NeonBright's recent activity

  1. Comment on 100 notable books of 2024 (gifted link) in ~books

  2. Comment on Any recommendations for books, novellas and short story collections? in ~books

    NeonBright
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    Anything by Becky Chambers - her books have substance, but in a calm and reflective and yet completely enjoyable and accessible way. In a similar vein but going back aways, Zena Henderson did some...

    Anything by Becky Chambers - her books have substance, but in a calm and reflective and yet completely enjoyable and accessible way.

    In a similar vein but going back aways, Zena Henderson did some great character-driven SF stories as well.

    While we are dredging around in the past, Roald Dahl (yes, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory guy) wrote three or four volumes of really good short stories for adults, most of which have quite disturbing horror-adjacent themes - and thereby maintaining a degree of shock value even today - but they are written in a clear and jaunty way that makes them enjoyable to read, and each one is bite-sized. Not at all like contemporary horror, and keep in mind he is an excellent writer who understands the craft involved in story telling.

    Elizabeth Gilbert's A Signature of All Things is a longer novel that takes in... a lot of things... and is very absorbing to read.

    If you want a rolicking read without a scrap of commonsense but lots of characterisation and decent plotting and some genuinely laugh out loud moments, try the Stephanie Plum series of detective novels by Janet Evanovich. Start at the series beginning, and if you like them you are in luck because I think there are about 30 of them.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on ‘Mild’ tofu, ‘mild’ carrots, ‘mild’ pine nuts: my five-year quest to understand German taste in ~food

    NeonBright
    Link Parent
    Raw meat is generally pretty pleasant to eat. The raw meat people choose to eat is analogous to sushi - it's selected cuts and treatments of raw flesh, rather than random bits hacked off a...

    Raw meat is generally pretty pleasant to eat.
    The raw meat people choose to eat is analogous to sushi - it's selected cuts and treatments of raw flesh, rather than random bits hacked off a carcass.

    It's mild and sweet, and usually quite tender due to the way it is cut and treated (large cuts of raw meat can be tough, as is anything at all to do with sinew or fascia, but raw meat is cut thinly and scraped or minced, and the initial piece of meat is selected with care.

    Too many condiments, or the wrong ones, can overpower the taste of raw meat, but if a dish 'mainly tastes like condiments' someone is doing something wrong.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Why does "Everything Everywhere All at Once" repulse me so much? in ~movies

    NeonBright
    Link
    Maybe it's because you have good instincts?! Brace yourself for the unpopular opinion here. To me it's a genuinely terrible film, and I have no idea how it came to be so popular. It's choppy,...

    Maybe it's because you have good instincts?!

    Brace yourself for the unpopular opinion here.

    To me it's a genuinely terrible film, and I have no idea how it came to be so popular.
    It's choppy, poorly thought through, intermittently gross, and even manages to be mawkish in a contrived way towards the end. Worst of all, it manages to be boring in places despite the hectic pacing.

    You could have knocked me over with a feather when it became everyone's darling for the season, because to me it's just a huge conceptual error from start to finish.

    Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to have liked it, because it has such a different premise - but there's just nothing there to like.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on "twitter.com" is now officially dead in ~tech

    NeonBright
    Link
    I know it's a minority view, but I'd be delighted if the word 'twitter' could be reclaimed by it's rightful owners - small birds everywhere. The english language lost a rather nice and useful word...

    I know it's a minority view, but I'd be delighted if the word 'twitter' could be reclaimed by it's rightful owners - small birds everywhere.
    The english language lost a rather nice and useful word with the rise of that social media platform, and it would be pleasing to get it back again.

    53 votes

  6. Comment on Reddit, AI spam bots explore new ways to show ads in your feed in ~tech

    NeonBright
    Link Parent
    Late reply here, but I just went over to Kagi and I'm pretty happy with the results. I tore through their free 100 searches in a few days and the experience convinced me to take out a...

    Late reply here, but I just went over to Kagi and I'm pretty happy with the results.
    I tore through their free 100 searches in a few days and the experience convinced me to take out a subscription.
    It's pretty expensive here in local dollars, and it hurts to pay almost $200 for a service google provides 'for free', but for my purposes as a fact-focused private individual kagi does a pretty good job of cutting through the dross.
    Google - which I once loved - has become almost unusable.

    A significant thing about this whole experience though is that I now see subscriptions as kind of inevitable; I reaaaaally didn't want to pay for this service, yet here I am.

    But the truely horrible thing is that I know, deep in my heart, that it's only a matter of time until these paid subscription services start advertising to me, too...

