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Cake day: February 5th, 2025

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  • I’ve watched all of them. I was a TF fan as a kid. I watched it every morning before school and on Saturday mornings. The movies just…I don’t know. The first one was the best of the live action. Bumblebee maybe. All of them felt more machine like, except the stupid peeing…wtf…

    That said, they were not great. The story, on concept, seemed ok. The execution sucked. The acting was not great. The tropes were un needed, didn’t even really fit in, and just plain stupid at best. Mostly they were irritating. Like someone dragging their nails on a chalk board in the middle of a mediocre movie.

    The last couple felt more like an attempt at hero porn. [que “heroic” music, lame Walberg lines where he wields some weapon that makes no sense, then lots of booms. Don’t forget the meaningless jumping, falling all over the place, and special forces that lean more on the special than forces.]

    The only good thing that came out of them was the limited re release of the OG toys. I managed to finally snag an Optimus and a couple others.



  • DarthKaren@lemmy.worldtoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldinsane
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    2 months ago

    I’d bet abuse in his past. Not that it’s an excuse, but it’s so much easier to follow the path you know. I grew up in it and decided to break the cycle. I only learned much later that my step father was abused as well. My sister hasn’t dealt with it. She’s always angry. She’s always yelling. She’ll argue instead of deescalate. I did it at first, but I realized I was perpetuating exactly what I didn’t want to. I was making myself depressed and physically sick for days after an argument. Luckily, I realized it pretty quickly.

    Abuse and trauma are a blanket in a war zone. The war zone (the world around you) is chaotic and unpredictable. Abuse and trauma is familiar. You know it. You know it isn’t safe, but you know what to expect. So you stick with it. Leaving that is hard. You have to leave the warm blanket behind. Trudge through the unknown chaos of that war zone, and find your way out. You want to go back to that blanket. To the predictable. The path out isn’t even totally for you, and you know it. It’s for the next generation.

    I feel bad for his kids. They’re not going to get any type of mental health care until they’re adults. I’d bet that “therapy is for pussys” and “Only women cry” is his household motto.

    My son’s girlfriend is in the same predicament. Her step father is military. Her mom is a detective. Her step is the abuser. Her mom lets it happen. She’s 18 and graduates this year. Yet they read every social media message. They track her on her phone through an app. They yelled at her to get a job, or she couldn’t play softball. They read all of her bank statements and grill her on what she spends of her own money. Then, he turned around a month later and said she needs to spend her time off filling out scholarships. She’s their full time babysitter to her sisters, who are treated well by step father because they’re his own legit kids.

    My son is so frustrated because he doesn’t know how to help. I’ve been helping coach him on how best to help and be there for her. I do what I can to communicate that she’s a good person. They can’t read IG photos so I’m constantly sending funny faces back and forth with her. She’ll come here with him for lunch as well and I’ll give her a hug when I sense she needs it.

    We’ve offered up our home if she wants to move out. She won’t, and I understand it, she’s stuck a bit, but it’s there. They’re moving after she graduates. She said she’s not going to visit them on holidays. She’s welcome here. I’d bet they’ll wonder why she doesn’t visit. People like that never understand why. She’s going to have to get her own car ASAP too. They’re using that as leverage over her. I told her we’d help as much as we can. Even if it means we co sign.

    I see this behavior in the military a lot, and I think it’s because it attracts people that don’t see a way out. Even if they think it is for altruistic reasons as a kid, the root cause is just wanting out of the home. Out of that situation. It isn’t until years later that they truly, hopefully, realize why they went in. Many won’t though.


  • DarthKaren@lemmy.worldtoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldinsane
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    2 months ago

    Then you get into the actual military. It’s a bunch of high school kids with responsibility. Good leaders? Rare. Those higher end crazy weird assignments, like SG would have been? Those breed the worst because they usually attract the worst.

    “Here, Lippyballscacker will train you on this.”

    Wait, Lippyballsacker? Wtf?

    “Yeah, his supervisor was hanging in the building and remembered he had to pick him up at the last minute from the airport. One guy asked him what the new guy’s name was. “I don’t know, Lippyballsacker or something.” That name stuck.” - actual story from my time in aircraft maintenance

    When they guy left, he was gloating the name wouldn’t follow him. One of the maintenance supervisors had contacts at the new base. The name followed him.

    We also had a fuck up who was good at taking tests, so he made rank fast, but was an absolute moron. Didn’t realize he had to put his manual truck in gear or set the brake. Always had to repeat lefty loosey every time…out loud. Walked right through an antenna on the bottom of the plane. Didn’t skip a step.

    They show the military way too organized and disciplined. No. Bunch of blind leading the blind.


  • DarthKaren@lemmy.worldtoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldinsane
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    2 months ago

    Watching Live PD last night. Guy runs on a motorcycle. They have the area surrounded after he ditches. They’re looking for him and one cop spots him. He commands the guy and he’s complying. He’s almost on his knees and another cop spots him. He ran, full on run, and leapt onto the guy that was almost on his knees. The other guy that was commanding jumped on him after that as well. Guy wasn’t resisting. Guy was complying. Guy had hands in the air. Guy wasn’t reaching for anything.

    Cop after: “He ran and we didn’t know what he was capable of. So we tackled him and restrained him.”

    It’s absolute cop wank material. All of it. The majority of the time they are way over reactive and then try to justify it all. They have that disclaimer, but then most of the time they never really follow up with info, or proper info. “Guy was booked on blah blah.” Ok, but was he actually convicted? Was he found guilty, or did you just over react and your “oh I totally for sure smell weed” was bullshit. I’m fucking sick of seeing that too. How many times has jackass said that only to find…nothing.



