I was the victim of a cyberstalker about a decade ago. This person was convinced that I was really someone else that she had a beef with. Her reasoning? We both like taking photos. (Apparently, I’m the only one posting photos online. All those pictures you see online? That’s all me. No wonder I have no free time!)

I couldn’t argue with her to let her know that she was mistaken because she had it on “very good authority” that I was lying about who I was. Namely, “God told her.” And I’m not exaggerating here. She literally thought that God talked to her and told her stuff like who was committing crimes.

Oh and I was guilty of those crimes according to “God.” I won’t name those crimes because they’re heinous, but suffice it to say she thought I was doing unspeakable things to kids. She was threatening to call my employer, the police, and everyone who knew me to tell them about what I was doing.

Luckily for me, all she had to go on was “TechyDad.” I blogged at the time, but didn’t post my exact whereabouts or my real name. The guy that she thought I was wasn’t as lucky. She contacted his employer (a school in New Zealand) and everyone with the same last name as him that was on Facebook and near him. All to tell them what he did to kids. (Again, her source was “God.” He didn’t really do anything and he had to have quite a few awkward conversations to clear things up.)

I finally got rid of the stalker by grabbing her IP address (from one of her comments) and modifying my htaccess file to report 404 Page Not Found for only that IP. She crowed on Twitter about how she singlehandedly took me down and then moved on. (I and her other targets would report her to Twitter, but she’d constantly have dozens of other handles ready and waiting and would switch to them the second her main one was banned.)

To my knowledge, she’s still out there stalking people.

Now, how would this have been different had she had my real name? Well, with a little work she would have been able to look up my location. (My name’s pretty common, but she’d find me eventually.) Then, she’d locate my employer, my address, and other information. She could send me packages or mail harassing me. She could contact my local police to swat me or just to report my “crimes.” She could contact my employer to report me and try to get me fired.

Now, I eventually did tie my real name to “TechyDad.” I wrote a book and didn’t want to publish under “TechyDad” so I used my two name. That being said, it was my choice. I definitely wouldn’t want it to be required for me to use my real name everywhere.

I heard about Boost coming to Lemmy also. I don’t have any information about development progress, but I’ll definitely be trying it out once it launches.

Boost is still working for Reddit because Reddit realized that turning off their API access was harder than they thought. It will take them a few weeks to do this. Once they do, Boost for Reddit will be dead.

I’m still using it to look into a few subreddits every so often. (Ones that I haven’t found Lemmy replacements for.) When it dies, my time spent on Reddit - already very reduced from the pre-API crisis levels - will drop even more.

I like Liftoff and Jerboa. I flip between them depending on my mood.

The only reason that he seemed like a “Genius CEO” with SpaceX and Tesla was because those companies had layers of management dedicated to protecting the company from Musk.

If Musk marched into Tesla and decided that all Tesla cars should have eyeball shaped headlights, managers would tell him what a genius idea that was and that they’d get right on it. Then, they’d distract him with something else while the idea went in the trash can.

Twitter has no such management layer so every Elon Epiphany becomes Twitter policy no matter how bad or destructive it is. SpaceX and Tesla were successes despite Musk and Musk gained his “genius” reputation because those companies were able to filter out his idiocy.

I was assuming that the reason was that Twitter fired all their system administrators so the services are basically held together with bubble gum and string. If too many people use the services, it’ll crash so they need to limit usage.

They can’t admit that the rate limits are due to unmaintained servers, though, so they trotted out the “people are scraping Twitter” excuse.

Come to think of it, didn’t Reddit use something like that as an excuse for the huge API pricing? Are they coordinating on how to ruin their services? If so, they’re doing a great job!

The last one is Imposter Syndrome. I struggle with it too. Despite having worked in web development for 25+ years, I’m constantly finding myself thinking that I don’t know anything and any day now everyone else will realize it. It’s a constant battle to remind myself that I’m actually talented and knowledgeable and not just a huge fraud.

Republicans seem to want to turn back the clock to the 1950’s and in one aspect I agree with them. The top tax rate back then was 90%. That should be returned for anyone making over $10 million.

Unlike Republicans, though, I think people should be free to be who they are - whether they’re LGBTQ or straight/cisgender, black or white, Christian or Jewish or atheist, or any other group I didn’t list. (I didn’t list all groups only because I don’t want this comment to be novel length.) Basically, as long as your actions affect only yourself and consenting adults, I’m fine with them.

