Thanks, I'd forgotten about this one. Our AC will be out for a few days. I've already started loading water bottles into the freezer.

Being aware of your own shortcomings and that you don't like them is a gargantuan milestone, OP.

Most people are in extreme denial about who they are, and what their shortcomings are, and it leaves them very poor in regards to the potential to grow.

If you're aware of and acknowledging things you don't like about yourself: that's actually a huge and powerful thing. You know what the things are about yourself that you want to improve.

Always remember, you don't have to change completely overnight or anything, like you're freaking Ebenezer Scrooge being visited by ghosts.

You can start by picking any one opportunity you see about yourself. "I don't like that I (negative trait/action), so today I'm going to focus on (doing something positive regarding that trait/action)." Focus on that for a while... find joy when you succeed in being better. Don't beat yourself up when you fail... just look at it as more opportunity to grow. Over time as you're establishing positive habits, you can add new things to work on.

Your knowledge that you are on a journey of improvement and your determination are your superpowers.

I will say that if you decide that you want to grow for the better, definitely check in with the pros if you can, and not just random folks like me on the internet. But my point is, your self-acknowledgement is HUGE, and can be a tool you use to chisel your way to a better you. Don't dwell on the past and keep beating yourself up about it... instead use it as your base to climb from. You've got this if you want it.

I've used it before when playing non-docked (otherwise I have a Blue yeti condenser mic hooked up into my docking hub).

The people I was playing with said I sounded good and clear. I've used it both with Discord and with Steam voice chat and I've never had an issue.

EDIT: I saw your post about issues with it when using wired headphones. That very well may be, but I can tell you it works fine with Bluetooth headphones (I alternate on a couple of pairs of BT bone conduction headphones).

I said it elsewhere, but it's almost like they looked at the market research showing Steam PC gamers would buy a gazillion Steam Controller 2s or Steam Deck Controllers if they made and sold either one, or both.

And then they decided to make something that was neither one of those things. It's totally bizarre.

Yeah, we may be at checkmate. Unlike the end of the age of the robber barons, when we reformed capitalism in the late 1800s / early 1900s in the US... this time the capitalists have purchased enough politicians to stop reform completely and forever.

"The free exchange of communication and ideas, unrestricted by capitalist interference? Can't have that kind of evil in the world. Surely it's my duty to shut this down, so that others may come to know the flavor of corporate boot leather as well as I have."

"I'm sorry, fairly-right-of-center Southern Democrats. You're not quite evil enough for me anymore, I need to spread my wings."

I'm getting major "I'm asking for a friend" vibes off of this post.

Oh, you've got a behavior there, but the wrong motivation.

I sit at home, but I don't sit on public toilets precisely because dudes have been whizzing all over the seat.

In order for us to vote for change, change has to be on the ballot.

Moreover, the ballot itself must change.

It's pretty amazing that a guy who has picked up several dozen felony charges in the last few months has this little idea of how the legal system works.

Far too little, far too late. Even if this was the most glowing revision ever (it isn't, but even if it was), the trust is gone.

You do realize that the actual issue is that this is kind of thing is going to be normalized, so that it can spread like a plague across the corporate-touched internet, objectively making the entire thing as a whole objectively worse... right?

Because it sure doesn't seem like it with that reply.

That doesn't fix YouTube's core issues with the ads that they run, impacting every free user without an ad blocker: 1) Not 100% safe 2) Unscrupulous advertisers, sometimes running scam ads 3) Poor user experience re: ads (far too many in general, and multiple mid-roll ads per video make for a horrendous time).

I'm not going to reward them for these misbehaviors toward their user base by buying their "Premium" service. Same for any other site that does this and offers a "Premium service" to fix the problem that they, themselves, created. There are ways to have safe ads, and fair user experience even with them in play.

It's hard to get steam into tablespoons. I was really impressed.

The Milky Way's Mass is Much Lower Than We Thought

You know, I'm really surprised, considering that the Milky Way galaxy is home to yo mama.

The tech exec who eats exactly 1,977 calories a day

No, he doesn't.

It's pretty much impossible to calculate EXACT calories in food you're eating, as various foods types will have variations that are slightly larger or smaller than normal, even if you're being meticulous with a food scale. You can get a pretty close margin, yes, but to definitively say "I eat exactly X calories every day" is a silly statement.

