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• How did your week go?
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• Books with an aggregate review score of less than 4.0/80% on Goodreads, LibraryThing, or any other review aggregator
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• Non-fiction books

Let's burn through these backlogs!

This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

My mother is 65+ years old and loves everything Apple, but whenever I need to touch her computer I find myself questioning that choice.

The degree to which Apple abstract things from the user enables the most absurd behaviors. macOS gives little indication about which programs are open, and the red x on the top left corner just closes windows, not apps. Because the session persistence is so robust, the consequence is that my mother's Macbook Air keeps 12+ programs and their states open at all times literally for months. Every time she comes over from another continent, I close a bunch of stuff and get her an instant performance boost. Plus, she's never really sure if a program is open or not.

The concept of (work)Spaces, as well as the launchpad, spotlight, or even how Finder really works is beyond her. Because of her over-reliance on the dock, she never enabled autohiding, so her screen real state is always crowded.

Folders are entirely immaterial for her. Everything goes to "Downloads" with no organization whatsoever, and she's always looking for stuff "manually" by reading the filenames.

Her machine is running Mojave, and right now I can only see that finder displays two "Libraries": Documents and Downloads. Linux and Windows have Videos, Downloads, Music, etc. Those are easy to make sense of. What's the supposed Mac alternative? Buy stuff on iTunes. Well, if something is not on Amazon Video or Netflix my mother is a pirate like me (hehe), so she never made sense of it and I truly despise using iTunes for doing anything at all. She also downloads a bunch of media related to her job.

I'm not saying macOS is bad, I'm just asking: is it really the best choice for non-technical older people?

I'm working on this for a poetry class I'm taking, any criticism is welcome.

Edit: Italicized some text I forgot when I copied it out of Word.
Edit 2: Fixed some phrasing.

Coming Out 2.0

When I first came out
I thought it was over.
Done.
I know myself now,
My life can finally be
worthwhile and fun.

But there was always a mess I dared
not touch. Who do I like? What gaze
makes me blush? I suspected the feminine
but held out hope – only taking up one letter
made it easier to cope.

And some people do change after starting
HRT, so patiently I hoped men would appeal
to me. I had some feelings before, it seemed reasonable
they would grow. But as time went on I realized I had
nothing to show. My feelings for men were entirely gone,
but still hopeful for a straight-passing future, I pressed on.

I had definite feelings for women before,
But at times the attraction seemed a bit more –
Did I want to be them or did I want to be with them?
The former I assumed, as it helped to distract,
focus on my work, brush my desires under the mat.

I’d think “She looks cute”, but “in that outfit”, “with that hairdo” and other qualifiers
I began to append, convincing myself what I felt was normal and, like a
Chicagoland road, no bend. When I began to notice some feelings bubbling up I said
“Female friendships are close, it’s nothing, the end.” But try as I might, they flowered
and bloomed, and soon I could not help but be all-consumed. Maybe I’m bi, I thought,
That isn’t so bad. More options for dating, how can I be mad? I told my friend my feelings, and as
expected, for me she had none. She’s still one of my best friends, so I’d neither lost nor won.

I dealt with the rejection and moved on. I could still be bi, better not
jump the gun. You can’t take back coming out, you’ve got one shot – nail it
and be done. I thought everything would be the same, but the floodgates were open,
my restraints had been broken. I could finally be honest about my feelings
for women (endless, confusing and interwoven) and for men, which were at most
an appreciative token.

A week after confessing to my crush, it was obvious
who won. The Sapphic feelings and desires made
their presence known, their intent to stay,
and more difficult than coming out
as trans was admitting
to being gay.

Firaxis just announced a new addition to the XCOM series in the form of XCOM: Chimera Squad. It takes place 5 years after the events of XCOM 2 and focuses on a specific squad of named human and alien characters trying to maintain the peace in a one of the new cities.

Game Reveal Trailer

Gameplay Trailer

It's currently $10 on steam, presumably since it looks like it was built on the XCOM 2 engine. The sale lasts until May 1st, so you'll have time to wait until some reviews are out before you buy it.

I absolutely loved XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, so this is a nice surprise for me. Some of my friend who have played some of the older XCOMs are comparing it at least thematically to XCOM: Apocalypse

Edit:
@cwagner provided a link to GMG where its currently $9.50