I could do the various incarnations of the Doctor in Doctor Who. An example info-dump from memory without looking stuff up:

So the first Doctor was played by William Hartnell, and later Richard Hurndall and David Bradley after Hartnell passed away. Second Doctor was Patrick Troughton who (tangent incoming) originally pitched playing the second Doctor in black-face which thankfully got nixed. Third Doctor was Jon Pertwee, Fourth was Tom Baker who is still the longest-running Doctor by episode count, Fifth was Peter Davidson, Sixth was Colin Baker, Seventh was Sylvester McCoy although (tangent 2) he also played the Sixth Doctor for the regeneration because Colin Baker got fired and refused to film his last scene so the Sixth in that scene is just McCoy in a wig. Eight Doctor was Paul McGann who was the longest-running Doctor chronologically even though he’s only been in one full episode (the 1996 TV movie) because the show didn’t come back until 2005. He’s done some cameos in the show since though. Ninth Doctor in canonical order is John Hurt, although he was added in retroactively during the 11th Doctor’s tenure so he’s referred to as the War Doctor instead of the Ninth. Tenth Doctor canonically is Christopher Eccleston, who is referred to as the Ninth Doctor because of the aforementioned retconning. Then it gets complicated. David Tennant is the Eleventh, Twelfth and Sixteenth Doctor because he regenerated into himself and then came back again later on, which we’ll get to in a bit, but he’s referred to as the 10th and 14th Doctor. Thirteenth Doctor is Matt Smith, who’s referred to as the Eleventh. He was also supposed to be the Doctor’s final life because Time Lords are only supposed to have 13 of them, but then he got a new cycle of regenerations because it would be silly to end the show because of some arbitrary plot point from the 1970s. So then Peter Capaldi was the Fourteenth (or First if you want to start counting again from the new cycle, which nobody does) and is called the Twelfth. Fifteenth (or Second) was Jodie Whittaker, who in the show is called the Thirteenth. She then regenerated into David Tennant again (hence him also being the Sixteenth/Fourteenth) for a couple of specials, and then he split into two separate Doctors, the other one being Ncuti Gatwa who is the Seventeenth or maybe co-Sixteenth or maybe Fourth but is referred to as the Fifteenth in the show. He then (SPOILERS if you haven’t caught up to the last episode) regenerated into Billie Piper, who played Rose Tyler previously in the show and also a sort of sentient bomb called The Moment and who might not even be the Doctor at all, we don’t really know yet. There’s also all the Timeless Child stuff which throws off the numbering even further, and Jo Martin who plays the Fugitive Doctor who is possibly some sort of pre-First Doctor Doctor but the show never really explained it. There are also some other pre-First Doctor Doctors shown in flashbacks and things in The Brain of Morbius and The Timeless Child, but who knows if they’re even real or not. There’s also another David Tennant who is a sort of human clone of the Doctor who lives off in some parallel universe, and another Tom Baker who is a character called the Curator who seems to be some far-future retired version of the Doctor who revisits some of his old faces.

I could go on but you get the idea.

Sadly phone scams are the 3rd most profitable bussinesses in the world. They aren’t going anywhere unless we give up having a phone or our phone carriers do their fucking job on actual scam prevention

what? actual human calling? sounds like something an ai would say.

A drop of water falls in an endless, still lake. The ripple spreads out, leaving a circular wave spreading out endlessly. Tiny disturbances create their own ripples; one side travelling with the main ripple, causing wonderful interactions in the wavefront; but the main ripple grows faster than these disturbances spread across it.

The beings of the ripple look across the main ripple, seeing the disturbances as their interactions propagate across the main ripple. Looking back far enough to the earliest disturbances, one thing becomes clear; the entire ripple comes from one drop, and most of the ripple is moving away faster than a disturbance can propagate.

An expanding universe where every point of the universe started from the middle is pretty easy to conceptualize with the right analogy.

