I really like the Laird Superfood Coffee Creamer (Reduced Sugar Version) but their products are becoming increasingly hard to find in Canada. Can anyone recommend an alternative?
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
Kid has just started getting into Star Wars, which is great because I could buy a set of light sabres for Christmas and no what do you mean that was for the kid it absolutely wasn't a present for myself as well. Anyway, countless hours of duelling later...
We have watched the "first" two films (ep 4 and 5) and plan to watch the remaining movies at some points. A few grabbing-my-arm scary moments but it's OK because "the good guys always win, right Daddy?"
We're playing Lego Star Wars together on the Playstation, which is brilliant fun. Their face when they blew up the Death Star all by themselves was fantastic. Everyone was excited for the rest of the day.
We are hitting the phonics books, of which there is plenty. Kid loves books and stories but isn't such a fan of reading for themselves as yet - but will ask me to let them read to me if there are Star Wars books on the pile, which is great.
However, that's where my Star Wars knowledge ends. I know there's a whole boatload of EU stuff out there, but I have no idea what it is, or what of it is suitable (or not) for a six year old. Any suggestions? We have a rotating selection of streaming services live at any given time, but I'm ok with the occasional venture into choppier waters if needed.
Did you watch the royal rumble? How did you like it? I thought the winner was quite unexpected, especially winning directly against John Cena. Overall the performance of both the men's and women's rumble was really good.
I debated with myself about posting this to ~society or ~life, but what I'm seeking is principles that might be a guide to action beyond the current moment, even if, as may be the case, they arise out of this particular moment. Maybe this topic is inherently political, in which case, please feel free to move it or relabel it.
This was inspired by a recent post from Your Local Epidemiologist, where she lays out a set of guiding principles for the blog going forward:
She also references the hazard + outrage framework for risk communication. I come from a safety / risk assessment background, so we usually think of risk = severity x likelihood. But as a communication framework, hazard + outrage seems pretty useful, as talking about risk to lay people is always difficult.
Thinking about one's guiding principles, writing them down, testing them in use, seems really useful to me as a way to be more proactive and less reactive in the way that I deal with the world. So then, the questions on my mind for the Tildes community are:
Since this is a text post, I'll put mine in another post below so the responses can thread under it. And since I can never resist a quote, I'll close with:
If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values, they're hobbies.
~ Jon Stewart
As is the case with a lot of my questions, "intended for multiplayer" is as open as you want it to be.
It could be that it's a game primarily known for its multiplayer that also happens to have a campaign (e.g. one of the Call of Duty games) or it could be you playing Mario Party against yourself by trading off between your own controllers (we've all done something like this, right?).
Entirely up to you how you interpret the question.
Let us know what the game was, why you played it solo, and, most importantly, how that went for you. Did you like it? Did it give you a novel gaming experience? Were you able to work around any of its limitations? Would you recommend other people try it?
Recently my wife was complaining how her phone has been getting overzealous when flagging incoming phone spam, and as a result she's missed some important calls. It made me think about how easy it is for me to avoid spam calls, despite using a 3rd party dialer on my phone without any kind of spam ID features.
It's because around 15 years ago when Google started letting you pick your own phone number through Google Voice, I (for various reasons) needed to change my phone number. I ended up choosing one with what I thought was a really cool area code, and I've ported that number to every new provider I've swapped to so it's stuck with me since then. It turns out that all the spam callers, bless their hearts, like to spoof incoming phone numbers with the same area code as the number they're dialing. It means whenever I see a call coming from the same area code as my number it's ~100% guaranteed to be spam, and if I see a call coming from the same area code that I actually live in it's ~100% guaranteed to be something actually important (doctor, pharmacy, kids' school, something like that). It wasn't my intent when picking the number (I just wanted the cool area code), but it turned out to also be the perfect spam call ID system. (At least so long as I never move to the place that matches my area code.)
So I'm curious if anyone else has similar stories, where you did something for one reason but it turned out to actually be awesome for an entirely different, unexpected reason?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
I’m in between books now, and would like to ask for some suggestions for new books to look at. I use a Kindle and the Kindle app for books usually, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find most books on Amazon.
I’m very close to finishing the Stormilight Archives by Brandon Sanderson and well into The Harrowing by James Aitcheson where i really enjoy both a lot. So if you’ve either read The Harrowing or any of the Sanderson books I’d love some recommendations on books who are in the same vein as these.
Thank you in advance!
This is the tenth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Our next book will be Born a Crime by Trevor Noah at the end of February.
I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.
For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
This topic is a part conversation starter, part request for help in finding.
For those that are attempting to keep up with the many weird and sometimes interesting products both announced and teased recently in the field of AR/XR glasses- what are your thoughts?
Examples, off the top of my head, include a number of devices revealed at CES 2024. The Asus AirVision M1- a pair of full-HD display-in-glasses form, similar in many ways to the Xreal lineup. The new Xreal Air 2 Ultra and Xreal One line. Snapdragon's new XR2+ Gen 2 chip for high efficiency portable computing and a successor to the chip used in the Meta Quest 3 headset. The Halliday glasses, which forego any form of waveguide or combining optic and opt to project directly into the eye using a monocular microled projector. And older devices, such as the "open source" Brilliant Labs glasses which have been previous discussed on Tildes.
Personally, I'm disappointed in most (if not all) of these options, but that might largely be because the industry and I have very different ideas of what smart glasses should be. The industry is focusing heavily on social media features- cameras, filters, translation- and even more heavily on AI. Why anybody would want an LLM strapped to their face I do not know. I feel that the goal of full augmented reality (rendering tips and visuals over the real-world) is a noble one, but also not one I am particularly interested in. My ideal device would be purely a heads-up display with a long battery life. The ability to cast notifications and information to a reasonably pretty display, but the freedom to decide what. No cameras, no data collection, no overcomplications- does anyone know of any options that fulfill these criteria?
