I’ve owned a fair few Fisher Space Pens throughout the years. It’s an interesting bit of space memorabilia that’s functional and affordable. It’s an impressive bit of engineering.

As a space nerd, I love the pen. As a pen guy…. There’s better options. The cartridge just doesn’t write as smooth as I like, nor is it a really bold, saturated line. For daily actual writing use, I use a Lamy Safari rollerball or a Pilot B2P.

After it gets dark, they refill it with lighter fluid. Every morning they light it fresh with a big ‘ole Zippo.

Some works will outright lie about it. For example, the TV show and movie Fargo specifically tell you it’s a true story, and even that names have been changed but ‘the rest has been told exactly as it happened’.

To me that’s weird. It doesn’t really add to the end result in my opinion, but would breed distrust when people discovered it was wholly fictional.

Still, even with things that are meant to be accurate portrayal of an event, it’s always good to check the facts. Hollywood just can’t help but fiddle with reality to tell a more interesting story, even when it doesn’t need it.

“Oi, cunt!”

While I’m not fundamentally opposed to kids learning basic math, even at that time it was used (think 1990-1996) it was a bullshit argument to ban them. After all, they were already cheap enough that a kid could have one on their wrist!

Heck, you can now buy them for less than a dollar on Aliexpress. But why would you, since literally every smartphone has one built in. It was silly to ban them.

Those remote control watches were actually banned at the schools I went to as a kid. Along with other calculator watches, couldn’t have one of those either. ‘Because you need to know math and won’t always have a calculator on you when you grow up’ 😂

Neat, I didn’t know that was a thing that they offered. Sounds like a good idea to keep people safe from stupid mistakes.

Yep. Years ago I interviewed someone for a radio program here in the Netherlands. This was a forest ranger, on the topic of people foraging for mushrooms. It was the hip thing to do at the time.

He explained how wildly dangerous it is for average people to do. Especially when looking up things online.

He showed me two images that looked basically identical. He explained to me that one mushroom was edible and delicious. And that it could be found in the forests in the United States. The other, identical looking mushroom can be found in European forests. That one liquifies your internal organs and causes you to shit yourself to an agonising death.

He explained that each year a handful of people die from eating it. Because they looked up a guide online, and failed to understand that there’s regional differences between edible and deadly mushrooms. And by the time they got medical attention, there was nothing that could be done.

I’m not a fan of mushrooms anyway, but I’d certainly never be dumb enough to go pick some myself. That shit’ll get you killed.

That’s pretty much what I’m assuming for an actual answer.

Though I’ve certainly read about people who spent ungodly amounts to save pets, even old ones or street dogs. Bless them for it, for sure.

Seriously though… I’m all for giving animals excellent care. But is that actually a thing people do? Give their hamster an MRI? That’s a very expensive procedure for humans with good insurance, so I’d assume it to be rather unaffordable when applied to pets like this.

I could see it for say, a beloved dog who’s got years of life left. But hamsters kick the bucket if you breathe in their general direction.

Don’t feel TOO bad; it’s not like they’re on every street corner.

Usually you’d go to one on say, a school field trip. But not every school does it. I’ve only been to a planetarium once in my life, and it wasn’t until I was in my 20’s.

Definitely go visit one though; they tend to have really interesting shows about what you can see. And there’s nothing quite like actually looking through a giant telescope with your own eyes. My local planetarium even has special sun-telescopes which allow you to view the sun and solar activity safely during daytime.

Yeah, we stick out like a sore thumb just about everywhere. And we’re easy to spot from a mile away by the typical Dutch stuff we tend to bring along.

The Dutch certainly like to travel just about anywhere. No matter where you go, no matter how obscure or remote, chances are there’s a Dutch tourist to be found - and likely another Dutch person who’s set up a little restaurant to sell typical Dutch food to said tourist.

I do hope my countrymen behaved themselves :D I’m always mortified to see the phrase ‘Dutch tourists…’ in the news.

As a Dutch guy, that’s actually something we always need to be aware of when visiting other countries :D

The average height for a Dutch male is 183,8 centimeters or 6 feet and a bit for you Americans. Even when visiting neighbouring countries like Belgium, they’re already 5 centimeters shorter on average. Spain? 7 centimeters shorter. Italians: 9 centimeters shorter.

If I was to visit say, Guatamala on vacation, I’d be 20 centimeters taller than the average male. Heck, a Dutch teen girl would tower over them by about 13 centimeters.

Basically, we always stand out. So you at least try not to be loud and overly intimidating to the locals. Thankfully, most people just think it’s really cool to meet a friendly giant though :D

I own a few Minolta’s, including the X500 and X700. Those were basically the last of their manual focus SLR’s. I love classic bodies like that; metal built bricks that feel solid and chunky to use. I also bought a ton of Minolta glass back in the 2010’s when they stuff went for pennies on the dollar on Ebay. Good glass is good glass, right?

I’ve never shot HP5 myself; I tend to be more of a Fuji shooter in general with Acros for my B&W needs. I’ve developed my own rolls, especially when I had to shoot that in cut-down form in Minox cartridges. Not exactly the kind of thing you take to a one hour photo place :D

Though I’ve also shot stuff like Tri-X 400, Ektar and a bunch of other stuff from Kodak and Fuji over the years. But the thing I absolutely LOVE to shoot is slide film. Velvia 50 & 100 in particular. Absolutely amazing to see slides on a lightbox. You get a lovely depth and color that you just don’t really see in other negatives in my opinion.

I actually just bought a Fuji X-S20 camera which includes a bunch of film simulations, including Acros and Velvia. That’s how much I love shooting those, that I want to bring that fun factor to digital as well :D Also own a Fuji X100S, which I found out is a ‘TikTok trend’ apparently…

I’ve got plenty of stuff that’s older than I am. I’ve got mechanical cameras dating back to the 1930’s, electronic camera’s from the 70’s, watches dating back to that time as well. And there’s game consoles dating back to the NES, like many here.

I like old tech. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s bad or unreliable. If you treat stuff well and maintain as needed, a lot of things will outlast you. I’ll be shooting film in cameras that are a hundred years old in a few years.

Honestly, it’s not surprising. They seem very ban-happy there lately, with accounts getting banned over nothing. And I’ve seen a fair few subs getting the axe as well. When a site gets actively hostile to users and lets mods run their own little dictatorships, people eventually get fed up with it.

Lemmy isn’t Reddit, but at least it’s… also not Reddit :D

Fair enough. Personally, I always stream music through YouTube Music. Never downloaded stuff because I don’t need to. I’ve got fast mobile internet with good coverage and I never really leave my city.

I’m not really into music enough to notice if things disappeared. Can’t say I’ve noticed that, but I’ve heard similar complaints from others. As long as there’s enough 80’s and 90’s bangers, I’m content :D

I wouldn’t necessarily say the best proof (that’s probably things like Spotify and Google Music, services which effectively killed any and all MP3 sharing).

But yeah, the Steam Deck is an awesome platform. It’s great to be able to carry games with you that you normally wouldn’t be able to play portable. It’s also an awesomely capable device for playing ROMS though, if you do decide to sail some seas :D