Maybe "My daily calorie target is X" or "I try to average X calories per day in my diet," but you can't be precise to the calorie.

Common Amazon deception. Mark up a product's base cost artificially, then take a "percentage off" to bring it back down to near the base price it always is. Maybe slightly more expensive or cheaper, but usually just a smidge away from the normal cost. It's for the illusion of "being on sale."

Use an Amazon price tracker site (like camel camel camel for example) so that you can always call out Amazon and make sure that you're getting their actual lowest prices when you have to buy from them.

I don't think it's a question yet. I've seen several people say today that Threads doesn't have federation enabled. It's possible that they'll want to stay in their own walled-off ecosystem.

But I do think it would be prudent to have a plan of attack ready to go to cut them off immediately if they ever change their minds about that. Every respectable instance in the Fediverse should.

Does anyone want to let him know that he has about 1,500 "post-birth abortions" per year happening in his state?

I remember Amazon being called out for doing this a few years back (like the early to mid 2010s if I'm recalling correctly). Theirs was particularly ridiculous because you could be on their site logged in, and in an incognito tab logged out, and be seeing different prices reported on the same product pages.

It might seem that way (especially if you subscribe to the Reddit-discussing communities here; I did that at first, but got tired of seeing the same five convos happening a gazillion times, so I unsubscribed them, and that mainly solved the problem).

I went out into the community search, found a bunch of stuff I'm interested in, joined those places, and have been having some good interactions so far. So that's what I'd recommend.

Yeah, "AAA games on high / beautiful graphics settings" isn't really the Deck's forte. FSR upscaling covers up a lot of the worst of docked ugliness, but it has its limits.

If visual fidelity is a huge deal for someone, and they are going to play docked 90%+ of the time, then they'd probably have been better served by a gaming laptop instead of a Steam Deck. And if one picked up the Deck because it was the best overall value for what they could afford, then they should probably be happy with the capabilities it has, and adjust their expectations a bit.

The Reddit antiwork community had quite a few ridiculous folks hanging out within it.

Not that getting to a post-scarcity society where people aren't forced to work wasn't a nice horizon-goal to have, but there are a million steps from where we are in the modern world to there, and a lot of those people wanted it done by next Tuesday. And then when you'd point out that was literally impossible, they'd stick their fingers in their ears and make noises. Needless to say, I didn't try to stick around for long.

I fled Windows to Linux 4 years ago, I got SO tired of the BS and annoyances. Have not regretted that decision one iota ever.

So if Windows ever gets installed on my Deck, you can just assume someone stole it from me.

Since I WFH 95% of the time, and have installed life-changing washlet bidet this year, I absolutely try to avoid the solid waste process while away from home.

But if I'm in the office and it can't be helped, there's a stall way back in the back of the restroom on my floor. It's out of the way, so no one can just casually walk up to it without you knowing or having reaction time. And the door closes completely with no side gaps as well.

Google needs to understand, that is not a choice that they have.

So much of the internet is covered by sites that don't take the time the vet their advertisers and the ads that are being placed on their platform.

Advertisers who, in turn, advertise on legit sites spreading scams and malware wherever they go, and Google and YouTube are no exception to this. These companies really brought The Age of the AdBlocker on themselves, by not making sure that the ads they are allowing on their platforms are safe for users.

So now, me and about a bajillion other people are in a position where we don't go out onto the internet anymore without protection. Ad blockers for everyone.

So, YouTube's actual choice is this: do they want me to continue to visit their site and drive their traffic metrics?

Because that's all they are getting from me, and if they find a way to disable all ad blockers, than they are clearly saying that they don't want me and others like me to boost their visitor numbers. Simple as that.

Non-neutral nouns have always struck me as odd. They provide no info gain whatsoever outside of actually providing a gender if you're referring to a person or animal (for example, in Spanish, gato -> male cat, gata -> female cat). And in those situations, a short sentence can provide instant clarification if needed in a non-gendered language like English.

It's a language feature built to be helpful in one use case, whilst simultaneously being worse in about a bazillion others. It's a very odd choice.

