We are the fridge
We are the drift punch
Liveblogging taking my suddenly partially paralyzed kitty to the vet.
A real hammer
It will make everything look like a nail.
2. Oh dear, is she distressed (apart from by being taken to the vet)?
At the moment he's quiet and seems calm. He seemed to be in a lot of pain earlier.
Eek, Heebie, that sound traumatic.
I am currently waiting (and frantically rearranging clutter) for people to deliver a new fridge. My old fridge started molding about two months ago, and I just didn't have time to deal with anything other than work until now (as it turns out, though, the day after Christmas isn't a bad time to go appliance shopping).
I'll be happy when it's all done but at the moment it's just making me depressed in an, "I don't want to be a functional adult" kind of way.
Depending on what time they show up, I may comment on unfogged some this morning (I've missed all of you).
LB - I'm enjoying the kitchenaid repair updates!
Heebie, that sounds like a miserable way to spend the day.
I've spent the day lying on the couch willing my cold to get better and my BH contractions to stop. It's not pre-term labour but it's also 2 months early and the dr decided after some monitoring yesterday that I get to take pills. This has crushed my hitherto footloose and fancy-free attitude to pregnancy, and the last two days have been rather more anxious. Bah humbug. I'm sure it's all over-monitoring and over-protectiveness anyway, but it's definitely no fun.
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. What are pills for B-H contractions? Back when I was doing that sort of thing, I thought there was nothing to do about them.
Well, it's a pill form of a tocolytic - actually a blood pressure medication which is also used to prevent preterm labour. Or so the internet tells me ... At least I don't have to be in the hospital hooked up to an IV or anything, of course. of course this all happens over the holidays when my dr is away, and so all my information came through a grumpy nurse who looked at me like I was crazy when I asked about medication side effects.
Grump.
Wondering if I am understanding the live-blog correctly: you're still trying to get the machine open?
Yes. (Well, I have the back part of the casing off, but that's not terribly useful. What I need to get off is the planetary -- the spinny thing the beater attaches to -- and to get that off I need to hammer out this groove pin, and the pin is not moving.)
Have I mentioned that while messing around with tools and such amuses me, I don't do it often at all and have no manual skills?
Can you reach the other end of the pin and pull it through with pliers or something?
Hitting things with a big hammer does sound like fun, no matter one's skill level.
Nope. The pin started flush on both sides, or pretty close. I've moved it maybe a scant millimeter? Enough that it's perceptibly protruding on the side I'm not pounding on. But nowhere near enough to grab with anything.
It's already non-functional, so you don't have to worry about breaking it; whack the crap out of that thing. Hey, this advice works for the mixer, too.
11: I am led to believe that is part of the fun.
Lubricant?
Hope all goes well with BH and cat.
I've been mostly eating cheese today.
I'm the last person on earth to discover FKA twigs, aren't I. I mean, apart from elderly Bulgarian judges, lost Amazonian tribes, and so on.
Oh, h-g, best wishes with the kitty. Parodie - hope you can get your more relaxed attitude back when the contractions stop!
If it's now inset on the side you're pounding, maybe you could hold something like a carpet nail against the end of it to give yourself something to hit directly?
The problem is that if I hit it hard at all, the 'punch' slips sideways -- I'm not successfully holding it steady under more force than a firm tap. If I could move it enough that the punch was actually in the pin-hole, so it couldn't slip, I could, as you say, whack the hell out of it. I've been trying different arrangements of grabbing it with pliers and such -- something's got to work eventually.
19. If I count as "... and so on", you may be.
Trying to think of better substitute punches you might have around. Presumably you do not have a nail set or would have used by now. Too bad you live miles away from any conceivable hardware store.
Arthritis plus constipation. Let me take a raincheck on your (appreciated) sympathy.
And parodie, fingers crossed for an uneventful two months.
Heebie, glad to hear it's simple and treatable! And thank you for the kind wishes.
hammer out this groove pin
LB's forthcoming funk album.
Are you using the short or the long side of the Allen wrench as the punch? Short side might be more stable and less likely to slip.
And it may go without saying but you can probably turn things to rotate the gear to get a better angle on the sucker.
26: Golden raisins soaked in gin should work for both.
You have the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed V? Best killer robot ever!
I have moved on to a big nail, which is the best punch-substitute yet. No progress at all, other than a bunch of damage to the finish around the head of the pin. I'm starting to wonder if I've damaged the metal to the point that the pin can't come loose -- nothing looks grossly bent, but the scarred-up finish might be hiding it.