  • I did this from our banister to a high window above our door. The cats were always testing the waters and I was afraid they’d fall. I made a ramp leading to the platform, which rests on the window sill, and short rail so they couldn’t roll off of the platform. There was a small roll of leftover carpet from the previous owners of the house. I used the rest of that for padding.

    They absolutely love going up there and staring out the window at the neighborhood. Although, only 1 can be up there at a time. Their rules, not ours. If another tries to come up they’ll have a stare off or the one that was there just leaves. Usually with a few choice words.


  • I think I see the issue. There is no real official militia. Those who call themselves militias here are white power, neo nazi, or the like. They are very much in favor of everything going on right now because it affects “those people” the most.

    Then we have those who are armed individuals. Statistically, last I looked, the majority of firearms are owned by right leaning individuals.

    There are those of us that are pissed off about everything, or left leaning, but we have no real means to get together and coordinate any type of uprising. Dig through my comments and you’ll get a good rundown of why.

    The best we can hope, those of us that are against all this shit, is arm and defend our own as best we can. That is really more for crazed right side folks who see some reason to start being stupid. Which has happened here and there already, or attempted to. We’re not talking door to door, but groups that have planned raids on peaceful protests, or have shown up in hopes of provoking a peaceful protest into a riot of some sort.


  • I’d love to do the same but I need to max out my ram before doing so. I have been working with Blender as well, so it’d be a benefit on that front as well. I have been going through the making a head tutorial and reached a point where it maxed out my system resources and I couldn’t progress.

    I used it to help fine tune a couple short campaigns for other artifact items. I am going to run through those eventually as well.

    It’s a very interesting usage case imo. DnD Beyond has that 3d campaign program out in beta right now. This would be a good usage for that system to me. Especially for small groups that struggle to find a DM or enough players to run. It could be a help to someone trying to run solo as well.

    I’d love to see LLM integrated into video games more to help give the NPCs life and make the game feel more life like. Even enemy NPCs. I’d love to see a game where enemy NPCs wander from their “zone” and try to attack different areas. Maybe even cities.

    It’s something that DAoC had in it, in limited quantities. I remember one small town would get attacked every so often by a group of NPCs. You could watch them march from their usual camp over to the town. They’d stand outside the walls and the leader would yell that they were in the area first and would yell insults. While this was happening, they’d throw rotted corpses over the walls. It would give you a disease debuff every time you entered, and you could get attacked by giant bugs that were attracted to the corpses.

    Eventually they’d retreat on their own. If you could take out their leaders, they’d retreat then as well. If you killed the leader while he was in their camp, it would delay them going to the city until he respawned. If you kept attacking the camp over and over, it would diminish their number so much that the respawns would slow down. You could eventually clear the camp and keep it that way for some time.


  • What we need is an mmo where you can make a difference. What do I mean by that? How would that work?

    For start, the “you’re the hero” thing, where 12981891961899 other mother fuckers are in the background doing the same exact thing, or getting the same exact speech as your are, needs to go. Just make me a regular dude that is adventuring. Just like DnD tt.

    How do you affect the world then? In DAoC, there were NPC raids on cities. You could go in and kill the leader, then the whole group would disband and run back to their village across the river. There were other similar events like this throughout the world. We need stuff like that. NPCs, or even players if you choose PvP, that affect the world. Instead of staying in one spot and just roaming a set path, they should be attacking the cities that they are mad at or revolting/gathering to revolt against. Make it so they can actually take territory. Take over cities. Assault capital cities. Even just randomly wander on a not set range. What I’d give to play an mmo where I have the chance to be randomly jumped by (level appropriate) NPCs. Even outside of a place they’re normally found.

    This adds dynamic change to the world. It’s not a static area. It makes it so that beginner zones are abandoned as soon as most level out of them. You need to make sure NPCs don’t take over the city because you need that flight path/horse route/etc.

    We could even have animal infestations. People aren’t killing farmer bill’s rats? They take over the farm and whatever he supplies isn’t available in the local city’s stores.

    There are so many things that can be done with NPCs to make the world feel alive and more dynamic. Again, I’m not the hero here. I’m just an adventurer, a normal mercenary, that is trying to keep the enemy in line or the rat population from getting out of control.




  • I’ll add onto the answers already. I lived in both an inspection state (Virginia), and a non inspection state (Washington state). I was in Va for about 2 years. I never saw more janky ass cars on the road and broken down ones. I saw more in those 2 years than the 20+ years I’ve lived here in Wa.

    When it came time for mine, all my neighbors sent me to a mechanic down the road. It was a long ass line, but moved pretty fast. No appointment needed. “WTF is this?” I thought. I got to my turn. The guy was in a short stool, like a dr’s one. He didn’t even leave it. I was in and out in 5 minutes. I’m anal retentive on our vehicle maintenance. So I’m not a danger, but man, I know how others are.

    One of our neighbor’s friends brought his car by one time. When it was off, oil was flooded into the spark plug holes. I swore it would never start. He cranked it. It turned over right away and all the oil sucked back down into the engine. I’ve never seen anything like it, nor since. I’m still flummoxed by it.

    I saw one car where the person cut the roof away from just behind the driver’s seats. Regular old car. They half ass put a piece of plywood and, what I assume, is plexiglass to act as a wall. The “bed” of the vehicle was now the passenger seat area. It also had some janky work going on back there.

    Our inspection system is really shitty, even in the states with them. There are so many, “I know a guy”, things going on that they might as well not have them. Then there are exemptions as well. Year ranges exempt. They do no real good if they’re there. Completely defeats the purpose.