I kinda like the look of them and often feel myself wanting a second monitor if I'm working on my laptop.

(I've come to the conclusion if people think I'm working I won't look like as much of a massive dork)

Always had the feeling they'd be a bit crap though, like the hinges break or the monitor isn't too good or it's big and bulky and you can't really carry it

Ideally I'd like to find a single fold out side monitor that attaches to my laptop (big chunky ThinkPad) somehow and doesn't need its own power supply but that may be asking too much

I have various flavors like Hawaiian punch and root beer as the powder you put in your water to make it taste better and it says they were best by last year (2023). Is it safe to use them? I've never even opened the boxes they came in.

They're sugar free for anyone wondering

And by should have I mean "should have" because this kind of thing can be subjective.

I'll start. Senior year of high school I would often skip class to go to the park and smoke weed with my partner (at the time). This park had a lot of birds. The sometimes silly, sometimes strategic, sometimes social and cooperative behavior of the birds blew my 17 year old stoned mind. I remember my partner and I would theorize about what they were doing and thinking. I thought it was super cool. I still think birds are super cool.

Now, many years later, I have a PhD in a behavior adjacent field. I don't study birds specifically or anything like that, but those experiences and curiosities pushed me in this direction.

Maybe it was all inevitable: these are deep interests that would have been pulled out of me in one way or another. The tinder was inside of me and if it wasn't getting stoned at the park as a teenager and watching birds that sparked the flame, something else would have. Who knows.

Not sure if this goes here, but whenever I get a reply to a comment, it shows up twice? Any body know why?

Screen shot of the phenomenon:

This involves consciously making an effort to listen to a song, and does not include accidentally hearing it.

Backtracking leaves you in debt of the amount you would take

Edit: word

The idea is simple. A worker-consumer hybrid coop that develops, maintains and hosts a lemmy-like fediverse platform that is open sourced.

There r two pricing tiers- a free and paid tier. If u pay a monthly membership fee, you become a member of the consumer body. If u r hired by the coop, u of course become part of the worker body.

The core of the coop's workings are direct democratic. Creating, filling and destroying job positions are all done direct democratically. To pass a piece of legislation, either one of the following conditions need to be met:

1. Simple passing: Both, worker and consumer bodies cast more than 50% votes each for the given bill.
2. Consumer override: If the consumer body casts more than two thirds of the votes for a bill.

Assume that the quality of the platform is as good as Lemmy is right now. Assume that the functionality is similar too.

Would you be interested in being a member? Do u think this is a good idea?

I personally find Lemmy's current donations based model to be severely lacking from a fundraising point of view. There needs to be a better form of organisation imo.

The direct democratic consumer coop element would bring in more people imo. I'm hoping that the worker coop element prevents worker exploitation.

Do you think this is an absolutely horseshit idea? Or do u kinda like it? Or do u have any suggestions? I'm seriously considering this, which is what made me ask this here. I have a Lemmy client nearing the MVP stage which I was developing with this purpose in mind. Sorry if this is the wrong community for the post.

My favourite 2 animals have gotta be :

The Meerkat, I love these little guys, they're so funny when they pop their heads out of a tunnel and dart their head around looking for potential threats or curiosity. And also cos of the Meerkat adverts.

The Jaguar, this big danger kitty has got the strongest jaws of the big cats and is the unofficial mascot of Brazil. I just like the design of this animal and sheer power that it brings to the food chain below it. An absolutely deadly and beautiful creature.

What about you guys? Got any favourites from the animal kingdom and why?

So it's almost the end of 2024 and many of us are still in the "New Atheist Movement" mindset (not dissing on atheism, just the movement).

I was in a conversation with someone recently and it made me think of the title question. We had an adventure in philosophy. The person said they were from Pitcairn, as in the country known as Pitcairn, the one with only fifty people living in it. I naturally responded with "uhhh yeah that's going to be a big pill to swallow."

"Where are you from" the person asked?

"I'm from so-and-so."

"Oh, that one village in the Southern US with only forty citizens? I'm going to take a while to register that."

"But you said you were from an island."

"Literally the only difference between where you're from and where I'm from is it's surrounded by water. Does the water affect the odds?"

The message she was getting across seemed clear. "Proof" is relative.

At another point, we spoke about religion.

"Can you prove Jesus existed?"

"No. Can you prove Genghis Khan existed?"

"No, but Jesus made some high claims."

"And look at what people said about Genghis Khan who was said to conquer a whole continent."

At one point, we spoke about God.

"Can you prove God exists?"

"Well... have you ever heard of the church of Google? Is it impossible for something to be considered a true god? Are some things not based on proof but rather criteria?"

"So basically you're saying anything can be a god if you try hard enough?"

