That tallness modifier is more real for me than I ever realized growing up. Wish I had made better us of that earlier in life. The 4-eyes bonus helped my INT too.

Rated by me:

• Strength 10 (Garmin says I’m a champ ;-)
• Dexterity 15
• Constitution 9
• Intelligence 20
• Wisdom 15
• Charisma 5

How I expect my friends would rate me:

• Strength 15 because I’m a man
• Dexterity 15 because I have long arms and legs and I’m thin (but not super athletic)
• Constitution 20 (im so damn tired and people overestimate how much more I can carry)
• Intelligence 20 (four eyes and fit the stereotype)
• Wisdom 5 (I joke a lot which hides my wise takes which often require emotional energy that I don’t like to expend
• Charisma 15 (I don’t feel charismatic, but people keep annoyingly pointing at hard evidence that shows that I’m doing much better than I think)

I’ve been working really hard the last few years to put new points into Charisma, and I’ve been building constitution and strength through long brutal bike rides with massive hills regardless of weather.

What does it really mean to be “the best” ebike? Interesting bikes, but the methodology for this listical makes less sense than the average Spongebob episode and I think the author knew that.

My buddy rides one of the Lectric folders and likes it. I paid 3 times as much for a Specialized Turbo Vado SL, which has fairly mediocre ebike specs. Nevetheless it is also the best ebike because it weighs only a bit more than a normal bike so it handles great and I never have range anxiety because I can just ride it home, even up some brutal hills. We have different use cases and that’s what this article failed to capture very well.

My other buddy is buying an ebike right now and he’s got “specs blinders” really bad. Numbers mean very little compared to riding the bike or knowing what your looking for and having access to reputable experiences from others. He’s going to end up with a suuron or something silly that doesn’t even match »potential« use cases where we live.

I have an oil filled space heater that doesn’t work. It just runaway heats, trips the breaker, and tries to melt the outlet. The scrapyard will pay me maybe 50¢ for the metal, but I have to drain the oil and then I have to figure out how to properly dispose of that. I’ve thought about donating it to the side of the highway, but I can’t do something like that so it just lives in my living room, unplugged, broken, space-consuming, and ugly.

All that is to say sometimes people don’t know how to dispose of items correctly, especially if they’re foreigners from a country that sorts differently or not at all.

I’m not big on organized religion, but that doesn’t stop me from giving kudos when a religious figure has the occasional goated take. Pope Leo, Slayer of Greedbots!

Very nice. The tall trees make your bike look tiny!

I followed a similar path. When I was on Gnome I hated plasma. When Gnome 3 dropped I tried a bunch of stuff like Cinnamon, Budgie, Xfce, Lxde, etc. and settled on Plasma which has only continued to be great over the hears. I value the tweaks and the fact that it can be configured 100% desktop centric without a bunch of touch/convergence stuff getting in the way.

Back 10-15 years ago a friend tricked me into trying social dancing (think swing, salsa, tango, etc.) by telling me we were going bowling. They drove so I could not escape. Turns out I like it and since it’s not partnered a lot of people come alone and if you can summon up basic courtesy and respect, many of them will dance with you if you just ask. Different dances have different vibes. Swing is wholesome and a bit retro-nerdy, salsa is more flirty and extroverted, tango is intense and deeply technical. I made thousands of IRL acquaintances and dozens of friends doing this over the years. I never went or continued doing it because of the people, but they sure made it worth going. I never saw myself doing or liking this until I tried it. Now I can’t imagine my life without and I seek it out in every city I travel to. I imagine other hobbies could be similar. You can find group bike rides for various skill levels. Maybe your area has a nature hike club or a mycological society (people who study mushrooms). Poetry slams can be surprisingly cool too. None of this is advertised well, but a great place to look is in the back of an alternative newspaper that covers music and art and stuff like that. Like the back back, just before the weed and escort ads.

I would be signing all my communications cryptographically and sharing a key in person so people can validate whether a message not delivered face to face is really from me.

I donated a few bucks.

I see the controversy in the comments section, but none of us would be here if it wasn’t for the work of the devs.

I remember internet forums in the 90s and early 2000s and I’ve played MMO civilization roleplaying Minecraft servers with IRL nazis, takies, fascists, etc. Some of those communities made 4Chan look like Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. From my own experience ml has “character” and so do beehaw and dbzer0. These cultural differences are enabled by decentralized social media. There’s validity to the idea that the sign-up process should capture more of these nuances. You don’t have to look any further than your own instance to find bad takes and imperfect admins and moderators, but they’re still the best of the best because they actually did it and the people talking about them didn’t. Maybe I’m uneducated on this and I’ll change my mind, but as it stands I’m cool until they force tank emojis on .world users.

I do think it’s good that this type of talk happens, as it allows instances to develop a reputation.

That’s a no go for me. I stopped going to the gas stations with the ad screens on the pump for this reason. I want to hear the whoosh of gas going in my car, not some fake-cheerful spokesperson trying to sell me stuff. Some spaces are just sacred.

Junkie Elmo is the correct character to use here. Why do we crave enshitification so badly?

I’m also untangling myself from Strava. I already got a few good suggestions to replace the features I will miss most, like the personal heatmaps. There’s something super motivating about watching my ride footprint expand to cover large sections of my city as my fitness grows and I get more and more rides under my belt. I also like the fitness and freshness chart they do. I have a few years of summer peaks and winter lows that provide a nice backdrop to the current year’s training.

The last straw for me was how close they’ve become to google. If I’m paying to use a platform, especially if I’m paying a decent sized chunk of change, I don’t want them to also sell my data.

Very true. The recovery info from my watch is always secondary to how I feel. Often this aligns well, but sometimes it does not.

Try thrift stores if you know what styles look good on you. There is a thrift store in my area that specializes in business clothes for women. They help people get jobs, but you can also just shop there. The women in my life swore by it.

If I had to distribute money based on timeshare, Minecraft would get 49.5%, Cities Skylines would get 49.5%, and all the other programs would be left to fight for the scraps because I play those games like it was a full time job.

“Them” in this case being the business owners, not the workers or the people their tech is used to oppress.

What a trip down memory lane. Back when Reddit was still a place worth visiting and not (or at least only partially) a steaming cesspool of fermented bullshit.

This is a good reminder. I recommend everyone grab their takeout data every now and then, but also, print out the 6 codes and put them in a safe deposit box, safe, bury them in a ziplock bag inside of a coffee can in your yard, etc. Hopefully it will be a waste of your time, but if you need them, they’ll be there.

Yes, that’s how I used to have mine set up. I used to be able to make whitelist for numbers not to record, but otherwise it would just do it automatically for every call. Too many businesses, people, and organizations trying to pull sketchy things. I’ve literally played these recordings back to companies over the phone when they tried to claim they said something different. They record for quality assurance. I record to avoid their scam tactics.