IJBMer Updates

Stormtroper

As always, life's problems can be fixed by having more money.
How feasible would it be to sell the older toys that you've already covered?

fourteenwings

Probably not very.

Now I know why reviewers of all stripes are almost always willing to sell their dignity for free stuff.

EDIT: I'm actually not going to keep everything, though. I plan to donate about 70% of everything to charity at Christmastime like I did with my LEGO Friends stuff.

glennmagusharvey

Stormtroper wrote: »

For some reason the "troper" part of my username is starting to bother me. If I had known we'd be doing the whole "we are not TV Tropes" thing I'd have chosen a different username, but by then I was used to it, until now that is. Hmmm, maybe it'll go away, and it'll make old threads weird if have it changed (if that's even still possible).

FYI I can change your username if you want.

lrdgck

If it irks you switch it, but I think what we're doing is more like "we used to be like we are not TV Tropes but by now it's a long story". Or something like that. So, I'd say it's fine as long as you don't have problems with folks misunderstanding it as some sort of AryanGamer88 type of nick.

Bluesy_Cowgirl

I continue to be a cow

Stormtroper

I just realized that a cowgirl can mean a girl who is a cow, not just a girl cowboy.
Anyhow, I think I'll keep this username for the time being.

So, I'd say it's fine as long as you don't have problems with folks misunderstanding it as some sort of AryanGamer88 type of nick.

I dunno if this is what you're referring to but I can imagine someone thinking it's about Nazi Germany's stormtroopers. Then again it's not like I'm that much into Star Wars either.
Also I was born in '88, though I've never had it in an username, even ignoring the Happy Holidays thing I've never liked those "it was already taken so I put numbers on it" names.

fourteenwings

I think he just meant if you'd accidentally held on to a neo-Nazi nickname in general.

So, uh, today at work two people got the pink slip (along with their usual paychecks, like that'd make them feel better). There was also an e-mail sent out re:obvious goings on, and the gist of it was Restructuring.

Basically, that means this was just the opening salvo. I'm not feeling too hot about it, and it's clear others aren't either. One guy (like, twice my age) made reference to me being the last person who got a permanent contract. I want to say he was being snide but maybe I'm reading into things, but essentially he's saying I'll get LIFO-ed.

To be clear, he's not my boss or above me, but he hangs out with the crowd after work so I don't know what he knows.

I've been here a while, but I was still in school 'till this year so they didn't offer me anything super-concrete 'till then.

If uh... things happen, then like... like... well it's bad.

lrdgck

To clarify: I meant the biggest problem with that handle is whether people assume Storm to be a neo-Nazi on the basis of that being their first association with the word "stormtroopers".

Stormtroper

If uh... things happen, then like... like... well it's bad.

Indeed it'd be. Best of luck, wings!
Also, it'd probably be a good idea to save some money.

fourteenwings

Thanks guys.

Yeah, that's quite the good idea.

I will try and say this with no political commentary; I woke up this morning and The Atlantic was calling certain subsections of MLP fandom neo-Nazis. This sounds hilarious, but it was more surreal than anything.

It also occurred to me that due to modern usage of the term "Nazism", I've actually forgotten what the whole thing even was (as in, the exact ideology). The last time I did any serious pre/events during WWII study was high school history. I've read a lot about post-WWII events (with a little dabbling in Appeasement policy which is pre-WWII) lately, but that was mostly about Soviet Russia and the Cold War.

The high school history book I trusted with my mind is now lost to the annals of "probably gave it to someone".

lrdgck

I woke up this morning and The Atlantic was calling certain subsections of MLP fandom neo-Nazis. This sounds hilarious, but it was more surreal than anything.

Well, there are neo-Nazi furries, so neo-Nazi bronies aren't that far off...

fourteenwings

I'm not denying that there are neo-Nazi bronies, but I'd think The Atlantic would probably be better off doing a piece that wasn't exclusively about bronies based on 900 images on an imageboard that hosts 2m (a lot of which are extremely sexual in nature).

glennmagusharvey

they could instead do a piece about the sexual images

lrdgck

anyways, brogres > bronies

Stormtroper

I don't even remember learning about WWII in high school. We did study a bit of it at uni though, but the bulk of my knowledge about it probably comes from Wikipedia.

glennmagusharvey

Did you have a world history class in high school and if so what did it cover?

Stormtroper

We did, though I can't remember that much, national and world history were the classes I was worst at. I remember ancient Greece, medieval Europe, the Renaissance, precolumbine and colonial era Spanish America and the industrial revolutions. I remember noticing that there was much less emphasis on world history past the the time of our independence in 1811-1830.

FWIW we did study a bit of the geopolitical consequences of WWII in geography classes, and non-national art history in art classes.

lrdgck

For comparison, I had pretty much no mention of the big France-Spain-Britain wars of the XVIIIth Century. That was some serious shit, but I discovered there was such a thing through either internet or grand strategy video games.

Stormtroper

We learned a bit about that, but that's becuse it was relevant to our independence (it started with (ironically) royalists rebelling against the new French-imposed king of Spain, also the British helped us out to stick it to those paella-eaters, also the whole French Revolution freedom republic thing).

lrdgck

You might be interested in B. Anderson's Imagined Communities. The dude claims you guys invented modern nationalism, as in the concept of a nation as a community of more-or-less equals sharing the same cultural background. (And the Yanks too.) The premise is that, loosely speaking, the Creoles were cut off from European Spanish society, so they ended up developing a national consciousness of their own. Interesting, because it's us who are usually considered the vicious rabid animalistic nationalists (we kind of are, but that'd be beside the point).