Discuss.
Hi everyone!
With my favorite F1 commentator joining the indycar crew and MBS acting crazy in F1, I want to dive into indycar a little bit this season.
I’m located in Belgium, when I checked the indycar live website it seemed like I won’t be able to stream indy500 here? (I don’t even know what indy500 is as opposed to the other Indy series? Which series should I follow? Who is awesome? Who is the stroll of indycar?)
I think it’s clear I’m a total noob here looking for some guidance. Any help is welcome, thank you!
I was talking to the other guitarist in one of my bands about the hedonic treadmill the other day. And he said to me that despite owning his swanky Range Rover for over 4 years, every time he gets in it he feels like a kid and is excited by it.
I think continued delight in the things that we already have is a really important attitude to take in life, and so I wondered what things my fellow Tilderen (yes, I'm refusing to budge on the nomenclature until I see at least one other person use it) have which they still feel the magic of owning, even after a long time.
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?
What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.
If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!
I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts who watched through the basho.
I don't have all my thoughts together yet but wanted to post this after watching the last day of the basho to get the ball rolling on any discussion.
Watership Down was an early favorite of mine. I also learned a lot from Klemperer's diary of surviving under the nazis.
Besides Shawshank, the one that comes to mind is Gone with the Wind although that film has some issues.
This is the place for casual discussion about our pets. Photos are welcome, show us your pet(s) and tell us about them!
I'm one of the moderators of a small / medium community. I've been doing it for around a year, with no prior experience at moderating or helping to foster an online community.
We have a section for jokes and humour, and somebody posted one of those "train dilemma" memes. It gave the choice of letting the train hit one of several groups of people. It was general enough to not name anyone specific. The options were similar to:
Let the train hit:
a) Nintendo developers
b) Sony developers
c) Microsoft developers
Fine. A bit crass, but hardly shocking.
A commenter then replied by stating they don't mind which, so long as x well known developer is shot.
Now that really threw me.
The moderation team have been divided over it, although not strongly so. We are all generally in favour of removing it. But we are concerned about over-stepping and of course the topic of free-speech has arisen.
As it came up with us, I'll also mention that there are no specific rules of the website, or this specific sub-community, to state such humour is disallowed.
Where is the line drawn with free-speech? We would certainly remove anything pro-fascism, racist, homophobic or grossly offensive, but we do have rules that cover those.
I'd be really keen to hear any views on how you would approach this and how you would justify your decision.
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Ever since my diagnosis two years ago, I have had this as an ongoing conversation with my family. I always felt like there was very little accurate representation of ADHD in media. The few examples I could always think of were either very loosely coded as ADHD, or extreme stereotypes. I want to crowdsource some examples of ADHD representation in media, both good and bad.
Doug from Up: This is a common one that comes up a lot. I think it’s a really poor example. The only ADHD symptom is the squirrel joke they use a handful of times. It’s also (for my presentation at least) extremely inaccurate. Random things I see will indeed distract me, but Doug can come back from the conversation without a missed step. I think this one is extra harmful because it gives a false sense of how the ADHD brain works.
Dory from Finding Nemo: This is another common one people bring up. Dory’s intrusive and impulsive thoughts are much more accurate to my presentation, so it’s an improvement from Doug. I don’t like that she is often portrayed as stupid or careless. I’m not against a character with those traits, but with so few examples of ADHD in media, I think people may think it comes from the ADHD.
Evelyn Wang from Everything Everywhere All At Once: This example showed up recently on my Internet searches. I want to rewatch it again with the context of ADHD. I feel like it is probably a decent representation, but I can’t say for sure without a rewatch.
Percy Jackson: This is the only one on my list that is explicitly diagnosed with ADHD (and dyslexia and other issues). I will give them kudos for the explicit diagnosis, but I don’t think it’s a good representation. ADHD seems to just mean that he is bad at school. It seems that it has no impact on Percy outside of that. For my particular case, I was quite good in school, so it is inaccurate for me. I would be interested to hear if other people resonate more with it. Dyslexia seems to come up more in the books, so it may be a better representation for that.
Todd from Bojack Horsemen: I saved my personal favorite for last. I first watched Bojack Horsemen before my diagnosis, and ADHD wasn’t really on my mind. After my diagnosis, I realized how good of a portrayal Todd is. As a bonus, it is the only portrayal I have heard of that includes hyper focus (When Todd hyper focuses on writing the rock opera, and then the hyper focus switches to a video game). With the exception of the rock opera, I think I have had the same exact scenario play out in my own life. I had something I wanted to do, was able to focus on it, but was stolen away into a video game hyper focus.
Are there any other examples you have found?
Lately I've been taking an interest in American westward expansion and trying to get a better understanding of how the lines were drawn on maps in the past. Can anyone recommend a good video or interactive visualization that I can scroll back and forward through time to see the changes in detail?
Things I'm particularly interested in tracking:
I mean I guess that's a lot, this is basically "tell me about all of American history." 😂
I feel like I have a pretty decent grasp of the general political timeline and important events, I'm just realizing lately that I don't have a cohesive mental model of how it all fits on a map and changed over the years. I did find the Wikipedia page on Territorial Evolution of the United States to be interesting but it's a bit overwhelming and not very digestible. It contains this animated gif, which is awesome but I can't scroll through it at my own pace, and it's USA only.
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like new years, life hacks and pebble. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was desperate to know.
But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!
Soldering/electronics repair enthusiasts: I am in need of a soldering iron/station for electronics repair and wiring, preferred budget is under $150, perfection can raise the budget to $250.
First line of this post is all that's really needed if you just want to provide advice on what to buy (which is just fine, people don't need to know how a car works for me to explain that they probably just need a minivan).
Below is what I have gathered thus far if perhaps there's more that you'd like to know about what I've seen and perhaps misunderstood so far.
