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Also, I think you might be hard-pressed to find anyone who would consider sugary cake sponge to be “bread”. (Something something Ireland’s supreme court ruled that Subway’s bread isn’t legally bread for tax purposes due to its high sugar content)

It’d be like layering up some sourdough slices with sweet sugary icing slathered between them, most people probably wouldn’t call that a cake.

It wasn’t super relevant to the story, but yeah, I could just browse the files right on their PC, definitely a “Not intending to share it for free” kind of situation, completely devoid of any authentication or security.

I’ve actually taken note of my navigational skills over the last couple years… I grew up in one state, and then a few years after graduating college, moved to a different state. When I was growing up, phone navigation didn’t really exist as it does now, cars didn’t have built-in navigation, and standalone navigation devices were slow and not all that great (at least the ones I could afford).

I find that when I return home, even 10 years later, I am able to navigate all the places I used to go unaided with ease, back-roads, niche routes, able to travel for hours without getting “lost”.

When I moved, though, I had very recently gotten my first smartphone, and google maps was very convenient to “learn” the new area. I ended up just continuing to use navigation since it was convenient. I’ve found that beyond the major main routes, I don’t have the same kind of “built-in” navigational skill that I do for my original home-turf. I never really learned the area.

I am moving towards a smart-phone-less life, and I’ve been able to let go of a lot, but GPS navigation remains a sticking point. I need to start training myself to navigate unaided in my current area.

Many many years ago in the paleolithic era when 2.4GHz was king, a neighbor in the next unit over had an unsecured wifi network… I connected my old laptop, figured out where the connection was best (turned out to be beside the stove in the kitchen?), piped the connection out the ethernet port and into the WAN port on my router, and set up my own “secured” network lol. I’m fairly certain anyone with a straight-up unsecured wifi network doesn’t have the skills or knowledge to detect someone leaching their bandwidth. I did that for like 3 years without a single hiccup until I moved and finally had to start paying.

My Dell Latitude 7280 has a similar rubbery coating both inside and out, and the keyboard is really nice, similar to Thinkpad keyboards I remember from the past. It’s also got a magnesium chassis, and seems to be quite durable.

I read a bit more of your comments before posting and it seems like you’re looking for a new, more powerful laptop… At least that exact Latitude model is a few years old, and low-power (and small, only 12" screen), but I’ll leave it here as an interesting note. I use it as a field-capture device for my astrophotography camera that can be powered by a big USB C power bank. Works great for that use, and is small thin and light.

I am doing a similar thing with a mid-level build in a Dell Dimension 4600 case for my daily driver, but going full deep-end.

My main hurdle right now is RAM. I’m trying to find a 2x16GB set of green RAM with no heat spreader. I happen to have a stinky-poo-poo set of 2x16Gb Samsung 2133 (unknown CAS, but likely terrible). I’d ideally like to have something typical like 3200CL16, but really the only thing I can currently find are all those CL22 sets by Crucial. Does anyone have any other ideas for RAM? I’m thinking of just picking up one of those Crucial sets, it’s probably good enough and certainly better than whatever I’ve got now, but the fact that I can very easily get gamer-y RAM with lame heat-spreaders in exactly the capacity, speed, and CAS I want, but I can’t get it in green… You always want what you can’t have!

I have a single 80mm exhaust fan, and I’ve done some testing, and with the components I have (R5 5500 and RX5700XT), it’s actually not as bad as I expected thermally, and suitably quiet. I am waiting for some more Be-quiet 80mm fans to come in to put one in the front, and also possibly on a hole I have yet to drill in the side-panel…

I didn’t know what these were until a couple days ago, I saw them posted elsewhere and did a little digging. There must have been some release on Sunday because I went to the mall to meet up with some people before heading elsewhere, and there was an absolutely apocalyptic line with hundreds and hundreds of feet of little rope barriers, armed security guards, people brought chairs to sit in line since god knows when… all in front of a tiny little shop that sells things that all just look like funko-pops to me but are apparently unique and desirable for whatever reason… There were even more people all over the mall with bags from that shop carrying the weird little fuzzy things around.

Ah the good ol’ corner-of-a-building shot. I know it well.

I interact with nostalgia by using the actual tools that are the focus of said nostalgia., so like kind of a more difficult round-about way of achieving a similar extreme result… (All of those are SOOC, no editing, from various mid-to-early 90’s cameras)

(I also really like your shot of the stick “levitating” over the lake.)

I think it was just an odd way of making him seem more human and normal. Also the fact that he doesn’t mention anything about it also happening in his previous lives leaves an interesting open question that could either lend credence or hinder his whole backstory… At least that’s how I interpreted it.

