Reminds me of the adage “you didn’t pay me $5,000 for turning that bolt. You paid me $5,000 because I knew which bolt to turn.” Experience and knowledge is valuable.
Educator here. This is called “discovery learning”. (The alternative to discovery learning, “direct instruction”, would be if someone had told OP about these permissions before OP got themselves into a pickle)
When discovery learning is successful, it leads to better learning outcomes. Compared to direct instruction, you learn the material more deeply and will have better recall of the material, often for the rest of your life. The downsides to discovery learning are that it’s very time-consuming, very frustrating, and many students will just fail (give up) before learning is completed.
It happened to me countless times that I was suffering with a task for hours and hours and hours, then finally found what the problem was. Then a few weeks later, facing the same issue again somewhere else, I only remembered the fact that I had that same issue weeks ago, but I completely forgot what the solution was.
Weirdly enough, sometimes it’s indeed a lifelong experience and I can remember the solution forever. I don’t really know what it depends on.
Before getting Sponsorblock, I would always manually skip forward past the integrated advertisements. This tool does the exact same thing but faster and more convenient for me. My conscience is unaffected
Precisely! The sponsors have to be aware that some subset of the audiences watching the sponsorees will skip ahead anyway. They can’t seriously believe that they are entitled to our attention.
They are aware of it I guess, but probably don’t deal with the issue in an effective way.
There’s a French channel I look at, they make sponsor sequences as well but I don’t skip them because they make those in such a bizarre, ridiculous and remotely funny way I’m even curious to see how bad the sponsor sequence is gonna be.
They alone are the only reason why I set up my sponsorblock to not skip sponsor sequences, but to skip everything else
If, after puberty, you can’t easily retract your foreskin over the head of your dick (it also shouldn’t hurt), you have a very unhygienic problem called phimosis.
It can be self cured with regular stretching but sometimes you will need a doctor to prescribe a steroid cream to assist with this, the worst cases can require circumcision.
Yes, someone I knew had this. He actually bled because of his foreskin ripping when he lost his virginity when he was 30 or something.
We were on holiday with a group of friends at the time, we shared cabins in groups of 6. One morning we came downstairs and there were sheets hung up in the living room. We asked what happened, he said he had a nosebleed and bled on the sheets. Later we found out from the girl he was with they wanted to have sex, he was a virgin and when they tried his foreskin tore and bled all over everything. Of course by the end of the week everybody in our extended circle knew.
They wound up married, even though they were 10 years apart in age (she was 20 at the time, as were most of our group, he was the older brother of someone in our group). Now he’s a fat lazy fuck without a job and the wife has to take care of their two kids, the house and has a job. They still married though, even if the wife’s complaining about him all the time. So all’s well that ends well I guess.
A bit TMI but I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household (aka super sexually repressed) in an abstinence only sex education state. My parents decided not to circumcise me or my brothers, my dad is apparently circumcised because neither of them told me how to clean down there or that foreskin even goes back. It was never once mentioned during any sex ed, anatomy, etc. classes in school. I had no idea that foreskin was even supposed to go back or that merely getting it wet in the shower wasn’t good enough until I was 17. I had frequent irritation down there and I just thought that’s how it was supposed to be. 4chan of all places taught me about phimosis and proper hygiene.
Not to excuse the guy in that posts’ shitty behavior but for some people they are told literally nothing about their bodies or how to care for them and so long as it doesn’t put you in the hospital, it’s something you’re unlikely to learn out in the wild. There may very well be people reading these posts that are learning how their genitals are supposed to function right now. I was one of them at one point
Not being able to retract it has nothing do with being unhygienic - poor self-care is what is what is unhygienic. Just use a shower head and mild soap if necessary and you’re all good.
Source: I have it, I get a checkup done every year and it’s been fine. No buildup or issues whatsoever.
Maybe it’s fine in your case. For some people, it’s so tight that any amount of self care is not going to be able to reach the parts where smegma collects.
I had this problem until I was 19. I couldn’t retract the skin because it was so painful. I had a very short frenulum so I couldn’t even masturbate. I went to a doctor, he said I should circumcise. DO NOT circumcise your skin. There’s a much simpler operation where you just cut and remove the frenulum. I learned this from Google, the operation lasted 15 minutes and my recovery was extremely fast
It was that or no sex at all. At least I got to keep my skin, so the sensation stayed the same. When you are circumcised you loose a lot of feelings down there
It’s actually the whole penis. The glans is only the glans of the clitoris. The other parts (internal) of the clitoris, in the case of a penis, are the whole shaft.
Maybe it’s fine in your case. For some people it’s so tight that their pee shoots out sideways, any amount of self care is not going to be able to clean sufficiently under there.
Ok, we’ll advise young men to pressure wash their bellends instead of seeking treatment for their severe phimosis, and if they have to sit down to pee instead of using a urinal because they’ll piss all over, then oh well.
It can also lead to priapism if you somehow (through great pain, I’d imagine) manage to retract it and the tight part becomes stuck during an erection. If not treated in time the lack of circulation leads to necrosis.
I hate this line of reasoning. I hate what advertising has become. Whatever advertising gimmicks might work on me, way more is wasted on gimmicks that at best I ignore, and at worst actively deter me from purchasing whatever they’re selling. I’m a net negative as far as advertising is concerned.
