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[–] 48 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (12 children)

Note; I can't get the formatting right. I can see why images of text are so popular.

America is a Gun

Brian Bilston

England is a cup of tea. France, a wheel of ripened brie. Greece, a short, squat olive tree. America is a gun.

Brazil is football on the sand. Argentina, Maradona’s hand. Germany, an oompah band. America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe. Hungary, a goulash stew. Australia, a kangaroo. America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring. Scotland is a highland fling. Oh, better to be anything than America as a gun.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 week ago (10 children)

    FWIW, in case you don't know, Lemmy uses Markdown. IMHO it's pretty good at formatting and there are lots of guides for it online; just looking up "how to to x in markdown" is likely to get you plenty of results.

    In case you want to see the results of particular texts in real-time, there are also editors that will immediately show you what will be the outcome of what you write. These are available locally on your system, but also online:

    https://markdownlivepreview.com/

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  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago (9 children)

    They will never take notes the same way again. You know it's bad when you use MD with pencil.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 week ago (8 children)

    When I was a kid, before laptops were commonly accessible, I had a device ... I can't remember what it was called, I keep thinking "Altavista," but I know that was a search engine, not a device. I do recall that it was blue.

    Anyway, the idea was, you'd type into it and it would store what you typed locally. Later, you'd plug it into a computer's PS/2 port it would reproduce what you had typed by imitating a keyboard and literally typing out what was in its memory. My mom teased me because she'd sometimes review what I had put in and encounter &nbsp.

    This device was how I discovered Y-connectors, which later resulted in me having a keyboard on my desk and a keyboard in a keyboard tray with one hand on each.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago (6 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Fuck, I hated those things. I would rather hand-write and then retype than use one of those.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)
  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    You can only see a few words at a time, very hard to read what you have typed out. The interface and software to get them to work was a pain in the ass. The file system they had was less than stellar, my shit kept getting overwritten or would not save correctly. Total junk.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago

    It used volatile memory, which was standard for the time, and required a battery backup to keep your data preserved in case the 3 AA cells (which lasted about 700 hours of use) completely drained. No, 700 is not a typo.

    The later editions (the Neo and Neo 2) are still compatible with modern technology, since when the Alphasmart is plugged into a computer (or smartphone) via USB, it shows up as a keyboard. Sending your text file to the computer basically just sends all the keystrokes over to your text editor of choice as though you’re typing it really fast.

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  • [–] 29 points 1 week ago (8 children)

    America has one solution for everything.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)
  • [–] 15 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Hey in our defense, it’s a pretty good solution

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  • Can confirm. My grandfather built several devices for killing gophers. They were placed at the top of their holes. When the gopher popped out, it would push a rod that would release a spring-loaded pin, firing a shotgun shell from a short length of steel pipe.

    Gophers travel above ground most often at night, so sleeping at my grandparents' place often included surprise nocturnal ammunition discharges.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 week ago (10 children)

    Didn't Elvis once famously kill a roach with a revolver? I remember hearing that story, but all I can find with cursory DDG searches is some altercation between him and Alice Cooper.

    I might be confusing it with the story about him shooting his TV, but I'm not sure how a roach would get involved in that memory. Maybe I'm recalling a Simpsons bit. It's too early for me to remember clearly.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago (4 children)
  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Usually when you think that's a solution, I don't think the hearing is the problem.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Well now that it's later, do you remember now?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

    No, but I am prepared for a nap.

    edit: The problem is, it was always described to me as a "digital typewriter." I don't deny the accuracy of the description but searching for that doesn't return the device in question and adding "blue" doesn't make much difference.

    edit2: This was in response to a different post. I apologize.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 week ago

    Imagine the first night in a large apartment complex after that one pest control company set up shop.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 week ago (7 children)

    Would a blank still kill the mouse/rat?

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  • [–] 11 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    At that range, absolutely. A blank will blow a sizable hole in a rat or mole. People die every year from the perception that blanks are "safe"; aside from any barrel debris or wadding that may be ejected, they are still completely lethal at very close ranges because of the pressure wave.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    So outside of being loud, expensive, messy, overkill, and dangerous, what is the downside?

    Actually, I kind of wish this did catch on for more grocery aisle acceptable type items. Like right next to rat poison and car air fresheners.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    For what it's worth, you can buy blank refills for mole traps / nail guns at my local supermarket and they are in fact right next to the rat poison and air fresheners.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago*

    Fascinating; I bet our urban grocery stores have more holistic options and, behind the curtains, large-scale commercial solutions. Somewhere in the middle is the perfect store, where a man can choose every option on how to kill rodents while making that lingering smell in his car a little more tolerable.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 child)

    A blank can and has killed humans at that range so I would think so, but I don’t claim to be either a gun or a rodent expert

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    I think someone may have misinterpreted the word "trap".

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    i remember this so it was significant enough that I remember it. but I dont know why. any history buffs able to tell me?

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  • [–] 9 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    It’s funny? I think I may have seen it in a textbook many years ago as an example of the patent boom that happened after the Industrial Revolution in the US.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago

    There was like a very specific reason I remember this. I just dont remember the reason. I feel like its related to something significant and the only thing jumping out at me is James Garfield, but I'm not sure why.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago

    Tom and Jerry type shit

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago

    A new zealand company makes a thing cslled the A24, and it’s a rat-sized co2-driven ‘matador’ (the weapon in “no country for ild men”), which is pretty much that.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago (5 children)

    How could this have been legal? That mouse is unarmed!

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago

    Red Dead Redemption 3. Mickys revenge…

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago

    The unironic best trap ever is two tall cans (think monster or whiteclaw or sometjing) skewered on a wire or rod over a bucket. Smear peanut butter on it and that bucket will have literally every rat and mouse in a 500 meter radius.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago

    Imagine if a cat or dog or child messes with it. Or if somebody knocks it over. One of the advantages of spring or glue traps is they don't pose a significant danger to creatures not targetted.

    Here we're taking a device used to kill humans and using them in a trap.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago

    Hey, let's stick an atomic bomb to a bait! That'll get rid of the pest!

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago