It should have RS-232. Throw a Pi or other SBC that does serial and a 12V level shifter; use that to feed it programs.

Also, make an image of the hard drive if it has one and start looking for a spare drive on ebay.

It’s also a children’s song that I was taught as a child in kindergarten or maybe church. That’s what i associate it with.

You tell someone to go lube the shaft in complete seriousness, and they’re going to giggle and pull a, “That’s what she said…”

Not a probelm, per se, but it is a good example of just how much of technical language can be perceived as a double entendre. I generally don’t realize I’ve said anything like that until a new kid starts snickering.

This is also part, not all, of the reason there is resistance to changing these things. A good chunk of that resistance is because those using these words have no bad intent whatsoever. It’s not even on the radar.

And of course, there are plenty of bigoted shitheads who don’t want to change.

I still often say trans/tranny when referring to a transmission. It’s hard to train those language patterns out of yourself. Not to mention things like master and slave cylinders, hermophradite/mophradite calipers and fittings, gender changers.

Reamers and reaming, bastard files and bastard threads, deep hole drilling, male/female fittings, shafts and lube, prongs, orifice.

Open source has tried to redefine master/slave in things like SPI to controller and peripheral, ie. MOSI/COPI but the rest of the documentation and all of the documentation that came before it still uses it.

Technical language is full of this stuff and is often the clearest way to express something. It is the standard and changing industrial standards is very hard.

It’s funny, is changing this stuff performative or does it really matter?

I would say it matters. However, it is likely that new terms being created today will become offensive in the future.

I could see Big Endian and Little Endian becoming offensive if it isn’t already considered offensive.

Telomere length is the only thing I can think of, but that’s totally a guess and I don’t know much about it. Telomeres, as I understand it, are padding at the end of DNA and shorten as you age.

Fucking Quiverfull. Eugenics bad, but I really hate those fucks.

Hell, line em up, tell them to grab ankles, and I’ll take care of it with a pair of pruning shears.

Yeah, that tracks. She sounds like a sweetheart . It’s deprecated, but it’s not like a memo went out. It was much more common when I was a kid, I remember my grandfather griping about it and trying to make the change.

We moved North recently and I’m having the same problem with a different term. Lots of Italian in the area. I’ve always pronounced it eye-talian, it’s not a racist thing, I’m just a redneck and that’s what I learned. Some people find it offensive, so I’m trying to change it.

Well, I guess they find it offensive when they can understand me. Feels like I’m speakig a different language from everyone around here a lot of the time. I have an easier time talking to black folks than I do white, dialect is much closer. I regularly get jaw-drop suprise when I’m in public and say something.

Also having a hell of a time with Yes Ma’am/Yes Sir as there is high trans/enby representation in my social scene. I just apologize and move on. Southern charm and politness is a huge help.

I’m mostly self educated and my speech patterns are so stereotypically deep southern that most people assume I’m backwards. I was mostly raised in a Sundown town. All those inbred jokes and such. Black folks pick up that I’m not backwards faster than white because they understand me better. I find language and dialect fascinating, do a lot of involuntary code switching. When bullshitting with a group of white men around here, when I get comfortable, I unconsciously drop into full redneck speech and they really have a hard time understanding me.

As for colored, the below image is a good representation of why the term is problematic, it was used on Jim Crow signs. Calling a black man, “colored boy” is fighting words and roughly equivalent to the N word. I refer to white men as boys all the time but unless it is a mixed race group, I do not refer to black men as boy.

Yeah, it’s all going to be regional. I’m a redneck, and, to some extent, queer. However, call me those things with the wrong tone and we have a problem.

Minority is nice because it’s relatively short compared to groups-other-than-white and similar clunky terms.

“Minorities,” is now sometimes used in an insulting way, but it’s usualy obvious when someone is being a racist shithead.

At the end of the day it comes down to respect, intent, and tone. Basically, don’t be a fuckhead and be polite, folks will tell you how they want be called.

Minority is probably the best term when you’re talking about not-white.

In general, African American is seen as silly just like Latinx is. Caucasian American is used ironically as a mild insult: “That boy is such a Caucasian American that he keeps a loaf of whitebread in the glovebox.”

