This response is so boot-lickingly simplistic and lacking in context and nuance. I wish I could get to live in the world where this blanket statement just made everything okay again. It’s almost as if you actually have no reasonable counter to the points raised by the commentor.

You have it backwards here. Apple needs to support developers. They make it expensive and inconvenient to develop on their ecosystem. But until Apple releases their stranglehold, I would be just fine if I never have to use their shitty OS, development software, and tools ever again.

my M1 Max MacBook Pro could run Baldur’s Gate 3 at max graphics with no performance issues. On battery. Over extended periods

I’m a bit skeptical on this claim, or maybe we have different ideas of what “extended periods” mean. My M1 Max MBP would have just under two hours of run time with VS Code doing .NET Core dev. It was even worse when doing Ruby on Rails work. And that was when MBP was new. My whole team were issued these, and our experiences were the same. Zoom calls were even worse, with about 90 minutes of run time.

The ARM architecture has amazing battery life when idling, quite unlike x86. But when it gets spooled up, it eats angry pixies just the same as x86. All of my x86 laptops can do .NET Core work… for two hours.

I know nothing about miniatures or even painting at that level of detail. But I really admire the detail and shading. For example, the writing on the inside of the headgear above, to me, is such an amazing touch. Out of the miniatures you posted, what is a figure (or a specific detail on a figure) of which you are especially proud?

Sincere question: that’s “quick?” The detail, shading, even distressed/wear is really impressive.

Came looking for this comment. It’s absolutely critical to know thyself, and understanding one’s attachment style is one of the easier bits of self-knowledge.

One of the most accessible books on the topic is “Attached” by Levine and Heller. For me, that book was such an eye-opener. I read it as my second marriage was imploding, and I was grabbing at everything to try to save it. The example conversations for my and my ex’s attachment styles were uncanny. I kept getting the feeling of “were y’all in the room with us for that argument?”

I am also a bicyclist with three different bikes. One watch replaces three bicycle computers. I can track performance metrics, longevity of components, and service intervals… for all of my bicycles.

My watch also has functions for sailing performance metrics, kayaking, hiking, running, and lots more sports.

That’s ignoring the other watch functions: timers, find my phone (great for when the phone slips between cushions and I didn’t notice), compass, barometric trends, notification filtering…

My partner has the same watch. The longitudinal health stats from her watch was one of the key factors in getting her health complaints taken seriously. One medical facility completely, repeatedly dismissed her concerns as “nothing serious.” Turns out she had Stage-IVb cancer (now recovered).

I misspoke, and you raise a good point. I meant gift economies, and that error is on me. And those are pretty well-documented. I’ll stick to my firsthand experiences:

• Waianae, Oahu in Hawaii. The weekly take-what-you-need-bring-what-you-can food exchanges there are a huge stopgap for food insecurity and also spur community bonding
• Burning Man - TTITD, regionals, and much of the hippie festival circuit have a robust gifting culture

You are confidently incorrect on this. Currency == money. Money is, for we hoi polloi, a barely consentual conversion and exchange system for our labor, hypothetically allowing us to convert our labor into readily fungible exchange units. Money, at the Capital Class level, is debt, and therefore control, i.e. power. Money is just how they keep score.

There are plenty of barter gifting and Communist (“from those of ability to those of need”) economies, just on scales that fly below the radar of most economists. Your sweeping assertion leads me to believe that you may simply be ignorant of those non-monetary exchanges. Would you be willing to add more context to your assertion?

Edit: I misspoke; crashfrog raises a valid point, and I meant gift economies.

Wampum was used by Eastern Costal tribes as a storytelling aid.

In the Salish Tribes, dentalium shell necklaces were used as a status symbol/indication of social rank. Some tribes used the necklaces as a type of currency, but I’ve only heard the “some tribes did this” part; never anything about which specific tribes used dentalium as currency.

Obviously, anything that holds perceived value can be traded.

Source: went to junior high in a school that taught two full years of Haudenosaunee (also called Iroquois) history.

Salish source: I’ve been a volunteer naturalist in the Puget Sound for eight years with an annual training requirement, with entire days allocated to history of the original Salish tribe for the area where we’re working.

The Salish Tribes existed in the PacNW for over 13,000 years without money.

All other things aside, Mao has some legendary lack of chin. Like… Was this just a bad angle? I’ve only seen missing chins in caricatures and comic book villains.

I have long pondered a comedy set in the Star Wars universe. Maybe some beer-swilling, rowdy Jedi. And fortunately Auralnauts fulfilled my dream: https://youtu.be/WSCm8yAxBr8?si=QC1SNiLAMAu1rE0T

Some of the later entries in the series are a bit weak, but there are always worthwhile punchlines.

:( indeed. This got me right in the feels.

Ever see a toucan in person? I had an employee with a toucan he would sometimes bring into work. It could throw things, especially round fruit, with uncanny accuracy. Like it could easily play catch from at least 2m away.

Glaucous-winged gulls also seem to have uncanny accuracy with defecation, but that’s not quite throwing.

ADHD + tinnitus here, and my tinnitus frequencies shift around too. I made white and brown noise clips in Audacity, then notched out the frequencies of my varying tinnitus. I play it on repeat and found it very helpful. Although the tinnitus always comes back, I can focus while listening.

If you want help with creating your own files or just want me to make them for you, DM me.

Mashing the upvote for Shadow Tactics and Shadow Tactics:Aiko’s Choice. And agreed, their controller scheme is so spot on. Aiko’s Choice adds some deeply bittersweet context to the first game.

When I still had kitties (and a house), I bought a litter box with a lid. I then fashioned a vent hose with a 120mm 12V PCM fan running at low RPM. The hose went through the ceiling in a closet and exhausted out an attic vent. Zero cat box smell and no noise. While my exact implementation isn’t available to everyone (like in apartments), the basics can be adapted to almost any situation.

Punch card stock makes amazing paper airplanes, both individually and laminated into larger stock.

Monterey sea lemon, Hood Canal WA USA

Ask and ye shall receive! Giant nudibranch, Sinclair Inlet, Bremerton WA USA