    4 votes

  7. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    NeonBright
    Link
    I'm new to anime, but I'm enjoying the pacing and themes of Mr Villain's Day Off. The joy is in the minutiae - and the absolute lack of interest in adhering to hollywood-style plot structure and...

    I'm new to anime, but I'm enjoying the pacing and themes of Mr Villain's Day Off.
    The joy is in the minutiae - and the absolute lack of interest in adhering to hollywood-style plot structure and expectations; the focus is very slice-of-life.
    Very relaxing viewing! - if a little panda-forward at times.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on VHEMT: the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement in ~life

    NeonBright
    Link Parent
    The 'age 30' thing is no coincidence. There is a significant subset of women who do not want children throughout their teens and 20s and then around age 30 abruptly change their mind. I'm not...

    The 'age 30' thing is no coincidence.
    There is a significant subset of women who do not want children throughout their teens and 20s and then around age 30 abruptly change their mind. I'm not speculating on whether this is prompted by social or physiological changes, but it absolutely happens.
    Consequently health care professionals are loathe to sterilise young childless women, in case they experience this change in perspective and then a significant avoidable regret.
    Their reasoning is along the lines that reversible contraception is easy and effective (comparatively speaking) but that permanent sterilisation is, well, permanent - and so it's better to opt for the reversible version in the first instance.

    11 votes

  9. Comment on What precautions to take when someone is out to get you? in ~life

    NeonBright
    Link
    Document everything. Get into the habit of keeping brief notes of any conversation/interaction you have with your ex, and where appropriate sending them a text or quick email summary of what was...

    Document everything.

    Get into the habit of keeping brief notes of any conversation/interaction you have with your ex, and where appropriate sending them a text or quick email summary of what was said. Along the lines of "Just confirming that we agreed that little Johnny won't be going to summer camp this year", or whatever.

    This way you will have a timestamped papertrail of your interactions. It will also be easier for others to see if there was a concerning pattern of behaviour, or an escalation, should things go south at some point in the future.

    Even if nothing ever happens, it's still a pretty useful record of events for your own personal reference about day to day interactions and agreements; I did this years ago for a difficult neighbour and it was very useful to be able to confidently and accurately refer to a conversation from six months previously.

    16 votes

  10. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tech

    NeonBright
    Link Parent
    This post is very close to being an exemplar of the problems OP was attempting to describe.

    This post is very close to being an exemplar of the problems OP was attempting to describe.

    22 votes

  11. Comment on A romantic retrospective in ~talk

    NeonBright
    Link
    You use words well, and you are thoughtful about your own actions. That bodes well for the future. First we observe what we do; then we seek to change it. You are young. Clever, I think - but...

    You use words well, and you are thoughtful about your own actions.
    That bodes well for the future. First we observe what we do; then we seek to change it.

    You are young. Clever, I think - but still young. You might also be mildly depressed.
    These things are almost the hallmarks of your generation, who are proving slow to mature and a little emotionally vulnerable, when observed collectively.

    This slow journey to maturity isn't necessarily your fault; our society is acting en masse to make the markers of maturity hard to access for this rising generation.

    Meanwhile the emotional vulnerability that you and possibly your autistic friend and also so many, many others are experiencing seems to be another unintentional product of the way in which western society is currently choosing to conduct itself.

    My advice would be to be kind to yourself, because at the age of 23 you have time on your side... but also to make every action count.
    With every action - romantic or otherwise, big or small - promise yourself to make the moral choice (according to your own interpretation of the word), not the expedient one.

    This will do two things.
    The first is that it will make you focus on the substance and the consequence of your own actions. All of them.
    The second is that in a slow but cumulative way, your life will improve because your actions and your values will begin to fall into much closer alignment. This leads to far greater life satisfaction.

    And as for romance? That will come of it's own accord.
    As someone else in this thread right said, it can't be forced. But it's best to be well prepared for the moment when it does come.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on The dubious feminism of the natural childbirth movement in ~life.women

    NeonBright
    Link Parent
    My baby and I were separated, me at one hospital and the baby at another, because our different health needs at the time could not be accommodated by any one institution. 0/10, do not recommend....

    My baby and I were separated, me at one hospital and the baby at another, because our different health needs at the time could not be accommodated by any one institution.
    0/10, do not recommend.
    Especially since the nurses at the hospital that I was at did not seem to understand that my baby was not in the nursery down the hall, but several miles away.
    It was one hell of a motivator to get up out of that bed and get myself discharged.