Either that, or seventeen years of use and it's just stuck in there damn good. (I haven't been pounding on it continuously since my last comment, but I've put a fair amount of time in.)
This is heading for being some sorely anticlimactic liveblogging.
(I haven't been pounding on it continuously since my last comment, but I've put a fair amount of time in.)
This is heading for being some sorely anticlimactic liveblogging.
Some lubricant might alleviate the soreness.
If that pin has been sitting in there undisturbed for over a decade of kitchen use there's probably some rust/other corrosion/generic goo sticking it in place. Putting a little WD-40 on/around it and giving it an hour or so to soak in and start dissolving things might help.
(I'm not exactly a skilled mechanic, but "put some WD-40 on it and maybe give it a bit of a knock to shake something loose" is one of the major things I know about dealing with machines. The other is mainly "just cover it in tape so it doesn't move around".)
Let me be the first to suggest adding some lubricant.
32: Are you implying that she should waterboard it?
The difference between 17 and 35 is that 17 seems to be a genuine attempt to give advice, whereas 35 is a genuine attempt to make an off-color joke.
seventeen years of use
Somehow I hadn't caught this before. I do understand the impulse to fix the thing which has been such a long-standing (steadfast!) companion for so many years.
My hair dryer recently died, for example. It just ... emitted a burning smell toward the end of that particular usage, and then the next time, it simply did not power up at all. A hair, or blow dryer (at least this one) doesn't seem like the kind of thing that can be disassembled whatsoever.
And yet I examined it, for lo: I have had this thing since high school! Holy crap, since high school! They don't make 'em like that any more.
39: So, you're saying you were adding value while asilon was treacherously trying to bring this thread to an early close.
Between LB's mixer and Heebie's cat, it's lubricants all around.
I use a sharp Phillips head screwdriver when I need a punch, it has a point, is hard enough, long enough to get leverage, and usually has a large enough area on the handle to hit firmly.
Another thing to do is to grip around the pin with pliers or vicegrip very slightly changing the pinhole to an ellipse and loosening up the internal bond. Freezing, with differential contraction rates sometimes helps.
Seriously? Doesn't that wreck the screwdriver?
Wrecked screwdrivers is a theme of Japanese animation.
Screwdrivers are relatively hardened steel and ime tend to strip and wreck screws before being wrecked themselves. And they can be resharpened or ground, although I have never encountered a need.
Wrecked Bloody screwdrivers is (sic) a theme of Japanese animation.
Just kidding.
I'm getting close to giving up. WD 40, yes, the nail is a perfectly good punch (now that the sharp point is pounded smooth), and it is just not moving at all. If I wasn't looking at a perfectly clear picture in the manual, I'd think the pin couldn't come loose by design.
LB, here are some other people who r doin' it rong.
Maybe one of your kids or your husband has more muscle than you?
Nah, I'm stronger than the kids, still, and Buck is in North Carolina. It's not a muscle problem, exactly, anyway, more of a technique problem. I could be hitting this an awful lot harder than I am, I just can't keep the "punch" on the pin if I hit it too hard.
If that wasn't perfectly accurate, I would be terribly, terribly hurt.
Unlike those hapless clowns, you are cool and collected.
You need to just position the punch, hit it as hard as you can, and then reposition the punch. It doesn't matter if the punch slips after the crack.
Nothing. Perhaps I'll give it another shot tomorrow.
I assume you've tried from both ends at this point? Some rudimentary searching shows others have had this precise issue but no actual solutions* (this reddit thread may be the most thorough discussion). Or the comments to this video which you've probably looked at. In the several videos I've seen the pin just pops right out after a couple of light taps--analogous to the wonderfully rich, friable soil you see on the gardening shows.
*Well except, Only problem was I had trouble getting the pin out of the planetary part ( but that's what brothers are for) it was super tight So maybe get a brother.
Of course they do have the right tool, and as we've discussed I'm sure there are none available for miles and miles and even then they are probably wildly expensive.
We don't have brothers who aren't Canadian.
58: I sense sarcasm. Sure, I could get a punch.
Heading to bed, but I hope that there are more exciting developments over the next few hours. I believe in you, LB!
I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you
If it doesn't work out, everyone should post mixtapes and charge a buck or something, and send the proceeds to LB. We'll call it KitchenAidAid.
Trust me; I'm not snarking at you, I'm snarking with you. In similar circumstances by this point I would have tried every hard cylindrical object in the house.
If I'd known it was going to be that kind of repair job...
You can imagine what happens next?