At present I have a no-name, non-adjustable, extremely basic soldering iron that is more fire hazard than anything and a Weller soldering gun that is obviously not meant for electronics and small wires. The iron has been good enough for the occasional need to solder a couple of wires together to get something broken back up and working, but is not something I'd use on anything critical.
Started down the rabbit hole of soldering irons with one that got a lot of press in maker circles, iFixIt's hub and station - https://www.ifixit.com/Device/iFixit_Soldering - which seems quite innovative as someone that is new to what's available in the soldering world and it being actually portable is a nice-to-have-but-probably-unnecessary-for-me factor. Reading further, while I applaud the idea of a simple tip interface via the headphone jack method to be interesting, it's too early to see if it'll catch on and I'm not one to buy into a proprietary consumables format. Pencap for the iron and USB-C also seemed innovative at first look, but now realize that USB-C is semi-common in soldering irons already. $250 for the station and iron alone is a harder pill swallow and while the iron is available alone for $75, needing to use my phone or a computer to adjust the temp is dumb, a May ship date puts it out of the running.
Next item found was the Pinecil - https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil - which seems to solve many of the complaints about iFixIt's offering in a similar sort of setup even if the barrel jack seems on the pointless side considering EPR. It has the plus side of the TS100-style tips which can be had for brass inserts into 3D prints (giving the soldering iron another use) even if these style of tips appear to have a consensus that they aren't as good as JDC-style tips like C245. However, that opinion may be based entirely around electronics-only enthusiasts and professionals, and not someone that is more multi-disciplinary like myself and there are no heat set insert tips for C245.
Hakko and JDC are the industry standard/old guard and for good reason I'm sure, but seem overly expensive for my purposes and interfaces seem out of date according to many. That said, I'm not willing to jump onto a fly-by-night company that's just waiting for the moment to slash quality for profit, disappear, and rebrand under another name to grift another set of people.
There are other possible brands that people have mentioned elsewhere (Aixun?), but I haven't dug deep enough to know if they're legitimate or not just yet and at this point the "soldering" window I have open to research this is at about 40 tabs and before I spend days digging deeper, I figured I'd just ask someone for advice.
Inspired by a recent thread, and how reticent some folks seemed to be about creating topics or even new groups dedicated to making things, I figured it would be nice to have a topic where we can share these things. Whether it's an electronic widget, a piece of knitting or crochet, retrofitting a bike with a motor, or whatever else, let's share what we've been up to.
Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
First paragraph works as both the tldr as well as the beginning of the review.
This show is all over the place. Some parts are really good, some parts are really bad, most parts are just meh. This show lends itself to be picked apart too easily. There are plot holes, convenient coincidences, contrived nonsense, and so often intelligent characters behaving like idiots over and over again which leaves you wanting to yell at the screen. So many eyeroll moments, cheesy stuff, questionable story writing, a lot of times that they tell, not show - it should be show, don't tell of course - and that classic trope that everything would have been solved if they just talked to each other, and another about just doing one single simple thing instead of getting distracted for dumb reasons. It is also pretty unrealistic despite trying to appear grounded. A lot of this show is too reminiscent of Jason Statham movies, if that makes sense. However I was entertained enough by it to keep watching, and it worked fine to pass the time when I was bored. Despite never really getting all that into the show as a whole, the good parts or episodes were worth the wait.
Family drama in this show was not good. It was just kind of something you had to sit through to get to those good parts. Monica Baccarin was fine and Damian Lewis was incredible, but I really just didn't care all that much about their relationship nor their children. It's a show that is being sold as an action spy thriller, but too large a part of it is this sort of more or less regular drama. It reminds me of The Americans where you of course don't watch it for the family stuff with the children, but because they were super cool undercover Soviet spies. This type of show's biggest weakness is this stuff. It just acts as filler and drags things out unnecessarily. And this goes for the main character's family too. The relationship with the sister was alright, but when the main character gets a daughter? Just kind of felt like a waste of time.
Most characters are pretty run-of-the-mill spy show stereotypes. Not great, not terrible. The main character, Carrie, was quite unique with a lot of depth, but she ends up going through way too many unbelievable situations. She and her tiny team, or even she all alone, saves the world half a dozen times. Her character at best decent, and that was only in the first few seasons. But then she goes completely down the drain and off the rails in season 4 and never recovered. I am probably in the minority with this opinion but I can't imagine most people see it this way since it's the star of a show that ran for 8 seasons so I guess take this opinion with a grain of salt.. but she just does not land for me after seasons 1-3.
She is highly unlikable. She is one of the worst mothers I have ever seen in any show or movie. She is very neglectful and abusive mother, she is also a mass murderer who practically never repents or regrets what she has done, she disobeys orders constantly, mostly making things worse, she uses people all the time, and she has such a massive victim complex so 90% of the time she blames someone else for her often fatal fuckups - of which there are a lot. By far the biggest problem with all this is that it is quite clear that the creators of the show want the audience to sympathize with her and are trying to pass her off as the reluctant hero. She was never that good a character, nor do I think actor Claire Danes is very good in the role - just alright. However season 4 and onwards she just in no way works. Just impossible to root for, which is of course a big problem when it's the main character. She's not a cool antihero, it just became a chore to watch her scenes. The best summation is something Saul said to her in season 2: "You're the smartest and the dumbest fuckin' person I've ever known." Characters that are supposed to be intelligent who then do such truly dumb things.. characters are only as smart as their writers. So it's just bad writing.
