What’s the context of this photo? I.e. what were you making/processing?

Courage the Cowardly Dog is crazy

Yeah, it’s the consistency of it that’s so impressive.

Proton is so good that even when a game has a native Linux version, I often opt for the Proton version (so my games are all in one place). I was even able to install mods for games like Baldur’s Gate 3 (albeit with a bit of tinkering)

The only thing that I would miss is contactless payments via my phone.

I wonder if the poor legibility is part of the point. I would not wear an outrageous t-shirt such as this in public, but I would be even less likely to wear a more legible version — precisely because more people would be able to read it. Poor legibility may evoke curiosity in some people who are too far to read it, and perhaps even result in a humorous surprise when someone who could not originally read the text moves close enough to read it.

Smaller text feels like a whisper, and maybe that’s the effect the designer was going for

Archive link for anyone who finds this useful https://archive.ph/E7XFt

Edit: Have read the article and daaamn, this is ridiculous. Thanks for sharing this, I hadn’t seen it yet.

For me, it’s actually easier to trust sources like unionriot.ninja — though by “trust”, I don’t mean “take them at their word”. It’s more like a “I understand how to situate this journalism within its wider context”. Which is to say that I find them easier to vibe check.

I find smaller outlets like this are often pretty good with their sourcing. For the example, from these guys, I think I read some really good coverage of some specific issues in the prison system. The article was clearly written to persuade (and as you say, clearly left wing), but the way it was doing that felt transparent. In particular, I think there was a quote they used from a legal expert, but they also included links to that person’s work/full quote, which makes it easier for a keen reader to vibe check the person. I like their transparency.

I agree that it’s hard to place them on a “reliable” spectrum. My instinct would be to place them quite high, because the fact they’re open about their biases (i.e. left wing perspective) and they are good at citing sources makes it easier for me to evaluate their work. However, that doesn’t feel right when we consider what kind of news outlets would typically sit there — many of our heuristics for parsing media are still anchored in a more traditional model of news coverage, which these guys clearly aren’t.

Oh, I love this one, it’s very silly. I find it oddly grounding when I discover that the cause of a problem was me being silly, because I’m already aware that I am prone to foolish errors (as all humans are); when I discover that an unfathomable computer error is actually my fault, it feels like everything is right with the world

I think that’s okay, because that just means your answer is something like “take some time to breathe and introspect about what I care about when I am given the space to care about stuff”, or “try out a bunch of stuff I didn’t have time or money for before, to see what seizes my passions”.

I mean, it’s not okay — it’s a fucking injustice that so many of us are deprived of the opportunity to explore what we would do if we were free to live as we chose, but it’s okay in the sense that it’s not your fault, in case that’s what you were feeling

I’m not at home at the moment, but I actually have this small one to hand. These three photos are the same tesselation, just viewed [from the front/from behind/backlit]

front back backlit

Whilst automated tools can help on this, there is a heckton of human labour to be done in training those tools, or in reviewing moderation decisions that require a human’s eye. I think that in a world where we can’t eradicate that need, the least we can do is ensure that people are paid well, in non-exploitative conditions, with additional support to cope.

Actually securing these things in a way that’s more than just lipservice is part of that battle— I remember a harrowing article a while back about content moderators in Kenya, working for Sama, which was contracted to work for Facebook. There were so many layers of exploitation in that situation that it made me sick. If the “mental health support” you have access to is an on-site therapist who guilt trips you into going back to work asap, and you’re so hurried and stressed that you don’t have time to even take a breather after seeing something rough — conditions like that are going to cause a disproportionate amount of preventable human harm.

Even if we can’t solve this problem entirely, there’s so much needless harm being done, and that’s part of what this fight is about now.

https://www.codingfont.com/ is a fun, tournament style quiz that compares different monospace fonts. It’s far from comprehensive, but I found it useful to gauge what font features I find stylish and readable

(For the record, my go-to font is Jetbrains Mono)

I share this view. Someone elsewhere on the thread said that the best covers are ones that recontextualise the original, and this song/cover feels like the perfect example of it. I just can’t directly compare the original to the cover because they’re going for such different things

Oh, I love this version of Bad Guy.

Your playlist sounds fun, would you be willing to share a link?

I love Avantasia’s “Lay All Your Love on Me” (Originally by ABBA). Metal covers can sometimes feel lazy, but this is an excellent rendition. It feels like the perfect coming together of two distinct parts of me: the me that daubs myself in rainbows to dance to ABBA at the gay club; and the metal/punk energy of the majority of my style and music taste. It always goes down well at parties.

Edit: I am having more songs coming to mind, but a weird one I can’t help mentioning is Edmund Welles cover of “Hallowed Be Thy Name”.. It’s a clarinet quartet (+vocals) cover that I didn’t know I needed until I heard it. So delightfully weird, and it has no right to go as hard as it does

I have a bunch of origami tesselations stuck on my window. They’re made with translucent paper (similar texture to tracing paper, but lighter), so they catch the light beautifully

I was telling a friend about him the other day. She said she found it odd how it seems like he became a martyr for his ideals, in that the way that he is remembered is almost like he’s a mythological figure, more ideal than man. I agreed with her that the loss of humanity due to such a high profile death is tragic, but that it wasn’t the internet who turned him into a martyr, but the FBI (and whoever else was pushing for his prosecution).

They threw the book at Aaron Schwartz because they wanted to set a precedent. They wanted to turn him into a symbol, and that led to his death. I’m proud of how the internet rallied around him and made him into a different kind of symbol, but like you, I feel sad to think about what could have been if he hadn’t been killed (I know that he died by suicide, but saying that he “died” felt too passive). It sucks that he’s just a part of history now.

A huge aspect of this also is that it disproportionately benefits academics and students in parts of the world where there is less institutional access to journal subscriptions. That is to say that SciHub has been a significant force for democratising knowledge and countering historic inequities.

Hopefully later, I’ll find time to reply more substantially, but I just wanted to say that reading this comment, my first response was “hard relate”.

I also struggle with a perfectionist mindset which causes me to get into a “failure-spiral”, where the demoralisation from failing causes me to disengage and continue to fail.

“After reading your insight, maybe I’m sensing a change in my perspective. A positive change. Maybe I can LET GO of the feeling of failure and move on.”

This is a really positive achievement, and I’m proud of you for it. However, it’s important to remember that a quest like this never really stops. Regarding my own propensity to put more pressure on myself, and my frustration that I could neatly solve that problem, a friend compared the effort spent on self improvement to my heart beat — a rhythm that is essential to life, something that only finishes when my life does. This is to say that I’d wager that there will be a point where you will fail in your quest to let go of the feeling of failure. You will inevitably burn out and slip into old patterns of thinking that are harmful to you.

But something I cannot emphasise enough is that this is okay. It’s a part of growth and healing. You’ve grown around this mentality for years, so it’s going to take tenacity and time to unpick that and build something new. The important thing is to build the rhythm. When you find yourself failing to fail gracefully, give yourself some time and space to wallow, if you need it, then get back up and keep trying.

Maybe this perfectionist mentality is something you will never fully shake and that’s okay, as long as you keep yourself grounded in where you’re trying to go and who you’re trying to be. Come back and read this post, or other writings of yours that remind you that you want to be more than what you are now. Genuine progress is so subtle and slow that it’s hard to notice it when you’re focussed on pushing forwards, but if you keep yourself grounded and know where you want to go, you will make progress.