He fixes the stand mixer?
The only solution is to put the stand mixer in a larger, more powerful stand mixer.
69: Those can take off limbs, the bench-top ones menace digits, maybe hands on a good day.
Last industrial mixer I worked with was a spiral on a hydraulic lift. To get the dough out, you tilt up the entire mixer (mixing bowl appx. 6 ft. across). It was awesome.
70.1: They don't call him "Ripper" for nothing.
I'd like to put a word in for my favorite solution: Throwing money at the problem.
If you can throw money with enough accuracy to knock out a pin, more power to you.
|| Today in obituaries: reading | >
The sequel is "How to Avoid Masturbating to Large Ships."
Which in turn had "Sink the Bismarck!" as a prequel.
Having previously mentioned the 20-qt benchtop Hobart mixer that my mom uses, I should mention that she also has two other Kitchenaids out on the counter for smaller tasks. One of them is now 40 years old, having been a wedding present to her, and still works fine. So I'm in favor of LB continuing to make this one go.
|| Is there any interest in a Bay Area meetup on Monday evening? Blandings and I will be around and free that evening...|>
We don't have brothers who aren't Canadian.
Yeah, me neither.
All praise, all credit to LB, but I'll just go ahead and admit it: I have a 4.5-quart KitchenAid stand mixer that has stood me well, but I really, really want the 6-quart model. I mean, I'd probably be willing to fake an injury to the 4.5, if I thought it would get me closer to 6 quarts. IYKWIM?
Such shameless consumerism! Yes, my soul is craven and cowardly, but: chocolate cream pie, IYKWIM?
I'd be even more interested if it's in the east bay.
I could probably make it, either side of the bay.
Hooray! The east bay would certainly be easiest for me...
Re: 19
I was quite late, too. She has a really strong aesthetic vision and great production, she looks amazing, and is a brilliant dancer. But that really high 'head' voice she uses gets a bit much at album length.
Yes, she is stunning in short doses.
79: You could give the 4.5 quart to me as a hand-me down wedding present and then buy yourself the new one.
Oh: "She added the initialism FKA (Formerly Known As) to her name when another artist called twigs complained about her use of the name."
chocolate cream pie, IYKWIM?
Why, Jane! That's a new side of you.
86: I like the one song of hers I've heard, but I'll be damned if I have any clue what the lyrics are.
I'm guessing the one song you've heard isn't "Two Weeks", then.
It's about the physical act of love, I'm pretty sure.
Okay, I just looked up the lyrics, and I honestly wouldn't have guessed about 75% of them.
If it doesn't work out, everyone should post mixtapes and charge a buck or something, and send the proceeds to LB. We'll call it KitchenAidAid.
I'm willing to dump a bucket with a KitchenAid in it on someone's head if you want to post it on youtube to raise awareness for this issue. #Kitchenaidchallenge
I never heard of that trick, but I'd bet you are right that it is bonded in place as opposed to bent.
Agree with 99. Almost certainly it happened last time LB's kitchen's pressure hull was breached. The lubricant on the gears will have evaporated instantly and the parts will have vacuum welded together.
It's a known problem with mixers with planetary gears. Next time pay the extra for one with interplanetary gears.
How wrong is it for a 32 year old woman to sleep with an 18 year old man, assuming neither has a position of authority over the other and no other sort of structural power imbalance exists?
Depends on the circumstances, but 'not wrong at all' is a plausible option. If you're both having fun and you're not manipulating him into doing anything that either he doesn't want to do, or in your (presumably more sensible and mature judgment) is a bad idea for him, not actually a problem. (Admittedly, I'm a little squeamish about the age difference, but I have a slightly overactive squeam reaction on this one, I think.)
Just don't tell him he has an old soul.
98 sounds plausible - I might give it a shot.
I take the question to be "does the age difference, so gendered, make it wrong by itself?" and agree that it doesn't.
But that's pretty abstract.
You didn't specify whether the man was the woman's son. That impacts things.
(I'm worried that your "neither has a position of authority over the other" may be true only by virtue of his recent eighteenth birthday. That's a technicality. Mothers still have some degree of authority over their sons, even once they are legally of age.)
Oh, yeah, knecht makes a point. If getting busted would be really bad for either of you, you shouldn't do it. If it's bad for him, as the grownup in the situation, you should be protecting him. And if it'd be bad for you, as the grownup in the situation, you shouldn't be putting him in a position where he has to protect you.
I don't see why I have to get dragged into every conversation on cougars.
