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Jimmycrackcrack @lemmy.ml
Posts 41
Comments 653
When is it "enough" money?
  • I have wondered the same thing many a time. I don't think it's naive to wonder honestly. I find it genuinely confusing, not from a moral judgy standpoint but more of an effort to reward standpoint.

    If you or I sold tobacco in exchange for a quantity we'll call a "shit-tonne" for the purposes of discussion. It would change our lives considerably. As you said, you personally would do it, and I think odds are pretty good I would too. But if that 1 shit-tonne of cash doesn't significantly change the recipient's life or capabilities or long term security, I don't understand why they'd bother with it. I think my confusion diverges from yours in so far as I don't think the point of getting rich for the vast majority of people has to do with acquiring the luxury of a moral compass. It might be for some, but I'd say for most it's at best a side benefit and for many irrelevant. However I do think that most of us without the requisite shit-tonnes of cash like to imagine the purpose for acquiring it is to avoid having to expend the effort required to acquire anymore thereafter. In this framework, which seems so obvious and relatable to me, you'd think you couldn't hook wealthy actors in to shilling tobacco because basically, they just couldn't be bothered, I mean why bother? You might keep acting if you find it fun but surely there'd be funner gigs than ads?

    This is a more cynical way to look at it, but no less inaccurate than your theory of acquiring wealth to buy the ability to be moral. In the case of wealthy actors however, I think they're maybe not the best example, the richest ones are very rich but their material desires are sometimes able to scale with their wealth. Nicholas Cage was a good example as he managed to get himself in to ridiculous debt ostensibly from insane spending on ridiculous things. Presumably he liked having those things and was able with some effort to actually spend enough outpace his unbelievably high earnings. In that context you might well take lucrative acting gigs for scummy companies to help you out of debt or to help you buy one more private island.

    There's a whole other tier of offensive and obscene personal wealth where you see people like billionaire CEOs. These people trash my model of the 'purpose' of acquiring wealth and by the actions we see them do, yours as well. These guys probably couldn't spend all their money on material objects if they actively tried. Their motives are very obscure to me. I definitely judge these guys but I leave them just a little bit of slack in so far as it seems generally observable that acquiring this much wealth seems to make you want to keep acquiring more wealth. I may not know why, but it almost seems like some kind of a fundamental law or drive so it could almost have some exculpatory power, though not much and in any case would only lend credence to the idea that society as a whole ought to avoid the accumulation of quite so much personao wealth since if my observation is at all accurate it would tend to mean, that much like we hold it to be true that all drivers will be impaired after a certain amount of alcohol so too does wealth tend to corrupt the decision making and motivations of people who have too much of it.

    I've read about the topic a little bit and there's some concepts that make some sense. People do crave purpose, so if you make enough money to sit on your ass and avoid having to make money people have a tendency to create objectives for themselves to work towards and if they don't it can lead to unhappiness. In the case of some of those who achieved such wealth they had such objectives on the way up too, so it's how they've always lived their life (theoretically, if they supposedly got their through hard work and merit, big if). This does explain it I guess, but as an explanation it feels vague and weak. I've heard ideas around a kind of competitive peer pressure effect too, these guys want to be richer than each other. This is unsatisfying because it's just so dumb but makes a lot of sense, especially because it kind of scales with wealth as well. Often as people at all walks of life take stock of their position they will assess how well they're doing in comparison to where they were before and also in comparison to someone else around them so by those metrics you're always going to want to be doing just that little bit better than a few years ago and your always going to want to be exceeding or approaching the person you've most recently set as a desirable standard. All of these ideas seem to explain the behaviour we see but to me all feel too wishy washy to really make sense but I guess that's because it's going to be lots of these drives acting in concert along with something that one probably just has to experience and which basically none of us ever will as it comes with becoming richer than god.