Brown people is also useful shorthand but you have to be careful as it can be insulting without proper irony. “Those rich old white guys sure do love killing brown people for oil.”

Re-read and climb off that high horse before you hurt yourself. I was also referring to the UNCF, Unitrd Negro College Fund. Goes hand in hand with the NAACP.

Both colored and Negro occur in these names as the organiztions are so old that those were the correct terms at the time.

Example not involving race:

Moron -> retard -> special as in special needs -> intellectually disabled

It’s called the Euphemism Treadmill. Moron was a medical term defining the degeee of impairment lile a hundred years ago and is used as a pejorative to this day.

I dare you to call a group of black guys colored or Negro. Hell, get video if you can.

Keep in mind, Jim Crow is still in living memory and i grew up with the double water fountains everywhere.

Colored is Jim Crow and Negro is a racial category that goes back to phrenology. Negroid was still used in anthropology as recently as the 90s, still may be a technical term, IDK. But, unless you’re talking about college funds or forensics, you have a good chance of getting your ass beat in the right crowd.

Unless you’re old as dirt and polite.

It’s a an old name that contains a deprecated and often insulting term for black folks: National Association for the Advancement of Colored people.

However, it’s not quite a slur. If you’re under the age of 70 and using it, you’re almost certainly using it as a slur. Plenty of old black and white folk in the south still use it as it was the polite term when they were kids.

Wow! That’s amazing, I’ve never heard of a blue bee. That’s just really cool. I bet it was confusing when you first saw it. I’ve heard of/seen solitary bees but didn’t think about it. Did a little beekeeping work as a kid.

We’ve got a couple weird ones on the other side of the pond that I’ve been around. (wasps, actually)

Cow killer/Red velvet ant it’s sting is in the top 10 for most painful. They’re beautiful.

Cicada Killers are huge, 5cm/2in long. I had one fall out of a tree with a cicada right next to me. I thought it was birds fighting.

Didn’t even think it about it not being a honey a bee. You’re right.

I like the “No Kings!” messaging, simple and pointed. We need a slogan that is short and sweet for the soldiers to use. Something that shows them they have agency in this.

Drones don’t have stingers. Queens and workers have stingers. Queens are from worker larva that are fed royal jelly that transforms them into a queen that is capable of reproduction. Workers are technically female but they’re closer to asexual.

So, that badass enby ace bee gave that motherfucker what for.

Looks like the downvoters are chasing you again. Must be putting in work, fuckem.

I don’t get the same enjoyment from computer games that I used to. (I played heaviest when in highschool which was miserable and during my first marriage, which was hell) I rarely watch TV when alone. Tend to read or tinker, do some hardware hacking or whittling.

These days it’s a good way to spend time with my girl. Finishing up a Supernatural rewatch currently.

But yeah, it’s weird, I just don’t enjoy it the way I used to. Not that I don’t understand why people enjoy gaming so much. I’ve got a badass computer that I don’t think I’ve installed a game on. It’s built for CAD so it’s real beefy.

That, or I’m just becoming an old fart and casual gaming is more my speed.

My girl is high functioning, I’m crazy AF, but typical. When we were in a triad, that partner was high functioning as well. In the BDSM community, autists are so over represented compared to gen pop it’s wild. I don’t know what causes it, it’s probably a field that needs investigated. I tend to get along with autistic folks, always have, I think it’s a compatible communication style, I tend to over define by typical standards. Also, y’all don’t seem to lie much.

I’m a music lover and had music lessons on guitar and sax as a kid. However, I lack musical talent. I’m missing that spark that lets music flow and I can’t improvise or even come up with an original melody or rhythm. I just wasn’t born with it.

My talents are mechanical and artistic. I’m better at sculpture than drawing or painting.

You don’t have to have a reason to make a video game other than you want to. Maybe it makes money, maybe it doesn’t. Completing something you built, you put art and science into it, that’s a powerful thing. Taking an idea and making it real is an addictive thing. (Probably has a lot to do with why I love machining so much.) You should do it. Don’t wait until you’ve moved, no reason you can’t start.

Laying down and don’t have headphones, I’ll have to listen to it tomorrow.

Hope you have a goodnight.