I just took the kids to see HMS Pinafore (tickets were a present from my mother), and they were (understandably) baffled by the age relations. "So, the captain, who's now Ralph, is marrying Buttercup, who was the daycare provider who switched him with Ralph as a baby?"
Worked very well for me when I was eighteen. If there is no problem with consanguinity or scandal you'll be doing both of you a favour.
103: Go for it but I think the age difference implies an obligation for the senior person to take extra care looking out for the junior person's interests.
FWIW the awesome date I had just before Christmas was with a woman 10 years my senior.
LB - can you fit the planetary gear assembly in the freezer compartment of your refrigerator? I've had good luck unsticking things by taking advantage of different rates of expansion. Of course it has the potential to make things even worse, but you are already hosed, so why not go for it?
Nope, or not conveniently anyway.
If it was cold out, I could just leave it outdoors (fire escape), but global warming.
We do have a culinary blowtorch... No. Not going there. The finish would probably turn out to be flammable (I'm kind of serious about this -- it seems slightly rubbery.)
The campfire rule is a great guideline when getting your ashes hauled.
108. My experience with fused parts is that it takes a week of slow-dripping solvent to unlock them. Also, Liquid Wrench is much better than WD40 for this task.
Heating is crazy, requires a lot of space (ie, you can't do it with small parts inside of something else)-- it's a solution for oil well drills or a desperate measure for exterior pumps that are otherwise trashed.
You could try heating the oven to maybe 200 degrees and stick it in there for an hour or so. It probably will not release noxious fumes that kill you and your entire family I bet.
Also, Liquid Wrench is much better than WD40 for this task.
Noted.
Would it be wrong to press Mrs. Robinson for salacious details? Do you have a particular 18-year-old in mind, are you just considering picking one up in a bar you know where college freshmen hang out, or have you just woken up in a hotel room thinking "My God, what have I done?"
The campfire rule is a great guideline when getting your ashes hauled.
I couldn't find anything about "getting your ashes hauled" on urbandictionary—enlightenment?
Salacious details (insofar as any exist) are fine. There's a particular 18 yo who is hitting on me. At first I was surprised/disconcerted, but now I'm thinking why not? If anything were to happen it would be a fling. We are from different countries, temporarily living in a third one, and after we leave we are unlikely to run into each other in the future. We're currently friends, and he's one of the more interesting people of the opposite sex I've met in this current place.
are you just considering picking one up in a bar you know where college freshmen hang out
If television dramas have taught me anything, it's that you'd better check his license to confirm his age. I can't tell you how many times I've seen guys sitting in police interrogation rooms, pleading: "she told me she was 18!"
128: Under those circumstances, I can't really see why not either.
130: Does Mrs. Robinson owe any obligation of faithfulness to a Mr. Robinson, or his functional equivalent?
I think it would be morally OK only if you later anonymously unburdened yourself of all the intimate details on an internet forum. Liveblogging would of course be more stringently correct ethically speaking, but any sharing should do the trick.
I'm not exactly sure what the functional equivalent of a Mr. Robinson is, but I think it involves plastics.
I can't tell if 110 is a joke or His Urpleness voicing a sincere concern.
There is a Mr. Robinson, but he thinks that Mrs. Robinson having a fling with an 18 year old is a great idea.
Mrs R should go for it. However, if she's hoping for a fling I should warn her that my godmother copped off with a bloke 17 years younger than herself and they ended up married for 25 years (at which point she died of natural causes).
I wonder if 131 may have been posted by Jay Robinson. May explain it (but raises new questions).
He is also not in the same country as Mrs. R and the 18 yo.
127: you've never heard it as a euphemism for getting laid? That surprised me.
136: Nothing really for you to do, then, I don't think, but boy, I think ill of your boss.
136: Ugh. That sucks. Mrs. Robinson's ethical quandary sounds a lot more fun than science peon's.
He thinks it's good to talk about it, so that we don't gloss over ethical violations in our own mind and start to adopt the behavior
Agree with 142. And this is a gem.
141: never ever! I assumed it was some more specific act.
Never is it asked, is our commenters learning?
146: You've never heard that one, honest? And it's honestly not on urban dictionary either?
Is this a fluke gap in nosflow's slang knowledge, or is anyone else unfamiliar with the phrase?
I just asked my girlfriend and she also has never heard it.
I've never before heard the phrase "getting your ashes hauled" and, like nosflow, didn't understand 122.
Huh. It's not in my use vocabulary -- I wouldn't ever say it unless I was trying to be clever somehow. I'm trying to think of exactly who, demographically, I'd associate with the phrase. It's a little archaic, but not very; maybe post WWII urban lower middle class -- sort of my parents' generation.