That may be true, but for every you (and me) that are deterred by some ads rather than inspired, there are more others. If it’s didn’t work, companies wouldn’t spend the money.
I think ads could work better if YouTube didn’t use them to make the free experience awful. They usually have neither to do with me nor with the content I tried to watch.
And I think that’s some of the issue that has grew to an uncontrollable mess. Advertising companies only care about getting ads in front of the most eyes. Sure some try to target specific audiences, but the terrible and predatory practices have led someone like me to actively avoid any messaging from ads. I’d hazard a guess that trying to limit advertising to people like me, might actually have a positive effect on advertising as a whole. Less wasted resources on such a disenfranchised segment that will not buy what they’re selling.
The problem is, that impression is negative. And it extends to all advertising. I’ve actually trimmed my Facebook feed down to not having any ads. It’s kinda funny looking through my feed as opposed to my wife’s that’s filled with ads as every other post.
Even negative attention is attention. If it bothers you then you’re thinking about it. If an advert bothered you enough to complain about it online or to someone irl then even though you’re not a customer, you’re a vector of transmission increasing their organic reach.
But I don’t specifically discuss certain ads. My comments on this post are basically my thoughts on it. I hate the way advertising has infested every aspect of life and take active measures to avoid or ignore it.
Yeah, like how nestle kept advertising to me so it made me look up all the dirt on their company, and now I’m a free advertisment for boycotting nestle. I pretty much bring up how dogshit and unhumane and criminally unethical they are on a daily basis.
Also, did you know that the guy Kelloggs is named for was a proponent of circumcision because it was supposed to make it to where your kids can’t mastrubate?
Did you know that most chocolate and sugar are farmed using slave labor?
Did you know that asparatame, the leading artificial sweetener for diet drinks, is wayyyy worse for you than actual sugar?
Dont advertise to me or i will make it my lifes mission to sabotage your company in every way i possibly can.
This might make you feel better, but the Kellogg’s company was co-founded by two brothers, one a batshit puritan that thought masturbation, or anything that was enjoyable for that matter, was sin and one who didn’t really care about that but thought easy breakfasts were a great product to sell.
The crazy one was so focused on keeping their products as bland as possible because sugar was also a sin that he vetoed adding sugar to sell more and then didn’t notice his brother quietly buying shares of the company until he was able to do a hostile takeover and kick the puritan out.
So while he did start the company with the intent of making food so boring people would stop masturbating, he was relatively quickly forced out of the company for those beliefs. It’s one of the few cases of capitalism fucking someone over that I don’t disprove of, because fuck puritans.
Not that their cereals are particularly good. Despite not being as bland as buddy wanted them to be, frosted flakes are still pretty boring.
But why then are we even getting ads “not aimed at us”? Doesn’t a platform like youtube, which has access to basically all data on the google account, know us better than ourselves? Why all the tracking, only for us to be eternally bothered by stuff we’ll never buy? I’ve lost count of how many “atlas VPN” ads I’ve been bombarded with, and still no intention whatsoever of ever getting it.
If you turn off ad personalization at every turn, which most of us do, then most ads probably aren’t relevant to you. If you want the ads you see to be relevant to you, you have to let them collect the data. It’s one or the other when you see an ad that doesn’t get blocked, so make your choice.
edit: if it makes you feel any better, I have targeting turned off as well, but I still get the same ads over and over for a local surf shop on the other side of the island, and for two local dudes who will lift your truck 6-9” for a good deal, brah.
Remember when Subway had that annoying jungle “If you give a card you’ll get a sandwich.” or something like that? A long time ago right? It annoyed me SO much I have not even gone into a Subway since. Before that I had Subway for lunch probably 4 days a week.
I hated these Dairy Queen commercials so much I haven’t done DQ willingly in over 20 years. It used to be a regular thing to grab ice cream in a hot afternoon during the summer.
And I went on 4 seperate days to buy 4 seperate cards and get a free sandwich with each. I also used to rarely eat there, but am once or twice a week now.
You know how there’s often three sizes of something, say coffee, for example. Small, medium and large. Alternatively it could also be three price tiers; iPhone cheap, iPhone normal and iPhone expensive. Well more often than not the most expensive one is there so that people can go like: “$1499 for a phone?!? Absolutely not, I’ll go with the more affordable $999” version" - just like Apple wanted you to.
Customer behaviour is among the most studied psychological phenomenoms out there. No matter how stupid you think some ad is, it still works. It might not make a noticeable difference on individual level, but when you show an advertisement to million people, then it starts showing effect.
But what you described isn’t really an advertising gimmick. I’m aware of the pricing gimmick but how will I know what price an iPhone is of I never absorb an ad? In fact I almost ditched samsung last time I bought a phone (due to their bullshit bloatware which I consider an extension of advertising). It was only because it was the cheapest that I got another one. Advertising didn’t positively affect my choice in any way.
The thing is, it’s quite easy for a marketing department to measure their success. They release an annoying unskippable YouTube and and change nothing else in their marketing and their profits go up by 1% or whatever. As much as I basically do no shopping where the day to day advertising I see can influence it, that’s a pretty abnormal lifestyle pattern. Plus I’m still susceptible to choosing specific items inside a shop, and I definitely susceptible when I’m looking for specific products and come across secret ads disguised as advice.
