Random Thread

[Pabappa]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shopdropping <--- it exists!! I looked this word up on urbandictionary once, but never thought to look it up on wiktionary until now. Or, maybe i did and forgot, since the page was only created in 2015.

way back in 1998 I had a few books I wanted to get rid of, I guess they were all children's books although the marketing term is "young adult". I worked at a department store that sold books, so I brought them into work with me and stuck price labels to them over the barcode that said "[title of book] PRICE: 0". This was a big store in a small company, not like Walmart & Target which dominate the big-box market today, so Im pretty sure there was no corporate policy on the books for what to do when a customer tried to bring up a product like that . I only worked there for a year, and never got to see what we did when it happened ... I think I may have brought them in towards the end of my time working there, and felt it was just my way of giving back to the store I loved so much rather than to cause a scene. Today, if I had books I wanted to get rid of, I would give them to a book drop-off, but either such things didnt exist at the time or I had no means of getting to them (I was 16, but hadnt gotten my driver's license yet).

I did something similar with SNES games when I grew out of them, but instead of dropping them in a store, I brought them to high school and left them in a corner with no explanation. I have no idea where they ended up. Again, there are better ways to pass on unwanted toys, but at the time, I didnt know any other kids who would want them, so I did the only thing I could.

I have only had one retail job since then I loved enough to want to give back to them but the opportunity wasnt really there because it was a large corporation where even a good gesture like that would certainly have been rejected by coprorate policy.

[Ryusenshi]

Well, after all that talk about C++, it turns out that the project will use C instead.

Well, at least I'll have time to study C during the lockdown.

[Travis B.]

Too bad you won't be doing in Forth!

Of course, this is the language which is rumored to have more implementations per user than any other language.

[malloc]

Would you consider $260 a month high for car insurance and if so, what can I possibly do to lower it? I am really struggling financially as it stands and with the coming recession, I need to eliminate as many expenses as possible. And because of a recent accident, that cost will probably rise to $300 or more soon.

[Pabappa]

Would you consider $260 a month high for car insurance and if so, what can I possibly do to lower it? I am really struggling financially as it stands and with the coming recession, I need to eliminate as many expenses as possible. And because of a recent accident, that cost will probably rise to $300 or more soon.

cant really help, but Im posting here so I just wanted to highlight it. I had a car for a long time, but I was never really cognizant of what the bills were ... I moved around a lot and things werent really online yet so I just had the bills sent to my parents' house and they paid them (with my money, but I never paid attention to the amounts). and there are probably a dozen other factors that affect car insurance payments, ... maybe even the quality of the car. is it legal to charge people higher premiums if their car is more liable to suddenly halt and get rear-ended or cause an accident indirectly? I dont know.

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It seems awkward to post this after that, but ... it is the random thread, so ...

Is Twitter deliberately promoting mistyped hashtags? Right now #FlattenTheCuve is showing to me as trending, not #FlattenTheCurve. I've seen dozens of other examples of this, and I wonder if some algorithm at Twitter is trying to lure me in to make posts mocking the misspellers as if it knows from who I follow that I'm a bit of a troll. or does everyone else see the promoted typos too? In any case, I make very few posts on Twitter, ... I use it 99.9% for reading other people's tweets.

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Thoughts on shop dropping:

Although I did a small good deed by shop dropping my unwanted children's books into the store i worked at when i was a teenager, it wasnt all out of good will ... i think i really got a thrill seeing my stuff in someone else's store and not knowing where it would end up. i did the same with video games and i remember when i was younger that my mother donated my old childhood computer to the local school, so i saw games i had played when i was ~6 yrs old sitting around, some even with my name on them. I made my mark, and in a good way.

[Mornche Geddick]

Would you consider $260 a month high for car insurance and if so, what can I possibly do to lower it? I am really struggling financially as it stands and with the coming recession, I need to eliminate as many expenses as possible. And because of a recent accident, that cost will probably rise to $300 or more soon.

I definitely would. That kind of figure in pounds sterling is what I pay for the entire year. And the £ is currently only about 15% away from the $ in value. The only thing I can suggest (not being familiar with the car insurance market outside the UK) is to try shopping around for different providers.

[Mornche Geddick]

Thoughts on shop dropping:

Although I did a small good deed by shop dropping my unwanted children's books into the store i worked at when i was a teenager, it wasnt all out of good will ... i think i really got a thrill seeing my stuff in someone else's store and not knowing where it would end up. i did the same with video games and i remember when i was younger that my mother donated my old childhood computer to the local school, so i saw games i had played when i was ~6 yrs old sitting around, some even with my name on them. I made my mark, and in a good way.