Mint Cin is a solid first distro. UI feels a lot like Windows and gives a comfy environment to learn in.

Save yourself the PR nightmare that accompanies data breaches! Prevent all outside hacking forever by proactively dumping your data onto the internet yourself!

It's pure genius!

Please definitely don't be discouraged in the slightest, TPM.

Single-game forums were almost always the smallest gaming subreddits on Reddit, often times being several orders of magnitude smaller than the "gaming in general" communities.

But that special feeling of having other people passionate about that specific game you love can't be beat. Hang in there, and you'll definitely grow and get that engagement in time.

Yep, the name and branding were the problem. Nailed it!

Not sure which part of "if you don't have access to a gun, then you literally can not shoot yourself" isn't connecting in your mind, but it is interesting to me that it's almost like people subconsciously fight themselves to avoid arriving there.

Their No. 1 problem with it is how difficult it is to observe and monitor employees

Um, no. Like others here have pointed out, the overwhelming majority of office workers have to turn in countable digital product of some sort for their job production. LOOK AT IT. Was it the quantity and quality required of them? Well, there you go.

Also, what the hell are you on about, hypothetical boss? In today's technical age, so many bosses can just remote view a worker's screens (even when the workers don't know that it's happening in real time).

It's creepy to spy, but if you really suspect someone's away from keyboard extendedly when they aren't supposed to be, you can literally just look in.

"I can't monitor my employees" is such a weird complaint when counting is a thing and tech tools are out there designed to let you overview your workforce.

Chutkan: Recuse myself? No, I don't think I will, thank you.

Like others here have said, I find the question to be a little weird.

You just make sure you clean yourself properly after you go (and if you don't have a washlet bidet at home, get one, the basic ones can be had for less than $40 on Amazon).

And if you need to be out and about and won't be able to water wipe due to having to use public toilets, and aren't 100% about your ability to be fully clean using TP, then just keep a few pairs of underwear and wear them at those times.

This isn't the Mystery of the Ages or anything. 🤷‍♂️

A "dream" (?) I had a month after my father was killed. A long story, apologies for the book.

To start with, for clarification, I have always been a lucid dreamer, going back to childhood. Not every night. Not every dream. But every time I had realization in a dream that I was dreaming, I could control circumstances and events of the dream the entire rest of the time I was having it. Every single lucid dream. Without exception. Likely a few hundred times by the time this happened, just shy of my thirtieth birthday.

I was dreaming of playing backyard football with my friends as a kid. It's a happy memory, and I dream about it now and then. This particular night, I was in lucid mode. I was having fun doing whatever I wanted (throwing 200 yard touchdown passes, running around like an Olympic sprinter, what have you... I kind of return to my ten year old self in this one).

Before one play, the football suddenly deflates and goes completely flat. Weird, I think to myself... I don't feel like I caused that to happen. But whatever. I tell my friends I'll change the football out, and we'll get back to it. In my mind, I summon up the equipment shed from my campus recreation officiating days back on campus in college.

I open up the shed and step inside. It's just as I remembered, of course, but kind of dark, not much light is bleeding in here from outside. I do a 180 toward the door to flip on the light. And I felt everything change. Everything. And I didn't cause it. I also hadn't looked at it yet. But I felt it.

Instant warmth. Comfort. A sense of peace that I can't really describe... language isn't really sufficient.

I turn around and see that I am in the foyer of a beautiful house, full of warmth. It is pure wood tones through and through.

I realize that I can really smell the air... The woods, and the ocean, in a perfect balance. I recall never having a sense of smell in any other dream, lucid or otherwise. I'm not panicked or worried, this place is just too peaceful for fear to be. Just confused.

Lying on a table next to an open window is my favorite cat from my childhood, Pudding. I give him a scratch right behind the ears in his favorite spot, he purrs, rubs into me... like hey buddy, missed you. Almost like it hasn't been almost twenty years since he died, the last time I saw him. Realization dawns.

Realization that I still know that this is a dream. Or at least I thought it was. But if this is still a dream, and I realize this is so, why is all this stuff happening without my control? That's certainly never been a thing in a lucid dream before.