The beer Carling Black Label was specifically NOT advertised because It was determined that’s what drew the customers to the product
Edit: I should clarify that over the years it has been variously advertised and not advertised. I was referring to a specific period in Canada. But then like all things, different brand managers take over, strategies change, and they went back to advertising it. They lost a lot of the customers that appreciated the fact that it wasn’t advertised, but they gained manyfold more.
I’m not immune to advertising. I make a point to never purchase anything I’ve ever seen advertised. If you spend 30 seconds telling me about your product before I watch a 1 minute clip that I will probably regret watching anyway, then I will make a point to never buy anything from your company.
Not really, it just has to work on a few people.
With how cheap online ads are, if just 1% of people are stupid enough to act based on ads, it makes them worth it.
Unfortunately I have a bit of a drinking problem: my brain has no sense of thirst. I have to remember to and force myself to drink water on a regular basis or I get really dehydrated.
It’s all too common for me to have a headache and that’s my first sign I haven’t drank any water in a day or two.
That happens less now, because I’ve worked a glass of water here and there into parts of my routine.
And that’s not all there is. For months now I’ve been having nightmares about running around a sort of endless maze in the dark. There are enemies all around me, and my only weapon is my teeth. Mostly I have to hide. It’s terrifying. I wake up drenched in sweat, my heart pounding.
Anyway I think I’ve been losing too much water from the cold sweats in bed because I have the dehydration headaches after I have those dreams. Then I have to spend a day just chugging tasteless, bland, water. Like zero pleasure from drinking the water. I remember when I had normal thirst, it was like heaven drinking water when I was really thirsty. I can remember that pleasure, but I don’t remember what thirst felt like.
And then I get a temper, too. From the pain, but I also just feel like there’s less … webbing around my mind. It goes zero to sixty in seconds and I just want to rip someone’s nose off.
I’ve been to the Kaiser clinic down the road already. They tested me for everything but they screwed up the test. Sent me out with paperwork for malaria, covid, rabies, and cat scratch fever.
Did you know that’s a real thing? Fucking cat scratch fever. I didn’t know bedbugs were real either until I was like 28. The scratch fever must have come from that cat that attacked me in the parking lot outside Dennys a couple weeks ago. I wonder what bedbugs taste like. Gotta be nasty. Apparently, even though the scratch totally healed healed up, it left some kind of bacteria-virus thing in my body and that gave me cat scratch fever that somehow tears positive for rabies and covid and fucking malaria.
But they said that was a bad batch. They’re gonna test me again this week.
Oh yeah that’ll be fun. I can’t stand the hoses. All the hoses running everywhere in the hospital. Every instrument, connected by a hose. All of them sucking fluids away or you or pumping fluid into you. I’ll ask them for a different room this time. I didn’t like that room they had me in last time.
So where am I going with this? Well, it is apparently novel writing November now so maybe I can get a novel out of this before these headaches get any worse.
Dehydration man. It sneaks up on you when you don’t ever get thirsty. It sucks. I look like the fucking raisin I’m so wrinkly these days.
Mostly sodium and potassium salts, these are needed for the body to function properly. This is why oral dehydration solutions contain these and sometimes more stuff so you will be able to recover. You lose both water and electrolytes quickly when you sweat a lot, vomit, or have diarrhea, and if you just drink regular water, you won’t be able to absorb it properly.
Usually when someone is severely dehydrated, you give them fluids intravenously, but it isn’t always possible, so there are rehydration solutions that can be used. If someone is dehydrated but not too severely, oral rehydration solutions are great.
This is also the reason why you should never drink distilled water, it lacks these elements in them, it will damage the cells in your body when it tries to reach equilibrium.
I’m the same as you, if it weren’t for the water reminders on my phone, I would have probably died by now. I just forget to drink because I don’t feel thirsty.
A trick that helps me is to drink from a medium to large bottle, not a glass; it makes it easier to track how much you’re drinking, because the number of times you refill the bottle is lower than it would be for a glass of water.
Also eat plenty of fruits and vegetables that contain lots of water, like cucumbers (these are like 90% water, and you can snack on them without thinking of calories), apples, and whatever you like. Adding plenty of these to your diet will ensure you at least get some water so you won’t get super dehydrated even if your phone fails you. Also, soups are awesome, especially in the winter, and there are cold soups for summer (though I have never been a fan of these).
It’s called hypodipsia or adipsia. The bad thing for me is that dehydration causes the brain to get forgetful of things. So i notice that i’m dehydrated and i remind myself that i should drink … only to have forgotten about it after 10 seconds.
What helps me is to always have a water bottle at hand, and preferably have it so that i’m often reminded of its presence. Frequently have it in the field of vision, or strap it to the belt. Then train the habit that whenever i get aware of the bottle i immediately take some.
If you dislike the taste of pure water then try adding some flavour to it. Mineral supplement fizzle tabs, lemon, mint leaves … are you also “hungry for salt”? As someone mentioned, you might be low on essential ions as well.