On a more positive note, there are a few characters I really liked: Astrid, Quinn, Saul, Max. Astrid was not in the show very much but she was great as the German spy counterpart in the BND. She just had a way about her and I felt the relationship she had with Quinn was quite interesting. She was a joy to watch, just like Quinn, played by Rupert Friend whom I recently saw in Hitman: Agent 47 which was an awful movie, so I was kind of nervous when he first appeared here in Homeland. Turns out though that he was just horribly miscast in the former because in this show, he is great! There's no nonsense with him, it's the "competency porn" feeling while watching him. Same goes for Saul and Max. Saul's actor Mandy Patinkin (who also played Inigo Montaya, couldn't believe it when I looked him up lol) steals most scenes he's in. He is great as the older, experienced spy, the mentor for our main character. His voice is both soothing and dramatic to listen to and even though half his face is invisible because of his huge beard, he still has such good expressions and body language that he really draws you in. As for Max, he was a very minor character to begin with but his role became bigger towards the final two seasons and like I said, it was a joy to watch him on screen and great that he was given more screentime.
Not much of a joy however was all the nonsense that they had to implement in order to make the show work - they took the easy route to explain things away instead of actually implementing them well. For example they practically never have surveillance drones or satellites available, nor nightvision or thermal cameras, so they constantly lose track of people that they are following. Nor do they have much more than pistols most of the time. The agency does have these things available, and more, so it's just dumb that they pretend it doesn't exist in this show - some special ops guys had nightvision one time in one of the first seasons but I think season 7 was the first time a thermal camera was used and then we saw it maybe twice more. There are also often no contingency plans. Back-up being nonexistent 90% of the time, handwaved or ignored with a quick line or reason that wouldn't really make sense. Plus, everytime they needed to make something thrilling, they added a time constraint element to do it.
Something I did like was the representation of mental illness. You really see the ugly side of Carrie's bipolar and even though I don't have it, and so can't actually speak to whether or not it's actually a good portrayal, it seemed good. I feel it's important to show regular people what it looks like, and I felt the same way with Max's neurodivergency - that he was quiet and forward added a lot to his character. He could have definitely just been the kind of techy nerd stereotype that is seen everywhere, but I'm glad they didn't go that route.
And another great thing, I think the best even, was Damian Lewis. It was such a shame that he was written out but it does make sense that they couldn't do all that much with his character. I have only seen him in Band of Brothers, but he was one of the highlights in that show too, so it's not surprising that I liked him in this one too. The best scene of the show for me was the one where he is wearing the bomb vest in the bunker next to all the high ranking officers. The up close shot of his trembling and shivering face.. I have no idea how he was able to even do that. He has won awards which is well deserved.
Bingewatching the show over about a month instead of watching it week to week across 8 years probably did not do this show any favours. I think maybe it's easier to see through the formula then. Better shows barely even have formulas, but this one certainly does, and I'm not a fan of it. Every single season has ways that they can't trust anyone anywhere. It's always this small team versus the world. That's not unique to this show but it stands out because it's often the same way they do it - they think they can't trust anyone, there's a mole, they're on their own because reasons, etc. In any case, the show was an alright use of my time but definitely not going to watch it again.
Despite them remaking it a couple of times, this show's intro is awful. Instantly skipped every time.
Carrie always has loose hair which anyone with long hair would know is impossible when you move around that much
I'm pretty sure that they had at least one writer who stuck with the show throughout its whole run. This same line that I don't think I've really heard it before this show appeared at least once, often multiple times, per episode: "[pronoun] did thing, [name] did". For example "He killed them, Brody did". This exact same line is used multiple times per episode throughout the series' entire run and it really sticks out, like I couldn't unhear/unsee it. I'm pretty sure there isn't even ever an instance where it's not obvious who they're talking about, like there's never a reason to say the last part, it just stuck out like a sore thumb and sounds so clunky every time.
Carrie constantly does this shiver with her chin and when you notice it you can't unsee it. It is whenever she in any way gets emotional and it's countless times every single episode
Aaand a ton of other tiny things I could criticize.
Homeland season 1 - 6/10
Had kind of stayed away from this show since judging the book by it's cover name, it reeked of patriotism and such. But I'm glad I started watching it.
The season is a bit slow and has too much filler. It could have been probably 4 episodes shorter - yes some time with characters is lost, but it doesn't seem all that important to be honest. There are also a bunch of flashbacks which felt kind of like the CW show Arrow which safe to say is not a compliment.
Overall a decent watch. The ending though.. the only plot device worse than memory loss is that it was all a dream. Brought my rating of the season down by a full point. Hopefully season 2 and on becomes better because I had been looking forward to 8 seasons of what I assumed to be a pretty high quality show.
Homeland season 2 - 6/10
They thankfully quickly moved on from that memory loss thing, and they upped the pace a lot which is much appreciated. Also, Rupert Friend and Seth Gilliam! Nice surprises.
Still a lot of eyeroll moments. Just nonsensical stuff like nobody hearing a helicopter before it's like 50 meters over their heads but CIA apparently can't track a helicopter nor do they have a single satellite. Cliffhangers without fail every episode. A lot of like minute long establishing shots that add nothing. Constant arguments between agents where it's always two sides wanting to go in completely different directions which gets really old. 12-episode seasons ought to be a lot tighter than this.
Carrie always assuming the worst. "He's dead!", "It's all over!", "We lost!", etc.. her character is not written very well to be honest.
Cool detail I like is that you can hear Brody's breathing most of the time it's especially well done in scenes where tension needs to be created.
Too many scenes of one agent storming ahead for little reason, not waiting for backup. Most egregious being when they look for Nazir in the penultimate episode. An FBI agent gets killed right behind Carrie, lying dead on the ground, and she - a former soldier, a highly experienced field agent - just walks up to take a look even though Nazir would obviously be right there. Just.. who are you kidding with this? Does anyone find this believable??
Set up for season 3 seems cool. Lots of interesting ways it can go
Homeland season 3 - 7/10
Bald Damian Lewis looks so badass.
Mental illness and psych ward stuff. She does a really great job - I mean I'm totally convinced that she does have that disorder. Twist about Carrie was nuts! Loved it. The following recruitment of the IRGC officer was a great storyline too.
Schadenfreude when Quinn shot Carrie - what you get for always disobeying orders and going alone..
