Moved from @pingveno

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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • I just upgraded to the Pixel 8 Pro when the Pixel 5 went out of official support. The screen fingerprint reader works fine. Where it is flawed is that it’s not as quick to unlock from the front. I’m looking forward to the greatly improved support period. Three years was ridiculously short. I know something like GrapheneOS is always an option, but I’m hesitant to do so when I don’t have a backup phone.

    The Pixel 8 Pro has been treating me well. Great photos and video, snappy UI, good feature set. And it sounds like I’ll be getting feature drops for the next few years, so that’s nice. The battery life is good. I added on Peak Design’s case and mini tripod, so I can quickly set it up on a surface to take videos or make a video call.





  • For reading, digital. I can have access to a functionally unlimited number of books. They also tend to be less expensive. That makes a difference for media like manga where it racks up pretty quickly. And I can make adjustments to the text and lighting that help with readability.

    I still like having some books around as decoration. They bring a room together nicely.






  • Come to think of it, it doesn’t really make sense for Iran to want this sort of escalation to happen. The ideal situation from its standpoint is for Palestine to be a continuous thorn in Israel’s side, but not too much. That’s cheap to do and disruptive to Israel. If Israel connects the killing of hundreds of civilians to Iran, that could be justification for all out war. That would be damaging for both sides, but ultimately I think Iran would come out the worse.

    For a vaguely comparable situation, look to Ukraine. NATO is willing to arm and train Ukraine, but committing NATO soldiers involves incredibly high amounts of risk. That’s why NATO has held back, even though its conventional armed forces would have no trouble taking on Russia.



  • I think it’s becoming better overall, not worse. Yes, there’s a populism issue at the moment, but this is far from the first time that’s happened. We’re dealing with the introduction of an entire new means of communication, online media in general and social media more specifically. That brings all new hazards and benefits that need to be dealt with.

    The era after the printing press was developed brought intellectual development, but it also sparked revolutions. Those didn’t always wind up with that right people getting into power. It took a while for society to adapt and stabilize. I expect the same will happen with Internet communication.

    I’m also hopeful because studies have shown that successive generations generally improve their abilities in abstract thinking. (I’m having trouble sourcing that statement, unfortunately). That’s important for the economy because the jobs of the future will need that abstract thinking. At least in my experience, it also acts as a bulwark against bad actors because people with poorer abstract thinking abilities tend to be more gullible, at least when it comes to lies that they like.




  • Not me, but family lore. When my parents had just started dating in their 20’s, my mother was housed in “The Beaver Hut” with a bunch of people including her twin sister (my aunt). It was spaghetti night and they were making a homemade sauce. My aunt was putting in salt. Instead of a teaspoon, she put more like a quarter of a cup or more. Everyone else was going to fish it out, but she was like “nah, it’ll be fine” and stirred it in.

    Needless to say, it was not fine. It was so salty that everyone except my father refused to eat it.

    Note: It might have been something else like pizza. With spaghetti, it you screwed up a sauce that much it’s easy enough to make a substitute sauce from kitchen staples and odds and ends.