But I wouldn't have thought of it as even slightly obscure.
I've heard that phrase, but thought it was from about 90 years ago when actual ashes being hauled was a common thing.
154.last: Does Researcher perhaps employ some comely 18-year-olds among the underprepared immigrants? I hear that helps.
155: Same here. Urban Dictionary reference.
There is a Mr. Robinson, but he thinks that Mrs. Robinson having a fling with an 18 year old is a great idea.
And here's to you, Mr. Robinson!
Science peon's situation sounds really fucking frustrating.
137 seems to remove one potential obstacle. Depending on the particular 18 year old it may be more or less sensible, but not awful.
I've started the very early stages of a flirtation with a man 10/11 years older than me .... probably a stupid move, but I'm bored of trying to do the right thing, it's been too long.
My cynical but realistic view is that some version of 136 is pretty much where almost all professionals end up with regards to obvious but endemic unfightable-against flaws in their professions once they reach a status of seniority. The equivalent for doctors would be over-billing and prescribing unnecessary procedures. For lawyers, maybe over-billing but more likely making arguments to a court or opposing party that are known to be incorrect or to essentially misrepresent the facts. For humanities people it would be ... dunno, maybe ignoring contrary evidence in an archive. Obviously there's some further line of ethical violations that aren't endemic and are just unacceptable, but most senior professionals who don't want to end up on an unwinnable crusade end up somewhere around SP's boss for some subject matters.
I also know why he feels like it's just suicide for him to charge across this field.
Isn't that what tenure is for? Not that there's nothing they can do to him, but he's got at least some protection, and this sort of thing is the exact purpose that tenure is for -- to protect academics from repercussions from the positions they take in academic disputes.
I mean, I'm not familiar enough with the stats to understand the issue precisely, but from what you and others have said, this kind of thing makes the results worthless. And your boss's answer to this is to assume that any result in his field where this sort of shenanigans are possible is worthless, rather than kicking up a fuss where he can do it? Not cool.
I have never heard of "getting your ashes hauled" as a euphemism for sex, or anything else.
The discussion in this thread seems pretty good.
GET ONE'S ASHES HAULED / HAUL ONE'S ASHES means (of a male) to have sex, copulate and Eric Partridge (Dictionary of Slang) claims it has been around since the late 19th to early 20th century and originated in Canada. The related expression TO HAUL ONE'S OWN ASHES means to masturbate.
The earliest quotes that I could find were contained in blues songs of the 1930s (see below), which suggest the female vagina was the 'ash can,' but that might just have been an after-the-fact interpretation or usage by the song's author.Also see here for more connections to Blues songs.
SP's boss is having an affair with Researcher.
I mean, I'm not familiar enough with the stats to understand the issue precisely, but from what you and others have said, this kind of thing makes the results worthless.
That might be an exaggeration. In my field we don't do much in the way of stats because the sample sizes are really low, but people often pretend that they did the experiment 3 times and got equally conclusive results, when actually 2 of the repeats were less conclusive and they couldn't afford to repeat it any more. So publishing that one experiment isn't worthless, but it makes it look like it has been replicated more than it has.
Liquid nitrogen on the in to shrink it? I guess if you hit it after it might shatter but at least should allow access for the lubricant.
SP probably doesn't want to be confused with sp?
169: Now you're just being silly.
161 is also close to my sense of things.
162.last: not sure if it is much worse than publication bias. Of course my cynical view is that the majority of "results" in the humanities are horseshit. (Sorry, humanitarians. And I certainly have nothing better to offer.)
162: Assuming this stuff is NIH funded, the quicksand could be pretty deep. If it's just Researcher, she could/should end up losing her grant and be barred from applying for NIH funding for some prescribed period (I think 5 years for a first offense is not uncommon).
However, if investigation reveals that this sort of thing is endemic at Researcher's and sp's institute, the whole place could get in trouble. If it's a soft money institution, as most biomedical places are these days, that could spell death. So sp's boss may be worried that he could inadvertently nuke the entire place by blowing the whistle on Researcher.
True, that is confusing, especially since we're possibly in similar fields.
136 he would not want to ask too many questions because it might reveal the edifice of deception the entire institution is constructed upon
:: incoherent sputtering ::
171- No, just make a little dish around the pin using some kind of putty, pour in a bit of lN2 and let it soak. It's pretty easy to find somewhere that will sell you some liquid nitrogen, you can transport it in a standard thermos (as long as you don't fully tighten the cap.) Alternatively a bath of dry ice and isopropanol will work too although not as cold.