Nothing wrong with any of those motives. Good deeds make the world go round. What goes around, comes around.

[Raphael]

Ancient music question: what, exactly, is the instrument that Nero, according to legend, played while Rome burned? What kind of fiddle-like instruments did they have back then?

[Ares Land]

The version I learned is that he played the lyra.

(Oh and, if the translation of Suetonius I have is correct, the Romans had bagpipes!)

[Raphael]

The version I learned is that he played the lyra.

Yes, that makes more sense.

(Oh and, if the translation of Suetonius I have is correct, the Romans had bagpipes!)

So, if you were a particularly unlucky prisoner, the last thing you'd hear before being torn to pieces alive by lions would be - bagpipes?

[Raphael]

Unrelated: I had an idea for a silly work of fiction, in whatever medium:

The year is 1953. A down-on-her-luck aspiring Hollywood screenwriter has a vision of the future. Specifically, of the year 2020. The twist: the year 2020 in her vision is, well, the real 2020. Our 2020. Perhaps she's a clairvoyant. Perhaps the conceit is that the real 2020 is just a figment of her imagination in which we all live. Or perhaps it's all just an amazing coincidence.

Anyway, now she's a woman on a mission: to get her vision filmed - perhaps as a movie, perhaps as a TV show. Will anyone go anywhere near her script? If so, how will meddling executives try to tone down the more outrageous parts of her vision - the parts that are outrageous from a 1953 perspective, and the parts that are outrageous from any perspective? And if anything like her original vision gets anywhere near being filmed, how will the special effects technicians of 1953 try to create an illusion of our technology? Lots of questions!

[foxcatdog]

What practical purpose do flying cars serve? How are they not just a more dangerous version of regular cars? Are traffic jams really that bad we need them?

[zompist]

The year is 1953. A down-on-her-luck aspiring Hollywood screenwriter has a vision of the future. Specifically, of the year 2020. The twist: the year 2020 in her vision is, well, the real 2020. Our 2020. [...]
Anyway, now she's a woman on a mission: to get her vision filmed - perhaps as a movie, perhaps as a TV show. Will anyone go anywhere near her script?

That's a pretty good idea. I don't keep up with sf much, but I haven't heard of anything just like it. (Except ancient versions, like Cassandra.)

A lot depends on the tone. I don't think it would be best as a smug satire of 1953 ("these idiots couldn't imagine things would be so different!!") or a heavy-handed satire of 2020. If I were doing it I'd probably use some time travel tropes, like the woman really is from 2020 and is trying to warn people through fiction, and no one understand what she's warning about.

It also needs some sort of payoff... does she succeed? Do we care either way?

You could also go off in a Philip K Dick or Stanislaw Lem way... it turns out it's not the real 1953, or their attempts at modeling 2020 seem off to us but it turns out they really reflect her 2020, or reality turns out to be way too mutable, or something.

(Although the SFX angle is interesting... I'm not sure what effects you'd actually need. What about a cityscape or a typical house of 2020 is hard to replicate in 1953? Maybe the appearance of a color computer monitor, which I guess you'd handle with rear projection. Could be cheesy, but could actually work pretty well.)

[Ares Land]

Unrelated: I had an idea for a silly work of fiction, in whatever medium:

The year is 1953. A down-on-her-luck aspiring Hollywood screenwriter has a vision of the future. Specifically, of the year 2020. The twist: the year 2020 in her vision is, well, the real 2020. Our 2020. Perhaps she's a clairvoyant. Perhaps the conceit is that the real 2020 is just a figment of her imagination in which we all live. Or perhaps it's all just an amazing coincidence.

Anyway, now she's a woman on a mission: to get her vision filmed - perhaps as a movie, perhaps as a TV show. Will anyone go anywhere near her script? If so, how will meddling executives try to tone down the more outrageous parts of her vision - the parts that are outrageous from a 1953 perspective, and the parts that are outrageous from any perspective? And if anything like her original vision gets anywhere near being filmed, how will the special effects technicians of 1953 try to create an illusion of our technology? Lots of questions!

That's a great idea! Pretty reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, in fact.

Wouldn't our 2020 be kind of a letdown compared to 1953 SF? We went to the moon, but just a few times, nuclear power is now felt to be a bit of a bad idea, no flying cars...