When you drink beer, eat something salty to it (beer may cause sodium to get exchanged by potassium), and drink at least the same amount of water as you had beer. (hint for anyone for minimising hangovers)
Wouldn’t that be too hydrated, then? Don’t get me wrong, I love hydration as much as the next homie, but I was always told that perfect urine is still a light yellow, and not 100% clear
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If the lounge has a shower, do some exercise get that energy out of your system. Then take a shower.
You got 7 hours to kill, do some laps around the airport. Get the energy out. And when you’re ready to rest, play some games on your phone (like a emulator)
Seconding a workout. It’ll kill time now, give you something productive as a reward, not deplete your reserves of consumable content, and tire you out for your actual flight.
I don’t know about a full workout, since my athletic clothes aren’t available to me, but lugging my shit on laps is a good call just to burn energy. I did a lap of the airport and it was about 45 min, so another mimosa or two at the next lounge then I’ll do another lap or two.
Building on this, you can probably find space in the lounge to do some stretching or basic yoga. Short sessions are good if you have a short attention span. If you’d like a place to start, try Yoga by Adrienne.
I have had 12+ hour layovers. I knew ahead of time, so a little different, but still what got me through was exercise. I walked the entire airport route. It was a big airport and it took me about 2 hours of brisk walking. Freshen up in the bathroom as best you can afterwards. Rest, watch movie okay a game. Then walk some more. Keep moving. Time will not fly, but it will feel a lot less overwhelming. And you will have done some good to your body and mind.
Also, work. If you can, work ahead and do stuff you will need to do in the next couple of days. You will enjoy that time you are saving later when you are on your own and need it and can use it.
Speaking more than one language. Being from Switzerland, we’re required to study 2 languages (+ our native one) at school. So it’s not infrequent to encounter swiss people who speak 4+ languages
In Germany it’s also mandatory - but learning the language at school unfortunately doesn’t necessarily mean you can speak it. LucasArts adventures contributed more to my language skills than my first English teacher. I’m always shocked about the lack of English skills in a lot of Germans when I’m back visiting. Rather surprisingly one of my uncles born in the 30s spoke pretty good English, though.
We’re now living in Finland - me German, wife Russian, we each speak to the kids in our native language, between each other English. So they’re growing up with 4 languages.
It’s quite interesting to watch them grow up in that situation. When learning about a new historical figure my daughter always asks which languages they spoke - and few weeks ago she was surprised someone only spoke two languages. So I explained that some people only speak one language - she gave me a very weird look, and it took a while to convince her that I’m not just making a bad joke.
Also Germany.
I learned english in school but only enough to be able to read it.
Once I started reading user submitted short stories (lile fan fics but different) my grammar really improved.
Nowadays the content I consume is basically 90% english based.
Just my capitalization and grammar structure sucks. Also my vocal skills as I have no one to talk to.
But: I really have to thank my last Grundschul and Realschul english teachers. Without those two I may have never got into english that well.
For me it was mainly watching films and tv shows in english. I’ve always preferred the original audio on anything, really. So it motivated me a good bit to become more fluent.
The only german dub I didn’t hate was Breaking Bads’, and even then I wasn’t overly fond of it.
Can’t get over english cartoons dubs.
Ben10, Avatar ATLA and spongebob sound so much worse in english compared to german to my ears. Could not enjoy it.
Live action movies are usually equal or only slightly worse regarding original vs dubbed german.
That’s a point current generation children are actively working on by following English-speaking streamers, communicating in predominantly English Discords, etc. The worst: my kid chose to prefer American English. Where did I go wrong?
In the UK I was given the option of German or French, but I wasn’t taught very well, and could barely speak a few basic sentences after 5 years of schooling. If this is a common experience, as I believe it is, it results in a populace who speaks english only. (Obviously an issue exacerbated by the commonality of English on the internet and popular media)
It blows my mind how inefficient my school must have been. Right now, I can’t imagine learning something for 5 years and retaining nothing.
Yep. French Immersion was the way to go if you started in elementary school or had above average academic skills for late immersion. I’m still disappointed I had to stop when I moved and getting to the school with the program just wasn’t feasible (had done two years of immersion prior). By the time I moved again it was Grade 10 and the presumed fluency was so high I would have struggled very badly.
Now the best option is dating a French girl, but my wife has reservations.
I don’t know that it’s necessarily that it’s “inefficient”. Moreso that it’s difficult for a language to actually stick and be useful if you’re not immersing yourself in that language. You can go to class all you want, but if you’re not trying to actively immerse yourself in it beyond class, you’re not going to learn the language no matter how good the teacher is.
It’s relatively “easy” to immerse yourself in English language content because English has sort of become the “lingua Franca” of the modern world. Something like Polish, for example, isn’t.
Well that’s exactly my point. It’s pretty “easy” to do it with English because there is so much English media to consume out there. A lot of shows and movies they want to watch are probably already in English. Their parents might speak English for work, etc. Less so with many other languages.
I’m still not multilingual, but this concept made a lot more sense to me as to why I never retained my Spanish classes when I started learning programming. There’s a huge difference between say, reading a book / watching guides / reading tutorials on a programming language (which by itself generally won’t get you anywhere) vs actually following along, trying to make your own projects, etc.