How much does Adonis know about Mr. Robinson, starting with his very existence?
I've never heard of 127 either. Clearly a different kind of Canadian historical artifact than what I am.
LN2 is a bit of work to get a hold of, but aerosol cans of compressed air/duster can be turned upside down and you can directly spray the (now very cold) propellant on things, like this.
Some science journalist should investigate the black box software. Research data management, sharing code, and software preservation for the purpose of facilitating replication seem to be big topics right now and would probably be good hooks to draw attention to the problem, which sounds more widespread than just a lab or two.
Something along the lines of "we don't know if these results are valid, the problem is we can't properly evaluate the work" coming from a third party might be non-accusatory enough to not blow things up immediately.
|| Ebola case diagnosed in Glasgow. I actually feel sorry for the virus now, it clearly has no idea what it's getting into. |》
Science is so deeply fucked in so many ways. It's not that there's no progress being made, but it could be made so much more productive and rigorous.
181: But that's a further illustration of the problem. Here's software that apparently hid the methods used to generate publishable results, now the software is gone, the software's creator has moved on, but the results are still out there, and the work that produced them can never be evaluated. Some of the results may hold, but they'd have to be generated a different way.
You all sound like potential investors in my company.
We should have a day of commenting here where everyone has to either identify as "SP" "sp" "Dave" or "DaveL" and see what happens. Just fuck it and break all the rules.
In case that wasn't clear, that's what's going to happen if your proposal takes place. I will get on a plane to LA, acquire something sharp, and cut you with it. Don't know what happens to the blog otherwise.
183 pretty much goes for human endeavor generally.
189: And live-blog it, right? Sounds awesome!
186: This kind of thing dissuades people from whistle-blowing, so there's that.
I mean, I don't think I'd contact a journalist either, for basically the same reasons.
redact every comment I've made as "science peon" or "sp"?
Or instead just change the bylines so they are all authored either by "Dave" or "DaveL".
189 -- So we get both commenting chaos and (FINALLY) a long-promised knife fight. I'm in. On a related topic, I don't understand why just ONE of the apparently infinitely many meetups can't be a WWE-style battle royale. Wouldn't we all get along better if someone had broken a folding chair over someone else?
I'll do it when I get home if you still want it, but do you really think there's a security issue? I would be entirely comfortable, in your shoes, that there was no chance at all of repercussions from this.
It's not that sp believes him/her self to be identifiable -- the problem is the kids that may read this and lose their faith in Santa Claus.
While my brain continues to be set to max stupidity, 199 reminds me of an idea I had over Christmas (in fact, I literally had this thought while at church on Christmas Eve, THANK YOU BRAIN). Isn't the Elf on the Shelf literally the ideal premise for a pornographic movie? It's the ultimate voyeur, and also has a transgressive innocence. How has this not come up here before in detail? I'm hoping that someone who's not at work can search and verify that this porn has already been made.
I don't understand why just ONE of the apparently infinitely many meetups can't be a WWE-style battle royale.
I believe it has previously been made clear that any commenter is welcome to wear neon tights to any meetup. I assume if two or more commenters were ever to show up at a meetup in neon tights, they would begin wrestling. What more do you want? Are you looking for a requirement that anyone attending a particular meetup must wear neon tights and plan to wrestle? Because that just seems exclusionary. Some people just want to watch.
It seems the current iteration of the hotsy totsy shows "transgressive cinema." Perhaps along with the holiday themed cocktails they will be showing elf on a shelf pron. You should catch a flight up and attend the meet down to investigate! I alas won't be able to make it.
uh, so, I'm uncomfortable with the current tenor of this thread. sweet fpps, could you be persuaded to redact every comment I've made as "science peon" or "sp"?
Shoot, and here I was about to ask someone to please tell me where the original description of the precipitating events might be.
||
I am not a Serial listener, but I suspect this will be of more than middling interest to those who are.
Jay chose not to be formally interviewed by either "This American Life" or by "Serial" host and producer, Sarah Koenig. In the podcast Koenig pointedly challenged Jay's account of events and his motivation for assisting Adnan. Jay feels strongly that he was unfairly depicted by Koenig and that she painted a highly misleading portrayal of him and his role in the case. This interview is the first time Jay has spoken publicly about events surrounding Lee's death and the trial that ended in Syed's conviction. We met over the weekend at his two-story suburban home. Jay's wife and mother entertained the couple's young children while Jay and I spoke in the family living room. This is the first part in a multipart interview. The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.|>
208: I was fascinated by Serial, but that interview doesn't seem to me to add much of anything to it. Maybe later installments will be more interesting.
