Jesus Christ…

Who’s that?

I made an Arduino IR cloner, took it to the barbershop and when nobody was looking copied the mute button’s code so I now have a little device to silence the long Retro Music Television ad breaks I would otherwise have to endure. I don’t really go anywhere with TVs otherwise.

It definitely still works in the Czech Republic and Germany. Our pre-2023 president was an avid user. Public TV stations hand-format their own and syndicated news for 39 columns and pick monthly poetry. Commercial stations just automatically jam syndicated news into the format, sometimes overflowing to another subpage just by 1 word, and host huge amounts of banner and fullscreen ads with meh graphics by Teletext standards, mostly for dodgy phone services like tarot and erotic hotlines. They also host “chat24”, probably the worst message board ever: imagine a public IRC room but $0.50 per message (by SMS) including setting your nickname and color.

Pics: https://imgur.com/a/JF3wN6L

https://www.noblecollection.com/Item--i-PRP-HP-8050

Raise it straight up in the air and say “Addi-nau-seum” into the microphone, then quickly point it at the TV.

I found a cool way of ad-blocking back when I watched TV. Probably does not work anymore, and relies on Teletext page 888 (closed captions, the number varies by country) not being updated during ads.

1. Mute
2. Switch to another channel and back to clear Teletext cache
3. Turn on fullscreen Teletext, any page (I like the 89x test patterns)
4. Type “888” as the page you want to go to
5. The TV will now wait for 888 to be broadcast, which only happens after ads and trailers
6. The program is now running with captions. Disable Teletext and unmute if you want sound instead.

Where is the other Shrek ear?

I imagine if I were near Antares and looked the other way, it would very much look like night.

I like the corona though.

People have indeed thought this before telescopes. You’ll most likely see diffraction patterns around bright lights because of eyelashes and other imperfections, probably different for each eye but the same for all lights (technically, wavelength also matters but not really on this scale).

It’s always day if you’re a star. Or night?

Not really a bad question. The diffraction spikes have been corrected for.

You’re probably right. My biggest flaw is that I fail to notice forks, guarded pieces and other obvious patterns, and don’t know any nuances in the general strategy other than “exposed king bad, having more pieces good, K>Q>R>N>B>P”.

I also know how chess pieces move, other than the rare en passant, but will lose to anyone willing to challenge me and I don’t think I could get much better than mediocre with any amount of practice. However, I got full marks on a Mensa IQ test so I’d say I’m intellingent in a way but with my mild autism, likely ADHD and lack of practical skills, it’s hard to tell. I have done lots of stupid decisions IRL, often repeatedly.

Would I say I’m “smart”? Depends. Intelligent, probably. Wise, hell no.

There are specialized machines for this that resemble industrial vacuum cleaners but even bigger. Cleaned balls are bagged and get poured back once the floor and walls are sanitized. Do the operators keep track of when this was last done? Yes, and they aren’t proud of it so you won’t see cleaning logs hanging nearby like at most mall toilets.

Dearborn, Michigan, after its population drops by 30%: “Thanks for removing the bad hombres”

In the second clause, OP implies that an illusion is revealed when you rotate the image. As per the first clause, you shouldn’t trust OP.

Thank you for keeping the community booming!

¡Nobody expects the Spanish notation!

Common marketing strategy.