We also spoke of dating at one point.

"You got these guys who say 'pics or it didn't happen' but here I am, belonging to a subgroup of humanity that consists of approximately fifty percent of the population if not more, and suddenly I'm held in suspicion because the demographic of the specific community I was in had my subgroup of humanity slightly outnumbered, yet you can say you have something rare like ELS syndrome and people take your word. Go to Lemmy and ask what separates a claim that calls for proof from a claim more fitting in peoples' minds to take their word for it."

"Maybe don't make claims then."

"Why not? On the world's largest source of knowledge I can't make descriptors?"

"I tend to think peoples' definitions of claims-that-need-proof to be subjective."

"Hence why you should ask. But... does each individual have a consistent sense of it? Can they describe in words why claim A can be taken in their mind as is while claim B requires proof? And while some will say it's a matter of knowing someone and trusting them, if someone came running through Walmart saying 'run for your lives, there's a bad entity on the loose', I'm sure people would panic even though they have no proof of anything."

So I'm asking you. What separates them?

Hopefully the service can aggregate such ratings too, across all of its users.

I've moved back to my country of birth and Taco Bell seems to be a thing here now.

I've tried the quesadillas and the crunch supreme and it's been... life changing.

What else should I be trying?

Edit: Recommendations so Far

| Item                   | Type       | # | Users                                                                                                             | Variants                                                                                                   |
|------------------------+------------+---+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Burrito                | Burrito    | 9 | EstraDoll, NineMileTower, whotookkarl, ZombiFrancis, Makhno, ashok36, CalcProgrammer1, Zahille7, nullboi          | 5 layer / Crunchy / Supreme / Cantina Chicken / Bean & Rice / Cheesy / Grilled cheese / with steak / Beefy |
| Gordita                | Gordita    | 1 | PrincessLeiasCat                                                                                                  |                                                                                                            |
| Chalupa                | Chalupa    | 7 | Tehhund, JusticeForPorygon, ducklingone, roux, Mesa, zod000, some_guy                                             | deep fried Gordita / supreme beef                                                                          |
| Cinnamon twists!       | Dessert    | 1 | Leeks                                                                                                             |                                                                                                            |
| Baja Blast             | Drink      | 4 | acetanilide, Shiggles, NineMileTower, Zahille7                                                                    |                                                                                                            |
| Chicken flatbread melt | Flatbread  | 1 | CalcProgrammer1                                                                                                   |                                                                                                            |
| Fries                  | Fries      | 3 | roux, Lettuce eat lettuce, HubertManne                                                                            | Nacho / potatoes?                                                                                          |
| Value menu Hero        | Menu       | 1 | EstraDoll                                                                                                         |                                                                                                            |
| Breakfast Menu         | Menu       | 3 | Florn, TheRealKuni, HubertManne                                                                                   |                                                                                                            |
| Mexican Pizza          | Pizza      | 2 | ducklingone, ouRKaoS                                                                                              |                                                                                                            |
| Quesadillas            | Quesadilla | 6 | acetanilide, Shiggles, CalcProgrammer1, propter_hog, PrincessLeiasCat, whotookkarl                                | Cantina Chicken                                                                                            |
| Sauce                  | Sauce      | 6 | AquaTofana, Tehhund, CalcProgrammer1, anon6789, ashok36, ouRKaoS                                                  | Diablo / Fire / Green                                                                                      |
| Soft tacos             | Taco       | 4 | Kit, Tehhund, ZombiFrancis, whotookkarl                                                                           | Basic beef / Potato                                                                                        |
| Tacos                  | Taco       | 2 | PmMeFrogMemes, fluxion                                                                                            | Double-decker / Doritos locos /                                                                            |
| Cheesy Gordita Crunch  | Taco       | 4 | PmMeFrogMemes, databender, NineMileTower, teawrecks                                                               |                                                                                                            |
| Crunch Wrap Supreme    | Wrap       | 8 | Lettuce eat lettuce, CalcProgrammer1, NineMileTower, queermunist, AquaTofana, ZombiFrancis, anon6789, HubertManne | Breakfast / black bean / Supreme                                                                           |
| Pintos and cheese      | Side       | 1 | PrincessLeiasCat                                                                                                  |                                                                                                            |
#+TBLFM: $3='(length (string-split $4 ","))

My best guess is it's a busy road so it's dangerous and not really meant for bicycle and walking. I've done 13 miles yesterday to get a comic book on a bike and this right here is the distance between my house and a friend's house I told I can come on bike because what I just did gave me a feeling I could do it but my ass hurts so not right now. But yeah I want to see how this would play out. Before I would walk but I took a bike to a comic book store because it would've closed if I walk and I ended up getting there in time. Took longer than expected something that should've been an hour probably took 2 or 3 hours. So yeah I can do half of that for sure.