    9 votes

  13. Comment on US stores increasingly reverse course on self checkout in ~tech

    NeonBright
    Link Parent
    I thought I was the only one with those concerns. I'm very much just an end-point user, but I also am quite concerned about advanced old age and the ever-changing UI. It has the potential to make...

    I thought I was the only one with those concerns.
    I'm very much just an end-point user, but I also am quite concerned about advanced old age and the ever-changing UI. It has the potential to make everything from communication to banking quite difficult later in life.

    (It also makes me more sympathetic to the oldsters in our family who are grimly hanging on to their cheque books, despite the banks having made it quite clear that cheques will be obsolete in our country within a couple of years.)

    4 votes

  14. Comment on How many of you wouldn't be alive if it weren't for modern medicine? in ~talk

    NeonBright
    Link Parent
    I found this explanation of your approach to modifying your own gut biome fascinating, thanks for sharing.

    I found this explanation of your approach to modifying your own gut biome fascinating, thanks for sharing.

  15. Comment on What's on your Christmas lists, dads of Tildes? in ~life.men

    NeonBright
    Link Parent
    Not disputing, just adding my 2c worth. My fairly robust metal wedding ring saved my hand/fingers from being slammed in a car door. Ended up with a little bruising rather than mincemeat. So I'm...

    Not disputing, just adding my 2c worth.
    My fairly robust metal wedding ring saved my hand/fingers from being slammed in a car door.
    Ended up with a little bruising rather than mincemeat.
    So I'm pro-metal wedding ring precisely because it acted as a safety device.

    2 votes

  16. Comment on Wasabi linked to ‘substantial’ memory boost in ~science

    NeonBright
    Link Parent
    Later in the text they refer to a 'dab' of straight wasabi (ie not an extract) - that's the part that I was curious about. I can produce a dab of fresh wasabi much more easily than I can produce...

    Later in the text they refer to a 'dab' of straight wasabi (ie not an extract) - that's the part that I was curious about.
    I can produce a dab of fresh wasabi much more easily than I can produce an unspecified extract, but as a quantity it's fairly open to interpretation!

  17. Comment on Wasabi linked to ‘substantial’ memory boost in ~science

    NeonBright
    Link
    I do wish they were a bit more precise with their measurements. I have wasabi growing in a pot in the backyard (It's not as tricky as all that to grow), and would like to try this for myself, but...

    I do wish they were a bit more precise with their measurements. I have wasabi growing in a pot in the backyard (It's not as tricky as all that to grow), and would like to try this for myself, but 'just a dab' is difficult to quantify!

    1 vote

  18. Comment on How do you divide a room completely and maintain high visibility? in ~life.home_improvement

    NeonBright
    Link
    Have you considered soft netting - I mean quite wide diameter netting, like a tennis net? That can make an effective barrier that doesn't look too bad at all - unusual, for sure, but not terrible....

    Have you considered soft netting - I mean quite wide diameter netting, like a tennis net?
    That can make an effective barrier that doesn't look too bad at all - unusual, for sure, but not terrible.
    It's easy to install and replace if needed, and durable enough that the cats can't damage it much.
    I'm not sure what you could do about a door. Maybe build a conventional door frame+ door against an existing wall and tack the net to the wooden frame?

    Alternatively there is conventional pet-proof fly wire, which could be tacked to tall lightweight frames, and the frames installed in the hallway, floor to ceiling.
    One frame could support a screen door in this case.

  19. Comment on Tinder unveils staggering $500-per-month ‘VIP’ subscription tier in ~tech

    NeonBright
    Link Parent
    I've often thought that the next successful dating app should be a free-to-users public good, along the lines of public libraries. That would remove the perverse incentives introduced through...

    I've often thought that the next successful dating app should be a free-to-users public good, along the lines of public libraries. That would remove the perverse incentives introduced through running dating apps in for-profit mode.
    Many western countries are facing a demographic challenge regarding late/no marriages and falling birthrates, and so this could legitimately be considered as a means of addressing those problems.

    5 votes

  20. Comment on Experiment - Are there any Tildes users in Europe, Asia or Australia/New Zealand who might be interested to meet for a meal or a drink? in ~travel

    NeonBright
    Link
    Happy to offer advice and/or meet up if you are planning to be in Australia. It's a big continent we have here, so I may or may not be able to physically meet with you - but nothing ventured,...

    Happy to offer advice and/or meet up if you are planning to be in Australia.

    It's a big continent we have here, so I may or may not be able to physically meet with you - but nothing ventured, nothing gained. DM me any time.

    3 votes