Many fall in the face of chaos, but not this one, not today

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I use Kagi chat all the time for random shit:

    • scheming about food forest ideas
    • learning about Linux
    • helping me get inspired to write DnD campaigns
    • journaling about stressful shit and getting encouragement to relax and breathe through it
    • inspirations for cool projects to do

    it’s like a great resource to just see like an average of what people would say in that situation. I think of it like a faster more focused reddit thread full of good and bad ideas, and I sort through them



  • This is exactly why I’ve been on such a kick to plant perennials in my yard! There’s a resilience to be had, even if psychological.

    The other day I noticed my favorite dark chocolate bars are nearly $8 each, this time last year they were $3! I am obviously distressed to find I can only afford half as many bars as before, but it’s comforting to know I’ll be getting a lot more treats of grapes, kiwi, asparagus, strawberries, elderberries, goji berries, and mulberries. Sure they aren’t chocolate, but they are a fun sweet treat anyway, and if I miss the sharpness of chocolate I’ll make some into tart jam or kombucha.

    Rather than see the chocolate prices and despair, I’d rather take comfort in adding more to my little food forest, and then I’ll have more to share with my friends!



  • Pencilnoob@lemmy.worldtoAtheist Memes@lemmy.worldWhen he's right, he's right.
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    3 days ago

    What baffles me is how truly compatible science and religious faith could be, only in that religion attempts to provide answers that science cannot. But rather than pushing hard to only provide those answers, and reading the texts in the context of the time, these religious leaders get unbelievably bent out of shape and decide to die on hills that are just trivially and demonstrably false.

    Like evolution, the age of the earth, heck a few years ago even a heliocentric solar system. It does not matter at all if this is a heliocentric solar system, and yet folks were happy to die on that hill (even killing others who just point out the truth) turning away everyone who won’t submit. That’s what finally got me, the constant claims to seek truth, and yet inevitably ignoring it completely when it slaps you in the face.

    It’s so close-minded and completely misses the point. If all they did was say “here’s some moral teachings on how to be better to each other” at least I could get on board with that. But no, it’s somehow required to buy into all the false teachings too.

    It feels like a dead sea effect, where the only people left are those who comply when they see red plate and the leaders tell them to call it blue. To me that’s not about seeking truth or trying to live a more moral life, but rather about control and power.


  • Absolutely agree. I know much more about operating systems and software that the average person, and I’ve only been able to handle a number of Bazzite issues with Kagi Assistant. Trying to find how to fix something on forums and regular search is extremely time intensive.

    Of course keep in mind that if you’re messing around with your OS you might just screw something up and have to reinstall, but so far I’ve not had anything even close to that. Bazzite seems to be pretty hard to break.

    Really for me, Linux only became fun once I started using chat tools to help me learn how to make it do everything I wanted. And I’ve been using Linux off and on for work and at home for twenty years. It’s just sometimes really arcane, and the differences between opensuse, Ubuntu, fedora, and mint made it feel like I never could learn how to fix things.

    Sometimes things are harder than I want or just aren’t working right out of the box. But then sometimes I’m able to do things that are actually impossible on other operating systems. So it’s really a trade-off. Also it’s getting better every single day. There was an issue I had last month with a controller, I messed around for 30 minutes but couldn’t get it to work. I tried it last week and it just worked. So don’t lose hope entirely.




  • Pencilnoob@lemmy.worldtotumblr@lemmy.worldContext is king
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    7 days ago

    I’m reading Slaughterhouse Five for the first time this week, and clearly the man was tortured by something. Was it the endless injustices of the world, a love lost, the horrors of war? Plenty of folks grew up being told by our nanny that gays should all be thrown off roofs, were beaten for acting too femme or swish, were told eternal pain was the price. So it goes.

    Maybe Kurt was one of the vast multitude of folks so deep in the closet no one would ever know or have guessed. The unsung millions of queer folks who had that crush they couldn’t act on, the midnight fantasies held close, the whispered confession of love that was rejected, the true love just out of reach.

    Who hung in the balance friendships, job opportunities, family connections, and physical safety and decided that unrequited love was an easier burden to bear.

    All that weighing, maybe seeing your love be happy but could never love you back the same way. All that held tight could forge the soul of a poet, and yes, maybe a sardonic and cynical poet. One with a sharp wit who tells his own truths outright on the page but with a mocking tone to help the medicine go down smooth. Easier to put on the motley of a clown and make a sarcastic quip about being gay or a writer than it is to speak deeper truths that have gotten millions of folks ostracized or killed. So it goes.




  • I think this one happened rapidly because of conquistadors and plague. A rapid empire collapse making the elite location untenable and unaffordable.

    I recently read 1491 and it was excellent. It describes how these immense civilizations were in the New World, and how rapidly they collapsed as hogs infected with diseases accidentally escaped the explorer’s camps and killed of 90% of the populations.

    It talks about De Soto seeing the banks of rivers filled with dozens of cities of thousands of people, and then two or three years later explorers coming by and finding nothing but ruins.

    That seems much more of the type of collapse that would just leave entire buildings empty and abandoned.


  • Pencilnoob@lemmy.worldtoTrans Memes@lemmy.blahaj.zoneGirlfriend
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    8 days ago

    Not looking for sympathy or advice, just here’s my trend over time to deal with this.

    I am making considerable effort (and regularly failing because damn verbal ticks plus ADHD got hands) to avoid using any gendered or gender neutral terms as the folks in my community change pronouns and names regularly. I just got pretty harshly scolded the other day for using a gender neutral pronoun to refer to a person who told me to use it two months ago, but now it makes that person feel bad and this was the first I heard of it. Almost all of these people are not fully out so I have to keep a mental map of who gets what names and pronouns get used with what people.

    I cannot learn and unlearn them fast enough, keep the right context of who is is the room, and keep up with current preferred names and pronouns which change semi-regularly. I cannot overstate how hard this is for my ADHD ass.

    Especially when person A is out to B but not C, and D is out to C but not B, and I’m talking to B but C walks in the room, but then B leaves and I’m alone with C. This seems to happen to me several times a week. The mental gymnastics is absolutely thrashing my CPU. And I am trying my damnedest but keep fucking it up and making my friends sad.

    I think I’m too ADHD to use pronouns, so I just attempt to use people’s current names directly (still keeping attention to who they are out to) or just never speak about them to others and use no names or pronouns at all when talking directly. The latter is easier overall, so that’s generally what I aim for. Never talking about these people feels like erasure or something but that seems like the best way to avoid causing what seems to be significant emotional pain and/or accidental outing.

    There’s some where it’s stable enough to at least use names directly, but those are few. And those still aren’t out at large, so I’m still faced with the accidental outing issue which is very real.

    I guess I’m doing something right because it seems I’m always in the know. I legit want to be an ally to folks and support them in whatever. Just damn I’m not smart enough. I need like a universal translator.








  • Yes I see the value differences now.

    Maybe I will try the wash. I’m not sure why but this piece just it felt like every stroke would lose so much value as it dried. Maybe that’s normal for watercolor, I’m still really struggling to transition from oil and digital.

    I watch folks like James Gurney though and am super inspired. He does such a good job. It’s a big bonus to able to do a little painting like this in a small pocket notebook in a hotel lobby while traveling.

    I also just got what looks like a really good book on watercolor that I’m starting to read, that will also help. It’s a really hard medium! Feels like if oil and digital is a bicycle, watercolor is a unicycle. Just much more tricky to keep my balance. I’ll mix what looks correct on the pallet, but as it dries it fades so much. Almost feels like I have to think in 4d, imagining how each value will fade in advance and pre-darken it? Or maybe there needs to be more layers?