My old Android TV is almost 10 years old and despite ADB modding it shows its age. So I took a look around and quickly found out how bad things have gotten in the Smart TV space.

Dumb TVs are out of the question because of their high prices - they're for commercial use after all.

What I want is a nice big TV (around 65" to 75") with a real colorful, sharp display and an OS that does not annoy me with ads (I despise ads) and recommendations while still fulfilling my needs, which are

• Crunchyroll
• Prime
• Ad-free Youtube client like smarttubenext
• HDMI for console gaming
• Absolutely no stuttering and frame rate issues when playing videos in apps
• Preferably no stuttering menus
• Reasonably priced

Anything else is completely uninteresting to me.

And yes, I know about the nvidia shield, but that thing is 5 years old and I don't want to ride an already old horse that might be replaced very soon due to its age (even though there's currently no signs of that on the horizon). I also don't like using more than one remote...

I have no issue with modding it as long as that's reasonably possible - just to get rid of most bloatware, annoyances, ads and such.

Any ideas?

My wife puts Tabasco sauce on her pizza, while I am convinced that an Italian person dies every time she does that. Help us sort this out, please.

I get wrong numbers all the time in other languages. I only speak English fluently. The languages I studied previously were mainly in writing so speaking other languages is quite intimidating for me.

Top languages in my area: Spanish (mainly Mexico and Puerto Rico), Vietnamese, Korean, and Russian. I've also encountered Igbo, Yoruba, Arabic, and Haitian Creole.

Learning how to say something like "I only speak English" would be helpful as well.

I did find this website but I have no way of knowing how accurate it is:

https://www.indifferentlanguages.com/words/wrong_number

One of my posts was up for a while and was getting comments/interactions etc, and everything was fine - but now there is a gavel icon next to it and it doesn't show up in my "about" post history. Did I do something wrong or?

Background: I took some 100 and 200-level courses on electronics in college over a decade ago. I still remember some stuff (Ohm's law, Kirchoff's law), and I can recognise the basic parts in a circuit diagram.

I am also happy to pick up a beginner friendly text book and go through the theory by myself, if there are any recommendations.

However, I've never even held a soldering gun. I am a blank slate when it comes to any practical applications. I get overwhelmed trying to figure out what kit to order on Amazon.

So, is there a course/tutorial you'd recommend for learning the hands on parts of it? I'd prefer as much handholding as possible. Ex -- if someone sells all the components to finish the projects in the course that would be the course I pick.

I'm looking for a place to find any special info on soil nutrients, and simple image comparison type diagnostics. Something like the Wikipedia of a farmer's almanac or something. I'm looking for the best public commons type sources with no ulterior motives or influences; farm nerds for farm nerds.

I'm not looking for copy and paste articles, ads funded nonsense, or anyone that is influenced by sponsorships or product reviews of any kind.

If I have holes in the leaves of my tomato plants, or want to know the ideal lighting conditions, or soil pH, or hydroponics versus potted watering regimes, etc., I want to know where to look for info with everything from basic to advanced academic level depth.

Okay, I read a story someone linked here a while back and I'm trying to remember the title.

The story was structured as an old school web forum where people were discussing the meaning behind certain lines of an ancient poem.

The poem described a malevolent force in the woods associated with a particular kind of tree that would, cyclically, take people from the town.  Maybe oak?  Ash?

I think that the person taken was turned into wood in after being lured in by a beautiful girl.

One user on the forum was trying to trace the historical roots of the poem and managed to find the town he believes was the one referenced in the poem.  They had a yearly festival that included cutting down all the trees of that type and burning them.

In the end, they guy researching is presumably taken by the forest, after some events outlined in the poem begin to happen again and then he stops posting.

Any guesses?

Edit: I found it. Managed to piece together enough memories to get there. Title was "Where Oaken Hearts do Gather" https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/where-oaken-hearts-do-gather/

Seeing all that you grew up with, pass away. With the recent passing of James Earl Jones, I've said that the world is losing more color with the likes of him that passed.

Over the years, I've found that the things I've grown up with to know about with what they've done, what they've influenced and the chain of events that were caused because of them in a positive light, just vanish.

And I like others, have the unfortunate reality to hear and see them go away. Akira Toriyama, Kentaro Miura, Satoru Iwata, Leiji Matsumoto .etc

Those are few of the names I've listed as examples where moving on in life without them in the world is just a bit hard to get accustomed to. I mean, I guess the silver lining is that we'll be joining them someday soon since that's the cycle of life for you. But for now it just currently sucks.