Usually its something computer related and every time it happens, something about fixing something without knowing why it works now bothers me almost as much as never fixing whatever it is.

As a note, for people interested in a discussion oriented movies and TV community, there is !movies@lemm.ee

First of all, Happy Friday everybody! And for those ahead of the curve: Saturday. 😊

So I’m a 40-cough-cough-something year old who has been in grad school since 2020. I work full time, have kids, just bought a new house, and yada yada - I’m a busy guy.

So it is with great pleasure to announce that I have turned the corner to the last leg of my journey to my Masters of Information Technology! (A little humble-brag that I will also be graduating Magna Cum Laude)

I have one more week to go, with a 30-minute video presentation on the UNICORN: Runtime Provenance-Based Detector for Advanced Persistent Threats academic paper, and then I am finally a free man!

Anyway, that’s enough of your time. Thank you for coming to my TED talk, and have a great day or night!

I was watching a video the other day that mentioned the cassava plant, and how it's a staple food in many parts of the world. I may have had it once or twice, but for some people it's something they eat every day. This got me thinking - how many things do I assume that everyone else in the world must come in contact with and take for granted, because they're so ubiquitous in my life? It's very easy to take a self-centred view, and particularly when you assume that we live in a totally globalised world. But the experience of life for someone elsewhere may be completely different.

One silly example, in the UK nearly every house would have an electric kettle for brewing hot drinks. But a lot of countries don't.

What items, food, clothing, buildings do you have that other people may never come across in their lives?

I’ve started to create a playlist of work-related songs for days I’m feeling cynical at and about work. It’s got some classics like 16 Tons, 9 to 5, and Welcome to the Machine. But also more metaphorical songs like ‘The Snake’ from Shivaree.

I'm a reader. I completely understand how "the book" provides more nearly a singular vision and has room to explore characters and their interior lives pretty extensively and explicitly, and the lower cost means you can target niche audiences. I often find I like the book (LOTR, Dune, any Twain adaptation ever) better than the movie or show, but not always. At some point aren't you just saying that the things books do well are more important to you than seeing the collective efforts of a filmmaking team and what film as a medium does well?

Some personal examples where I think the movie/show is a better example of filmmaking than the books are of literature:

• The Shawshank Redemption. I actually just read this novella today. It's a pleasant little thing, sturdily written and with a bit of commentary and a melancholy reflection on hope and resilience and time. It's also sort of stylistically derivative, which means that anything setting tone and mood is unremarkably presented, and Red is so far from an omniscient narrator that I actually feel a disconnect. It also sort of rambles along in the interest of (I think) reminding us of how much time is passing. I get what was King was going for, and it works, it really does, but I don't know how special it is. The movie was all of what was good in the book, distilled and heightened to damn near the exact right amount, and everything that the book labors over, Darabont and Robbins and Freeman make look easy. It's a brilliant film, based on a nice book. Also, 500 yards is not almost a mile, Red. It's just not.

• The Martian. Weir was a first time author, and it shows. He actually remains one with a limited skillset, though he's honed it over the years (Hail Mary is really solid). In the book, every single scene not involving Watney is tedious and either mechanically pushing the plot forward, or if not it's bordering on juvenile. Just some dialogue doctoring and professional actors helps those scenes a ton. For Watney, Damon kills it; perfect casting and the run time of movie keeps the author-insert gimmick from wearing out its welcome, which is a risk with Weir. Completely losing the rover trek is a miss I think, as was the plan to get to space, but overall I like the movie just a touch more than the book, though again, I like both.

• Revenge of the Sith. Both of them suck. The book sucks worse, because it's trying to polish somebody else's turd, and doing so by way of a hack who thinks he's Hemingway. In fact, this goes for a lot of licensed tie-in writing. Halo is not top-tier TV, but I can just about bet the books I haven't read are only "better" to people who are invested in them or, to circle back to my original phrasing, who think the book is always better.

• The Last of the Mohicans. Not that the 1992 movie is special, but to quote the aforementioned Twain, "Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record."

• Honorable mention to the Expanse, where I think the one is just about even with the other.

Flew to and from a little GA airport to see the eclipse in a Cessna 182. Flew commercial from a little airport to a big airport on a Cessna Caravan, and then flew between major airports on A319. The flight on the Caravan was probably the most pleasant commercial flight I've been on.

I know journaling might be one, and doing new things from time to time, curious if people have other tips

I recently moved across Canada and the place that I'm in doesn't have a huge amount of work options. I also do not want to end up homeless and need a source of income. I've been looking for work local but honestly dealing with people face to face stresses me the almighty fuck out. Working from home has never been an issue.

I'm just in a situation where I've got basically no work experience for the past couple of years. I'm trying to find work online in Canada but I don't know where in the fuck to start. Stress levels are pretty stupidly high at the moment too and I'm just trying to figure out something.

I subscribed to this community with alts on the most populous instances:

• lemmy.world
• sh.itjust.works
• lemmy.ml
• beehaw.org
• discuss.tchncs.de
• reddthat
• lemmy.blahaj.zone
• lemmy.ca

So those at least should be covered, but it's always good to see if people from different instances are correctly federated too

I finally got the kick I need to go 100% in on Lemmy. I don't know why I am surprised. At one point they said shadow banning was only ever supposed to be used against bots, but reddit doesn't care anymore.

I have a funky idea, so this is both a genuine convo starter and an experiment in getting eyes & posts here, so uhh, I hope this is cool!