Stormtroper

That's how I understand it, but wasn't it the French who invented it during the revolution and we just copied it? Something like changing "united under our king" to "united under our Frenchness".

Also, although AFAIK this isn't true of the rest of Spanish America, Venezuelan national consciousness wasn't much of a thing until nearly the end of the century when the government of the time (Antonio Guzmán Blanco's) started promoting it.

lrdgck

Dude's got quite a thing for colonial America and south-eastern Asia, not just to get away from the usual suspects (ie. Europe, particularly Central). I got it from here anyway, so you can take a look in case of having too much time on your hands.

Stormtroper

I've begun reading it, but I can already tell that what I said earlier about our national consciousness isn't very relevant, lots of national symbols, ideas, etc. that are associated with us came much later but the concept of Venezuelan-ity as a distinct identity was well established at the time (dunno how widespread tho).
Anyhows, there's this (new?) ISP in town, it offers optical fiber (i.e. new and not worth stealing) 'net that I know is available near home (in fact I think I've seen them working on posts nearby), it's reliable and fast (20 Mbps minimum, for reference other providers (WISP) offer an unreliable ~6 Mbps for the same price, and >10 Mbps is so much I dunno what to do with it (Windows updates I guess)). It's $27 (payment not in Bs.S.) per month (Edit: and $150 upfront), I can afford it but I can also keep relying on phone data and downloading things at work, thus saving some bucks.
At least I'd start doing image dumps again.
(Edit: oh yeah, also downloading high quality textures fast for the purpose of previewing.)

fourteenwings

Well that was a lot of activity overnight.

I had pretty much no mention of the big France-Spain-Britain wars of the XVIIIth Century.

Yeah my history courses covered WWI and II but the majority was the vague parsings of pre-colonial African kingdoms. Funnily/obviously enough, there was a lot of impassive "and so the [some guys] kind of just went around conquering everybody else" since there were no set nation states/barely any lasting kingdoms and everybody was always moving around depending on how factions split.

Also there were a lot of "that time we sacrificed some random lower-chieftain's daughter to the rain god".

Similarly since this is sub-Saharan Africa the majority of slave trade stuff we covered had to do with this since it happened basically next door.

Then came the colonial era stuff which was insanely detailed with initial splits, "international" factions and federations, "joint ventures", overseas politics, reform, independence efforts (including the failed ones), actual independence, and so on. It felt like history class had gotten a hyperdrive upgrade or something.

I miss history class. I've mentioned before how I didn't genuinely get good at math until my second year of University (though I was competent enough). Before that, I was a languages/humanities guy all the way.

Stormtroper

I don't remember anything about Asia or Africa (or Oceania but I wasn't expecting to).
From the slave trade I distinctly remember the thing with aboriginal slaves being replaced with african slaves and how messed up it was that for the longest time we had no problem with that, seeing it as a big improvement, and that'd come up 10-20 years later when the internet started sucking up to Bartolomé de las Casas, the guy behind that move (apparently influenced by this comic: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day ).
I was always a math person, that and physics were my faves and one of my life's what-ifs is what'd have happened if I had pursued pure math/physics instead. I'll probably retake online learning one of these days.
OTOH at the time I wasn't interested in art classed and ended up forgetting a bunch of stuff, and this would come up later when I got into 3D modeling and I had to relearn much of it.
Memorizing the names of the parts of a Roman column is still pointless though.

fourteenwings

I feel like every other thing I did in my youth (like reading The Oatmeal) I now find full of serious issues. Somehow I've gotten to the point of "my youth was wild and I regret it" without ever having done anything wild.

I do remember that when that site put out that whole "just pirate whatever because laziness" comic I did feel uncomfortable about it, even as a kid.

The high school history book I trusted with my mind with

I will always be eternally grateful it wasn't A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

I did not expect PC Builder YouTube to be so... let's say "locker room jokey" (in a PG way). I mean most of the videos I've seen are from 2016, so they've probably changed tune by now. I've learned a lot, but I don't think it's safe to hear that many nuts-and-bolts jokes in one sitting.

Stormtroper

I'm stuck in the awkward position of having a complaint post in draft, that I shouldn't mention while skipping the relevant fact that a related person passed away recently. Should've mentioned it earlier.

Relevant: our plumber passed away recently, apparently due to COVID-19. He was good at it too. May he rest in peace.

Also relevant: the main hydraulic system at home is not working, for unknown but nonetheless dumb reasons.

fourteenwings

our plumber passed away recently

Ah, that's extremely unfortunate. Condolences mate.

Stormtroper

It really is. He wasn't that old, either.
In vaguely related news, I spent the whole day looking into home repair stuff, maybe I should start being more hands-on about it, I don't think I can keep affording to get things repaired. I think it's time I brave up and get over my feaf of damaging things.

glennmagusharvey

Sorry to hear about your plumber's passing away.

I think by now I know of at least two people who would be secondary connections who have passed away due to COVID-19.