I am retired and you’re describing me, other than the fact that you’d have to pay me to watch soccer. I watch bicycle racing instead. It’s a damn nice life.

I watched the first moon landing on a black & white TV while wearing footie pajamas.

I haven’t had it but my mom did. She experienced or remembered none of the actual cpr but the recovery from bruising and broken ribs was so painful that she signed a do not resuscitate order saying she would rather die than have cpr again.

When it comes to refried beans, “too many” or “too much” are both incorrect. The correct construction is “may I have some more please?”

Cbat?

According to an article I read yesterday, Florida defers to the state where the felony conviction occurred. Since it’s New York, he is allowed to vote unless he’s incarcerated.

BTW, he’s already convicted, so he’s already a felon. Sentencing is just the next step. If he wasn’t a rich white dude he’d probably be sitting in jail while awaiting sentencing.

My understanding is that it’s a holdover from after WW2, when American troops were still there a lot. Americans in general, and American soldiers in particular tend to be pretty loud and effusive in large groups, which can get on anybody’s nerves. So they annoyed the locals, the locals got rude, and a cultural trope was born.

In the USA, the French have a reputation for rudeness. I didn’t really expect that to be universally true, but I was surprised by how actively friendly many people were. I spent time in Paris, Nice, Avignon, Pau, and brief stops in a few other places. The only rude person was the guy selling food on the TGV.

I’m not sure what you mean by knowing how to move in a major city. While in Paris, I walked or rode the metro. In Provence and thereabouts, it was train or bicycle.

I spent three weeks on France (almost 20 years ago) and the only rude person I encountered was being rude to everyone. He just seemed to be generally in a cranky mood. Everyone else was somewhere between neutral and friendly. I speak some French, but my accent was bad enough that anyone who spoke English immediately switched to that.

AFAIK there is no known energy source that would keep a generation ship powered for the duration of an interstellar flight.

The person to whom you responded is half right. The speed of light is half of the barrier to interstellar travel. Entropy is the other half.

This Bread I Break by Dylan Thomas

It’s a short, beautiful poem that laments man’s destructive relationship with nature.

for the last 14 years of my career, I was using stupidly overpowered Oracle exadata systems exclusively, so “slow” meant 3 seconds instead of 1.

Now that I’m retired, I pretty much never need to compress anything.

tar cvjf compressed-shit.tar.bz2 /path/to/uncompressed/shit/

Only way to fly.

I love the smell of bleach.

Absolutely hate the stench of coffee. About the only thing worse is coffee with vanilla in it. Disgusting.

You can sorta get close with MVNOs like Tello. I have a plan that’s $6.16/month, including taxes.

That’s kind of true for Amtrak everywhere except a few dedicated Acela lines in the east. The rest of their trains run on freight rail and freight trains get priority.

It depends on which line you take. Amtrak has different service levels on different routes. When I took the coast starlight from Seattle to San Jose it was wonderful, with clean cars, great food, and courteous service. When I took the southwest chief from LA to the middle of the country, it was a completely different experience. The porters were still friendly but the equipment was grungy and frequently broken and the food was about what you’d get at Denny’s. Bear in mind that both times I was in a ridiculously expensive first class cabin.

I’ve never taken the empire builder, which runs east-west across the northern part of the country, but I’ve read that it’s a “premier” service, so it should be on par with the coast starlight.

Edit: c/grey food/great food/

Mint Oreos are good, but lemon Oreos are great

Persistent object ooze prevention? Yes, that’s a solved problem.

They are humorous IETF standards published on 1 April over the years. These are specifically about implementing internet protocols using carrier pigeons instead of more traditional media like wires or optical fiber.