Me again. My computer keeps dropping my name.
Ah, I had no idea what would be new or just a rehash. Assumed it would actually add something of interest.
It's not that it's a rehash, exactly. But the central question in the case is that Syed says he didn't do it, but Jay, the guy in your linked interview, says he did, and there's no conclusive evidence to say who's lying (well, Jay's story as told to the police can't be true in all respects, but he could be telling the truth about Syed having committed the murder.) Jay didn't give Koenig an interview, so in theory it'd be interesting to see what he has to say, but in practice it comes down to Jay saying, again, that Syed did it. Which might easily be true, but it was already sort of baked into the Serial narrative.
I thought serial never meaningfully grappled with jay's relationship with the police, perhaps (likely?) because jay barely spoke with them and the cops hardly at all. Much of the fuel driving serial's continued commitment to the possibility adnan was innocent however was built on the inconsistencies between and within jay's different tellings of the events to the police and court. Although serial gestured a bit at jay's fear of the police, it was never I thought seriously explored. The linked story allowed jay to flesh out his fears in ways that were plausible to me and I thought would have undercut the narrative thrust of serial's pro-adnan stance. The very limited commentary on the show that I read was so dismissive of jay's concerns I found it enraging.
The other gigantic hanging thread for me of course was the unrecorded interactions between jay and the police. Although serial did include a very brief discussion of how problematic those interactions can be (understatement!!!), they then dropped it.
While I think the relationship between Jay and the police is where a whole lot of the unanswered questions lie, I don't think what's in the linked interview does anything to change the thrust of the show. Jay's story is the whole prosecution case; Jay was obviously, and now admittedly, lying about some of it. His current story that when he lied, he lied out of fear of the police, doesn't make him a more credible witness for the prosecution. Prosecutions based on witnesses threatened or bribed by law enforcement are one f the big categories of bad convictions. (I still think it's perfectly plausible that Syed is, as a matter of fact, guilty, I just don't see this interview changing the center of gravity of the narrative.)
Before this whole thread gets redacted, let me just say 179 is right and also that 'sp' is a really bad temporary bitching pseud while 'science peon' is just fine. Abbreviating is nobody's friend here. AIMHMHBST.
Neither thought is novel, but that just makes them science.
OT IT Bleg: can anyone help me identify what could be wrong with my home internet connection? Something is slowing it down dramatically in a way that doesn't show up in speed test results. By which I mean, if I run a speed test, it looks like the connection is way beyond adequately fast. (I just ran a test, and it came back with a ping of 33 ms, download speed of 47.3 mbps, and an upload speed of 5.66 mbps. These are fairly typical results.) And yet, real world performance in more or less any application other than a speed testing program is pitiful. This is most noticeable with videos--if I try to watch a video on youtube, it will get maybe 10 seconds into the video before stalling out, and then just loading and loading and loading nearly interminably. Netflix acts similarly--I can usually watch a movie, but doing so almost always requires me to tolerate interruptions to re-load every two minutes or so, and it frequently cuts to the extra-grainy low resolution video feed they use when you don't have adequate speed. Same thing with the video clips on my facebook feed or on espn.com--loading loading loading nearly forever. (I usually am not that interested and just give up before they load.) Downloading files gets similarly slow results--I often get actual file download speeds of maybe a few hundred kbps, even at the same time that speed test programs show results of 40+ mbps.
There are no other devices using internet bandwidth at the moment. (I've wondered if that's been the issue sometimes, although really with a true download speed of 47.3 mbps it shouldn't be an issue if my wife and I both wanted to watch a video at the same time. But regardless it's definitely not the issue right now, and yet I can't watch videos.)
I usually use speedtest.net, although I've run tests on a few different speed test programs, all with similar results.
This happens on the computer that is connected to the router by ethernet cable, so it's not a wifi issue. (It happens on the wifi connections as well, but it's obviously not wifi's fault. The wifi connections show much slower--but still adequate--results when you run a speedtest program, but in real world results they are inadequately slow.)
I have tried googling this issue many times and not come up with anything. My ISP acts like if speedtest results are coming back fine, then I must be imagining the problem.
Any ideas?
I meant to also note that I've tried different browsers (safari, firefox) with no noticeable difference in results.
