That’s some quality plausible deniability right there. Flared base and everything.

That’s definitely ending up in someone wearing a dog collar…

Yeah, that’s certainly one odd aspect. Also, there’s a ton of other methods to handle labour shortages. Like activating underused groups, such as women. Or offering retraining so people can switch to different jobs. And higher pay for sectors with shortages doesn’t hurt either, considering the already very low pay in Greece.

Running your existing workforce ragged is NOT the way to deal with this.

But hey, maybe we’re missing some cultural or political piece of the puzzle as to why they went this route.

The Greeks are insane for going along with this. Revolutions have started over less. Clearly their politicians no longer have the best interests of the Greek people in mind.

Here’s the way I see it: to most people, that word is not linked to a disability. It’s just a word to describe bewilderment or exasperation at someone, something, some situation. It’s not intended to be hurtful.

I have a disability as well. I see about twenty percent of what normal people see. I’m pretty much blind without my contacts or glasses. I don’t get offended when someone uses terms like ‘short-sighted’ or when someone says ‘are you blind?’ to someone else. We also use seeing metaphors quite a lot if you pay attention to them. I’m not offended by it, because I know the language is not intended to offend me.

I’ve also worked with people who had actual mental disabilities. And trust me, most of them know damn well when something’s intended as an insult or when it’s just metaphorical use.

Airbus is Ableist!

Couple years ago, I visited a historic grand prix that featured classic F1 cars. They also had open pits, so you could walk up and ask questions and literally stand next to the cars.

I was standing next to a 70’s F1 car when they performed an engine test. I was wearing thick, professional earplugs and the biggest Peltors you’ve ever seen. When they fired that thing up, I lasted all of five seconds before I walked out. At that point, it was no longer sound but sheer pressure. You could feel it in your chest.

As for how the mechanics do it? Easy, they’re all deaf as a post. Even the best earpro can’t prevent that kind of hearing damage, especially if that’s your chosen career. If you’re worried about good earpro not being enough, best advice is to put distance between you and the object/career path involved.

My brother in Buddha… how about we don’t do that.

That’s awesome! I got back into LEGO as an adult in 2012 when they released the first VW camper.

On mine that panel seems pretty secure, though it is a bit finicky to attach. Might want to check if it’s properly attached.

Recommendations are tough; LEGO makes so many awesome sets. It also depends on things like budget and space. For example, the Concorde set is awesome, but also quite large.

Personally, I really like their modular sets. Larger, very detailed buildings like a hotel, jazz club, bank, etc. I’ve collected most of them so far.

There’s also a lot of cool new soace sets, in addition to the galaxy that you’re familiar with. I’m really looking forward to the lunar rover that’s coming out later this year.

A good site to follow for LEGO news is Brickset.com. That way you can get a feeling for any future sets that you might like. Some can sell out pretty quickly; lots of us adults love LEGO ;-)

That’s an awesome set; the Polaroid OneStep SX-70 camera.

https://www.lego.com/en-nl/product/polaroid-onestep-sx-70-camera-21345

It actually has a really neat feature where you can push the red shutter button and it actually pops out a cardboard ‘photo’. They tweaked it to perfection; it doesn’t shoot out fully, but instead sticks out just partly like the real camera. They went through a lot of iterations of that mechanism in order to get it just right.

It’s an awesome set for photography nerds.

The best strategy when it comes to expensive niche lenses like this is: save up and buy a good used example of a lens that won’t limit you and will let you grow as a photographer. There’s always people selling gently used lenses because they either don’t use them or they’re switching systems.

I’ve always bought better lenses and gear than I needed at the time and never regretted it. If you buy a cheap lens, it often comes with tradeoffs that the expensive lenses don’t have. If you buy a good lens - especially dumb, manual lenses like a tilt-shift, you can always use them on other cameras down the line or sell them to another eager photographer without losing a lot of money.

Owning niche gear like this is kind of its own joy anyway. It’ll let you do and experiment with things that others can’t do. You might not use it every day, but you’ll be ticked pink to use it when you can. I can’t really tell you what I paid for some of my specialty gear, but I can damn sure tell you about how much I smile when I use it :D

The one in the video is a Canon TS-E 90 - that’s a 1000 bucks USED. And that’s not really what you want if you’re going to be doing landscape stuff. You want the TS-E 24 for a much wider field of view. Those are even more expensive.

