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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Google photos has a date tag attached to this of 9/10/2008

    A whole lot of stuff has traveled with me through the years swapping SD cards from one phone to another, and eventually things getting backed up to the cloud, etc. this is probably the oldest thing I have saved that can count as a meme. I don’t know if that date is when I actually first found it, when it first somehow got backed up, if maybe that’s just from some metadata left over from whoever made the meme originally, or something else entirely

    But that date does generally feel about right, and the humor feels about right for high school-aged me.


  • As far as terminal tutorials, so far the best I’ve found is LabEx, but I feel like it’s lacking in a lot of ways.

    First of all it definitely feels designed to push you towards paying for a subscription. And while their pricing honestly isn’t too terrible, it’s more than I want to spend on this. Nothing against companies and people being paid for making a product but it feels a little against the FOSS spirit to me.

    Second I’ve mostly been trying to use it on my phone and that experience is just kind of shitty. Personally I kind of want to learn in short bursts here and there throughout the day when I have downtime at work or whatever. If I have time to sit down in front of my computer it’s probably because I want to be doing something fairly specific with it and it’s probably not to just practice my terminal use, so a better phone experience would be great.

    And finally, it just seems a bit over-engineered, at least for what I want to use it for. It seems like it’s spinning up a whole Linux VM with a desktop environment and such for me to interact with through my browser just for me to type stuff into a terminal and read their tutorial. It does have other courses and maybe all of that is more useful there, but it seems like a bit much for me.


  • Which kind of shows how easy it is to take certain things as “obvious.”

    I’m a new convert to Linux. I played around with it a bit probably about 15 years ago, but never did much seriously with it. Finally bit the bullet about a week ago between the windows 10 EOL and deciding that Linux gaming is finally in a place I can live with.

    I’m a reasonable tech-literate person, I’m no sys admin but I’m the family “guy who’s good with computers” I did a few semesters as a computer science student and was reasonably good at it before deciding to go in a different direction.

    And while things are working just fine for most of my general computing needs, I feel like I’m in a bit of a weird place right now, kind of like I’m back to being a kid with my family’s first Compaq in the 90s. I can play games and do my homework and make my computer do some cool things, but I know there’s more cool stuff I can make it do but I don’t know how yet.

    I have about 30 years of know-how and tips and tricks built up on how to make windows bend to my will, but I don’t have that for Linux yet, and it’s not exactly a great feeling.

    And I feel like there’s sort of a gap in the Linux community to help the slightly-above-average-computer-person Linux-convert like me to build up to where they were as a windows user.

    Like there’s a wealth of knowledge on choosing a distro and installing it, alternatives to common windows programs, etc.

    And then a big gap

    And then people who have a whole home computer lab, self-hosting everything, doing serious programming as a hobby, etc.

    And in the middle are a bunch of forum posts where someone asks a question, and some kind of computer sage emerges from the ether, tells you to transcribe a magic spell into your terminal, and all your problems will be solved, then vanishes in a puff of smoke.

    And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad those magical Linux wizards exist to fix my problems. But I have almost no idea what the hell what the magical commands they told me to run are actually doing.

    And I’m slowly piecing some of it together, googling things as I go, and that’s a fine way to learn things, but it is slow and I wish there was a better way to power through learning some of this stuff without needing to go take a whole actual course on it. I think my ideal would be sort of a Duolingo-type app for terminal commands.

    Also at the lower end of the spectrum, I feel like maybe there’s a need for sort of a basic tutorial program for the kind of people who are not computer people to learn the absolute basics. I feel like back in the 90s I encountered a few introduction-to-windows sort of programs that would walk you through “this is your start menu,” “here’s what click/double-check/right click/etc” means," “here’s how you turn your computer off” kind of stuff.

    And while that kind of thing is almost insultingly basic for anyone who’s going to install Linux for themselves, I think that kind of hand-holding might be needed for some other people we might try to convert.

    Also don’t get me wrong, I like doing stuff in the terminal and don’t want it to go anywhere, when I know what I’m doing it is really efficient, but that shit is straight-up intimidating for a lot of average and below-average computer people, not to mention how truly abysmal a lot of their typing skills are. I feel like a little less emphasis on the terminal and building out some more control panel -like GUI menus would go a long way to getting people to switch.

    Maybe these sorts of resources exist and I haven’t found them yet. If they do please point me towards them. If they actually don’t exist, maybe one of those wise Linux sages will see this and take up the task of building it.



  • I understand that oil isn’t just sitting around in big empty voids in the rock, and that those voids are full of gravel and such, and that we’re also injecting water and such into the wells to maintain pressure, etc.

    But I’d be willing to bet (a small amount, maybe like $50 tops) that out of the thousands of oil wells we’ve drilled over the years, that through some quirk of geology, some void has opened up somewhere down there with just enough liquid oil and open space that you could probably get a kayak on it and paddle around in a small circle.

    I’m thinking probably more like the size of a smallish above ground swimming pool, not a decent sized lake that would actually be worth paddling around on.

    Of course there’s also the issue of the pressure at that depth, and the fact that any atmosphere down there is probably gonna be natural gas and not breathable air, so you’d probably have to do it in a hard diving suit


  • I’m all for splitting hairs over semantics, and I’ll agree with you that “fascist” probably isn’t the best label for Iran

    But if you take a step back and look at the big picture, it does look a hell of a lot like fascism.

    Extreme right wing, militaristic government, social and economic regimentation, charismatic, authoritarian dictators, focusing a whole lot of hatred and blame on people in the nation who don’t conform and towards external enemies, etc.