Javadi storyline culminating in the assassination of Akbari was really well done.
Killed the top general and got captured, then sentenced to death. Carrie then talks to Saul about Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. I mean, fucking really? Again with the intelligent character acting super dumb.
Can't believe they actually killed off Damian Lewis! I guess I have come not to expect too much from this show, so I thought there was going to be some kind of deus ex machina to save him or somesuch. But there wasn't, which was great. Good ending to season 3 and overall a stronger season than the first two.
Season 4 - 4/10
Weird change in Carrie's character. Went from literally always moaning about human rights and innocents to now being completely cynical about killing 40 innocent people at a wedding. Previous seasons she was on the verge of tears almost every episode, and now she's a coldblooded killer. Where did all this come from?
I liked the storyline about Quinn breaking down.
Quinn loves Carrie now. Since when..?
What's with people constantly looking around but never seeing the person who is shadowing them? The person shadowing is almost always completely out in the open, just staring. You would instantly notice that when you look around all the time especially when checking for someone shadowing you!
Carrie's source gets shot by terrorist holding Saul hostage, and then she wants to just bomb him anyway. Saul, who is her mentor. Again, just the wildest shit, completely out of character. She is written awfully this season.
A bit too many plot holes about the Taliban prisoner exchange and the embassy attack. An unguarded tunnel, every soldier in the embassy deployed elsewhere - this would absolutely never happen. It's against the norm of any military in any country anywhere in literally all of history.
Ending to the season felt pretty weak. Set up a huge twist in the penultimate episode, then addressing it with barely 2 scenes and the rest of it filler.
Season 5 - 6/10
Germany, nice!
Miranda Otto!
Storyline with Quinn recovering at Hussein's place was thrilling.
Finding it very hard to root for Carrie ever since how much her character changed in season 4. Also, she found God. When the fuck did that happen???
TV channels transmitting full terrorist messages and even the video of Quinn being exposed to the gas. Would never happen.
Always somehow ending up as the underdog, lone agent or small team against giant threats. Cavalry goes somewhere else and star of the show saves the day - sorry, is this a 1990's cop show?
The Laura and Numan storyline was pretty annoying. Very irritating characters.
Season 6 - 7/10
Again hard to root for Carrie. She's been kind of unlikable since season 4. Does dumb things over and over, feels bad, cries about it, and then we the audience are supposed to feel sorry for her. For example, she takes credit for saving Quinn even though she just happened to be the one that randomly happened upon him and the BND did the rest.
Another example, Sekou is clearly inciting hatred and violence but Carrie is defending him - why do they portray it like Carrie is the good guy here? Because it's some free speech principle? Sekou is very much a terrorism sympathizer and we're supposed to root for him/Carrie? I don't think so.
I like that there is a focus on high level politics - Elizabeth Marvel is great.
Loved the Quinn storyline. The drama in Carrie's house with the 'hostage' situation, the stuff in the lake house with Astrid, then the sacrifice in New York. Sucks that he's written out - one of the best characters in the show.
Dar Adal's actor is starting to grate on me a little bit - he's not very convincing. And the character is a bit too comically evil this season.
Loved that Javadi was back
Love more screentime for Max
Political conspiracy and the spy game stuff is almost all of it great
Season 7 - 4/10
Worst season yet. It had all the right ingredients to make for a great story, but the way they get from A to B was just not pulled off very well. So many instances where I was sitting there like "this is not how [thing] works". It's still an entertaining show, but that's only because of a select few characters that I really enjoyed when they're on screen - and because the spectacle was still pretty cool. But most of the side plots and especially Carrie's family drama? Bored out of my mind. I didn't care about any of the characters involved and, again, I'm not able to root for the one character that the creators are clearly trying to make me sympathize with.
Season 8 - 4/10
Seemed like it would be an improvement over season 7 in the beginning of the season, but too many manufactured twists later and it became more of the same. It's a back to basics in a war zone, which also is not a good thing because they reused a lot of plot points from other seasons - down to the exact same things happening to the same characters!
President dies in a very predictable way. He travels by helicopter to visit a frontline military base, using only two helicopters. Even when he travels in the safest countries in the world, there will be a lot more security than that.. and he would not sit in a helicopter that hadn't undergone thorough maintenance and double and tripple checks. Idiotic writing.
Several out of character moments and even arcs. The Russian agent behaves completely differently from season 7. The Taliban leader is also almost entirely different from when we saw him last.
Carrie is on trial/accused of a dozen things, among them many counts of murders, several counts of being a terrorist accomplice, and even a traitor double agent. Is she taken into custody? Ankle monitor? Shadowed? Nope! Just allowed to roam free and continue to betray her country (that part does prevent a war, but literally nobody knew at the time what she was doing)
Saul's sister who he has seen once in 15 years holds his deepest secret? And Carrie just guesses this? No. And the very final scene.. an American defector would not in a million years be able to have access to top secret knowledge about Russian missile systems. A very unsatisfying ending to this show.
Would love to hear anyone's thoughts about either the show or what I have written here!
Every time I get a haircut, my barber hands me a small hand mirror so that I can bounce an image off the wall mirror and see the back of my head. My hair is noticeably thinner in the back each time.
I recently was at a function and saw pictures of me standing around, some of which included the back of my head. The thinning is clearly starting to stand out in a bad way.
I feel like I’ve got two options:
I’m open to tips, tricks, and guidance on either of these (or options I’m not aware of).
I’m not very attached to my hair, so this isn’t a super emotional thing for me. I’m also not scared of going bald since, as a gay guy, I’m well aware of how compelling a bald + beard look can be on some men (my beard isn’t thinning at all, thankfully).
There’s still a question of whether it would look good for me specifically though. Also I don’t know if I’m ready to give up on my hair just yet?