I took Spanish for three years here in the States. Most of the Spanish I know now I learned after high school. This seems to be a pretty common problem in nations with English as the official language…
Common for everybody learning a language in an educational institution without RL practice. Immersion, of course, is the best way to learn a language, - gives good results even if you didn’t know it at all before being, eh, immersed.
and could barely speak a few basic sentences after 5 years of schooling
Thanks to events earlier last century pretty much everybody at least in Europe/Russia can speak a few basic sentences, and is often more than willing to demonstrate: “Haende hoch!” (hands up), “Nicht schiessen!” (don’t shoot) and a few others.
It doesn’t help that outside of school, you will never use that language. Even if you go abroad, everyone either wants to practice their English or thinks your French/German is so poor that they’d prefer to just speak English.
Growing up in Australia I was required to learn a second language in years 7 and 8. All I can remember is how to say “and now cumshot” thanks to my friend and I finding his dad’s porn collection.
Oddly it’s actually very common (and required in some areas) in the US to study more than one language also. What is extremely uncommon are opportunities to use a second language, so very few people actually ever become fluent. It’s a shame really.
It also has to do with the wide diversity of languages spoken. The elementary school where my kids go put out a statement during the pandemic that there are 32 different languages spoken by kids at home. They had gotten many requests for school communications in more than just English and Spanish, and had to explain why that wasn’t feasible.
So there are a ton of bilingual kids in their school, but my kids could learn the 4 additional languages spoken by the kids in their classroom, and the following year they would need to learn 4 entirely new languages. They learned to count to ten in several languages, but like you said, they will never have the opportunity to become fluent if they don’t go somewhere less heterogenous.
Exactly. Unless things have changed dramatically, one or two years of a foreign language is a requirement in high school, and there are more opportunities in lower K-12 these days from what I hear. However, you’re right that this is not especially helpful without some immersion, and the practice of trading your kids to a foreign family for a year is far less common. Then, after K-12, opportunities to practice greatly diminish.
The German mother of a good friend moved to the US West coast when she was a young adult, married, and had my friend. She never lost her German accent. When I was in my early 20s, I had the opportunity to live and work in Germany for a couple of years, and when I came back, I was fairly fluent - enough to pass as a native from a “different region.” I visited my friend when I returned, and tried to have a conversation with her mother in German; she sadly informed me that she had forgotten most of her German, and could no longer converse… there are few opportunities to speak in German on the West coast, and even native language skills attrophy if unused.
In a related annecdote, when I first returned to the states, I’d sometime fail to remember the English words for the odd thing, like “trash can.” All I could remember was the German word for it.
All thay has gone away. Years later, I can barely hold basic conversations in German. Maybe some people have an ability to retain language skills without practice, but I believe it’s far more common to lose fluency you once had.
For my part I took Spanish from 2nd or 3rd grade all through college. I basically knew enough to be dangerous and it was occasionally useful in online chat where my broken Spanish was marginally better than some people’s non-existent English. But honestly the biggest strength was that I knew enough to be able to tell when Google translate did a bad job conveying my meaning.
Nowadays I’m several years removed from the last opportunity to use it at all and I hardly remember anything. It’s definitely a “use it or lose it” thing.
Only speaking one language fluently makes me feel like garbage regularly, none of my schooling really stuck and I can never commit to language or feel enough confidence to use anything I do learn.
In Sweden kids learn English from second grade and a third language from fifth grade.
What really annoys me is how many programmers seem to expect us to only be able to understand one language. I much rather have the program made in English than to read a bad Swedish translation.
Presumably what they meant, yes. Sometimes YouTube translates video titles for example. Of course, the video is still in the original language, so it’s completely useless, except for videos without speech.
Every program should have a setting to define in which language you want to interact with it.
YouTube supports multiple audio tracks these days and sometimes it decides that I should listen to a dubbed version of a video. Somehow all media players are very limited when it comes to settings for language preferences.
Yes exactly. Google is a big culprit of this, for instance translating descriptions of apps in Google play or giving me results on Google search in Swedish when I specifically wrote it in English. If I had wanted results in Swedish I would have written it in Swedish. Adding quotation marks doesn’t even help. I miss the time when you actually got what you searched for and not what Google believes that you search for… YouTube has an issue in the app when looking at playlist. Since the word “visningar” is so much longer than “views” the rest of the line is cut off. So you for instance can’t see if the video was posted 1 month ago or 1 year. This is more a failure of gui due to translation than the translation it self though.
On the subject of shitty translations: a budget webpage translated “disabled”, as in “this option is turned off”, as “funktionshindrad” which means a person with a disability. I bug reported it and the initial response was:
We do not currently support this functionality, but will pass your feedback on to our product team, who will make a note of it and try to incorporate it into our product as soon as possible.
Two months later they wrote that it would be forwarded to their product team for “whenever there’s an update in our system”. That was 10 months ago and it still isn’t fixed.
we’re required to study 2 languages (+ our native one) at school
This is crazy to me. I studied French at school for years and got to a decent enough level, but then when I tried to take Spanish later on I couldn’t deal with it. Maybe if they’d been concurrent it would’ve been a different story but I just couldn’t keep the languages separate in my brain. Then years later when I moved to a different country the French pretty much left my head as a new language replaced it.
I guess I’ve only got one “foreign language center” in my head and only one language can occupy it at any time.
