I appreciate it! I’ve currently got an injury that started out one way and has slowly moved towards chronic pain with no real solution other than marginal pain management. Had to quit my job and am currently trying to find some kind of remote work I can do. Something will happen sooner or later I’m sure.

I was less defending myself and just trying to be a friendly educator. I kind of dislike that word because it makes me sound superior but I’m definitely not. There is that XKCD comic about not making fun of people for not knowing things and instead showing them what it is. https://xkcd.com/1053/ . I have found this to be good advice.

Maybe the person that I was responding to really didn’t know Sous Vide could be affordable and just needed an example. Same with the cost of the meat.

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

The pork shoulder was in a discount bin because it was on the way out so was cheaper per pound than anything else available. There is enough meat on it to feed us for about 2 weeks of 1-2 meals per day.

Sous vide can be exceptionally efficient with regards to energy. There are several resources that dive into the breakdown of the cooking method and cost of electricity but the most detailed analysis I’ve seen which accounted for cooking vessels, humidity levels, and temperature stability found that at a rate of 15 cents per kilowatt-hour a properly insulated sous vide machine cost $0.30 for a 24 hour cook.

My electricity is slightly cheaper so my sous vide cook cost me maybe $0.40 for the entire thing.

Source: https://www.amazingfoodmadeeasy.com/info/modernist-cooking-blog/more/how-much-energy-does-sous-vide-use

Oh I almost forgot: The cheapest Tofu in my area is $2.30 per pound and I got the pork shoulder at $1.15 per pound. Plus I have yet to find a Tofu recipe that I enjoy eating. I had an incredibly delicious Mapo Tofu from a mom and pop Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles when I was out visiting family but have been entirely unsuccessful trying to recreate it at home.

A very mild coconut flavor, it’s almost similar to Kings Hawaiian rolls. If you just gave someone one to eat I’m not sure they would be able to pick out the coconut.

Man, that kind of switch really rubs me the wrong way.

Day one: Dear citizens, your elected government is stepping in to combat the extensive spread of misinformation and lies in consumer media. We have heard your desire for a safer cleaner internet based on scientific fact.

Day ???: Citizen of the state, receive your government sponsored daily truth. Any dissenting opinions will be met with immediate sanctions and corrective discipline. Remember, government is truth, government cannot lie. You will see reason or else.

Music. I can play close to a dozen instruments with enough skill that I could sit in as a stand in player for a large variety of genres. I do everything in my power to avoid letting people around me know.

I make music as a way to meditate and relax. I can throw down a synthesizer drone and spend an hour+ noodling on the piano, guitar, cello etc without doing any recording or writing down stuff. I’ve got probably 100 or so short 4-12 bar ideas saved on my computer. I probably will never do anything with them but I like going back and rediscovering where I was musically/emotionally.

The dubstep phase was, in a word, terrible.

I drive for UPS and the pick me up I get from taking a quick cat nap in the back of the truck cannot be overstated.

Two I surprisingly haven’t seen yet:

“I haven’t given a shit about anything in a while”

and

“I’ll just cancel the free trial”

That’s actually pretty interesting. I started with minimalist footwear once I was old enough to start making shoe decisions myself and apparently that was partially causing some of the problems I was experiencing.

Five Fingers were my go to’s (once they came out) for most days and Vivobarefoot’s / Nike Free’s for when the social side of five fingers was in questionable taste.

It’s always fascinating to me how wildly different solutions are the exact remedy needed for different individuals. It’s why I always get a little irritated when you read someone saying “Use this thing AND THIS THING ONLY! everything else is junk and dumb and you will be a worse person for using it.” such a close minded approach to the world.

I’ve been out of the minimal shoe worlds for a bit minute, anything cool to come about recently?

I had this exact stance until I won a pair of $200 running shoes in a raffle. My occasional backpains and joint problems disappeared almost immediately. I started buying the best footwear I could afford and my quality of life went measurable up after that decision.

The BIGGEST changes were going to a reputable podiatrist and getting shoe recommendations based off of my arch shape, weight and gait. They put me on a treadmill with highspead cameras at the sides and rear to record how my stride landed both walking and running. That and custom molded insoles.