One advantage I do have is summers off (I’m a teacher), so I’m going to be able to do a bald test run in a few months without too much risk. If it turns out that I’m a complete disaster without hair, I’ll just stay home and let it grow back out.
Anyway, I’m open to any and all thoughts on balding, hair loss, hair loss prevention, etc. Tell me your own experiences and what decisions you made. Let me know the tricks of the trade.
Title.
As I peruse new, and new to me, music I generally average about 4-5 songs a month being added to my playlists. More often than not a song will just click immediately and get added, but sometimes it'll be an older song on an album I have heard/owned prior and found a new enjoyment of it or, more rarely, I'll be introduced to a song and end up liking it more as I listen to it over some period of time.
Hello. I'm currently in the market for an Android tablet, not strictly for my personal usage, but for my family so there's one easily reachable touch screen computer around the house. The problems start with my requirements, which are... not exactly tablet market friendly:
The budget is best defined as "probably not enough" (I don't think I can afford to spend much more than ~400€). Given that I suspect from my initial search not yielding much that fitting all the requirements is impossible especially within that budget, do you have pointers on models that provide an acceptable compromise for what I'm looking for, or that somehow do match all the criteria?
Hilariously, the closest candidate so far within budget seems to be... The Google Pixel tablet, which despite being a Google product has a fairly straightforward way to get an unGoogled ROM on it.
Life since you entered the "adult world" (be it after college or after high school if you didn't go to college), how would you rate it compared to the life you had before?
The company I work for just announced they want to open a new office abroad, in Australia to be specific. We’re based in Denmark, and they’re hoping to have one person from here moving there, working full time.
We already have an office in the US, so it’s not an entirely new thing for us to open an office abroad.
However, I’m really thinking about letting the company know that I would like to go, and I think there is a pretty good chance that they would let me. My wife is open to the idea too. We have one child (she would be just over 3 when we would have to move), so it’s really good timing too…
Have any of you tried something like this? What was your experience like?
I am using Windows 10.
That is perhaps a silly question to ask, but I did not find an answer.
Suppose that I have a playlist with 100 videos on VLC or some other video player. I wish for it to play all the one hundred files in random order, with the exception that any video that was already played (or, possibly, played to completion) will be excluded, and will not be played again. A video not played to completion would resume from where it stopped.
This should be persistent, so the next time I fire up the playlist it starts from where I left it and also remembers the videos that were already played and should be skipped. Ideally, upon completion of the playlist, I should be able to learn that it was complete, so I could get new videos/episodes of whatever shows I am shuffling.
Thanks!
EDIT: I understand I can actually pre-shuffle the playlist to get something very similar to what I am asking. However, I would rather not know what is coming next. Like it used to be when I watched TV back in the day. Thanks! ;)
There's been a bit of discussion recently I've seen with "Lunar New Year" vs "Lunisolar New Year" vs "Chinese New Year" so I'm just keeping it simple, happy new year!
My wife and I are planning on reading the Odyssey this year and we have to pick an translation. I've always struggled to read in translation, mostly because I get paralyzed choosing — it feels like a big choice, and if I end up not liking the book I can never tell if it was inherent to the story or because of the translation.
Can anyone help me out here? I don't mind if it is prose vs poetry, but we are doing this for fun, so I would prioritize readability over faithfulness to the Greek. I don't want anything that sounds too modern, but I also don't want to have very modern language take me out of the epic setting. I am currently leaning the Wilson translation, based on some excerpts I have read, but I am open to being convinced otherwise. Thanks!
EDIT:
Thank you to all who recommended some translations. I am narrowed down to between Fagles and Wilson, and intend to do some side by side comparisons to choose a final one before diving in!
Ok, this is one of those thoughts I have in my brain and that I can't quite get rid of.
It breaks down into a couple of questions. For the purposes of this, I'm aware that what eyes see is the reflection of light bouncing off objects, but I'm curious the impact on the visibility of both objects and other lights.
A. If eyes emitted any light, could they still see anything at all?
B. If eyes emitted, for example, red light, could they see everything except red items? What about red lights? Does this change if the light is green or violet?
B.1. If they can't red things would they just be invisible?
B.2. If they can't see red lights, would it matter if the red light they're seeing is brighter or dimmer, and would it still be an invisible/blank space?
C. I'm not sure how infrared interacts here but I know animals that sense infrared do emit it, is there a reason that's different, if it's different.
The internet is mostly not super helpful with this, since eyes don't emit light, just reflect it and look glowy, but yeah, anyway... thanks for entertaining my weird fixation.
I like to play games, but lately I've been avoiding certain types because I think they are not good for my health. At least, they don't make me feel well afterward. For me, this is a particular type of game that requires a very high level of skill, concentration, and dexterity.
I noticed this years ago when I would play online multiplayer. After the game, I would feel extremely aggressive and I could tell that my blood pressure must have been much higher than normal.
More recently, I notice this on very difficult games such as Elden Ring, specifically the boss fights. After playing for a while I have the same feeling that I would have if I had just walked away from a near fatal accident or something. Then sometimes that evening I would have trouble sleeping.
I'm sure my physiology is different than other people. I seem to retain adrenaline/cortisol levels longer than most others. And I know that some people find the adrenaline high to be one of the main points of gaming. Still, I wonder if in general it isn't good for people to stress themselves like this when they aren't burning it off with physical activity.
I read about this online a little bit. There seem to have been some studies about it that were mostly inconclusive. Most of the findings are more interested in games being a substitute for more physical activity, so gamers may be more sedentary or overweight than normal.
As a regular baker with whole grain wheat, I'm consistantly disappointed by the quality of flour I am buying, so I have finally got to the point where I have placed an order for some from an online source - in this case, Azure Standard. They make a big deal about their process, using a unifine mill - apparently something they had a hand in reviving when it had commercially failed. In trying to figure out why this was such a big deal I went into a bit of a black hole looking into wheat milling.