Keeping them separate is a struggle! Especially if they come from the same ancient language. I have troubles separating like German and English, and also Italian and French. Especially when I try to speak German, I end up throwing in lots of English words and structures
Drinking instant coffee at home, but really enjoying “proper coffee”
To
Buying a cafetiere (~£15) + preground coffee
To
Buying a Nespresso (~£60 on offer) + pods
To
Buying a budget espresso machine (~£120) + preground coffee
To
Wasting my money on a cheap manual coffee grinder (~£50) + beans
To
Immediately replacing it with an entry level Sage grinder (~£170)
To
Buying an entry Level “proper” espresso machine (~£700)
It took me a good 2-3 weeks of practicing and dialling in before pulling a good shot of coffee that I’d actually want to drink, but by that point it was also about learning a new skill, learning how different aspects of the process affect the end result and learning how to make all sorts of different espresso-based drinks.
My girlfriend thought I was nuts at first, but a year or so later even she agrees it was worth the investment. I still for the life of me can’t get the hang of latte art though.
The problem is now though that I’m a waaaay more critical of coffee from coffee shops, because I spent a long time making bad coffee whilst learning!
Not op, but ours is a Lelit Elizabeth dual boiler. Not cheap but I expect it to last like our Gaggia Espresso Deluxe did, about 15 years. I could’ve gotten away with a single boiler, truth be told but the ability to preinfuse (in a somewhat proper way) depends on it. Non negotiable was the PID temp control. Timed shots is nice to have.
But really I could’ve spent more on the grinder and less on the machine. The grinder I first got wasn’t up to the task of espresso. Didn’t have the range of settings and the grind quality was subpar. Had to get one a year later (grr) and settled on the Eureka Mignon Silencio. The flavor profile is so much clearer (this was obvious from the first shot I made with it) due to grind quality and it has stepless adjustment. So I can dial in the shot pretty well. Timed grind is nice too.
But damn what a lot of money for all this. Still worth it. It’s not much over 10-15 y. And it pays for itself quickly. I can have an espresso drink every day that is far better than many places offer and it costs significantly less even for the super expensive, fancy beans.
Sage Barista Pro. Definitely an entry level machine, but I’m very happy with it… I’m not invested enough to go for a dual boiler or higher end machine quite yet - They start to get very big and very expensive very quickly, and I have limited space.
Me too. Besides, I have just enough space for my AeroPress. Gettin a machine of any type would make it difficult for me to do other things in my small kitchen.
Besides, I’m not entirely sure I would appreciate the flavors I can get out of coffee using an espresso machine. I’ve tried a bunch of different drinks at several cafes and I just don’t see the value in owning a machine like that. AP coffee is just fine or even really good as long as you use the right type of beans.
If you don’t want to splash out too much to start with, I can highly recommend the Beko bean to cup machine for about 250. I’ve had mine three years now and it produces better coffee than any shop
Similar but different : tea! You go from cheap bagged tea to going down the rabbit hole of loose leaf variations, temp control kettles, brewing vessels and brewing styles.
I have! …then full circle back to grandpa style. I still use a gaiwan from time to time on the weekend but I like bringing a container up with me at my desk without needing to refill constantly.
I have a temp controlled kettle that only cost like $40, some really nice french presses from thrift stores, and a couple really nice pots ranging from iron to ceramic but they were a one time cost about 10 years ago.
You can cold brew tea in a big mason jar and strain with a dollar store strainer even.
The scale for weighing was expensive but is super useful in a kitchen anyways.
So the expensive part of Tea is mostly just the tea but that varies all over and is down to taste preferences and marketing. And per glass is pretty negligible in cost. As long as you aren’t buying like the aged fermented monkey picked stuff.
Tea is a lot about patience and remembering organization of steps to get it perfect and that can be prohibitive but not cost if you don’t want it to be.
You raise good points. The expensive part for me was the discovery aspect. Once you know what you like it’s not bad but the learning part…trying all the different greens and oolongs and pu’er and black teas - that was a little nuts at the beginning.
Now I have about 10 varieties that I like for different occasions and I stick to those and it’s not too bad.
Biggest splurge for me was an ember mug. Im a little embarrassed by how expensive it was, but honestly no regrets. Perfect temp tea for hours.
Nice! Never be ashamed of a purchase you actually use.
But yeah I still spend money trying a different tea flavor all the time but I know where and what my cheap Chinese greens are and have to make my own English breakfast tea but that’s because I’m not importing stuff and it’s easy enough for a flavor I can’t get otherwise
Before diving into this hobby I was worried that I might not be able to tolerate the type of coffee that happens to be available to me at some random gas station or cafe along the way. That hasn’t been a problem for me yet, but how about you?
Having spent some time experimenting with my AeroPress, I have learned to notice some basic flavors and notes, but I wouldn’t call myself a experienced coffee taster yet. I can tell the difference between light and dark roast. Trying to tell the difference between two expensive coffees is usually very difficult for me, so I guess gettin an espresso machine might not be worth it yet.
I might not be able to tolerate the type of coffee that happens to be available to me at some random gas station or cafe along the way. That hasn’t been a problem for me yet, but how about you?
Not really been an issue for me either. I’d say I notice more now when a coffee is slightly under/over extracted, but I’d probably have noticed it tasted 'weird" before and just not known what was wrong. That said, I’ve found it to be very rare. A lot of places just use quite forgiving dark roasts that are a LOT easier to make than more lightly roasted beans.