I’m also fine with parents having some control over what their kids do. I’m a parent myself and know that as a parent you need to make judgement calls as to what’s best for your child. I wouldn’t want someone else questioning my parenting based on their beliefs. However, there are limits. If your child is LGBTQ and you try to force them to be straight/cisgender, you aren’t acting in your child’s best interests. If your 10 year old child is raped and their life is in danger, but you refuse to allow them to have an abortion because your religion doesn’t allow it, then you’re harming your child.

Also, a person’s “parental rights” shouldn’t mean that they get to decide that certain books are banned from everyone reading them. My son actually just finished reading a book because it had been banned and we laughed over how innocuous the “ban triggering passage” was compared to some stuff in the Bible.

Basically, I think I’d call myself a Pragmatic Progressive. I advocate for progressive causes, but I also realize that society can often be slower to adapt than we like. While we would love to be able to pass X and have it be widely adopted immediately, there’s often a series of slow moving battles to get X passed and another slow march to get wide acceptance. We can’t simply throw in the political towel at the first setback. Neither can we pass up 10% of our goal being within our grasp because we’re holding out for 100%. We need to get whatever advancements we can while continually pushing for more.

I started working from home in March 2020 also. I was convinced that my productivity would suffer working from home. Previously, I had only worked from home during snowstorms and that was me sitting on my couch or bed working on just my laptop screen. When the pandemic hit, I got an second monitor and set up a dedicated working area. That made all the difference.

I’m actually more productive now than I was in the office. I can get through an entire days’ worth of tasks in a matter of hours because I can focus without people walking up to me to talk.

I’m also healthier at home. When I went into the office, I needed to pack my lunch and any snacks I wanted. I’d often overpack and since my lunch container was on my desk next to me, I’d snack all day. Now, all my snacks are in my kitchen, but that means getting up and walking downstairs. Laziness actually helps me eat less. Go figure. Plus, I can make a salad fresh for lunch instead of relying on frozen meals.

Do I miss talking to my coworkers? Sometimes, but the advantages vastly outweigh the disadvantages. I’m also now technically working for my company’s home office which is in another state. A commute would be about 10 hours each way for me. (9 hours if I cut through Canada.) So I’m pretty much permanently working from home now as long as I stay in this position (which I have no intention of leaving at the moment).

I make “egg muffins” and freeze them to reheat every morning. To make these, I steam a bag of broccoli florets. I break these apart and put them into greased muffin tins. Then I add some shredded cheddar cheese and egg beaters. I bake these (400° for about 15 minutes or until done). Then, after they cool, I stick them in the freezer. I make sure I have 12 in a Tupperware tub in my refrigerator.

Every morning, I microwave 3 of them and have that with some whole wheat toast and cream cheese. (I take more out of the freezer as needed and they are mostly defrosted by the next morning.)

I usually can’t get close enough to get pictures. This one let me get in my car (which was right by it but I was entering on the other side). I was then able to lean over and take a photo through the passenger side window.

Does the money go poof if you spend it? For example, say I buy some jewelry with half of the million dollars. Then, the time limit passes. Does just the half a million I still have on hand disappear or does the cash I spent vanish as well?

If the cash I spend vanishes, then I might be opening myself up to fraud charges after the hour is up. Going back to the jewelry situation. I buy half a million in jewelry and hand over the last of the cash just as the time limit ends. If the money in the store clerk’s hands suddenly vanishes, they’re going to demand their merchandise back. If I’m already walking out the door when it goes poof, they’ll call the police on me.

Of course, if the money that I spend doesn’t vanish after the time limit expires, then that’s a different story.

It sounds like the “Swedish Meatballs” my mother would make: Stir together tomato sauce and a can of the jellied cranberry sauce. Toss in the meatballs and let them simmer.

(I’m sure this isn’t how you really make Swedish Meatballs, but that’s what we called it growing up.)

That’s actually a big debate happening in the kosher community.

On one hand, you don’t need to do things like check every organ for signs of illness. As long as the vat doesn’t get infected with something, it’s good. You also don’t need to drain blood from the resulting meat since it doesn’t have any.

On the other hand, if you take a cell from a living animal, is the whole mass in the vat considered a living creature? If so, eating from it might not be allowed (eating flesh from a live animal is forbidden). The lack of any kind of slaughter process could either mean they want harvested meat is fine or none of it is.