    Personally I can't but think that if instead of becoming rich, I suddenly got bequeathed all of Elon Musk's wealth unexpectedly from his timely death then I'd very likely have far less ambitious and contentious goals than he. Not necessarily because I hold myself to a higher standard but because, I mean, why take over the world like a megalomaniac when it's so much easier and more fun to do lots of drugs and go traveling and play with all the best toys? If I really crave purpose I can make a movie or something, I wouldn't even have to be good at it, I could buy everything related to it being made and distributed. If I was talentless and it stunk and flopped, it wouldn't be my problem and I could afford to spend my time getting good at it as a hobby even if each flop cost hundreds of millions. But maybe one the zeros started trailing on my account balance I'd suddenly start wanting to own everything and influence politics and just generally being a bit of a prick, it seems to happen to people.

  • Is my girlfriend gaslighting me? (Edit: No, she is not gaslighting me, but may have some other issues.)
  • I'll add to the chorus. No, by definition this isn't gas lighting, but the behaviour is extreme and no less concerning. I'll not try to give amateur psychological diagnosis over the internet like some here are apparently willing to do, but you don't need that to know that she's acting in a really fucked up way.

    I wouldn't say you were "in the wrong" for missing her text, I mean, you missed it, it's not like you chose to do that, but I can see why from her perspective it felt temporarily frightening and it made her angry to be put in that situation (I'm assuming she was just frightened and that that's justified where you guys live, because where I am, her request is strange in the first place and getting mad about it not being fulfilled is ludicrous). How she's dealt with those unpleasant, but temporary emotions that had a perfectly reasonable explanation and resulted in no actual harm is unreasonable, unfair and ridiculous.

    The questions themselves are as manipulative as they are pointless. "What would you tell my mother?" I hardly think that's a particularly important consideration "she's been kidnapped" probably, since that's what's happened in this scenario, the question is not asked to get an answer, it's asked to maximise guilt because she thinks it's your fault if some psychopath kidnaps her. The subsequent questions likewise are selfish questions to ask because realistic answers are implicitly unacceptable, she just wanted debasement and contrition. If the CCTV is broken then the police, who would be the ones investigating this, would have their investigation compromised, there'd be little you or anyone could do about that hence asking because she wants some kind of super hero saves the princess type of answer or for you to have no answer so she can pounce. She's extracting false or unrealistic promises on purpose as a kind of emotional salve. The worst and most concerning of all is the request that you kill someone for her, this is real life, not John Wick. I can only assume and hope that she doesn't really actually believe you'd do any of this nor really want it and it's just part of this stupid punishment where you've got to promise the moon over and over until she feels you've made an idiot if yourself for long enough. If she really is sincere about that request and wants to bring it up again in any serious capacity that really would be time to leave because the fact that she has a manipulative streak and is now apparently murderous as well raises a lot red flags, but most likely she was never serious to begin with and this will likely not be something that comes up particularly often. This was up to you but frankly I would have stopped the game of make believe at that point and not actually made a promise to kill people on her behalf even if it's all non-specific fantasy, it's not a prospect that should be entertained on any level. The thing about the cat was just funny and honestly would have been kind of sweet if it wasn't for everything that came before. It is evident from the order of questions and the fact that you had answers to everything at that point that she was reaching for a "gotcha" to prove you don't think about things because you're somehow inconsiderate.

    This response to an everyday wrinkle in the fabric of life is something to keep an eye on because if she cannot deal with being temporarily made to endure bad feelings on occasion without having to make you pay then this is going to happen to you a lot and the things you're accused of or indirectly implied to be responsible for will be long and absurd. Let her cool off on this specific incident and if after there's been time to reflect, she still brings it up again with the same manipulative and guilt tripping approach I'd suggest to her that maybe it's not working out. If this single incident has shaken her faith in you so badly maybe she could take some responsibility for her own safety since apparently nothing you say will convince her that you'll be of any use in that regard.

