SeraphicSoul's recent activity

  1. Comment on Canada Post strike update: Postal employees back to work in ~life

    SeraphicSoul
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    I'm generally against unions being forced to stop their labour actions, because that's the only peaceful pressure tool they have. Wonder what the general opinions are here on Tildes?

    I'm generally against unions being forced to stop their labour actions, because that's the only peaceful pressure tool they have. Wonder what the general opinions are here on Tildes?

    8 votes
  2. Comment on What shampoo/conditioner do you use? in ~life.style

    SeraphicSoul
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    I'm a bit off grid but I use Bronner's castille soap for basically everything - dishes, body wash, hair, dog wash, etc. Never feel bad dumping it anywhere I happen to be. For the hair...

    I'm a bit off grid but I use Bronner's castille soap for basically everything - dishes, body wash, hair, dog wash, etc. Never feel bad dumping it anywhere I happen to be.

    For the hair specifically, I use a small amount of Bronner's and it lathers up fine, but one wash is not enough to remove all the oils from my scalp... which is usually what I want. Very, very occasionally I will mix with a bit of baking soda only if I've been without a shower for more than three days. It happens sometimes when you're camping and cuts through all the oil buildup nicely - but is not a daily driver, it will dry and even damage your hair with too frequent use.

    3 votes
  3. Comment on Electric cars are suddenly becoming affordable in ~transport

    SeraphicSoul
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Everyone seems to be rushing towards EVs with optimism, but the two things that I need to see meaningfully addressed are: Privacy Hands down the biggest thing preventing me from going and...

    Everyone seems to be rushing towards EVs with optimism, but the three two things that I need to see meaningfully addressed are:

    1. Privacy
      Hands down the biggest thing preventing me from going and purchasing any new car these days. After the Mozilla report posted on Tildes a while back I can't help but mirror all of the concerns on the top comment there, and EVs are WORSE than their ICE counterparts in this regard as far as I can tell. Until I can have a fully offline EV, and have confidence that if I connect my phone for music that nothing else is happening in the background, it's a non-starter.

    2. Battery Recycling
      This is a bit of lack of research on my part, but as far as I'm aware most batteries are just material for special landfills at the end of their life. Are EV batteries truly recyclable and renewable? Or is it like nuclear waste, in that there's not really a good way of dealing with it after it served its purpose?

    3. Zero Touchscreen
      Okay this is super nitpicky and not specific to EVs, a lot of newer vehicles are moving towards touchscreens and I hate it. It feels less safe. Knobs and buttons, please. This is the point I'm going to get blasted for, I'm sure.

    I'm seriously considering rebuilding and restoring a 2004-era Toyota ICE over getting an EV because of the privacy concern alone. I am a road tripper, I'll go from Vancouver, BC to Dawson City, YT and back on a whim, and the 30min charging stops don't faze me at all, would happily do that as long as a bunch of corporations aren't getting my personal info along the way.

    EDIT: changed my mind about the recycling thing, seems like there are decent ways to recycle them once we get to scale. Thanks for the comment(s) that made me actually do research!

    2 votes
  4. Comment on Three Cheers for Tildes: App updates and feedback (April 2024) — Version 1.0 is out for Android! in ~tildes

    SeraphicSoul
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    Apologies for the bump on the old post, but I can't find anything newer so I hope this is alright. I'm in the middle of attempting to de-google my life and have started playing with GrapheneOS and...

    Apologies for the bump on the old post, but I can't find anything newer so I hope this is alright.

    I'm in the middle of attempting to de-google my life and have started playing with GrapheneOS and CalyxOS. I can still download Three Cheers via Aurora but it's not the cleanest experience. All this to ask:

    Have you considered releasing the Android version via F-Droid at all? Why or why not?

    1000% appreciate all the work you put in here, the app is excellent!

  5. Comment on What's something you've been mulling over recently? in ~talk

    SeraphicSoul
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    I've been mulling over my childhood trauma. Possible triggers, even though I'm going to dance around details. My sisters and I had a provider dad who was awesome when he was around but wasn't...

    I've been mulling over my childhood trauma. Possible triggers, even though I'm going to dance around details.

