Some use something called a “bag-closing chain stitch”, which is done using a special bag-closing machine. The way it works is that the machine punches the thread through the bag material leaving a loop on the back side. It then connects that loop to the next stitch. The thread holds the bag securely closed, but if you pull on the right part of the thread each stitch disconnects in a chain until the whole thing is undone.

There are really 2 problems:

1. Flour is essentially dust. It’s really hard to find a good way to package dust.
2. Flour is really, really cheap. The packaging needs to remain a small fraction of the overall cost.

A couple I know moved from Canada to the UK. Even at 6ish years old, despite being raised by them, including one as a stay-at-home mom, the kid had a strong British accent.

Luckily, they’re mostly immune, although my friend does now say “gareridge” instead of “gahraje”.

The “boing” part should really be the sound of parts falling off.

Pleasure? I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I’m talking politics.

He’s right, in politics the top just pounds the bottom, over and over again. In civil society, unions sometimes change the dynamic. The bottom is more confident and learns to wield their power, sometimes that even gives them the power to control the top. The top might never stop trying to fuck the bottom, but with the right rules in place, it can still be a happy ending for the bottom.

Tennis games aren’t perfectly flat. Wimbledon is famous for being played on grass, which isn’t flat even before the wear and tear sets in. And that’s in a sport where judging the bounce of the ball is critically important.

Football (futbol) is actually played on varied pitches. A legal pitch can be anywhere from 45m wide to 90m wide, and can be from 90m long to 120m long. Legally you could play a game on a square shaped 90m by 90m pitch, although in practice those are rare. The City of Manchester stadium is the biggest pitch in England’s premier league, and it affects the way the team plays and gives them a home field advantage.

Anyhow, I don’t think there should be an “even playing field” because that’s not realistic. Where would you ever encounter a perfectly flat steel floor, other than at battlebots? It would be fine if that artificial constraint led to more interesting robots, but it doesn’t. It leads to boring fights. I mean, imagine if there were a competitive first person shooter game where the teams faced off against eachother across a completely flat, featureless expanse. It would be awful. As long as every robot has to deal with the same conditions, the conditions are fair. So, I think they should make the arena more interesting.

Yeah, the saws and hammers in Battlebots might have been a good idea, if they actually did anything. I can’t remember them ever having a decisive effect on a fight. Given the armor of the bots, it was like using a feather on them.

A pit, on the other hand, can end a fight. Frequently in Robot Wars, a really good robot lost by being pushed into a pit. Having said that, a pit doesn’t discourage wedge robots or flippers. It only slightly discourages spinners because they sometimes aren’t easy to control.

I’d just rather have a wavy / bumpy or otherwise uneven surface so that a low-to-the-ground design might get stuck.

In a sense, I understand why they designed the arena the way they did. It’s extremely uniform so it’s the same for every competitor. If it’s damaged in some way it’s easy to put it back the way it was. People can make their own versions at home so they can test their robot in a similar arena. It’s basically trying to avoid having the arena itself become a decisive factor in any battle and leave the winning or losing to the robots. But, by doing that they lead to all robots being boring and optimized for that one arena. That means a battle over who can have the tightest possible ground clearance tolerance.

I want wheels, legs, tracks, not ground-huggers. So, I don’t want perfectly even, perfectly level, perfectly boring arenas. I want arenas that will challenge bots. Ideally, I’d like one where there are different sections of the arena. Maybe there’s a “plains” section where the low-to-the-ground bots have an advantage, but then there’s a “hilly” section (even if it’s just a steel floor with some dents bashed into it) where you’re screwed if you designed a bot that has a clearance that’s too low. Then you might have certain bots trying to make sure the battle happens in their section of the arena. That adds interesting strategy.

The problem with that is that the matches tend to be win or lose, and end when one of the robots is unable to continue. If you lose but the audience votes for you, does that mean the winner doesn’t get to proceed?

What makes it boring is that the engineers optimize for the arena, and the arena is boring.

They made it an almost perfectly flat metal surface with no features of any kind. Robot Wars was more interesting. Not only did they have house robots which looked like The Shrieking Maimer, the arena was also more interesting with pits, house robots, flame areas, etc.

IMO a more interesting arena would lead to more interesting battles, especially if the arena weren’t perfectly flat so it wasn’t optimal to have one that had a 2mm clearance. Even better would be if you had a variety of arenas, and the contestants didn’t know until the day of the battle which one they’d be in. Some might be flat, some might have a water hazard, some might have sand, some might have a dirt floor. Then you’d have more walking robots, more tank-tread robots, etc. so they could tackle a variety of terrain.

That’s really amazing. Before I got my 1080 I remember how having a video card that was just 5 years out of date meant many new games were completely unplayable. I wonder if I can hold out long enough for the next batch of AMD cards to come out. I’m on Linux these days and would really prefer to buy an AMD card, but I don’t want to buy a medium spec card, and the last high-spec card AMD released was the 7900 type cards from 3.5 years ago. I wouldn’t want to replace my 10 year old card with one that’s 3.5 years old. That seems pointless.

Is it surviving? I’m on a 1080 and there aren’t many games I can’t play, but I’m finally having to make noticeable sacrifices in quality to get a decent frame rate. I can still run games at 1440p though. But, for a 10 year old card, it’s amazing what it can do.

It’s unbelievable how well that one line of cards is holding up. I’m on a 1080, no Ti. Still runs most games on decent quality settings at 1440p and 60+ fps.

Or because school was actually well taught, back in the day, and Gen X learned that prior to capitalism there were other economic systems, like feudalism / manorialism, that were even worse than capitalism.

Capitalism may be bad, but it’s not the origin of all those terrible things. If anything, it took baby steps towards addressing some of them.

People who say “that isn’t because of capitalism” aren’t necessarily defending capitalism. They’re simply annoyed by the less well educated who want to believe that everything bad is because of capitalism.

It’s basically the same as Mormons who convert people to Mormonism after their death. I don’t think trans people would be happy to be compared to Mormons like that (or vice versa).

In the 60s and 70s, feminists fought for the idea that people should feel free to dress and act however they wanted and not let their gender define them.

It seems like we’ve taken some steps backwards since then. Men wearing dresses is more accepted now, but only in the narrow confines of being trans. I don’t think Kobain or Bowie ever wanted to be defined as trans, they just wanted to be themselves and challenge cultural norms.

I have long hair, and it’s a major pain in the ass. Even though it’s in a braid 99% of the time, I still find long hairs everywhere. And, wrestling it into that braid is annoying because the only time it’s at all manageable is when it’s still wet from the shower. I can’t get a brush / comb through it any other time.

The main reason I stick with it is that I really hate hair styling sprays and gels, and I think parted hair looks really stupid. So, my choices are either very long and tied back, or very, very short.

It makes sense. A lot of fashion is showing off your wealth. It’s also showing that you don’t do manual labour. When I travelled in South-East Asia, a lot of taxi drivers had one very long fingernail. The accepted reason for that was that if you had that kind of nail, it showed you didn’t do a job that involved physical labour.

As long as your gender expression is channelled along very strictly defined lines that define what tartan to wear, how to wear it, which accessories are allowed / required with it, etc.