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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: December 7th, 2023

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  • A disappointingly large proportion of the general population appears to be unable to tell the difference between centipedes and millipedes. Is it possible that the “centipedes” you saw were actually millipedes? If so, they may have been “fucking”, or at least the millipede equivalent of it.

    Additionally, it appears that this “fact” is actually wrong (big surprise, huh?). Many species of centipede do have courtship strategies that involve males and females meeting up. The sexes may even employ various forms of physical touch as part of the process. So, it’s certainly possible that the critters you saw where centipedes courting each other.


  • For me it’s a little less haphazard, but I’m guessing this person has lived something of a life of privilege and is probably significantly younger than myself.

    I had an ex who was arrested because a gas station employee accused him of not paying for gas after he declined the receipt. Grocery stores and department stores, I want a receipt because there’s too much bullshittery and asshattery going on at those types of places for me to go without. I want to see when Walmart charges me $5.99 instead of $3.00 like it said on the shelf and I want the money back on my card when I inevitably have to do a return. Restaurants, I want my receipt because unfortunately some of the folks who run the card will “accidentally” miskey the tip amount, and strangely it’s always in their favor.



  • I distinctly remember my last time in a Circuit City. I don’t recall the date, but I’m going to say it was circa 2006. I had purchased a Nintendo Wii at one of CC’s competitors but the competitor did not have any suitable Game Cube controllers. So I went over to Circuit City to see what they had since they were essentially in the same shopping complex. In a surprising turn of events, they actually did have Game Cube controllers in stock, they had the style/brand I was hoping for, and the price was actually reasonable.

    They had dozens of employees out in the various sections of the store, at least one per department. There were a plethora of customers. However, they had literally 1 cash register open. The line was backed up into the aisles. I am pretty sure I waited 45 minutes just to check out with this one single item, and that’s only because the customer service manager came over after about 40 minutes and offered to check out anybody with only 1 or 2 items.

    Might be a complete surprise to the former corporate overlords, but for some odd reason I decided never to go back after that.







  • My assumption is that the “do not rotate” advice inadvertently sent you to the actual, correct solution – more light! Congrats on figuring it out.

    In my experience, it’s incredibly common for people to overestimate how much light their indoor plants are receiving. People think a south facing window (in the northern hemisphere this is typically your brightest light, assuming no obstructions) is equivalent to full outdoor sun. Or they place the plants 6 feet / 2 meters away from the window and still think it’s full sun because it gets some direct rays of light during part of the day and it “scorched” when they tried moving it closer after it had adjusted to life in the shade for the past six months.



  • Shitty wasps like Yellow Jackets give almost all the other wasps a bad reputation. Yellow Jackets are mean and spiteful, even when they aren’t protecting their nest.

    Most other eusocial wasps are pretty docile, unless you mess with their nest or really go out of your way to harass them.

    In many parts of the world, like my own, there are far more species of solitary wasps than eusocial wasps. Solitary wasps are nearly all non-aggressive, they don’t have communal nests to defend, and they basically don’t have time to fuck around with stinging shit because they are too busy building a chamber for their eggs, collecting food for their upcoming progeny, and trying to stay fed and hydrated while doing it.

    So what I’m getting at is that most wasps I encounter on a regular basis are pretty chill. Really, this goes for bees as well. Most of the ones I see on a regular basis are solitary types and non-aggressive. The most aggressive bees I tend to encounter are male carpenter bees. They are highly territorial and they’ll even buzz a human to scare them off. However, there’s no threat. Male bees and wasps cannot sting, they do not even have stingers.


  • I’ll be upfront: I don’t know. But I do have an anecdote.

    I have a family member who swears that their phone is listening to every word they say. Their evidence is that they say they get ads or news regarding things they had recently had conversations about.

    Fast forward a bit, they come and stay with me for a bit for a visit. This phenomenon starts happening while they are here. Absolute proof, right?

    Well, no not really. Every single instance of “evidence” they pointed out could be explained as simple IP association.

    “We were just talking about having okra for dinner and now my feed is filled up with okra recipes” – well yeah, we talked about that, so me being the good host I am, I looked up how to cook okra so I could maybe fix some for our dinner.

    “We also had that conversation about Tom Hanks and I just got an ad for one of his movies” – yeah, we did, because you watched a couple Tom Hanks movies on Hulu yesterday so now they know someone at this IP is watching Tom Hanks movies and now might be a good time to advertise something else he’s been in.

    And this went on and on.

    So anyway, I do wonder if there’s a chance someone else on your same wifi / cell / whatever is looking this stuff up and it’s just coincidentally seeming like the all knowing omniscient internet gods are leaking your private conversations.





  • In all my adult life, I can only think of one friend of mine who would absolutely be down for going out and hunting for bugs. Fortunately, some of my friends have young kids, and young kids love to go bug hunting.

    Still wish I knew how to find more adults who would be enthusiastic about going on a bug hunting adventure rather than just being weirded out by it.



  • In your original comment that I responded to, it sounded like you’re making the case that mixed and non-white people should start asking white people those questions as a matter of policy, and not just those times when a specific white person asked first. That’s why I was curious what you thought the effect would be.

    That being said, even if you meant that people should only return the question if the white person asked first, that’s something which would just be normal and instinctual for most folks, I would think? Like if someone I’m getting to know asked me my favorite color, I’d probably follow up with the same question after I gave them my answer. So it seemed a bit weird to see a call to action to do something that I would have otherwise thought most people would already be doing (at least in my experience, which I certainly am open to the possibility that my experience is atypical of what racial minorities endure).

    And although I am white, and thus I’m certainly coming from a place of privilege, I am a minority (lgbt) and have had my fair share of experience with inappropriate and/or weaponized questions, so I’m not coming from this from a place of complete naivety. I’m certainly aware that sometimes people will ask questions like “are you the boy or the girl in the relationship” from a place of authentic and unintentional ignorance, but that it’s quite often coming from people whose intent is to be derogatory.