  • is this the right way to establish boundaries with my nosy coworkers at the hospital?
  • Yeh that definitely sucks they've rigged it up in a way that's unusual for this type of work and also forces you in to this situation. Redirecting is good and probably your best option, canny and sensitive people will notice you doing this and take it for the hint that it is but dense or uncaring people will probably carry on steering things in to places you don't want to go. If you're forced to eat with them then yes redirecting the conversation will work up to a point but it is a subtle skill to do so non-obviously. It's hard to advise specifically what to say like a script, though I would say if you just totally ignore the question altogether and switch topic very bluntly it's going to come across strange and prompt confusion and questioning. You'll need to somehow maintain the initial thread of their topic as lip service and then turn off down an unrelated avenue fairly smoothly. It's what politicians do professionally. Reading the other responses to your post I think they've got some really good ideas on how to deal with this if you really get forced in to conversing against your will. It's a subtle art of contributing basically nothing and rephrasing their same question back to them. I think another commenter suggested something along the lines of "I don't know much about that what about you?" and similarly bland and useless resonses. This is friendly enough not to piss anyone off and lame enough to be totally uninteresting which hopefully invites little follow up. If they continue on their original track, you can combine this with seguing to another topic.

    I didn't suggest this to you initially because it doesn't sound like your natural style and I think advice is best if it allows the recipient to handle things mostly in their own way while helping to avoid pitfalls in doing so. I guess you'll have to navigate this daily frustration in a way a little outside of your comfort zone by carefully appearing to engage whilst really not and hopefully they'll find you so boring they don't bother anymore. Hopefully you don't mind this giving the impression that you're a boring person to the remaining 50% of your peers that don't bother you so much but sometimes it's a necessary evil.

  • [Silly Thought Exercise] What over-the-top absurd person would you choose to replace Biden who you think could actually body Trump, and why?
  • I think the doughnut thing is actually just some folks wanting a laugh and trying to be witty. The phrase made sense as it was intended and was taken as such (a person from Berlin), and the fact that there is coincidentally also a doughnut given that name is unlikely to have registered in anyone's mind while present at the speech and if it did it probably wouldn't have merited much more than a smirk since it's not a mistake to have said that, it's just a funny coincidence.

    I'm sure there's probably more than one pizzeria somewhere with a pizza on the menu called "New Yorker" and if someone said in a speech "I'm a New Yorker" no one's going to pissing themselves laughing at the person for being such a baffoon to have accidentally called themselves a pizza.

  • [Silly Thought Exercise] What over-the-top absurd person would you choose to replace Biden who you think could actually body Trump, and why?
  • The guy seems to be able to sweet talk his way in to any room and convince people to do and say the most humiliating things on camera. If him being British become an issue I think he can just act his way out of it and somehow everyone will believe him in spite of it being a publicly known fact.

  • is this the right way to establish boundaries with my nosy coworkers at the hospital?
  • You'll likely run in to a little bit of trouble because you're having to make explicit what would have been better for them to have inferred and when it's made explicit like that, it will come across as very weird to people and they'll probably have some trouble not taking it personally (even if they shouldn't).

    Some understanding of the general tenor of how this group talks would make for better ways to communicate what you want to say but as general advice, your proposed ways of addressing this seem like they're on the right track in spirit but you're phrasing them in ways that imply a note of contempt.

    This is probably because you really do harbour some contempt for these guys given the way you described them, like calling them childish for example. If you actually want to express some of that animosity then your suggestions are probably fine but if you're concerned about the "right" way to set these boundaries you might want to try and keep it neutral. This is also good if you don't want to earn their contempt either which is probably advisable even if you don't like them very much since you have to work with them and if they feel offended and hold a grudge it could risk spilling over in to the actual work.

    I like your idea of saying outright that you're not a talkative person, hopefully they'll feel a little guilty about having forced you in to having to say that and will not try to drag you in to the conversation so much from then on. The additional bits around that concept don't seem advisable, you don't have to chastise them for not realising you don't want to talk, that's likely to be unproductive, the point is you don't want to talk. Similarly the "and I hope you respect that" addition is good for being firm but also comes across a little aggressive, best deployed only if you've already made your wishes explicit and they're clearly not respecting that.