There will likely be rabbis ruling both ways for awhile before any consensus emerges. If any ever does. (Judaism is very decentralized and consensus is often difficult to impossible.)

Great to hear! Sync was my first third party Reddit app. I eventually switched to Boost (IIRC, Sync was having some problems with image uploads and so I moved clients), but Sync was still a great Reddit app.

Even though I’m liking Jerboa, I can’t wait to see what the “third party Reddit developers” can do. The more Lemmy apps, the better!

I buy Beyond Meat bricks for $8.99 a pound. That’s pricey compared to regular beef, but I’m an outlier with pricing. I keep kosher at home and kosher meat is VERY expensive. Between the price and hassle (it requires separate pots/pans, plates, utensils, etc), I keep vegetarian at home. It’s just cheaper and easier.

Beyond Meat lets me cook “beef” dishes for less than kosher beef would cost me and with more flexibility. (Tonight, we had pasta and Beyond Beef meatballs with cheese - a dish I couldn’t make using kosher meat.)

There’s still a market for products like Beyond Beef, but I agree that they’ll need to hit “normal need” price levels before it really takes off.

My worst experience came just before the API disaster started. Someone posted on the ELI5 subreddit asking what autistic people experience when they are nonverbal. Now, I’m autistic and, while I’m verbal most of the time, I do have moments where I can’t speak even though I want to. Typically in moments of high emotion or stress. (It feels like the words are in my brain, but the highway to my mouth has a twenty car pileup blocking all traffic.)

My comment was upvoted many times and many people replied positively to my comment. Then, suddenly, my comment was deleted. The mod said that because this was my personal experience, it was too subjective. Meaning, only an “objective” experience from someone who wasn’t autistic would be allowed.

Needless to say, I was upset and needed to vent. I vented in the Autism subreddit about the situation and got people replying in support of me. Now, I did make a mistake where people started asking to see my original comment and I posted a screenshot. That was on me - especially because I forgot to blank out the original poster’s name. (In my defense, I had nothing against the OP or their question so nothing lept to mind saying “better blank that out.”)

The whole thread was suddenly deleted from the Autism subreddit for “doxing.” I deleted the person’s username and asked for the thread to be restored. Instead, I was given a 30 day ban. Then, I quickly got notified that I was permanently banned from ELI5 for “sh*t-stirring.” My goal was never “raise an army of autistic people to attack the ELI5 mods,” but just “blow off steam for something I felt wasn’t just.”

I decided not to contest either and just stop going to either sub. In fact, I was deciding to reevaluate my Reddit use altogether. And then the API debacle started.

Even if cultivated meat was initially bad for the environment, I’d guess that it would be easy to minimize it’s environmental impact versus traditional meat. There’s only so much you can do to stop cows from belching CO2. However, a factory making vats of cultured meat could install pollution controls to reduce their emissions.

I’d definitely like to see peer reviewed studies backing everything up, but my guess is that cultivated meat will on par with or be better for the environment than traditional meat and will only get better.

I’m not vegan, but I do keep Kosher and I’m sure there would be a huge debate in the Jewish community as to whether cultured meat was kosher.

Assuming that the animal that the original cells were taken from was Kosher (e.g. a chicken or a cow, not a pig), then would the cultured meat be Kosher? Would it not need to follow usual processes (specific slaughter techniques, salting and soaking the meat to remove blood, etc) if there was no animal/blood?

As cultured meat takes hold, there are going to be a lot of communities trying to take it into account. I’m sure there will be plenty of arguments as to the status of it as well. It should be interesting.

If I had been caught with just one of the documents that Trump had at Mar-A-Lago and I had refused to turn it over ASAP, I’d be behind bars waiting for my trial. Trump was given every consideration and chance. He blew them all. He has nobody to blame but himself.

Not that this won’t stop him from blaming everyone else. It’s what Trump does. “Me being held accountable for this thing I did is everyone else’s fault!”

Hopefully, the abortion pills remain legal and easily available. States can’t regulate the mail system so they can’t intercept mailed abortion pills. (Doing so would be a federal offense.)

Of course, we’ve not only got some right wing nut jobs as judges who would be more than willing to decide that states are completely allowed to open and inspect every piece of mail and any future Republican Congress/President could rule that abortion (including pills) are illegal nationwide.

All it takes is one red wave to remove rights nationally that are (at best) hanging on by a thread in many places.