And why am I smelling the fresh air of a forest that is twenty feet away from the ocean? Why do I have tactile feel of my furry buddy who died years ago? It feels like reality. Crisp, sharp, full of senses normally non-existent or dulled in normal dreams.

I catch some movement to my side and turn. Walking down the stairs, with a smile, is my dad. He's clean, unhurt, in perfect shape... not at all like he was in the hospital when I last saw him, beaten up and brain dead. Before I even know what's happening, he's got me in a hug. I'm too stunned to react much.

"You've always been too stingy with the hugs," he says. The feel of him, the sound of him talking... so real. I realize fully, finally, 100%. This is no dream. I hug him back, delighted.

As I pull away, all I can say is, "Aren't I dreaming?"

He gives me the look he has always given me when I ask a completely stupid question. "Are you?" he says, all good-humor-light-sarcasm.

"But how... where are we?"

"My place," he answers. "I needed to talk to you. Let's go in there."

He leads me down a side hall into a study. The few seconds while we walk, I'm still trying to reassert control. Open the floor and have us plunge through. Have him start dancing a jig. Have the house catch on fire. Anything to have proof that this is all a dream. Nothing works. As we enter the study, he tells me, "Morgan, son, seriously. Let go and relax." He gives me that wry smile he gives when I'm being ridiculously amusing. "You're not dreaming. Sit down."

The room is supernaturally strong with the smell of cedar. Of pine. On the bookshelves, I'm noting some of my Dad's favorites. Tolkien. Stephen King. James Clavell. A light bulb goes off over my head. This house is pretty much what my Dad would build if you gave him a perfect house button to press to make it come into creation. In a way, it feels like a piece of him, as real to me as he was right at that moment.

I take a seat in a wonderful leather bound chair. He sits across from me and says, "after this, we are going to talk about some things, and you won't remember any of it consciously. But I had to tell you."

And we talked. I felt the hours. I don't remember the specifics... he was absolutely right about that. But I remember some feelings. Happiness and relief that he is okay here. Some good times... I think it was a good talk. Some sadness. I remember him hugging me goodbye. "I love you son."

I woke with tears pouring out of me. Things "awake" felt... less real somehow, but still as they always were. I spent the next couple hours talking to my wife about what happened, in the middle of the night.

In the following days, I went back over my experience in my mind, while it was fresh. I came to the conclusion that it was most likely not a dream, because it was so unlike any other dream I had ever had before (or have ever had since). I left a small chance in my head (like maybe 2%) that it actually was a dream, because I'd been grieving pretty hard, and maybe there was some weird chemical imbalance in my brain chemistry or something. I was even slightly miffed at dad that he used this experience on me, and not my younger sister (who was taking this as hard as I was, if not more so).

Then, in July the same year, my mom fell ill and passed away. And I hit the wall of pain all over again. But this time, with a sliver of peace that I didn't have last time. I realized that this is why Dad shared this experience with me. He knew this was going to happen, and soon.

I'll never forget the gift. The view into the other side. The transition that makes my grief for those who have passed into a selfish thing... that I trust that they are fine, and I'm really just sad that I'm not going to see them again for a long while.

I'm tired, boss. Tired of bein' on the the app store, wantin' to be lonely as an owl in the rain. I'm tired of always havin' people annoying me, tellin' me to give them new words. Mostly, I'm tired of people never memorizin' the vocabulary. I mean, how many times can I give you "Cómo estás?" before you finally remember what it means, Cletus?

There's too much misremembered - it's like pieces of glass in my head, all the time, I've fed you the entire Spanish lexicon ten times, and you've learned three words. Can you understand?

The current booster was based on the XBB.1.5 Omicron sub-variant. Therefore it's expected to also be effective against the current dominate strains that are directly related, like BA.2.86 and EG.5. So it's worth getting, it'll be some protection against the most common strains right now.

Of course once we roll through the winter into the spring and there are several more mutations and a new dominant strain, it'll be time to start the process over again.

Agreed. Ruud has done a lot of great things for .world in its short time, but I don't agree with his decision on this... I do hope he changes his mind.

There's no need to "give Meta a chance," they've already demonstrated who they are time and again. And I don't want to end up having to leave .world in the future because the traditional Fediverse split in two, and .world is on the wrong side of it.