Ridiculous Fishing

“As of December 10, 2025, the Android version is no longer downloadable from the Google Play store.”

:(

I used to play the web version of Bee Sort. Unfortunately, I got stuck on level 371 and the web version doesn’t have the option to skip a level. Does the app version have that option?

Good choice - I was going to suggest Simon Tatham’s Puzzle Collection.

And don’t spend money on fancy prescription sunglasses - that gives you an extra pair of expensive glasses to lose. You can get over-glasses sunglasses for like $20 each. They fit over your regular glasses; provide more sunglare protection from the sides, overhead and even reflected upward; you’ll still be wearing your regular glasses so you won’t lose them; and they’re cheap enough that you don’t need to worry about scratching or losing them.

You might check around with your friends and relatives, to see if any of them digitize stuff; I’ve done it on a casual basis for some of my friends and relatives.

Alternatively, you can probably get an old VHS machine at Goodwill, give it a quick cleaning, and pick up various digitizers (standalone recorder or computer-input) and convert your own tapes. If you do it yourself, I would strongly suggest checking your setup with old commercial tapes first, so that you iron out any setup issues on something you don’t care about, before sending your irreplaceable tapes through whatever process you have.

[Note on commercial tapes: some of them have copyright protection on them, which will make the video fine when you send it to a tv, but just make it erratic when you send the video through another device. Very very occasionally, for undetermined reasons, an entirely home-recorded tape will also exhibit this behavior. If this happens to you, there are two main options: (1) if the device you’re recording onto has front input jacks, switch your setup to record through those jacks, as many of the front inputs lack the monitoring needed to screw up your recordings. (2) Check eBay or other online shopping places for a “video stabilizer”, which is old-timey code for “copyright buster”. Look at the listing for some indication that it’s used for VHS or VCR.]

If you think there might be issues with the tape quality (for example, dropouts or the magnetized bits sticking to the back of the previous strip on the reel), you might want to go professional - but only after seeing what steps they take to minimize this, and what that might cost.

Edit: when I did this for family and friends, I’d monitor the first five minutes or so of each recording, simply to make sure that the tape wasn’t crinkling (more likely to happen at the start of a tape, or some midpoint that was heavily used (repeatedly rewatching a single scene) of where someone had left the tape sitting. And then I’d check in periodically, to see if the tracking needed to be adjusted. I’d also try to at least stay in the same room, so that I could react quickly if I heard the tape crinkling.

Also, in an attempt to minimize problems with the tape having become slack over the years (even if properly stored on their spines), before I started any new tape, I would: if it was stopped partway or at the end of the reel, I would rewind the tape to the start, fastforward it to the end, then rewind it again, to try to reset the tension on the tape. If the tape was stopped at the start of the reel, I’d fastforward and then rewind, to reset the tension.

Also, if you do this yourself, it’s good to have some old tapes lying about that you don’t care about, either old commercial tapes or home-recorded tapes with content you don’t care about. This is because every so often, a tape will jam inside it’s cassette, at which point you need to open it up and unjam it. But sometimes the cassette itself (but not the tape) has developed problems, and you need to re-shell the tape into the shell of a different cassette.

Ngl, I’m vaguely curious what they’d be saying in the “Love and Mass Migration” article. Like, is it okay to import a citizenship-seeking tradwife from another country if none of the libgirls in the States want you?

Aside from what everyone else’s already mentioned, there’s the whole hassle of setting up a new device - debloating, tweaking the settings, etc. Why go through the pain of adjusting to a new device when the old one works just fine?

What is your informed opinion of Campbell Island and it’s marine preserve?

[Campbell Island is the closest land antipode for Northern Ireland.]

Also, have you noticed an increase in the number of Americans moving over there in the last year or so?

he goes on about how people speak English in America and in Germany and Norway, they speak other languages

They do speak other languages. However, 88% of Norwegians seem to be fluent in English. The percentage is less in Germany, I think about 25%, but that’s still enough people that you could get by, particularly in the tourist areas.

… I think I shall start disregarding you, disregardable. Goodbye.

Might’ve only had to be on the registry for a few years?

Anyway, here: https://web.archive.org/web/20050706062151/http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-molest01.html

TIL - thank you!

Also, Dumas based D’Artagnan from The Three Musketeers and it’s sequels (the last of which was The Man in the Iron Mask) on an account of the life of Charles de Batz de Castelmore D’Atagnan, later Captain in the Musketeers and also for a time Governor of Lille.

Eh, that page sounds like AI output, not sure I’d take their word for the origin of the phrase.

There were videos of this a few years back, when Tesla was pushing an update to all the cars in their lot.

You know who the biggest welfare queens in the States are? Corporations who deliberately limit worker hours so that they’ll never get benefits, and who deliberately underpay workers relative to their value and the amount of profit the company makes, and who deliberately arrange to underpay their taxes.

All of these things increase pressure on the worker and their desperate struggle to have just a little breathing room - and the government cheerfully goes along with all of this.

If any part of society was working as it should - if government represented the people instead of the corporations, if minimum wage had kept up with inflation, if corporations and the wealthy paid back into the system that has so vastly benefitted them - if any of that had happened, then you wouldn’t be under the stress that you’re under.

Go. Sign up for SNAP. Check with your county and see what other resources are available to you because you’re on SNAP - maybe you qualify for reduced heating, or a free phone line, or seasonal credit at your local farmers market. Anything that you qualify for, take advantage of, because each program will get you a little more space in your life for yourself.

Driver’s license. Credit/debit card. Library card. RFID blocker (if not built into wallet).

Health insurance card. Important medical information (like I dunno, “Diabetic” or “allergic to penicillin”). Contact information for next of kin [can be the same card as health information].

An emergency twenty dollar bill.

If you get really big daikons, you should try scalloped daikon radishes, it’s my new go-to during the season when I get overwhelmed with large ones.

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Where is Pretti’s phone, with the video he was taking before he was shot?

I suspect it’s less a case of “won’t turn on the heat”, and more a case of “there’s no heat to turn on”. I don’t know Prairieland, but they’ve been looking into converting warehouses into detention centers - places that have walls, but which lack critical infrastructure like heat, air conditioning, sufficient toilets, shower facilities, etc. It’s the same playbook as the Nazis: most of the deaths in camps (in Germany at least) weren’t the result of explicit murder, but sheer neglect: minimal protection from the elements, minimal nutrition, minimal medical care, maximum work and cruelty, letting diseases rip through the camps - that’s where the deaths came from. That’s where most of ICE’s deaths will come from, as well.