Author: Chill

S-VHS

Chill Culture

What’s your white whale – something you’ve been looking for for years but never found?

Not quite what the OP is asking, but I had a lot of music videos recorded on Super-VHS from MTV and other sources, some of which are not available on YouTube or any other service. I had a couple dozen of these tapes back in the 1990s, all two hours long.

Those tapes were thrown away or sold for drugs, not sure which.

Some of those videos will probably never be seen by anyone again. I doubt there are any master copies extant at the studios, and if no one can unearth a copy on VHS, they are gone forever.

Au Hell Yeah

Chill Tech

I guess I am a tech elder now, and the reason for gold is that it was corrosion-proof and is easier to solder and wire-bond (the gold was present in more than just the cap). The older process (prior to gold) with tin and whatever else, was prone to oxidizing and corroding.

Gold was the best option at the time vis-à-vis the drawbacks of the others and technological capabilities. Not needed any longer as the tech matured. I know this stuff because I read about it on some website back in like 1997 or so (maybe HardOCP).

Of Any Concern

Chill Prediction, War

I don’t agree with all of this, but Europe pretending to defend Greenland while doing nearly nothing to defend Ukraine with actual troops == fucking INSANE. Do they not care that if Russia succeeds in Ukraine, then their own countries will be overrun with Russian (really conscripted slave Ukrainian) meat waves? Is that not of any concern to the EU? Apparently not.

Well, they dug their grave. Russia will put them in it.

Cause K

Chill Evil

Correct. The Palestinian “cause” was largely created by the KGB, with money from Iran and other sources contributing. It’s not and never has been an organic movement. Another thing idiot leftists were snookered by.

ICE Cold

Chill Political Economy, Politics

I disagree with the methodology (and hiring practices) of ICE and ICE raids as conducted. However, I very much agree that all illegal immigrants should be deported. That’s just what what any normal country should be doing if it wants to remain an actual nation.

The brunt of enforcement should be directed at employers, traffickers and landlords who don’t check citizenship status.

The rest would then take care of itself.

Canchina

Chill Amusing, Annoying, Clowns

Canada becoming more dependent on China. In some ways, we pushed them that direction.

But they really think that’s gonna work out well for them? Of course it won’t. They’ll be played with, chewed up, then spit out out like a lion finding a vole running around in its enclosure. That is, if they don’t just become a satrapy fully under Chinese control — which is also likely.

Of course, a lot of the idiot leftists would cheer for that. Not as much as if it were under an Islamic theocracy, but still. They would like it.

Worst Emp

Chill Evil

Iraqi migrant who murdered 16-year-old Ukrainian girl by shoving her in front of train avoids prison in Germany.

Social experiment gone wrong in the Netherlands: 125 students made to live with 125 refugees for ‘integration’ report sexual assault and violence for years, complaints were ignored.

What the fuck? Suicidal empathy combined with the worst of it being taken out on women and girls.

Just about what I expect of the modern left. It’s time for a mass forced remigration. Send all the Islamists back. Every single one. And send the Islamoleftists somewhere. Bottom of the ocean, Somalia, a bonfire. whatever. Doesn’t matter.

Granted That

Chill Evil

Does anyone really believe that the left cares about immigrants? Other than being worried about who will wipe Nana’s bum in the nursing home in 10 or 20 years so they don’t have to do so. I mean, they care about that a lot.

The only little bit of empathy they have is of the suicidal type, which means it’s a problem for us all. Most of the loudest and most powerful people on both sides of the aisle now are insane, to be clear.

Not a great way to run a country.

Strict Forward

Chill Culture

Overall, the world would have been better off if only a few dozen million people ever used the internet outside of corporate work/connectivity, smartphones required expensive licensing and mental health testing to acquire, and social media just did not exist at all.

There’s no going back. But that would have been a far superior timeline.

Heavy Questions

Chill Cool

Is my phone actually heavier when it’s 100% charged compared to 0%?

This is where you can actually use E=MC2 to figure out the answer. It’s not even difficult math, as such things go. In fact, it’s dead simple.

I’ll spare you the full math (though it just involves converting the Wh into joules, then figuring out the mass added by energy increase with E=MC2) It is just a simple identity, essentially. Just how the universe works.

So, charging an iPhone from 0% to 100% stores about 49,320 joules of energy (for a 13.7Wh battery). By mass–energy equivalence, that stored energy gives us an added mass of about 550 picograms. Or if you want to be exact that is around 0.000000000548759 grams.

These questions have pretty exact and easy answers but Reddit types never seem to realize that.

Chill Links

If you put the Apple icons in reverse it looks like the portfolio of someone getting really really good at icon design.

It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons.

Army Punches Its MV-75 Tiltrotor Program Into Overdrive.

More than 8,100 stores closed across the U.S. in 2025, up roughly 12% from 2024,.

Trump’s promise to slash energy bills in half has failed across the US.

MacOS’s UI has gotten drastically worse over the last 10 years, in ways that seem so obviously worse that it boggles the mind how it happened.

Ocean damage nearly doubles the cost of climate change.