Lorindól

I’d hug my mom. Then I’d go ask the pretty next door girl for a date; I lesrned later in life that she also had a crush on me at the time, but since I was plain looking and slightly overweight nerd I never thought I’d hsve any chance with her.

After getting that out of my system I’d do the obligatory investing.

Ukraine has lots of valuable natural resources, but Russia has much more of everything. The biggest reason for the invasion is most likely that Putin could not let a “brother nation” prosper and drift towards Europe and being a functioning democracy.

Russia’s population might get wild ideas if they saw that their Ukrainian cousins’ standard of living starts to rise rapidly while they have to endure living under a fascist dictator. And substandard and underdeveloped infrastructure, due to the rampant corruption and a government who doesn’t give a shit about the areas outside the larger cities.

Farscape is excellent, but it’s very trippy and the heavy use of Muppets may be offputting to some. And it’s far from harder scifi like the Expanse.

And it has Derek Smalls in the backgroung waiting for his turn.

Absolutely brilliant.

I have not claimed any profession.

In my original comment I did state that I got into officer training, perhaps you assumed that as a career officer? I admit that the conscript army system is so profoundly different that I could have been more precise.

I assumed that the later mention of university studies would have made it clear that I was not a career soldier.

It is also true that I cannot verify my claim about the IQ test. Like I said earlier, it was a part of another student’s thesis. We got to hear the results after the test, then the gathered data was processed anonymously. If I recall correctly, the study was more about the qualities of the test itself, the qualities of the participants were not important. I think everyone got a free movie ticket for taking the test and I spent mine on “Kill Bill” 1 or 2.

But tell me, why would I want to lie about this? To what gain?

No edits have been made and you know it.

Just admit you made a mistake and we’ll laugh this off.

Are you familiar with the concept of “projection” in psychology?

Yes! If you know how to look up edit history, please do so! There has been no editing on my part.

You’re getting quite incoherent.

I have edited nothing, so it matters not if the edit history is publicly available or not. If this is your attempt to discredit me, it’s pretty pathetic. You just didn’t bother to read what I had written, right?

Our universities do not use IQ tests to select students nor have I claimed that they did. This is your own mental fabrication.

Depending of the situation, in my country we DO refer to ourselves as “officers” or “reserve officers”. Spesific rank is used in the garrisons and drills or when an individual is interviewed by the media. In the refresher drills the reserve officer ranks are equal to career officer ranks.

I understand that this all may be new and confusing information to you, but some things can be done very differently in different countries.

You are quick to leap to wild conclusions.

The army test is taken by every conscript at the beginning of the mandatory military service. It is an aptitude/IQ test which had a lot of similiarities with the Mensa type test I took later. You need a high enough score to get into NCO or officer training. The ones who graduate from the officer training may apply to the military academy after their mandatory service is over.

And like I clearly wrote in my original comment, the test I took later was a Mensa type test, using similar questions. It was a part of cognitive science or psychology department’s student thesis, not a Mensa test. I majored in educational psychology, so I do have some understanding of what IQ tests are. I got a high score in one and it resulted in absolutely nothing in my life.

I have not claimed to be a career officer. I am a reserve officer, I did not wish to apply to the military academy, therefore the refresher courses. And even if my soldier’s oath would not prevent me from discussing service matters with aggressive strangers on the Internet, my common sense would.

You are indeed a peculiar one. On my first comment I tried to validate the very point you made of IQ tests being poor indicators of true intelligence by sharing a personal experience (even though I know the fallacy of empiric experiences) on the matter. Yet you vehemently attacked my statement and accuse me of lying.

Lastly, your opinion of me is irrelevant, only the truth is relevant. One would gain nothing from lying to strangers. Perhaps practising some restraint on your part would result in more fruitful and pleasant dialogue in the future?

I’ve never taken any preparatory courses for anything and I’m not really good with mathematics, so no and no again.

And why I put the quotation marks around good is a reflection of my native language, we do that when one wishes to express their personal disbelief or doubt. I am well aware that the ~140 score is considered a good one by the designers of the test.

I served in the late 90’s and there have been several refresher courses but I’m not at the liberty to discuss any specifics of service matters publicly. If you have done military service you know this.

No.

The whole point - which you seem to have missed - was that getting a “good” score in some test can mean very little or nothing in real life.

It just means that you’re good at that sort of mental exercise.

We had to take a mandatory IQ test at the beginning of military service, my score was in the highest percentile and because of this I ended up in officer training. It wasn’t the Mensa type test, they measured our language, math and pattern recognition skills with a vast battery of questions with a time limit.

Many friends of mine got average IQ scores in the army test but they are the ones who are really smart and extremely succesful.

In university I got a chance to take the Mensa type test and got ~140 points. I just laughed it off since at the same time I was struggling to pass my courses, while my friends who got average scores passed them with ease.

I do not consider myself really “smart” in any way, I just have a very good memory and I’m pretty adept at solving problems. Otherwise I’m just about as average a guy can be.

One would assume that Sony Pictures’ vast catalog of flops would have taught the mother corporation to license the money machine IP’s to a more capable studio, but no.

The inescapable corporate interference will prevent any singular vision to prevail and these will be messes with lightning fast cuts to serve the Tiktok generation.

I wish I am wrong.

Right.

Along the years I have managed to scrounge together almost all the gear I always dreamed of when I was young. Nothing really expensive or fancy, but good quality second hand stuff that would get things done right.

But there just isn’t any time to use them. And if by some miracle a bit of time appears, it’s guaranteed that I’m dead tired and choose sleep.

Maybe one day.

I had 10/15 of these when I was single, and I was single for a very long time. That is how I had the time to learn all these hobbies/skills.

This is the way.

I solely used Netscape Navigator since it came out and after it fell I chose Firefox. My interface has always been modded to look permanently like Firefox 3.6.

Everything is where I want it to be and everything works perfectly.

Many moons ago my employer tried to force us to use only Internet Explorer / Edge for reasons they were unable to explain - since there were none, technically or otherwise. I rebelled and remotely installed Firefox with Adblock / uBlock Origin to every personal computer (I was the unofficial IT guy) and told my co-workers to try it out.

At the next meeting we were told that the use of Firefox is not only approved but recommended. The magic of an “ad free browser” had taken hold, people found it vastly superior and had been vocal about their newfound dislike of MS browsers.

To my surprise I wasn’t even reprimanded in any way.

I remain baffled by this. But since I can barely differentiate red and green in optimal lighting conditions, it does not come as a surprise.

This is worse than terrible. Now Trump gets to play martyr and it rallies up his base, even the ones who were in doubt after his conviction.

And as the chaos ensues, Putin is laughing at his throne.

Leaf blowers in small yards are pointless, agreed. I would never use one in the suburbs.

But I do own one and I use it at my family’s farm, for one day every autumn. It would take 3-4 days just to rake the leaves, with the blower I can easily create large piles here and there. Then I gather all the piles and take them to my leaf compost heap.

Before the blower this used to take a full week. Now I can clear all the lawns in just two days.