214: I agree wrt the juridical guilt/innocence issue, but never saw (heard?) that as the "point" of the show, I sort of took the show at its word that it was about the limits of interpersonal knowing and then judged the show's choices for which stories/versions were given legs and which dropped, as obvs those choices have repercussions for where the show comes down on what we can know about each other.
Also I ended up finding adolescent jay a more interesting character than adolescent adnan although that's cold comfort for actual human adult jay with his unasked for nationwide notoriety.
209: The elves in your closet are watching porn.
Or maybe devices that are connected but not in use. That happened to us once. Two computers, two tablets, an ipod, a Kindle, and a Wii. Had to start closing some connections.
I believe the offending comments are all gone. If I've missed anything, someone should bitch about it.
(Also, redacting bunches of comments is an irritating hassle. I'll do it for people I know, or if I'm convinced it will actually ruin your life, but if I don't know you personally, don't count on being able to talk something out here and then get it redacted.)
that's cold comfort for actual human adult jay with his unasked for nationwide notoriety.
Not a lot of sympathy for actual human adult Jay here. The best thing you can say about him is that he's an accessory after the fact to murder who would have helped the murderer get away with it if the cops hadn't caught up with him. You do something like that, even as a teenager, hearing about it for the rest of your life seems doesn't seem disproportionate.
And if he didn't help a murderer hide a body, he lied to put a friend of his in prison for life, which is worse. There's not a version of the story where Jay isn't fairly contemptible. Syed is guilty or innocent, but there's no way Jay comes out clean.
That's weird, Urple. I assume you've rebooted the modem itself?
Agreed with Dq's/205's take on the Jay thing.
That Jay in this interview was willing to admit to lying under oath at trial to keep from bringing his grandmother into it seemed like the kind of thing that could make the prosecution turn on him if this does get to another trial, but I wish serial would have had more about the magnet/voc program divide he brings up, which is interesting and pertinent!
That really was interesting. I am fascinated by the fact that all sides agree that Jay and Adnan weren't good friends, but they were in a 'borrow your car and new cell phone and drive it around all day making calls' relationship. That is a peculiar state of affairs. I mean, 'dealer' explains a lot of half-social/half-business relationships, but that's an odd one.
209, 210: you might try these things.
197: It came out during the local meet-up.
To Mrs. Robinson: Be sure to adjust for multiple comparisons.
I don't know what that means, but it makes more sense than "hauling ashes".
209: That sounds to me as if your connection is fine but your *ISP*'s connection to the rest of the world is the bottleneck. The speedtest node is probably on site at your ISP, so traffic to it doesn't have to go anywhere but up your local link; traffic to Youtube or Netflix has to go further afield. At the very least use the speedtest.net map to pick a further-away test server and see if that comes out differently.
But anyway, if this kind of thing is the problem, there's nothing you can do about it but yell at your ISP.
Do you have any neighbors/other folks who have the same ISP and you know well enough to compare results and experiences?
Are you 87 years old, Stormcrow? Just search twitter for [town] [isp] and if anyone else has a complaint, it'll probably be there.
Nathan makes a good point. You could google instructions for running a traceroute from your computer (google traceroute [your os]) and see if there's an obvious bottleneck.
Wasn't there some rumor that an ISP, I can't remember which one, was selectively throttling traffic but not to speedtest sites?
Last year I signed up for something like a 50 or 25 Mbps connection and for the first few hours after activating it video streaming was really slow. Then I went to the ISP's own speed test site, followed by some other speed test sites, and suddenly the connection sped up and stayed fast after that. Probably a coincidence, but noticeable.
My current apartment is in a building that, I was told when I asked about it, is not wired for anything faster than 1.5 Mbps, so that's what i get. I bet it was set up 10-15 years ago when that was considered a fast connection.
Yes, yes, but what has happened to the groove pin?
226: Getting on towards it, you jerk. And yes, additionally try that.
209: Spray some WD-40 on it and see if that speeds things up.
227: T-Mobile was unthrottling customers who were being throttled normally on speed test sites, which might be what you're thinking of -- http://www.fcc.gov/document/t-mobile-improve-disclosures-consumers-using-mobile-speed-tests -- but that was mobile only, and they've stopped.
Liquid wrench and a proper drift punch have failed me. It's a repairman or a new mixer.
I vote repair person, because they can tell you what's wrong with the pin and you can tell us.
You're ready to give up when you still haven't tried a cryogenic method yet?
I'm really dubious about getting it repaired. I don't know how much damage I've done pounding on it, and I'm envisioning getting it back nominally working, but with the planetary permanently loose and rattly.