    Eating elsewhere, if that's an option is great, it you can already opt for that do it, you can avoid even having to bring anything up and the physical separation makes questioning you about it really inconvenient. If they ask you about it later that's when you can say you need time to unwind and that's also by far the most socially acceptable and understandable reason that people are less likely to take personally. I don't know if you resent the idea that your reasons have to be socially acceptable to these guys or should have to be massaged to avoid them taking things personally, but ask yourself this: do you want to teach them a lesson and demonstrate your contempt for them, or do you want to just be left alone to work and to continue to work effectively with them? Pragmatism over principle would make sense here.

    If it gets to the point where you have to actually say to another adult, in a work environment, "leave me alone" then odds are it probably won't even work and your coworkers are complete idiots that need to be fired. However if that's really the case, saying that, even if it doesn't work is probably good since at that point things are probably going to escalate and at least no one can say you did or said anything inappropriate.

    In short, take the easiest route if possible and just eat somewhere else at lunch and redirect the conversation back to work if they keep talking to you during work. If you end up somehow having absolutely no other remaining options but to explicitly tell them you don't want to talk be careful to communicate in a way so you only express this simple desire and don't imply some sort of judgement or contempt towards them. Try to be nice about it.

  • What’s the worst piece of technology you’ve ever owned?
  • They do many many useful things and the utility is valuable enough to begrudgingly have to accept the frustrating experience of using them. We generally really do have to accept it as well because as with all useful technologies, they become ubiquitous and then useful technologies are built off the fact of their reliable ubiquity and then those technologies replace existing ones and you find yourself needing smartphones to get by in society. They're close to a necessity if not in reality, a necessity where I live, but places like China for example it is simply impossible to go about life without one. I honestly don't what people do there when their phone is broken, just getting out the door to pick up a new one would be a challenge.

  • Homemade clubhouse sandwich with apple fries
  • Not gonna lie, I was pretty excited to find out what apple fries were before realising you just sliced up sticks of raw apple and put it on a plate. Looks like a nice sandwich in any case. Got that nice Hotel Food look.

  • What is it about the text messages and emails sent by older people that make me feel like I'm having a stroke?
  • The trend was to make the phone as small as possible and it would have been hard to do that with extra keys. You could make them smaller keys, but then it's almost as hard to use just by virtue of being too tiny tiny to type on.

    I always thought t9 was pretty great but I do remember it being frustrating when you needed to type something it was never going to get and it wasn't always convenient to switch to regular keying temporarily.

  • I’m 43 but everyone at the workplace thinks I’m 25. Is this something I need to change?
  • I guess it doesn't help you to say it now, but this was a terrible way to deal with a slight nuisance from what has to be a small group of stupid people. This has the potential to cause far greater intrusion and judgement from your coworkers than your lack of marriage and kids ever would have done, and this especially with a crowd that love gossip. You've potentially handed them the juiciest gossip they'll likely ever get and given how dull the workplace can be, they'll be milking it for years if they find out.

    I think you're pretty much in it for the long haul now, which will take work to maintain, and also depending on how long you work at this place with these guys, you better hope your unusually youthful appearance stays at a consistent 18 years behind your real age and doesn't hit a sudden inflection point where it suddenly all catches up because that'll be tough to account for.

  • Do Christians really think that being educated is sinful and should be avoided?
  • So, if I'm to take their message as intended, in addition to avoiding sports and education, I ought to avoid religion too? Are there more pages to this saying something along the lines of "... Except my favourite religion?" Otherwise, I mean, I'm confused what they want me to do here?

  • On Google pixel, is there a way to search ONLY locally when searching apps?

    When I want to find an app I haven't pinned to the home screen I swipe up from the bottom of the home screen to bring up a search bar where I can search for an app by name or scroll through list of all apps on the phone.

    Thing is the search bar on my new pixel phone is actually a Google search bar that will search apps locally at the same time as providing web results, especially if it can't find the app by name.

