toynbee

Hey, you can’t fool me. That’s a full-fledged cat.

Or spying on you.

When I was a kid, I had a series of books including Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology. It vaguely tried to explain the science of Star Wars weapons, including lightsabers. Now, before I proceed, I want to acknowledge that this doesn’t really make sense. I was around eleven at the time and even then I was pretty sure it didn’t check out.

Their explanation for the long life was that the blade was made from a loop of plasma, so all energy that comes out of the power source is fed back into the battery unless the blade contacts something else (such as in Episode 1, when Qui-Gon melts through blast doors; I remember watching that scene, reflecting on the book entry, and thinking that the lightsaber probably needed recharging after that).

They might have said something about reflecting blaster bolts adding energy back into the loop or I might have made that up in a desperate attempt to make it make sense. I don’t really remember.

At that age, though, I genuinely did enjoy the book series.

Was this some roundabout attempt to initiate the viral success of The Safe?

At this point it seems likely they have at least one dull drill bit.

It is in a superposition. Well, until you investigate.

It’s not, but I did reference his videos in the next line!

I liked Exit Wounds, in which he demonstrated that the fastest way to steal a car is by using a key fob.

In all fairness, that’s the only thing I remember about that movie and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen anything else with him in it. Excluding Space Ice YouTube videos.

Ah, gotcha. Thank you for the information. I’m at least a bit behind on that show and don’t remember that premise from it at all, so I think it must have been after I last watched it. I think the last Black Mirror thing I saw was that interactive choice movie, but I might be misremembering.

FWIW, I also liked Love, Death & Robots and it was mostly less depressing and/or frightening.

You’re right, several of them would be perfectly relevant in this case, but I was specifically thinking of an episode where they put electric contact lenses in soldiers and made them think they were fighting monstrous creatures rather than other people.

When the protagonist of the episode realized that and refused to fight any more, he found that the contacts were not removable by the user. His superiors put horrific displays on his lenses. Because of their nature, he couldn’t escape even by closing his eyes. Eventually he agreed to behave so as not be forced to see such horrible things.

Hiro Protagonist, presumably.

Just make sure you avoid Ice-9.

I don’t actually remember that detail. I mostly remember the premise of the episode: torturing you with visuals to make you comply.

But yeah. Torture in general, physical or mental, is messed up.

… Not because of that one episode of Black Mirror?

I don’t know, that shovel looks like it might be pretty sharp.

Headless servers definitely help.

I believe you, but the number of people in my life who have any clue what ssh is is pretty much equal to the number of people I know who work in my industry.

I’m not a programmer, and don’t really know that much about these things

Clearly a lie.

My wife got a Bluetooth ring and connected it to her Kindle. It has a single button that turns the page for you.

Not technically hands free, but pretty close.

Thank you for the validation! I’ve no more stories about the rock, which I hope is the dullest anecdote of them all.