When I was in graduate school, I used to call the 700 Club’s prayer hotline and talk about my dissertation. To their credit, those people were remarkably patient and would only occasionally attempt to steer the conversation back in the direction of Jesus and his need to have some of my money. “Oh, I don’t have any money. Anyway, it turns out that there’s a perfect correlation between the giving of dowries and engagement in plow-based agriculture.” Completely true but for some reason they didn’t really care.

Nobody wants my info dump. I know way too much about networking and computers. The topics are massively deep, like iceberg levels of deep. One for each topic.

I could lecture for an entire day on the nuance and considerations of picking a Wi-Fi channel, or you can ignore me and just hit “auto” which may or may not take some, or all, of my considerations into account when selecting a channel.

If anyone is keen to hear some generally good advice about home networking, here’s my elevator speech:

Wire when you can, wireless when you have to. Wi-Fi is shared and half duplex, every wired connection is exclusive to the device and full duplex. If you can’t Ethernet, use MoCA, or powerline (depending on what internal power structures you have, this can be excellent or unusable, keep your receipts). Mesh is best with a dedicated backhaul, better with a wired backhaul. Demand it from any system you consider. The latest and greatest Wi-Fi technology probably won’t fix whatever problem you’re having, it will only temporarily reduce the symptoms and you won’t notice it for a while. Be weary about upgrading and ask yourself why you require the upgrade. Newer wireless won’t fix bad signal, or dropouts.

For everything else, Google. That’s how I find most of the information I know.

Good luck.

I’ll be around in case anyone has questions. No promises on when I’ll be able to reply tho.

Actually makes me wish I had kids, this is brilliant.

I’ve been getting a lot of spam calls lately. Eventually said fuck it and screwed with them as much as possible. The best times were where I had something to do that didn’t require much brainpower but had to be done. I eventually was able to keep them on the phone for up to a half an hour by pretending I was following their instructions until they realized I was bullshitting them. Everything from the internet being slow (and going on a rant about “ever since I moved to [made up town] I’ve had to deal with this shitty Internet, and they promised it to make it better X years ago”) to fake accents and changing my voice, or sometimes just not having a clue if I have an iPhone or Android and getting walked through how to figure it out. Once they figure out I’m bullshitting them they get furious. Absolutely hilarious.

Unfortunately for the fuckery with the scammers I don’t have as much brainless stuff to do at the moment. Though I still do fuck with them, I keep it short. Some things they really hate:

• go into the bathroom, and when they’re explaining their stuff flush the toilet so they can clearly hear it

• answer in a voice like you’re getting off. Instead of “yes” answer “Oh God yes”. At a fitting moment say “Oh God I’m going to cum”

• go really far away from the microphone and speak softly, and when they ask you to speak louder tell them you’re already speaking loudly, something must be up with the line. They’ll most likely turn up the volume. Once the conversation goes to their scam and they’re not thinking about it anymore, scream as loud as you can into the microphone.

• “How would you like to get fucked in the ass?” (Works best with men, considering those men often seem to be pretty prejudiced)

• in a crazy voice: “HEY, WHAT DO YOU WANT, I’M TAKIN A SHIAAAAT”

• "You say you’re from [insert company they’re pretending to be from]? Shit, your ex was right, you are a liar!

• "you work for [insert company they’re pretending to be from]? Is that what you tell your mother?

• “Hey [insert their fake name they gave you, the way they pronounced it], if you’re going to use a fake name, at least learn to pronounce it right”

• if you recognize the name from an earlier call, reference what happened in that earlier call and rile them up further about it

• when they’re about to hang up: “don’t be a chicken, don’t hang up! I have a bet going with my friend here, if you hang up, I win!”

• after getting insulted because you told them you know they’re not who they say they are: “you’re insulting me, which means I’m right, thank you!” [Proceed to laugh loudly]

Anyway, I have more, it’s just not popping into my head at the moment. But creativity is the key here, and it’s fucking entertaining.

Except now they record your voice and use it to train voice ai and scam you harder. My coworker’s ex-husband got a call from their “daughter” distressed “kidnapped” needing money for ransom. Sent it and called the ex-wife. Daughter was sleeping at home.