    My sisters and I had a provider dad who was awesome when he was around but wasn't always around. Mom was a hippie, and had a bunch of non-mainstream values. Combined with a domineering personality, many of her suggestions weren't suggestions, and she suggested some fairly inappropriate things in retrospect. She could be scary, and all of us kids were motivated not to bring that out of her.

    I'm left wondering how bad it was. Talking with one of my sisters, sounds like there were more things happening than I was aware of. But I'm still wondering if it's worse because of retrospect. Inside the nature of growing into personal autonomy is establishing your ability to consent. Thinking back to my early and late teens, it's all "me" but of course I never stopped growing, integrating new ideas into my worldview over the years. There's no line to draw except the arbitrary ones society puts out there. And of course I made my own mistakes. Continue to make my own mistakes. How hard is it to be a parent? One of my sisters doesn't want my mom around my nephew unsupervised based on some of our shared childhood trauma, which is totally fair. Did my childhood contain abusive moments, or patterns of abuse? I was slightly older, do I share in responsibility and to what degree...

    It's a process. Had a good reconnection with my sister recently which brought all this back up. It's clear she doesn't blame me but how do I feel?

    5 votes
  6. Comment on The decline of username and password on the same page in ~tech

    SeraphicSoul
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    Another similar thing that drives me nuts is having login happen in a JS popup instead of having a solid, purpose built page for accepting a login. Accidentally change focus to another part of the...

    Another similar thing that drives me nuts is having login happen in a JS popup instead of having a solid, purpose built page for accepting a login. Accidentally change focus to another part of the page and suddenly anything you typed gets cleared from the form. I want a URL to put in my password manager that doesn't require a session token, but often I have to go to one page and then click a couple links to get to the actual login page.

    I get the SSO argument above, honestly, but I feel like there should be a better UX around it, more intentionality that you're using SSO and not a site-local account. Maybe I have a Gmail email, but I don't want to be redirected to SSO based on that domain. If I choose to use SSO, I should be able to select that identity provider separately from entering my email address. However, this only applies to personal use; I can see corporations enforcing SSO use for their employee credentials. But even that workflow's UX could be improved.

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

    SeraphicSoul
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    I've always been a casual anime watcher, mostly just paying attention to recommendations from friends and having a nice little meaningless distraction here and there. I've found some heavy anime...

    I've always been a casual anime watcher, mostly just paying attention to recommendations from friends and having a nice little meaningless distraction here and there. I've found some heavy anime too, but tend to stay away from those as I'm looking more for happy and light content without drawn out tension or high stakes. But nothing truly connected with me, until...

    Over the last couple weeks, I have devoured Ascendance of a Bookworm. I know this series is old news to heavy anime watchers, but somehow I just connected with it in a way that I haven't for any other series. I watched those three seasons in 24 hours, then I rewatched it immediately. Usually, manga is ahead of the anime by a fair bit, and I wanted more of the story, so I looked into it, and a couple sources that I found gave me disappointing news, that the anime and manga were at the same point. (Dunno if this is true, it's just what I saw commented, so I didn't look into the manga too much further.)

    So I went to the light novel. J-Novel club was mentioned somewhere else on Tildes, so I checked them out, and they had what I was looking for... but it was paid content. So, I made my first ever purchase of anime-related content. Over the last week, I've read up to the point that has been translated so far. I tried using machine translated versions for free a couple times but it was so broken I just couldn't get into it. I'm now re-reading the light novel from the beginning of the series with the physical books that I broke down and also purchased.

    Work has suffered a bit, but I'm over the fever pitch obsession I had for the last two weeks... mostly. I can't wait for the next translation, but I will have to wait for next year this time (approximately, at the current rate of translation) for the English translation to catch up to the original Japanese content.

    I'm happy with the pacing of the story. There are gaps of time that are lead up to with phrasing like "we'll have to wait three days..." and then it feels like whiplash when the very next sentence is like "so we walked into that place three days later" when every English author I've ever read has felt compelled to interject a bunch of sentences to make the reader feel the "wait" along with the character. As a skim reader, that sort of lead up makes me scan ahead to the point where the action continues, but I can't do that with this novel. It's so different, and I love it. There's tension, but it's seldom if ever drawn out in a truly uncomfortable way, and most conflicts are resolved quickly, which makes it very... light. Which feels perfect, for me, at this moment in my life, when work has shifted and gotten more intense.

