Strawberry jam. Made from the strawberries grandpa grew in the back yard, and like 9 lbs of sugar.

Not just with every post. It updates your position every time you open the app.

Seconding a vertical mouse. I like Evoluent’s mice, been using them for years.

I’m not super bothered by Tue copyright issue - the copyright system is barely serving people these days anyway. Blow it up.

I’m deeply troubled by the obscene power use. It might be worth it if it was a good tool. But it’s not.

I haven’t gone out of my way to use AI anything, but it’s been stuffed into everything. And it’s truly bad at it’s job. AI is like a precocious 8-year-old, butting into every conversation. And it gives the right answer at about the rate a ln 8-year-old does. When I do a web search, I then need to do another one to check the AI’s answer. Or scroll down a page to get past the AI answers to real sources. When someone uses it to summarize a meeting, I then need to read through that summary to make sure the notes are accurate. And it doesn’t know to ask when it doesn’t understand something like a proper secretary would. When I go looking for reference images, I have to check to make sure they’re real and not hallucinations.

It gets in my way and slows me down. It needed at least another decade of development before being deployed at all, never mind at the scale it has, and it needs to be opt-in, not crammed into everything. And until it can be relied on, it shouldn’t be allowed to suck down as much electricity as it does.

I was very conservative. My drift leftward started before the internet was enough of a thing to have video debate spaces, but online debate has given me a lot to think about and pushed me farther left. I credit George Carlin with some of my early movement. He’s like an online debate, just against air.

To me, there’s concentration and there’s flow state. Concentration is more of a manual process where I intentionally ignore distracting events. It involves building a structure that can hold up to bumps and it’s hard work. Flow state is a groove where distractions melt away and only the task remains. One can turn into the other, and and depending on how your brain works they can both be fragile.

Vice signalling

The antivax movement goes back farther than Wakefield and the “causes autism” thing. That’s just when it became really popular.

The MMR (measels, mumps, rubella) vaccine is the one Wakefield was against. The OG of the vaccines cause autism movement.

Remember to send them an email and let them know you’re boycotting them. They don’t have to know how long you’ve been doing it.

Sometimes you just need to send some dogs into that meeting and shoot the first plan that comes flying out.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it” The older form was flipped: “you can’t eat your cake and have it” They both can mean about the same, but the older form makes it much clearer - if you’ve eaten your cake, you no longer have it. But you could have your cake, then eat it.

I have a Viture One and an Xreal Air 2. They’re both solid for gaming as a screen directly attached to your face. Neither do floating or body-anchored screens out of the box. The Xreal can do it with a breakout box, and the new generation of the Xreal that’s coming out in March is supposed to do it on its own.

Viture One came with a better carrying case and is easier to hook up in the dark. It’s slightly more comfortable to wear, and it has built-in focusing dials. Picture quality is good for gaming and watching videos, but not good enough for extended text reading - books and websites aren’t recommended.

The Xreal Air 2 has a much better screen, good enough for reading for an hour or so. The edges get some chromatic aberration, but most of the screen is good. It requires prescription inserts if you need glasses - a mixed blessing since it adds a hidden $80 to the price, but means you can wear them as real glasses. The nose bridge has size options, but none are quite as comfortable as the Viture. The Xreal uses standard USB-C cables, which is good for compatibility, but bad for attaching in the dark. As mentioned above, Xreal has a breakout box that gives different options for how the screen is displayed - attached to your head, attached with a delay (better for motion sickness), PiP so you can look at the real world with your media in the corner of your vision, and attached to your body giving the illusion of a TV screen sitting a distance from you.

It depends on what you’re looking to do with the screen, but I’d probably wait until the new generation of Xreals.

Mine’s around somewhere, too. I didn’t do a lot of gaming on it, but it was a very solid media streaming box for the time.

I enjoyed my Ouya back in the day.

Postman was great! The book is worth a read, too.

My family was religious enough that they made it super clear that Santa was fake. Us kids still got little gifts “from Santa,” but they were of the stocking-stuffer variety. All other gifts were from specific people. As a kid I liked getting stuff, but the more important thing about the holiday was spending time with family, and them showing their love. Gifts was one way to show, but spending time, preparing meals, and just being present without worrying about other life issues also did it. It is the thought that counts, but you have to show that you’re thinking about them. Honestly, your kids might appreciate not having to pretend they still believe in Santa. As other people have said here, don’t catch your kids in the crossfire. If there’s something they’re really looking forward to, get it for them, but label it “from Dad” or Mom and Dad if you’re feeling generous. If they don’t have their hopes on something, a trip or experience might be good. Not sure what experience fits both a 6 year old and a 12, but I assume you know your kids better than I do. As for the rest of your family, they can stick it. They don’t seem interested in participating in the holiday, so don’t include them.

Aleve (naproxin sodium) is the only OTC painkiller that reliably works for me. So first I take one, and if that doesn’t work after an hour or so, I take another and a nap.

The worst thing about standups is that about once a month I catch a problem early because of what someone says. The tradeoff doesn’t feel worth it time-wise. But it keeps me from skipping them.

Panzer Dragoon main theme