I imagine it’s because it’s the simplest, most common type of ball that you commonly see described as such. Like, baseballs and basketballs and soccer balls and beach balls exist, but out of context they’re typically called that rather than just “a ball”. So, a simple round ball. Giving it a pattern requires some extra thought, and of the solid colors red seems like the most common (think dodgeballs).

I pictured a smooth red rubber ball about the size of a baseball on my kitchen table. The “person” was more of an invisible force, not explicitly male but definitely not female. That might be male bias, or subtly thinking of myself doing it (combined with playing too many physics engine video games where your disembodied self pushes things around).

All of this was pretty vague though, like I didn’t really imagine the details of the room or the exact path of the ball other than knowing it would roll off and bounce on the floor.

This might be more of a blogosphere-era thing I guess. Even when most people blogging did it for pleasure rather than work, it was always considered polite to “hat tip” (h/t) the source of a given link, if you happened to find it on someone else’s site.

When you share something cool, link back to the original creator or where you found it from.

Petrichor: The smell of rain on dry ground. One of those things everybody knows about but lacks a word for.

The way the moon is perfectly sized to just exactly cover the sun while still showing the corona and stuff like Bailey’s Beads. It’s an extremely rare cosmic coincidence, and a few million years before or after today and total solar eclipses as we know them wouldn’t be possible.

Here Comes the Sun. Simple melody, timeless lyrics, and it’s the most-streamed Beatles song out of an already strong and memorable catalog.

Climate change is the single overriding issue for me. We are beyond out of time to avert damaging levels of warming, and even Biden’s climate policies – by far the most sweeping in the history of the country – are barely adequate to begin steering us away from the absolute worst. If Trump gets in, and eviscerates federal climate policy, and stacks the EPA with oil lobbyists (again), and fills federal courts with science-denying assholes, and sabotages state and local efforts to decarbonize, and destroys all chance of global cooperation on this issue, and (most importantly) dismantles democracy so that it is effectively impossible to vote for a progressive ever again absent a second civil war, then we will be consigning the entire planet to “nightmare hellscape” levels of climate change with no viable pathway out. A second Trump term would add four billion tons of carbon emissions over the next six years. It would “negate – twice over – all of the savings from deploying wind, solar and other clean technologies around the world over the past five years”. And that analysis doesn’t account for increased emissions from Trump policies, just a reversal of what Biden has accomplished. Allowing Trump to win again would not just be national, but global suicide.

My nightly routine before bed:

• Smartle (simple word game)
• Chronophoto (guess the year five photos were taken)
• TimeGuessr (guess the year and location five photos were taken)
• Connections (NYTimes categorization game)
• Spelling Bee (NYTimes letter game)
• Hurdle (basically five linked Wordles)
• Wordle
• Strands (new NYTimes letter game)

Also try to play AntGame.io at least once a day to get a decent score.

I thoroughly enjoy MetaFilter (one of the last surviving community blogs from the 90s) and Tildes (a more recent attempt at capturing the same feel). Text-heavy discourse, minimalist design, human-scale moderation, and moderately gatekept (MeFi has a $5 fee, Tildes is invite-only). PM me if you’re interested.

Defederating Beehaw would not only weaken it as an instance, but remove its positive influence from the wider fediverse. The big platforms wield so much power and influence and money, the smaller upstarts need to connect as much as possible to stand a chance at relevance as a credible alternative. We’re all better together. I really hope you reconsider.

Assuming you mean the actual Soviet Union, Chernobyl was incredibly well-done.

You can do anything at Zombo.com. Anything at all. The only limit is yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_of_Mankind

“WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, DON’T MAKE LEMONADE. MAKE LIFE TAKE THE LEMONS BACK! GET MAD! I DON’T WANT YOUR DAMN LEMONS! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THESE?! DEMAND TO SEE LIFE’S MANAGER! MAKE LIFE RUE THE DAY IT THOUGHT IT COULD GIVE CAVE JOHNSON LEMONS! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?! I’M THE MAN WHO’S GONNA BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN! WITH THE LEMONS! I’M GONNA GET MY ENGINEERS TO INVENT A COMBUSTIBLE LEMON THAT BURNS YOUR HOUSE DOWN!”

Not only is Odysee based on crypto BS, but it caters to conspiracy nuts, neo-Nazis, and other extreme-right hate groups. No thanks.

If I could mandate one rule for the fediverse that it didn’t already have, it would be a hard ban on reposts, especially those undated Twitter screencaps that took over entire subreddits the last few years.

When I fly Southwest, you’re supposed to check in starting 24 hours before to get a decent position in line. You can pay extra to get a guaranteed spot in boarding group A, but as long as you check in on the dot you’ll get at least B. Wait till the last minute and you’ll be stuck in a middle seat in the rear on most flights. Not sure how it works with other airlines, though.

Deleted how? I can see it here while logged in (though there are only a few posts):

https://lemmy.world/c/piracy

Couple nights ago, but it was weird enough that I had to write it down, which I hardly ever do.

I was shopping at a supermarket at night, with terrible weather outside. Pitch black, howling wind and rain, real tornado weather. Trying to use my phone to look up something when I started to hear ominous creaks and pops from the roof. An employee comes on the staticky intercom to tell everyone to proceed calmly to the back area of the store, which of course triggers a near-panic. As we’re all hustling to the back, the ongoing safety announcement sloooowly winds down in speed and pitch before everything kicks over to generator power. I’m one of the first to reach the back doors when I realize I left my phone behind on a shelf. Surely there’s time to reach it?

Just as I reach my phone, the generator dies and everything is near-dark apart from a handful of emergency lights. The creaks and groans increase, then a huge tearing sound. It’s not a tornado – it’s some giant horrible Cloverfield/Lovecraft/War of the Worlds monster ripping a hole in the back wall. A two-story greenish blob heaves into view with searching tentacles. Dozens of them catapult forward in long arcs and strike people, the rest flee in panic. I notice that each tentacle strike transforms the victim into a smaller creature, a couch-sized blob with a crazy happy expression. As they see people fleeing around them towards the front of the store, they toss smaller arced tentacles forward at angles to grab them. As they inch forward they start merging together like the T-1000. Real Mr. Frundles/The Thing vibes. The only chance was to hide behind stuff while they herded past/over you towards the front.

It kind of morphed from there into driving around outside in the daytime through a The Mist/Godzilla/Cloverfield pastiche, but that zombie arcing tentacle monster bit was really unsettling and I’ve got no idea where it came from.