[Ares Land]

What practical purpose do flying cars serve? How are they not just a more dangerous version of regular cars? Are traffic jams really that bad we need them?

One advantage I see would be to free up the streets for pedestrians.
Alternatively, in City by Clifford D. Simak, in what is perhaps one of the earliest forms of the ideas, everyone gets atomic helicopters and people simply abandon city to go live in grand countryside estates.

[Mornche Geddick]

So, if you were a particularly unlucky prisoner, the last thing you'd hear before being torn to pieces alive by lions would be - bagpipes?

Or Nero on the lyre?

[alynnidalar]

Unrelated: I had an idea for a silly work of fiction, in whatever medium:

The year is 1953. A down-on-her-luck aspiring Hollywood screenwriter has a vision of the future. Specifically, of the year 2020. The twist: the year 2020 in her vision is, well, the real 2020. Our 2020. Perhaps she's a clairvoyant. Perhaps the conceit is that the real 2020 is just a figment of her imagination in which we all live. Or perhaps it's all just an amazing coincidence.

Anyway, now she's a woman on a mission: to get her vision filmed - perhaps as a movie, perhaps as a TV show. Will anyone go anywhere near her script? If so, how will meddling executives try to tone down the more outrageous parts of her vision - the parts that are outrageous from a 1953 perspective, and the parts that are outrageous from any perspective? And if anything like her original vision gets anywhere near being filmed, how will the special effects technicians of 1953 try to create an illusion of our technology? Lots of questions!

It’s a fun idea for a setting, but my immediate question is... what’s the plot? Of the 2020 movie she wants to make, I mean. What sort of effects or set dressing they’d have to do would vary quite a lot if you’re making a film about a down-on-his-luck 2020 farmer who’s under pressure to sell out to a larger operation, Russian trolls interfering in the 2016 election, or the trials of an Italian family under quarantine during the coronavirus.

[Raphael]

Thank you for the feedback, everyone!

It’s a fun idea for a setting, but my immediate question is... what’s the plot? Of the 2020 movie she wants to make, I mean. What sort of effects or set dressing they’d have to do would vary quite a lot if you’re making a film about a down-on-his-luck 2020 farmer who’s under pressure to sell out to a larger operation, Russian trolls interfering in the 2016 election, or the trials of an Italian family under quarantine during the coronavirus.

Hm, when I first thought of that a while ago, I didn't think about the plot at all, but now I'm pretty sure it would have to be something Covid-19 related. Though your "2020 farmer who’s under pressure to sell out to a larger operation" might have the advantage that people in 1953 were probably already at least somewhat familiar with that kind of thing.

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Zompist: One general problem that I have with time travel stories is that IMO, their authors usually don't realize just how common time travel would be if it were possible. You wouldn't just have one guy or gal travelling back in time to kill Hitler; you'd have hundreds or thousands, or perhaps even millions or billions, of people trying to kill, or prevent the killing of, everyone who ever played an important role in history, had descendants who played an important role in history, or might have played an important role in history in an alternate timeline. The time and place of every major, or even minor, historical event would be completely overrun by time travellers trying to influence that event. Time travel stories usually don't account for that, so I have problems with accepting time travel even in a story. You might get around that problem by making time travel something accidental and impossible-to-control, though.

[WeepingElf]

Zompist: One general problem that I have with time travel stories is that IMO, their authors usually don't realize just how common time travel would be if it were possible. You wouldn't just have one guy or gal travelling back in time to kill Hitler; you'd have hundreds or thousands, or perhaps even millions or billions, of people trying to kill, or prevent the killing of, everyone who ever played an important role in history, had descendants who played an important role in history, or might have played an important role in history in an alternate timeline. The time and place of every major, or even minor, historical event would be completely overrun by time travellers trying to influence that event. Time travel stories usually don't account for that, so I have problems with accepting time travel even in a story. You might get around that problem by making time travel something accidental and impossible-to-control, though.

This is also what I have been thinking about time travel stories recently. I think that we have no evidence whatsoever for visitors from the future (OK, some people claim that UFOs are just that, but why, then, do they not cluster around major historical events?) is probably pretty good evidence that time travel is impossible.

[Raphael]

Just thought of this:

nuclear power is now felt to be a bit of a bad idea,

You could argue that miniaturization has to some extent played the role in real life - enabling things that would look like sheer magic to visitors from the past - that the 1953 SF people thought nuclear power would play.