Beautifully said.

I found similar value in taking various anthropology courses in college. Learning about other cultures provides a perspective for thinking about your own. There is some good and some bad in all of them, but mostly there’s just “different”. You can have a meaningful dialog with a person you disagree with, but you can’t with someone you just don’t understand.

I bet you could find a Dot Matrix font for your injet or laser if you looked around.

As someone who lived through the dot matrix era, I’m just as glad that they are no longer with us. I’ve gotten spoiled by being able to read what I print without eyestrain. :-)

If you can afford one, get a Subaru. They have a well-deserved reputation as being one of the longest lasting brands. In addition they are great driving cars, particularly under bad conditions. Finally, they have an amazing safety record.

That last item is not a casual one for me. I was T-Boned in the center of my front passenger door by a car going over 50 mph. My Outback rolled twice and only stopped because the roof hit the side of a van. I can remember my head bouncing off the curtain airbag as the pavement went rolling by. The car was thoroughly destroyed, except for the passenger compartment, which was intact (even the door that took the hit). My passenger and I were both unhurt.

The paramedics who examined us were more than a little surprised. They said they were expecting at least head and neck injuries. Instead, I had a minor bruise on the outside of one knee. That was it. We didn’t even have headaches.

I replaced my totaled Outback with a newer one. My friend bought one too, the following year. I expect to drive Subarus for the rest of my life.

Once I’ve gotten myself out of the immediate situation I tend to sit down and shake for a while. My system always wants to do that when coming down off an adrenaline surge. After that I think through what happened and come to terms with it as best I can. Finally, I find a friend to talk with, get it out of my system, and move on to other things that are more interesting to talk about. If no one is available, I engage in some activity that I find relaxing (reading, watching a movie, walking in the woods, etc.).

I use an insulated Contigo Autoseal bottle that I’ve had for at least ten years. It keeps water cold for quite a while. Its big virtue is that it closes itself automatically if I let go. I’m not all that clumsy, but I have dogs that sometimes decide to poke my hand unexpectedly.

kbin works surprisingly well on a mobile browser, but I’m happy to see a full client for it. Thank you!

When the Star Destroyer appeared, too big to fit onto the screen, I knew that science fiction movies had just changed.

The world needs fewer cynics and more skeptics.

I use over-the-air supplemented by a few streaming services. After years of cable, it was startling how much better the picture and sound are with OTA. It used to be that cable was better quality, but they have compressed it down to the point where it is just barely acceptable.

We have two dogs and two cats. All of them talk, but our husky mix is in a class by himself. He carries on detailed conversations all the time. If he could form consonants as well as vowels he would just speak English. And occasionally he sings the blues, quite beautifully.

Denali: “Both cats are on the bed, although Sue is hiding in the headboard. There are three rabbits out back near the windows. Three people are walking dogs somewhere on our streets. And the postman is running late today.” Me: “Okay, thanks for the status report.” Denali: “That was just the summary. Let me give you the details…”

There is a concept, known as the Peter Principle, that says people will rise to the level of their incompetence. Basically, anyone who is good at a job gets promoted. That keeps happening until they finally end up in a job where they are not good. And that is where they will stay.

In almost every case, the best defense against this is to be a genuinely good person. Treat everyone with kindness and you will get surprising amount of support.

Yes, but you need “multipoint” headphones that are designed to do that. Low end headphones tend not to have that feature. Medium to high end often do, but make sure before you buy.

I enjoy both, but I prefer a good series over a good movie. The much longer form of a series enables more complex stories and greater levels of nuance.

TV series come with more risks and more bad default behaviors than movies. They can always be cancelled in mid-story. Some are forced to tell a story-of-the-week at the expense of the overall story. And there are always producers who want to stretch a series as far as it will go, long after the material has been exhausted.

Despite the potential risks, a series with a coherent long-form story to tell can do things a movie just cannot do. It is possible to tell a story across multiple movies, but doing that amplifies all the risks of a series. If the second movie of your five-part story isn’t a hit there will never be another. Movies almost always have to tell a self-contained story, even if they are part of something larger. And if the last planned movie does get made, and is successful, there WILL be more sequels to cash in on the property.

It’s worth noting that movies can never replicate a typical novel because the difference in volume of material is far too great. A movie roughly corresponds to a novella. There are plenty of brilliant novellas and plenty of brilliant movies, but at the end of the day I prefer a novel or a series of novels.

I’m with you. After more than five decades of wearing generic briefs I tried a pair of Buck Naked boxer briefs. They are more expensive, but the comfort is easily worth it. They also seem to last a lot better than what I’d been buying.

That some people can have a fleet or private planes and billion-dollar yachts while a major part of the population struggles to get enough food and has very limited access to medical care. Any sane society needs to have a minimal standard of life and needs to shift wealth (i.e. tax) as necessary to achieve it.

Jason’s Deli has yet to disappoint me. It is not high-end cuisine, but they serve good food with consistent quality. They also have enough variety that almost anyone can find something.

I’ve been using KeePass since the dawn of time. There are now other good options too, but I haven’t seen any compelling reason to switch. It does everything I need both securely and well.

I haven’t deleted anything on reddit, but I have not been back there since the protests began. The Fediverse is my new home and I am happy to be here.

I’m using Jerboa right now. When I’m on my laptop I use Firefox.