All in all, though… one of the less awkward and more impactful sex scenes in a science-y book, which is much better than the usual ones I remember because they’re terrible and awkward and don’t fit in with the surrounding plot lol

It’s ironic that I have an anecdote that I recently read that feels very fitting here.

Permutation City by Greg Egan. Post-human digital consciousness via uploaded brain-scan becomes possible, and there are interesting questions about how the “sense of self” is derived, and how much someone can change themselves before they are no longer the same person. There are many different characters that deal with a newfound immortality in different ways, and either embrace, or shun, the ability to change themselves at a whim to fit their needs or wants. It’s a very prominent part of the overall plot and is prevalent right up until the last sentence.

Also, separate from that, I have the exact opposite feeling as OP. When I’m reading a book, I feel like my world is expanded in new directions. I tend to see certain things from slightly different perspectives in the context of what I’m reading. I’ve been reading Greg Egan’s entire body of work (after reading Diaspora and absolutely fucking loving it), and some insight and thoughts I had about the book Quarantine actually pushed me to make positive changes in my life that have been really hugely impactful, and I don’t think I would have had the courage or drive to make them had I not been thinking about my life in such an abstract manner.

While I haven’t seen him the most times, I am unequivocally a massive Dev-head. I’ve seen Devin Townsend 3 times (4 if you count the virtual concert during lockdown in 2020), but one of them was to travel from the USA to the Netherlands this March to see the one-time live performance of The Moth (I was right in the second row, I get a lot of peripheral screen-time in the live-stream). It was such an amazing experience, I’m going to count that as 10 or 20 normal concerts. I probably also haven’t cried that many happy tears in at least a decade or two. It was also my first time ever leaving the USA, and I really REALLY didn’t want to go home. I’d have happily lived the rest of my life on the Dutch train network.

I’ve been meaning to get to one of their shows, but just never had the chance, or always learned about it right after it happened.

I really wish Грай (Grai) would tour somewhere in North America…

I had never heard of Thank You Scientist before, but they were opening for one of the bands that I really like to go see live (Rivers of Nihil, seen them 5 times so far). HOLY SHIT they are so good. I have no idea how they ended up as the opener for that show, they’re so different from the other bands on the setlist, but I am very glad I got to see them.

I saw Tesseract recently when I went to see Devin Townsend, that was an amazing show.

FxTec Pro1 X… As someone who has spent years searching for a modern-ish phone with a Qwerty keyboard… How has this flown under my radar for 5 years?!?

I’ve completely rethought my phone situation recently and it wouldn’t really fit my lifestyle, but man I am still tempted to keep my eyes out for a cheap one.

You’re not going to get an argument out of me lol. I had a Reddit account for over a decade. I was addicted to the karma system of Reddit, it was seriously negatively impacting my life. I finally deleted my account and moved here recently, it’s been one of the better changes I’ve made in my life. You can completely hide post scores here, and the communities are smaller and less active which drives a more genuine engagement vs the hot-take one-liners, memes, and low-effort post replies.

Reddit can burn to the ground and cease to exist for all I care. It’s become so big and full of hate and misinformation.

My legitimate advice is just… don’t go back and save yourself the headache.

The karma itself is the gamification that increases engagement.

The gated subs, karma limits, etc. are there to cut down on spam, low-effort content, brigading, etc. in large communities to keep the engaged users more engaged so hopefully they spend a few more dollars on silly updoot awards.

It’s all supply and demand, profit-driven decisions. If a feature like karma limits alienates a small number of users, it is still worth it if it retains and engages with more high-value users who invest money in the platform with their ad viewership and direct purchases.

Costco bought RAC in a stunning buyout in 2437 after Costco’s CEO Harambe Memelord Disney Jr. offered RAC’s CEO Squiggy John John John John Johnson a 2-for 1 deluxe latte coupon and an extra big-ass fry.

I would unironically love if there were enough people in my life that also wanted to live that way to make it viable… Also the lack of functioning payphones these days would be challenging.

The place (at least in the USA) where I’ve found the most functional-looking payphones was actually Hawaii… And even then, so many are decaying and non-functional. I’ve had a silly idea to go back and just roam around and photograph as many as I can.

Excellent examples of that all around me where they installed a bunch of flex posts around previously unprotected bike lanes.

It’s been about a year (I think. Time is hard), and there are significantly less flex posts, some stretches have none at all anymore, because people just run them over like they don’t exist. Even on a street where the bike lane was ALREADY separated from the lane of travel by a ~5 foot section of cross-hatched pavement, people still somehow find a way to run over and destroy the poles. It’s baffling.