Oh, so that’s why I can’t seem to find any cafe making good light roast. Every place seems to love dark roast, super dark roast, ultra-mega-hyper-dark-still-smoking-black-hole-shade roast.
About a month a go I went to my local cafe and asked if they’re selling coffee beans. They had some options, so I bought a bag of their lightest. Back home I tried it out and it tasted rather dark to me. I compared it with a cheap store brand that is labeled as roast level 1, and the taste difference was significant. Their lightest is probably like level 3 or 4, which is nowhere near what I’m looking for.
It took me a good 2-3 weeks of practicing and dialling in before pulling a good shot of coffee that I’d actually want to drink,
Could you elaborate? I’m a chef so I’ve helped myself to a fair few coffees from the big espresso machines and I’ve found it easy every time, and the coffee very potable indeed. Just haven’t got the hang of foaming milk yet.
I’m still learning myself, but it’s potentially because the machines are already warmed up and the grinder is “dialled in” for the beans on offer. One very important aspect (among other things such as temperature, pressure etc) with espresso is the grind size, which will need adjusting between different bean types and roasts. Everything else being equal, a grind that’s too coarse will let the water through too quickly and give you an under-extracted “sour” tasting coffee, whereas too fine and the water moves too slowly and you end up overextracting (and/or choking the machine) and it gets very astringent and bitter tasting; not pleasant at all.
Alternatively, they could be using a pressurised portafilter, which give much more consistent results, but do take away some control and limit the end result. If it’s a high end machine though it’s probably an unpressured filter basket.
Edit: Also the roast makes a big difference to how difficult it is to pull a good tasting espresso. Many restaurants/ chains use fairly dark roasted beans which are generally a lot more forgiving than lighter roasts. At least that’s been my experience.
This is why I appreciate my “tea hobby”. For minimal investment, you can get a lot of bang out of your buck, and it doesn’t need to go as hog-wild as fancy coffee or wine or beer.
Dry loose leaf tea is just relatively cheap to be snobby over, compared to coffee and other things.
Get an electric kettle for $40-70, a $20 teapot…and you won’t spend more than $100-$200 year for some tea (if you drink a LOT of it) that is head and shoulders better than ANYTHING in the grocery store.
Like, you can have a giant improvement in the quality of your tea for not too much.
You CAN go hog-wild and spend lots and lots…there are fancy expensive teas to be had…but even if you don’t it’s still way better than grocery store teabags.
I do enjoy my tea… I think it might be my next rabbit hole to go down. I just got back from a business trip to China, and was gifted a few different black and green teas, loose and bagged. Really enjoying them so far.
I really want one of their…uh… Tea tables(?), which has a tap and temperature controlled kettle and drain built in. I’d drink so much tea…
I can’t believe I answered “board games” to this before. Yes, espresso wins it over. I just got an espresso machine for my 10th anniversary (price too high for me to be willing to admit). And here I have a wishlist of $500+ in “devices” for it.
Like you, I’m about 3 weeks in and just now getting my burr grind just right for that perfect 26s shot. Luckily my vendor was giving out a free badass scale. It keeps telling me how bad my shot is.
I still for the life of me can’t get the hang of latte art though.
Ditto. I just got my first “correct emulsified foam” today. Usually I end up with hot milk with hot whipped milk on top.
Move to a new, smaller, instance. You can still use lemmy.world as though it was still running at full speed. You can still post to lemmy.world or other federated communities and you experience won’t be so painful.
Lemmy.world is experiencing an influx of Redditors and with us good Redditors come our awful trolls. Growth, along with DDoS attacks have plagued the site since I began using it.
Tbh, I kinda like that we have these growing pains. Helps folks leave out older expectations of monolithic profit-oriented social platforms. And actually put some money down to help host the specific niche community they really want to exist.
I’ll probably eat these words later but, as of this moment, I stand by it.
It’s a tumblr meme and IKEA reacted to the association by using the shark as a prop in their pro-gay marriage ads in Switzerland. F1nnster has like twenty in a pile in the background as people keep buying them for him.
If anything this is basically establishing to everyone out there that if you want to kill an instance or encourage people to move to a different one (with different admins who might have different…“styles”), just DDOS it and promote your alternative instance as a refuge.
I’m sticking with .world because the admins there are chill. Don’t feel like rolling the dice on a new instance where some power mods probably set up shop.
And if the thought of setting up another account annoys you, I’ve made a tool that will migrate your account settings, subscriptions, and blocks: github.com/CMahaff/lasim
Now that does require the source instance to be up long enough to download your profile, but after that you can upload to any instance you want and be running like nothing changed in like 2 minutes.
It’s mostly DDOS attacks though, not the influx of normal users.
Really? As site_aggregates table getting 1500 rows updated on every single new comment and post local insert is just the tip of the iceberg of how nobody has scrutinized the PostgreSQL performance. Thank you to lemmy.ca last weekend for looking at AUTO_EXPLAIN on their data.
do you have any example logs from your postgres instance demonstrating this?
