Toots for WesternInfidels@mefi.social account

Written by Western Infidels on 2025-01-23 at 15:19

I've got a small appliance that has died just short of its warranty period. The maker has been responsive. They're offering me a new one. Which is great, I guess.

But to get the replacement, they want me to cut the cord off the old one, and to send them a picture showing that I've done it.

I never held out much hope that they would offer to repair the thing. But my active participation in this wasteful system feels like a crime. I'm expected to personally turn something that almost works into un-recyclable trash.

It doesn't make me keen to acquire more of their products, it makes me wish I had never acquired this one in the first place.

[#]consumerism #materialism #recycling

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Written by Western Infidels on 2025-01-07 at 05:39

A recipe that starts with the claim "pointedly low-fuss" but winds up with "Step 5: Create an improvised deep fryer from items you may already have around your home" feels like a betrayal to me.

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Written by Western Infidels on 2025-01-05 at 18:50

When I moved into this house, twelve years ago, I bought some Kenmore appliances. I thought, even at that time, that I'd never have problems getting parts or repairs for Sears-brand stuff.

Today, looking for parts, I wound up at sears.com. The Windows firewall actually shut down my browser's connection to sears.com, because something shady was going on there, I guess. I'm not going to pretend to understand the details.

I haven't seen that firewall popup in years. What kind of primordial digital crimes must be present to trigger that old-school alarm?

It's like a signpost for the final corruption of the Sears name. Ayn Rand killed Sears, and the firewall popup is it's headstone.

https://www.salon.com/2013/07/18/ayn_rand_killed_sears_partner/

And I can still get parts from Whirlpool. So I guess I was right, in the end, but for the wrong reasons.

[#]capitalism #brands #repair #parts #diy

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Written by Western Infidels on 2024-12-22 at 18:57

Elderly laptop, that I mostly keep on a shelf, has been working well with Debian for years.

Yesterday I booted it up, and as soon as it connected to wi-fi, the screen went dark.

Booting up with older kernels, going back to 4.x even, same problem.

Tried a live USB of KDE Neon. Worked great... until I connected to the wi-fi. At which point, the screen went dark.

Laptop still works with Windows 10 absolutely fine. Wi-fi, video drivers, everything.

How could this happen? How could it magically go from working to not-working, just sitting on a shelf, no software updates?

It's very much as if the hardware itself has decayed in some way that Windows is more tolerant of. I've never heard of such a thing. The mind boggles. Topsy-turvydom.

I shouldn't even be thinking about this. This is very much me procrastinating Christmas preparations.

[#]linux

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Written by Western Infidels on 2024-12-19 at 17:42

A big traffic or traffic-jam scene set up at the intersection of East 9th and Euclid doesn't show up in this trailer.

I know the public library was used for some scenes, too. The PNC Bank tower is in some crowd scenes from an earlier teaser.

I'm kind of astounded how much use this production seemed to get out of downtown Cleveland. The courthouse, library, arcade, the Leader Building, Terminal Tower, PNC Tower, Key Tower etc. are within a few blocks of each other. You could see most of these locations on a 15 minute walk. They found a lot of good locations right there.

But I suppose this is precisely the virtue of old-school, pre-automobile, traditional-downtown urban planning, isn't it?

[#]movies #superman #cleveland

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Written by Western Infidels on 2024-12-19 at 17:13

I was under the impression that just about everything had a green-screen background in it these days. But it looks like this is just a straightforward as it looks, a scene set in the Key Tower lobby, with the courthouse in the background. The amazing light fixtures in the film scene are apparently really there:

[#]movies #superman #cleveland

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Written by Western Infidels on 2024-12-19 at 16:50

I guess the Leader Building (East 6th and Superior) was dressed up as the Daily Planet, that's fun.

For some reason, when I took this picture of the Leader Building, there was an oversized leg lamp (invoking that other Cleveland movie, A Christmas Story) out there.

[#]movies #superman #cleveland

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Written by Western Infidels on 2024-12-19 at 16:34

I see some more:

[#]movies #superman #cleveland

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Written by Western Infidels on 2024-12-19 at 16:12

Over at Reddit (which I've given up completely I swear) someone has paired up some of the locations seen in the trailer with tourist-style shots of the real-world locations.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Cleveland/comments/1hhtwcn/superman_trailer_and_cleveland/

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Written by Western Infidels on 2024-12-19 at 16:08

This summer I got to see some of the sets and location setups for the new Superman movie, filmed partly in my hometown of Cleveland, OH. So I was curious to see if Cleveland would be recognizable in the final result.

Cleveland is all over this trailer. I've never seen any movie that was more obviously Cleveland. I hope that turns out to be an asset.

https://youtu.be/uhUht6vAsMY

[#]movies #superman #cleveland

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Written by Western Infidels on 2024-12-12 at 15:19

The people who write recipes are trying to get us to say "traybake," as if we need that to be one word, for some reason.

Nobody's trying to get us to say "onepot meal" or "one potmeal" or "onepotmeal," though.

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Written by Western Infidels on 2024-12-08 at 16:16

When I first saw the trailer for "Nightbitch," I was immediately put in mind of the music video for "Wolf," by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

And, in what could be a kind of nod in that direction, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs do show up on the Nightbitch soundtrack.

I'd love to tell you that my admiration for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs would never bias my opinion of the film, but that's probably not true.

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Written by Western Infidels on 2024-12-08 at 16:12

I saw "Nightbitch" last night and enjoyed it.

People will tell you it's about motherhood, and that's sure not wrong, but it's ultimately very much about relationships, too. The mother in the story feels socially isolated by her role, not because she's actually alone, but because of the way our culture's conception of motherhood puts limits on her ability to express her feelings and make meaningful connections. The story is about finding her way out of that trap.

I saw at least one critic complain that the movie "didn't know what it wanted to be," meaning, the critic couldn't categorize it, couldn't force-fit it into a tidy little genre box. I think that's an amazing, revealing critique, one that reveals so much more than it says.

I've seen some other commenters claim the movie is anti-motherhood or anti-baby. I am confident those people did not watch the movie. It is absolutely pro-mom, pro-parent, pro-baby, happy, joyous.

[#]movies

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