    Anyway, can't recommend highly enough, began buying the physical books just so I could lend them out to friends, will support the author any way I can. Wanted to share my first experience of connecting with Japanese content in such a deep way.

    3 votes
  8. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~life

    SeraphicSoul
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    This may seem off the wall, but a theory that has been stewing in my brain lately has been polyamory as it relates to the housing crisis, and the idea that perhaps a contributing factor to the...

    This may seem off the wall, but a theory that has been stewing in my brain lately has been polyamory as it relates to the housing crisis, and the idea that perhaps a contributing factor to the acceptability of non-monogamous relationships or the willingness to explore such relationships is in part due to the fact that it is no longer feasible for two people to purchase a house by themselves. The so called American dream is disappearing in front of us, and people are looking for alternatives.

    This is, of course, a bit of a stretch, and is not to say that it is a primary driver in the motivations of people seeking non-monogamy. I simply find the juxtaposition of the housing crisis and the rise or vogueness of non-monogamy to be... interesting.

    4 votes
  9. Comment on Looking for chiptune album recommendations in ~music

    SeraphicSoul
    Link Parent
    Aivi & Surasshu was one of my very first album purchases as a young person and The Black Box still gets a listen once every few months. Album listening is something of a lost art these days, but I...

    Aivi & Surasshu was one of my very first album purchases as a young person and The Black Box still gets a listen once every few months. Album listening is something of a lost art these days, but I still value it for its ability to tell a story. (Not chiptune, but I like The Flashbulb for similar reasons.) Strong seconded on Aivi & Surasshu for chiptune albums, it really does flow together quite well while still being good distinct song collections.

    2 votes
  10. Comment on What were your favorite Canadian bands of the 1990s? in ~music

    SeraphicSoul
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    Wide Mouth Mason is the one that always springs to mind for me, their first two albums were absolutely solid and their next three, while more dance focused from their touring, were very decent. I...

    Wide Mouth Mason is the one that always springs to mind for me, their first two albums were absolutely solid and their next three, while more dance focused from their touring, were very decent. I think they're still doing something but I always come back to Where I Started (their second album, haha).

  11. Comment on Looking for help in purchasing an eReader in ~books

    SeraphicSoul
    Link Parent
    Thanks for the mention of reMarkable, hadn't heard of it before now but the Linux base and the ability to SSH into it makes it a tempting option, especially if I can somehow justify the price by...

    Thanks for the mention of reMarkable, hadn't heard of it before now but the Linux base and the ability to SSH into it makes it a tempting option, especially if I can somehow justify the price by dual-purposing it for work meetings...

    A quick read on the hackability of the reMarkable shows me that the hardware is spacious, the software is Linux based with a couple interaction API languages available, but it's definitely not meant to be a workhorse, and only has 8GB storage so it's never going to hold your entire library. If you're not scared of some soldering it seems somewhat repairable though. Someone else has already done a tutorial on adding a microSD card slot to the reMarkable, which definitely seems interesting.

    1 vote
  12. Comment on What silly thing do you argue about with your significant other? in ~talk

    SeraphicSoul
    Link Parent
    I'm surprised there's no mention of the Cube Rule in this thread yet...

    I'm surprised there's no mention of the Cube Rule in this thread yet...

    1 vote
  13. Comment on Suggestions for fantasy that feels truly different in ~books

    SeraphicSoul
    Link Parent
    I can't speak to Faerie Tale, but Dresden Files seems like it wouldn't fit what OP is looking for, because it is very classical fantasy identites brought into a western context, which are both...

    I can't speak to Faerie Tale, but Dresden Files seems like it wouldn't fit what OP is looking for, because it is very classical fantasy identites brought into a western context, which are both things OP stated they were hoping to avoid. However, Foreigner series is an excellent recommendation that I would emphatically support, and is why I hope this doesn't get labelled as off-topic even though it may pedantically deserve that label.

    2 votes