    I don’t know that they’re exactly nationalistic, but they do have religion filling pretty much that same role, and let’s be real, the line’s pretty damn blurry between religion and government there.

    And they don’t exactly make racial/ethnic superiority a centerpiece of their identity, but they’re certainly not exactly sitting around singing “Kumbaya” with their minorities either, and again we have religion filling a pretty similar role in other ways.

    You can get into the weeds about the specific philosophies at play here and about the history that led them to their current situation, and there’s certainly merit in doing that, but as far as the casual observer is concerned, they do look and quack a hell of a lot like fascists, and while it’s not the best label for what they have going on it’s certainly not the worst either. I’d maybe prefer to slap a qualifier on it- something like pseudo-fascist, islamo-fascist, maybe something like “Farscism” if we want to get a little cutesy with the wordplay to separate it from “classic” fascism.

    And similarly I’d probably want to slap a few qualifiers onto the term “theocracy” as well before applying it to Iran, I don’t think that just that one word really points the whole picture.

    And now that I’m looking at it, “fascist theocracy” might be a contender for how I’d label them.


  • Fondots@lemmy.worldtoDogs@lemmy.worldI'd drink there
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    21 days ago

    I went to a local dive bar one time with a friend.

    It was our first time at this particular bar, not that we were avoiding it, we just had another perfectly adequate dive a bit closer to our respective homes.

    We sit down, ordered our drinks, and as we were getting settled in a little dog comes walking down the bar.

    We just kind of gave each other a look like “are you seein’ this?”

    And watched as the dog hopped off the bar and onto a stool at the end of the bar.

    No one else seemed to acknowledge the existence of this dog.

    And it sat there for the rest of the time we were there, waiting patiently like it expected to be served a beer.







  • Fondots@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzLymey Lizards
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    23 days ago

    I’m from PA, lyme is pretty common here.

    One of my friends moved to Seattle, and one when he came back to visit family he managed to catch it.

    Apparently he got a call from the state health department in Washington after he got his test results back basically asking “where the hell did you get Lyme disease”

    He told them he’d been in PA, and they were basically like “ok yeah that checks out”



  • I can’t offer a comparison with the other options, but I have a sofa baton U2, and I’m not really a fan. I haven’t spent too much time messing with it so maybe with a little extra setup it might work great, but the scroll wheel seems to skip around when trying to select different devices, a lot of buttons don’t seem to do quite what I’d expect no matter how I try setting it up, the IR seems to have a really narrow beam and is really picky about being pointed right at the device you’re trying to use it with, Bluetooth controls seem pretty unreliable, and I’ve never been able to get it to work work with my PC in a way that feels right.


  • I only judged people in a handful of cases

    If you ordered fountain drinks instead of bottled sodas when we had both available, that’s kind of a dick move.

    One lady once ordered a few cups of milk (in her defense, she did tell me when I delivered it that she was injured or her car was in the shop or something so it was an easy way for her to get milk without needing to go to the store. This was before grocery delivery really took off)

    And I judged you if you gave a shitty tip or took too long to answer your door.


  • I’m also in the process of learning Esperanto (there’s actually a decent amount of us on Lemmy)

    I don’t foresee it ever being particularly useful on its own, but it is a really easy language to learn, and I think it’s a great way to learn how to learn languages. I feel like after casually teaching myself it for a few years I’m a lot better prepared to learn another language somewhere down the road

    There’s a few Esperanto clubs and such out there, I’m not a part of any of them so I can’t really comment on the community all that much.

    One thing that does kind of interest me is Pasporta Servo, which is sort of a free Airbnb/couchsurfing thing for esperantists. Seems like that could be a cool way to travel around on the cheap and probably a good way to get more involved in the Esperanto community. Unfortunately most of my traveling is done with my wife and I haven’t been able to convince her to learn Esperanto with me so I doubt she’s gonna want to go hang out with me chatting with someone in a made up language in a foreign land.

    Mostly I talk to my dog in it. She knows most of her basic commands in both English and Esperanto.


  • I don’t know every chain off the top of my head to double check, but I assume that those two and the 3 I mentioned are probably more-or-less the top 5

    And using the locators on their websites, I can find 1 VCA-affiliated vet, and a handful of Banfield (mostly out of PetSmart) and blue Pearl locations operating under their own names. Nothing else came up around me

    I suppose it’s possible some of them may be part of some smaller chains, and I’m not going to comb through every last vet in my area, but a cursory glance at a handful of them that I’ve used doesn’t look like any of them are affiliated with any kind of chain.


  • I very well may live in a bubble, but this is actually the first time I’ve heard of them, are they really that widespread?

    I can think of about a half-dozen independent veterinarians off the top of my head within maybe about 20 minutes of me

    We do have a handful of Banfield and Blue Pearl locations around, which now that I’m looking into it also seem to be owned by Mars, which is wild

    But even still, they’re still dwarfed by the number of independent vets.


  • BotW and TotK are such weird games to me

    They built these big beautiful worlds, and designed some really cool mechanics

    And just kind of did nothing with them.

    TotK was a bit better, but still fell pretty short.

    Also it’s so weird that TotK is clearly a direct sequel to BotW, but there’s almost no actual continuity between the games. There’s a handful of characters that are missing without much of an explanation, and other characters from the previous game act as if you’ve never met them before. I get that for gameplay reasons you kind of have to start things over from square one in some ways, but it just felt weird.

    And the weapon degradation never really felt fun to me. I feel like at the very least once you get the master sword and recharge it to its full power or whatever you should have that as an option that just doesn’t wear down, even if other weapons that do break might be better suited for the task.

    And having to go out and farm a thousand different fish and master parts and whatever else to upgrade your armor is just bullshit.