Another recommendation for Linux Mint here. Just live boot off a USB drive and try it out. Maybe dual boot for a while if you’re unsure about just getting rid of windows cold turkey.

I use it daily on my work machine (2 year old Dell laptop) and it feels pretty flawless and polished. Even for basic desktop stuff I like it better than windows, but then all the techy Linux shit it’s still there if you care to use it. I use this “user friendly” distro to stare at plain text in monospaced fonts all day, usually between source code files and command-line stuff.

A default install of Linux Mint Cinnamon has a classic windows layout of a taskbar and start button.

But things like searching and updates actually work smoothly and quickly.

It seems pretty consistent that any time I hear somebody mention Sharia Law, I am in for some horrible takes.

No anomalies detected in this case.

Your comment reminded me about how I keep wondering if I should bite the bullet and throw away all the plastic cups, plates, bowls, and utensils in the house. Spend a little money on more metal and ceramic stuff, and potentially benefit my family’s health long term. Maybe.

The kind they have (sulcata or African spurred tortoise) is 3rd largest behind Galapagos and Aldabra tortoises, but they are common and cheap in comparison to those.

We have a sulcata too, only about 4 years old but of course growing pretty quickly.

If I could go back to tell 10 year old me that future me would have a tortoise waiting at the back door to go out like one of the dogs, it would have blown my mind. I’ve always loved turtles. Even the ninja kind.

it shocked me that anyone could value personal wealth over coexisting

Laughs in freedom units

Yeah I agree with that. Relying on individual compassion to fix real estate probably makes even less sense than relying on churches and charity to fix poverty and hunger.

I’m still in favor of making things better in one’s little corner of the world, because even just looking at it selfishly it tends to make your life and your mental health better too.

The finance people (and sadly, many many others) think making the number bigger is a more important and worthwhile goal than making your corner of the world a better place. So good on you for being a compassionate human!

I think “quiet quitting” is just the white collar equivalent to the more blue collar “nobody wants to work anymore!”

I typically stay at work until 5pm because I make no effort to come in early and I take long lunch breaks.

This place is an absolute ghost town by 5, and it makes me happy to see that. It seems people mostly have their heads on straight here.

Ooh I still haven’t tried this. I wonder if it has any issues with Skyrim VR.

What they are getting at is that gravity is not a force so much as your mass trying to travel in a straight line through curved spacetime. The weight you feel is because the surface of the earth is in your way.

Get into low earth orbit and that straight path has you going in apparent circles around the planet. You are very much within the earth’s gravity but you don’t feel “weight” because the surface of the earth is no longer blocking your path. You still have mass and inertia and all that, of course.

I have a carbon steel wok and I absolutely love it. I have a couple cast iron pans but I haven’t used them in a while because of it.

This made me want to see more “shame on you” PSAs and even political ads in the US.

It’s both because some people need to hear it, and because so many of the “fuck your feelings” and “waaah did I offend you” crowd would be butthurt and offended.

It doesn’t even need to be overnight! I’m currently sitting in a recliner in an infusion/cancer center because I am on a medication that’s given through IV every month. My insurance is going to pay a 5 figure sum for me to chill in this chair for about 90 minutes.

I’m a software engineer and the actual dollars paid monthly/yearly (not the fake high “retail” cost) are something like 2x my gross income.

I sent that image to the guy from college. It was the first time I’d messaged him since 2016. He responded within seconds with “those were the days.” Then he asked about the family and we discussed what games we play with our kids now.

Mine is about to start 2nd grade, so still pretty young, but I can always enjoy some chaotic Halo with occasional friendly fire. (Skulls enabled to give unlimited ammo and grenades — extra chaotic!)

Yeah you’re thinking along the same lines I was. If the situation ever occurred that an F-35 was in close combat with an enemy aircraft, shit has gone very sideways.

Though you’re also right that with the interconnected platform of the thing, in reality the dogfighting F-35 would just have to distract the enemy for a moment while somebody dozens of miles away fires a missile.

Well this hits home for me.

My first experience playing Halo was checking it out at a friend’s place in college in 2001 and proceeding to play several hours of split screen co-op all night. It was awesome.

My most recent experience playing Halo was earlier this evening, playing split screen co-op with my son. We ran around the island in The Silent Cartographer just blasting the shit out of covenant, our fellow soldiers, and each other. Though admittedly a lot of the latter was me running around like an idiot while the kid blasted my corpse high into the sky. It was also awesome.

The US keeps the F-22 to itself already, but the F-35 is basically the NATO multirole fighter jet so the US has plenty of those too.