    It's a nice idea in theory but in practice I find it annoying, especially if I've just made a typo. Also, I'm just never going to use this search bar for web searching anyway because for that I would want my chosen browser so the web results are of no use to me.

    I actually remember my old phone used to do what I wanted it to do, then one day it switched to what my new phone currently does and after a long time I found the solution to return it back to it's previous behaviour except now I've forgotten what I did.

    I only want to search my phone's local storage for apps matching my keyword when I access the app drawer. How do I get rid of this Google search bar? (I'd love to get rid of the Google search bar from the home screen itself as well but I understand I can't do that without root on stock android.

    26

    Do you ever feel nostalgia for a type of sadness?

    It's strange but listening again to music from about 20 years ago, during a time when I was mostly sad and depressed, and where the musical choices reflected that, gives me a weird sense of nostalgia and longing for that time.

    I know it's not unusual for music to do that, that's just run of the mill, it's just odd that, it has me longing for a time and associated mood that, on the whole, I kind of didn't really enjoy very much. The angsty tracks were what I listened to because I was so bummed out and dissatisfied.

    19
    Youtube @lemmy.ml Jimmycrackcrack @lemmy.ml

    I never sign in, I delete cookies everytime my browser quits, but Youtube keeps pushing right-wing, incel bullshit at me

    I guess it shouldn't bother me, after all I try my best to avoid watching anything on youtube that I didn't go there to watch in the first place but nevertheless, it's hard not to see the clickbaity thumbnails for suggested videos to the right of the one I'm watching, and also, when I'm researching something it's undeniable that sometimes it genuinely was actually useful to have another video on the topic suggested that was relevant.

    But this has really started to freak me out, Youtube has gone bananas recently. I'm constantly getting suggestions decrying woke this or woke that, in particular a lot of videos of compilations of police bodycam footage with titles about various people being 'idiots' or 'entitled' or various other terms suggesting a strong pro-authority angle. Those suggestions were annoying but it's starting to get disturbing now because they're veering strongly towards incel themes. Today I've seen suggestions for: a video about catching a woman faking a rape accusation 'caught on camera', another about a 'high value' man winning in court against a woman wanting him to pay reparations because she refused a DNA test, another about why men don't approach women anymore, and on and on. They stick in my mind because I can see exactly the the world view this constellation of fucking garbage is catering to.

    On the one hand, I guess I could take some comfort in the fact that if the algorithms have gotten it this far wrong then maybe Google really didn't manage to snag so much data about me as I assumed but on the other, it's definitely used something it reckons it knows about me to make these assumptions. I can't for the life of me figure out where the fuck it got the idea I would like this or why it's so persistent despite the lack of positive reinforcement. I am not signed in, so I can't even attempt to manually give negative feedback and as far as I can tell people who do that say it doesn't work anyway.

    This all seems to have coincided with a dramatic change in recent viewing habits, so I'm guessing that's what has triggered this, but it's still weird as fuck that there's apparently some overlap here. I've been in the market for a new phone and so have been watching a lot of videos about various phones and I was also considering a pixel as one of the options because if I went with that, I could use GrapheneOS. This has meant watching a lot of content content on GrapheneOS as well. This does seem to have had the expected effect of a lot of suggestions along those lines but it's definitely coincided with the fucking alt-right starter kit. This is certainly a counterintuitive link. Shit makes me want to puke. Normally when I see these kinds of surveillance economy mechanisms at work I just look at them with a detached kind of wry amusement at the shitty state of things but this actually really did offend me, I mean yuck, makes my fucking skin crawl.

    6

    Is there any permanent risk to the phone itself if you install graphene OS?

    Back in 2007-ish I told my Mum all about how you could jailbreak iphones and unlock them to make the phone with other carriers. I helped alleviate any concerns by convincing her and myself that if there are any problems after the procedure, nothing physically has been changed on the phone and as long as I made a backup first, we could always switch back.