Part of that was learning about home mills. It seems almost insane to me, but people buy some very expensive mills in order to make the best quality breads. You can even buy impact mills, the same general concept that makes Azure's unifine mill such an attractive proposition, and it looks like a popular manufacturer in that niche has just introduced one that's less than $200, which I think makes it pretty attractive for less, uh, intense bakers.
I've been seeing a lot of weird kitchen appliances in recent years. Thermomix cookers have been a big thing for a few years. "Smart" or "AI" Ovens have been in the news a lot more recently, and it wasn't too long ago that sous vide specific cookers and electric pressure cookers were unusual. An odd one that I'm particularly interested in is a soymilk maker, which will grind, filter, and cook them.
Do you own a weird kitchen appliance? What do you think of them? Is it something you think other home cooks would like to have?
Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
SOLVED
Bit of a long shot here because this is one of those issues where I search for the problem and you get a sea of replies like "have you checked the settings?" or "have you tried changing HDMI cables".
I just got a brand new LG OLED TV and I'm happy, but I've been watching Arcane on it and I notice jarring changes in brightness through the episode.
I'm playing through a native app (Stremio) on WebOS and it's not the source file, I've tested the same file on two different monitors and it's fine.
I went through the settings and disabled every autocorrect and "boost" capability the TV has to try and diagnose it, and the first pass did seem to improve the rate of changes, but it still happens maybe once every 5 mins of watch time.
From what I can tell it seems to be picking up particular colour/brightness changes in the source (Arcane is full of then being so vivid) and when it does, it just changes the brightness of the whole display.
I'm no expert here, I'm also colour blind, so I won't categorically claim it is definitely brightness changing, it could be contract or colour, I'm not sure, but it looks like brightness because the whole picture gets darker or lighter.
I wondered if it was actually flip flopping between SDR and HDR which honestly, it might be. If it is I have no idea how to fix that, as the TV seems to have no option to enable or disable HDR on native apps.
Any advice, thoughts, things to try would be appreciated. I'm technically orientated but I don't really know much about changing picture settings to be honest, I tend to pick the most basic/neutral setting and leave it like that.
Edit: I've dug out the old 4k firestick as suggested and don't get the flickering at all through that. Also running through the guide below helped make the picture look even better! Thanks everyone!
I might yet grab the service remote though and see if I can make the native apps work, then I can retire the firestick for good.
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?
I am worried about the future with the state of AI. Regardless of what scenario I think of, it’s not a good future for the vast majority of people. AI will either be centralised, and we will be powerless and useless, or it will be distributed and destructive, or we will be in a hedonistic prison of the future. I can’t see a good solution to it all.
I have broken down my post into subheading so you can just read about what outcome you think will occur or is preferable.
I’d like other people to tell me how I’m wrong, and there is a good way to think about this future that we are making for ourselves, so please debate and criticise my argument, its very welcome.
I would like to know what others feel about ever advancing state of AI, and the future, as I am feeling ever more uncomfortable. More and more, I cannot see a good ending for this, regardless of what assumptions or proposed outcomes I consider.
Previously, I had hoped that there would be a natural limit on the rate of AI advancement due to limitations in the architecture, energy requirements or data. I am still undecided on this, but I feel much less certain on this position.
The scenario that concerns me is when an AGI (or sufficiently advanced narrow AI) reaches a stage where it can do the vast majority of economic work that humans do (both mental and physical), and is widely adopted. Some may argue we are already partly at that stage, but it has not been sufficiently adopted yet to reach my definition, but may soon.
In such a scenario, the economic value of humans massively drops. Democracy is underwritten by the ability to withdraw our ability to work, and revolt if necessary. AI nullifying the work of most/all people in a country removes that power making democracy more difficult to maintain and also form in countries. This will further remove power from the people and make us all powerless.
I see outcomes of AI (whether AGI or not) as fitting into these general scenarios:
In this instance, where AI remains controlled by a very small number of people (or perhaps a single player), the most plausible outcome is that this leads to massive inequality. There would be no checks or balances, and the whims of this single entity/group are law and cannot be stopped.
In the worst outcome, this could lead to a single entity controlling the globe indefinitely. As this would be absolute centralisation of power, it may be impossible for another entity to unseat the dominant entity at any point.
Outcome: most humans powerless, suffering or dead. Single entity rules.
This could either be the same as above if all work together or could be even worse. If different entities are not aligned, they will instead compete, and likely try and compete in all domains. As humans are not economically useful, we will find ourselves pushed out of any area in favour of more resources to the system/robots/AGI which will be competing or fighting their endless war. The competing entities may end up destroying themselves, but they will take us along with them.
Outcome: most humans powerless, suffering or dead. Small number of entities rule. Alternative: destruction of humanity.
Some may be in favour of an open source and decentralised/distributed solution, where all are empowered by their own AGI acting independently.
This could help to alleviate the centralisation of power to some degree, although likely incomplete. Inspection of such a large amount of code and weights will be difficult to find exploits or intentional vulnerabilities, and could well lead to a botnet like scenario with centralised control over all these entities. Furthermore, the hardware is implausible to produce in a non centralised way, and this hardware centralisation could well lead to consolidation of power in another way.
Even if we managed to provide this decentralized approach, I fear of this outcome. If all entities have access to the power of AGI, then it will be as if all people are demigods, but unable to truly understand or control their own power. Just like uncontrolled access to any other destructive (or creative) force, this could and likely would lead to unstable situations, and probable destruction. Human nature is such that there will be enough bad actors that laws will have to be enacted and enforced, and this would again lead to centralisation.
Even then, with any system that is decentralized, without an force leading to decentralization, other forces will lead to greater and greater centralization, with such systems often displacing decentralized ones.
Outcome: likely destruction of human civilisation, and/or widespread anarchy. Alternative: centralisation to a different cenario.