I’ve exposed raw data from my PostgreSQL tables. And every single new comment and post you could see +1 going on every known server. I haven’t updated to 0.18.3 yet, so it’s still there: …bulletintree.com/…/raw_site_aggregates?output=ta…
I wish people would stop using this advice without some caveats. The instance you choose is also about the admins your choosing to have your account under.
I’ll stay on Lemmy.world because I trust the admin there. Any time you jump to a new instance, you better hope it’s run by levelheaded, fair-minded people.
You don’t have to jump to tiny < 100 user instances though, any instance within the top 10 is a good alternative to lemmy.world. If everyone thinks the same as you do, then there would be no point in federation.
Y’know what, you’re right, but in an ideal federated world, it is probably for the best if people branch out further than just the top 10 as well. The instance I’m on probably is not even within the top 50, but it’s fast, performant, and has all my subscriptions. Not sure about the admins, but I also have alts on lemm.ee and sh.itjust.works in case this instance goes bust.
Ignore it. Defederate. Defederate with any instances that chose to federate with it. Keep the fediverse small and independent. It’s nice here, let’s keep it nice.
I keep asking but haven’t gotten an answer, why must instances that block meta also block those that federate with META? Wouldn’t blocking META be enough, as you wouldn’t see their posta, nor users, nor comments in any way after blovking the domain?
I got the impression that somehow your activity 3rd hand can still be passed on via the intermediary instance to Threads, and then becomes part of their dataset. I could be wrong, I’m not sure how that information gets passed on in the backend.
Agreed, the data concern is a red herring. Might as well do a “I hereby revoke consent for Facebook to take my data…” post for all the good it will do you.
Block Threads because of the potential impact it can have on the quality of experience here. That’s a good enough reason. Nobody joined a lemmy so that they could keep in touch with people who use social media to gossip about brands and influencers.
In a federated system, users on Alice can see and post into communities hosted on Bob, eg alice/c/funplace@bob. When Meta tries to join, Alice chooses not to federate - avoid giving meta free content, protect its users from ‘bad’ meta communities, preemptively block toxic meta users, whatever - but Bob does federate. Alice users can’t see meta/c/advertising, there’s no way to subscribe to Alice/c/advertising@meta. Both Alice and Meta users can see Bob/c/funplace, and so alice users can see anything that meta users post there and meta ‘gets’ any content that alice users contribute. Bob effectively acts like a tunnel between alice and meta users.
That’s right. We theorized the effects shortly after the first coal power plant, and we have observed the effects for a century now. Yet the response has been minimal, to say the least
Of course the creator is going to tout the most morally upstanding use of his app. If it genuinely helps human trafficking victims, then that’s another story, but from this quote it just seems like he has some vague hope about it.
Yeah that sounds so much like post-hoc justification that I’m seriously surprised that it’s being swallowed by anyone.
I mean, great if it DOES help with such a terrible problem, it’s just I have seen this thing being talked about before and it’s NEVER been discussed in terms of helping trafficking victims. This is the first I’ve heard of it. Almost every time you see this kind of narrative being discussed it’s either 99% of the time a bunch of sweaty incels online whinging about how women aren’t really pretty and just want to trap guys or some other dom/sub kink fantasy nonsense to validate their depression and self-loathing, OR about 1% of the time it’s an actual empowering discussion talking about unfair hollywood beauty standards.
I mean ageing technology (what the person might look like after 5 years etc) was also created for human trafficking victims, and I haven’t seen it really being talked about in many years now since it came out. Seems weird to base something on whether or not you’ve heard of it.
If the family doesn’t have a recent picture of the person without makeup, then yeah, this would be useful, since people can look pretty different without makeup. I’m the only one who has recent pictures of my wife without makeup for example, her friends and parents only have pictures of her with makeup since she normally does some when meeting them. She’s also half Chinese, so depending on how she decides to do her make up, can look way more asian or barely asian at all. If I didn’t have those pictures and something happened, the make-up pictures wouldn’t be as useful in searching for her.
I think this is more about whether or not the creator was honest when they claim that’s why they created the app and it looks like many people here, myself included, are dubious about that being his intention and not just a justification.
The creator stated their intent, and the author disagreed. Does that opinion make the creator’s statement untrue?
It’s a weird situation & definitely a slippery slope. Was it his intent? I honestly can’t say. I guess it’s certainly a possibility.
I don’t think this kind of app is harmful in itself. This kind of thing can & will obviously be used/weapon used by stupid shit-heads for their own agenda, but those kind of people will utilize literally anything that exists to justify their shit-head views.
The author of the article is right not to believe this claim. The author can say that their software was intended for whatever noble uses they want. We know from experience that software has mainstream off-label use.
Is BitTorrent really a tool for downloading community content like open films and Linux distros? Because that’s what the creators say it’s for. It’s not untrue.
Is Jellyfin or Plex a tool for organizing your ripped collection of CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays? That’s what the developers say. It’s not untrue
Is Tor a tool for protecting dissidents? That’s what they say it is. It really is that. But is that all it is?
This tool might be useful for identifying sex trafficking victims, just as a nudifying app might be useful for identifying victims of involuntary pornography.
But on the other side of this is that nudifying apps are more likely to be used to create involuntary pornography, and makeup-removal apps are more likely to be used to harass women.
No reason to ban AI technology or anything, but no reason to pretend that tools like this aren’t used for off-label and sometimes nefarious purposes.
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