Now Shoes are a part of our yearly budget to make sure we have good condition, supportive shoes at all times. Also re-soleing if applicable.

Side note: Dress shoes can die in a fire.

Nice low poly model! Looks cool!

Definitely this. Not copper though looks like lead. Possibly steel. Humans really suck.

I feel enlightened. When’s your next talk!

I was more so referencing the appearance of the home page of the site itself. My original Linux experience is from the early 2000’s Pre-Ubuntu so I am familiar with being able to tailor exactly what you want from a technological standpoint but not all people are looking for that.

PopOS and Mint do the best job I have seen of being reasonably inviting to non-technically literate users. Ubuntu is pretty bad but not nearly quite like Arch.

I think the point I was trying to articulate (not very well as it seems) was that there are few Distro’s websites that I could send to friends or family with out scaring them away permanently and that’s a shame. The Arch Linux site just seemed to pop that thought into my head.

I have dabbled in Linux a bit in the past. Around 2005-ish I was messing around with Debian, Ubuntu and one other I can’t remember the name of at the moment. It was more of a hobby and messing around with spare hardware I had sitting around.

Life happened and I ended up with only one available computer and just stuck with windows for convenience sake. Queue a decade and a bit later and the writing on the wall is that FOSS is going to be the only way to go so I am once again starting to dabble into the world of Linux.

Good for them! My union did massively right by me so far and as far as I am aware there have been zero downsides.

I feel like Linux would be more acceptable to people looking for alternative to windows if a bit more care was spent on the image of the software from a customer facing perspective.

I went to the Archlinux website to check out what it was a was met with a wall of text and techno babble with complicated sounding package names and stuff that a layman would never be able to parse.

All this from the distro that on their home page claims to “keep it simple”.

Glue them to an excessively large canvas, title it “The trickle down from the billionaire’s wealth. Found behind my couch” and sell it for a couple hundred grand to an art gallery.

All the gears on our Singer are metal and it can perform all the of the requirements that you have listed. I should mention however that seeing on buttons is done by hand. There are way to many variables for a machine to do it. The feature I was referencing was the ability to see the edges around the hole for buttons when creating garments and the like. You use the machine to sew the edges and then a blade to cut the hole in the middle where the button goes through.

The exterior is plastic but it has a fully metal internal frame that in images looks rather robust.

For embroidery over stains/holes in clothes I recommend looking into hand embroidery. There used to be a subreddit specifically for exactly that: Hand embroidery over stains and holes. It was super fascinating to see the beautiful things people could do by hand.

I recommend browsing the singer page for this machine. It lays out nicely all the features and shows an internal shot of the all metal construction. https://www.singer.com/heavy-duty-4452-sewing-machine

Anecdotally the Mennonite who runs the sewing machine repair store in my area recommends Singer. He repairs them less and when he has to it’s easier to get parts for.

edit: You are correct regarding the FOSS software workaround. Inkscape would be used exclusively for embroidery and not at all needed for straight stitches.

Software to control your sewing machine?

Are you looking for a sewing machine or a computer controlled embroidery machine?

Those are WILDLY different types of machines. Sewing machines are for constructing/repairing fabric items with the option of manually performing very tedious embroidery style work. Embroidery machines are specifically for create designs and art on the surface of fabric.

For that VAST majority of projects (including fixing your socks) a standard “dumb” seweing machine is the way to go. Our Singer Heavy Duty 4452 is entirely mechanical and has 32 built in stitch profiles. Standard stitches, stretch stitches, decorative stitches and automatic button hole stitching. You can dial in a range of threads per inch for your project. It’s not going to give you a setting of choosing the exact perfect TPI setting but doing experiments and test pieces with your fabric and thread will let you dial in what you want.

Fully computer controlled embroidery machines can be insanely complex and can cost a couple of hundred up to obscene amounts of money. The only experience we have with one like that is the monster machine we rent hours of use on at our local sewing store.

I know both brother and singer have good reputation with the computerized embroidery machines. Between the two (in our experience at least) singer has had the better hardware and brother has had better software. Sort of related note: Brother is the only company I would by a computer printer from because SO FAR they haven’t participated in the obscene practices the rest on the industry has.