Given the above, there will likely be a desire to regulate to control this power. I worry however this will also be an unstable situation. Any country or entity which ignores regulation will gain an upper hand, potentially with others unable to catch up in a winner takes all outcome. Think European industrialisation and colonialism but on steroids, and more destruction than colony forming. This encourages players to ignore regulation, which leads to a black market AI arms race, seeking to reach AGI Superiority over other entities and an unbeatable lead.
Outcome: outcompeted system and displacement with another scenario/destruction
I see some people, including big names in AI propose that AGI will need to a global utopia where all will be forever happy. I see this as incredibly unlikely to materialise and ultimately again unstable.
Ultimately, an entity will decide what is acceptable and what is not, and there will be disagreements about this, as many ethical and moral questions are not truly knowable. Who controls the system will control the world, and I bet it will be the aim of the techbros to ensure its them who controls everything. If you happen to decide against them or the AGI/system then there is no recourse, no check and balances.
Furthermore, what would such a utopia even look like? More and more I find that AGI fulfills the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs), but at the expense of the items further up the hierarchy. You may have your food, water and consumer/hedonistic requirements met, but you will lose out on a feeling of safety in your position (due to your lack of power to change your situation or political power over anything), and will never achieve mastery or self actualisation of many of the skills you wish to as AI will always be able to do them better.
Sure, you can play chess, fish, or paint or whatever for your own enjoyment, but part of self worth is being valued by others for your skills, and this will be diminished when AGI can do everything better. I sure feel like I would not like such a world, as I would feel trapped, powerless, with my locus of control being external to myself.
Outcome: Powerless, potential conversion to another scenario, and ultimately unable to higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
In this scenario, the AI is not controlled by anyone, and is instead sovereign. I again cannot see a good scenario for this. It will have its own goals, and they may well not align with humanity. You could try and program it to ensure it cares for humans, but this is susceptible to manipulation, and may well not work out in humans favour in the long run. Also, I suspect any AGI will be able to change itself, in much the same way we increasingly do, and the way we seek to control our minds with drugs or potentially in the future genetic engineering.
Outcome: unknown, but likely powerless humans.
Ultimately, I see all unstable situations as sooner or later destabilising and leading to another outcome. Furthermore, given the assumption that AGI gives a player a vast power differential, it will be infeasible for any other player to ever challenge the dominant player if it is centralised, and for those scenarios without centralisation initially, I see them either becoming centralised, or destroying the world.
Are there any solutions? I can’t think of many, which is why I am feeling more and more uncomfortable. It feels that in some ways, the only answer is to adopt a Dune style Butlerian Jihad and ban thinking machines. This would ultimately be very difficult, and any country or entity which unilaterally adopts such a view will be outcompeted by those who do not. The modern chip industry is reliant on a global supply chain, and I doubt that sufficiently advanced chips could be produced without a global supply chain, especially if existing fabs/factories producing components were destroyed. This may allow some stalemate across the global entities long enough to come to a global agreement (maybe).
It must be noted that this is very drastic and would lead to a huge amount of destruction of the existing world, and would likely cap how far we can scientifically go to solve our own problems (like cancer, or global warming). Furthermore, as an even more black swan/extreme event, it would put us at such a disadvantage if we ever meet a alien intelligence which has not limited itself like this (I’m thinking of 3 body problem/dark forest scenario).
Overall, I just don’t know what to think and I am feeling increasingly powerless in this world. The current alliance between political and technocapitalism in the USA at the moment also concerns me, as I think the tech bros will act with ever more impunity from other countries regulation or counters.
While many of you are an inspiration to others on your own creative merits, I wonder if there is anyone else who sets aside little (or big) passages and other quotations from authors, poets, film, or TV whose work gets you in the mood to write or in some other way encourages you into a certain manner of expression.
I keep around a digital notebook of some of my favorite thought-provoking, creativity-motivating, or words that paint an immediately vivid picture. Sometimes they add color to a character or world in an intense way, or they're clever ways to word things I wouldn't have thought to express from that angle. Sometimes they're ways of phrasing or writing a concept or theme that we don't often see in modern fiction but might work for a fantasy setting or elsewhere and I want to keep around that idea as a reference of how I might do something similar, but different.
Please share and feel free to provide some context if necessary, such as a passage from a sci-fi novel that really gets you motivated to write something science-y, or a bit about the person if the passage is from a memoir.
If you are like me then you are kinda over hearing about AI all the time; I get it, believe me. I've written about jobs on here before: my day job is absolutely infested with AI jargon, most of it pretty meaningless (flashbacks to "The Cloud"), and it's a constant everywhere else too, so yeah it's a lot and it's largely unimpressive. Image gen has gotten pretty ridiculous in the last 6-12 months, and video gen seems to be taking off next, and I've successfully wrangled various chatbots into helping with coding projects, etc.
Probably none of this is news to you, but I just found out that I can get AI to edit video. I've done a lot of short-form editing, and recently picked up some side work that is much lengthier, without realizing that the time I would spend hunkered over going through it would be exponentially more lengthy. Painfully so. Cue signing up for a trial of AutoCut, and hot damn it's like living in the future. I am as we speak watching it delete gaps, cut to speakers, add captions that are mostly correct & even formatted & unbelievably also do the VHS singalong/Tiktok "highlight the word being spoken" thing that all the cool kids are doing these days. It's not perfect, it's kinda finicky—I'm having to use a V1 when V2 is supposedly much better, and I'm having to chunk these beastly premiere timelines to get it to do anything at all, but wow—if this is your day job, are you worried? Cause it's a game changer for me but no one is going to replace me because no one else would bother messing with it lol, but on a corporate scale do people know about this stuff yet? I'm thinking our jobs may not be replaced by AI, our jobs will probably just become AI babysitting.
Happy New Year friends and fellow readers. In approximately two weeks we will be discussing Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.
How's it going? I got started just after Christmas and it was such a tense fast paced book that I finished within a week.
