this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
100 points (98.1% liked)

Ask Lemmy

33313 readers
1707 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 42 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

Me and my partner were going away for 10 days. The final task I had to do before coming to get her from work was to turn everything off in the house like the lights and TV so we weren't using any extra electricity or were going to come back to a burned down house from a faulty dryer or something.

I though, I'll get everything at once and turn the electricity off at the circuit breakers so I don't have to go through the whole house.

I was very proud of my smart decision so I told her what I had done with a big smile on my face.

"What about the food in the freezer you idiot" she replied.

She was laughing all the way back home to do the job properly.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I had a teacher in high school, who also coached the hockey team, who liked to make fun of you when you bought into something stupid by saying "did you know they took the word gullible out of the dictionary?".

So when he said it, I grabbed the dictionary and looked it up and said "no Mr Pizzo it's right here!".

He looked wonderingly at me and said "I would expect that from one of my hockey players but not you".

I also liked Motley Crue a lot in grade 7, and because I had just begun learning French decided to ask my French teacher what the lyric about menage a trois meant. It was very innocent of me, and she told me it meant three people living in a house together.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 3 days ago

Not that I recall, but I feel you have a story you're not telling us?

[–] [email protected] 44 points 3 days ago (6 children)

I've forgotten how to spell "of" before because I couldn't sound it out. Not my proudest moment.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Today I was asked whether I wanted a cup or cone with my ice cream. I had to stop and 'draw' each one out in my mind because I couldn't remember which was which.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

I too have spent way too much time wondering why "ov" didn't look quite right

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 days ago

Uv. Obviously.

[–] mic_check_one_two 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

One funny quirky part of English is that many people (primarily phonetic sight readers) literally won’t notice if you substitute “ov” for “of” in the middle of a sentence. Sort of like how you can add the word “and” on both ends of a line break, and people won’t notice until you point it out. Their brain just sort of passively filters out the second “and”.

And I bet a significant portion of people reading this comment went back to see if I intentionally added either of those to my comment.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Halfway through the first paragraph I considered rereading, but decided to go with my gut that I didn't miss anything.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

well i guess the reason why
why it's ok to repeat the last word of
of the line is to provide continuity.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Why so many native English speakers use "would of" and similar, while it is much less common for people who have learnt it as a secondary language.

Of course such quirks are not exclusive to English, but is shared among all of the less literal phonetic languages.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

Mine was "many". I feel like my brain bled trying to figure it out.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

English orthography is pretty dumb, TBF.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

When I decided to test if the tip of my welder was cool to touch yet by holding it right next to my lip.

I touched my lip.

It was still hot.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I built a solar tracking system with light sensors for a solar cooker. It worked beautifully on a cloudless day but sometimes got confused when there were some clouds. Some weeks later I realized that my glorious invention was trying to find something we know the position of at any time during the day. Considering the time and money spent and how smart I had felt for building that monstrosity made me feel very dumb afterwards.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

Still an impressive feat. The fact that you thought of improvements afterward does not diminish that you made a thing, with some amount of success, more sophisticated than anything 99.9% of humans will make in their lives.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 days ago (1 children)

A non-optical sensor based solution would require other sensors to calculate the relative position of the solar cooker oriented to Earth as well as calculate the elevation. Your solution is turnkey that you just slap down and it does everything needed without external input beyond solar radiance.

Also, a whole bunch of your approach has many other applications with only very minor tweaks. I like what you did.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Yeah, it's like making a car self-driving without GPS. it's not dependent on external input that way. If you can make it work by only using cameras and lidar, that's fantastic work and definitely deserves credit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

If you replaced it with something that requires connectivity, then your first approach may have been a better design if even if it didn't work out quite right the first time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

If it were able to retain coordinate tables, then after a sunny day calibration it could use that as fallback. And make limited micro adjustments and table updates as-needed.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 days ago (1 children)

No, but I have done and said stuff that gives me an intense feeling of embarrassment when I recall the event.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago (2 children)

No, but I have done and said stuff that gives me an intense feeling of embarrassment when I recall the event.

Wait, this isn't a daily or near hourly occurrence? The longer you live you even have a longer list of these to recall intrusively when you're doing completely unrelated things.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

And the worst thing about age-related memory loss is that those fucking moments are stuck like glue forever! Can't remember my phone number but will never forget the stupid thing I did/said that one day

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

This may happen to me once a week.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I once wondered aloud how they get tanning beds to emit vitamin D. I then immediately corrected myself by saying that it was photosynthesis, which is technically correct, but doesn’t sound right in the context of animals. I did not feel smart.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

saying that animals do photosynthesis is like saying that radio signals transmit power. yes, they literally do, but it's so miniscule that it's practically negligible. it's essentially only a signal that's being transmitted.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My crystal radio would beg to differ, sir/madam!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

what? i can't hear anything

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

My guitar teacher got me with a good one. At one point we were discussing care and replacement of the strings, named by the notes they play (E-string, A-String, etc) ……. I wanted to be diligent about taking care of my guitar so innocent kid me spent days talking about buying a new G-string before someone had mercy on me and explained it

Edited to clarify and add a little context

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago (2 children)

For a moment I thought a motion-activated sink garbage disposal would be convenient so I wouldn’t have wet hands flipping the switch and dripping all over the counter.

Heh.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago

Ever want to recreate the sensation of blindly sticking your hand in a bag with an angry wolverine?

ooo has just the thing for you!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Honestly, this isn't a horrible idea. If the motion sensor is in a different location than the actual disposal,, Like a motion sensor under a black panel instead of the light switch to remove the electrical hazard chance

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I thought of using the internet once

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Check out this guy lol

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

Wow. That's intense and specific. I can't say that I have

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I don't recall my thoughts, but sometimes it goes trough my mouth. I once ask why bloody sunday was not a sunday on the calendar this year. Yeah because, you know... a date isn't on the same day each year...

[–] emeralddawn45 7 points 3 days ago

I mean lots of holidays are on the same day each year though, like good friday or easter sunday or Thanksgiving so i think thats kinda excusible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I was there thinking of the bloody mary, didn't understand at all ..

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

why bloody mary isn't on a sunday.... hmmmm.... 🤔

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

Don't be so hard at yourself. We all have dumb thoughts here and there. It doesn't look like so because people usually only externalize the good ones.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Every god damn day of my life

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Edit: I misread your question.

~~Online: Pretty much any prank and/or challenge resulting in death or permanent injury.~~

~~IRL: Some old guy in the hospital bed next to me refusing to be treated by an African immigrant nurse, calling her slurs. (He might have had dementia, but still)~~