You CAN however buy cheaper, new lenses. Brands like Laowa and Samyang produce tilt-shifts that cost less than half of what a Canon costs if you really want a new example.

That said though… anything in photography is expensive anyway, and these are niche lenses. They do some things that other lenses really can’t, like this magic trick. And while you can replicate some of its effect digitally - like the miniature effect - the best way to do things like that is always in camera. If you take a good shot to start with, you’ll alsways have a better end result.

I’m personally looking to buy a TS-E 24 one of these days, assuming I find a gently used - and gently priced - example.

You CAN in fact more or less do this for real: photographing a mirror from a straight on perspective without the camera visible.

https://youtu.be/ZlaeWRMYwGg?feature=shared

Basically, you need a special tilt-shift lens that distorts perspective to where it looks ‘straight on’ while the camera is actually off to the side or down below. If you do it correctly, the viewer won’t even notice anything’s missing.

These lenses are primarily used for architecture photography to prevent ‘leaning buildings’. They can also create really cool miniature effects. It’s quite a useful bit of gear, but also rather expensive because it’s such a niche lens.

Which is exactly what everyone does. At least in the US. And every side is equally wrong about it.

The loudest voices always draw the most attention. And I don’t know any other vegan voice that’s as loud as PETA’s. That’s kind of the problem.

There’s also the ‘guilt by association’. Look at organisations like PETA: they even complained about things like the treatment of entirely fictional animals in video games, like Palworld. Basically, you can’t even argue that ‘they look like real animals so it encourages real-world mistreatment’ like they usually do.

That does not make you look particularly sane. I’m sure they do good work as well, but that sort of thing isn’t helping their cause.

I honestly don’t mind people discovering Fallout. Heck, I’ve bought and lent copies to people to get them interested in it.

But I’ve also been in gaming since the late ‘80’s, and I’ve seen franchises ruined because developers chased the mass market instead of sticking to what made their games popular in the first place.

People came to Call of Duty for tight, sweet multiplayer matches with a military aesthetic.

Nowadays it’s got silly battle royale modes which let you play as Snoop-Dogg, The Terminator or a Warhammer 40K character. It looks nothing like what the original games were. And as a result, the playerbase has declined and shifted towards casual.

Battlefield is a shell of its former self after they moved away from what made it good. Need for Speed games also suck because they chased the Fast and the Furious trend. Flight Simulator has become too mainstream leading to quality decline because developers chase casual players. And there’s numerous other examples of games moving towards a more casual, wider base. Usually because newcomers think the old gameplay is ‘boring’ or ‘too difficult’. Go talk to some Diablo veterans about their thoughts on IV…

And yes, as someone who’s been with Fallout since 1: 76 should never have been made. Fallout is a single player, story driven experience. And it should stay that way. The mobile game… I’d rather they put that effort into making a proper game.

I’m still conflicted if it’s a good or a bad thing that the show is a hit. On the one hand, it’s nice that people are discovering the great storytelling and adventure that Fallout has to offer.

On the other hand, newcomers tend to… totally ruin the thing you’ve loved for decades. Especially if companies start chasing that group. So let’s all hope this doesn’t lead to watered down cash grabs, but instead lights a fire under development of good new proper Fallout titles. We’re looooong overdue.

That place really went to shit over the past year. Which is hardly surprising seeing how many good people were pushed away from the platform.

Good mods were replaced by power tripping shitheads and good posters and commenters were driven off when they couldn’t use their desired app and the subreddits they liked went to shit or were nuked. Meanwhile, bots are ruining everything else.

And let’s not even get started on the ads, the IPO shenanigans, the AI thing…

Reddit needs to be taken out back and shot. It’s the humane thing to do; we shouldn’t let it suffer like this.

I’ve had a fair few colleagues with varying levels and flavors of autism. The answer is yes.

Also, weird people are fun. Normal’s overrated. I like weird people. Which is probably why I actually prefer the autistic colleagues over the ‘normal’ ones.

Sure, not everyone will dig your particular weirdness, but the same thing is true of everyone without autism too. Just live your life and do your own thing.

That sounds like a scary one; you’d almost be tempted to think you suddenly dislodged a brain tumor or things like that :D

Yep. Like a blood ribbon almost. I imagine the bleed started in the front of the nasal cavity and trickled quite a ways back when I was sleeping on my back.

I was quite surprised indeed when it came out. Even took a picture of it.