    I jailbroke the iphone 3g she had and it didn't take long before she began to notice a lot of problems, it got hot all the time, the battery drained way fast and animations were juddery and slow and sometimes apps crashed. I restored the backedup image of the phone from before thinking I'd fix everything, but although it improved the situation somewhat, the heat and battery dissipation remained permanent and the phone became useless. Ever since then I've been pretty scared of doing anything of that nature to any phone.

    I really want to install Graphene OS on a pixel phone but... well, I also want to be sure I can go back if I change my mind, especially as the phone is expensive. Any risks associated with doing this? Is there any way to screw it up so bad that you permanently brick the phone? If the USB cable breaks or gets yanked in the middle of it or something like that can I always get back to square 1? Is there any known way for things done in the installation of Graphene OS to somehow survive having stock android flashed on to it?

    7

    Does Matrix have anything akin to 'posts' as in Lemmy and Reddit?

    I haven't really used any kind of messenger service since probably MSN Messenger and IRC back in the day so I'm a bit behind on a lot of the basics. Part of what's quite different now than the experience then is what modern messenger protocols seem to be used for, as in they have public channels dedicated to topics that function like communities, whereas I only really had experience using them for talking to people I personally knew IRL and manually adding some kind of username to establish talking.

    I just got a matrix client and joined a community on a specific interest because I had a question I wanted to ask. I did something similar about a year ago on Discord. This worked.... sorta but the problem I had doing this on Discord is kind of what I think I'm going to run in to on Matrix. If the community is open to the public, there's going to be a lot of people some of whom will log on at different times. If I post a message asking a question hoping someone will have an answer for me, I feel like it's going to be hard to see anybody replying to me specifically because presumably there's going to be lots of people talking to each other on various topics including those with their own questions. The messages just come in a stream, much like you'd expect of something designed around chat but like, if I get up to make coffee and miss someone's reply to me, how would I ever find it. Or conversely if my question is not immediately answered but someone joins the room later that could have answered it, how would they see it?

    If I make a post here on Lemmy, it's open and around for anyone to answer it for some time. Theoretically it's around forever but in reality it's more like however long it shows up on people's feeds but either way it'll be longer than a few minutes or seconds.

    6

    How do I confirm if a certain phone supports VoLTE?

    You'd think this would be easier than it seems to be in reality. I am interested in getting a Sony Xperia 5V or Xperia 1V. Where I live, phones can't make calls unless they support VoLTE. The phones in question support basically all the bands I need them to support and I've found several encouraging Reddit posts from people saying they got the Xperia 1V to work here (haven't found any for the 5V). Some confirm VoLTE, others simply say they were able to make calls. The VoLTE requirement for phones is very recent with different carriers killing off their 3G networks at slightly different times the latest being about a month away so it's hard to judge how much I can trust those posts. I've also seen a video from what seems to be an Indian person showing you how to enable VoLTE on a 1V.

    The thing is though, these are encouraging signs but Sony themselves have kept decidedly shtoom on the matter not mentioning the capability in their marketing or their web manuals for either phone, it is also not mentioned on GSM arena, however I noticed that this is not mentioned in the information about my current phone on GSM arena either, even though it definitely does support it because I've been using since even before it was a hard requirement. Is there any way to figure this out definitively? I've tried contacting Sony and maybe at some point they'll reply but frankly I'm not holding my breath and I suspect if they do reply they'll say something about the phones not being for sale in this country (which is true), or mentioning some of the other things the phone can do without answering whether it will do this one particular thing, which is what some websites selling the phone did as well. That type of evasive behaviour would normally lead me to conclude the answer was the feature isn't supported but those Reddit posts and that video, while not definitive enough in their own right seem to strongly indicate that it is supported.

    5

    If GSM arena lists a certain band frequency as supported by a phone but says - USA at the end of the list, does that mean the same phone won't work in another country operating towers on that band?

    I'm trying to make sure that if I import a phone to my country, it will likely work pretty much wherever I may go here. Most phones I'm looking at support every 4G band operated here, but I've noticed that on the GSM arena website, they will often give a list of supported bands for a given phone followed by a dash and a region name like 'Asia' or 'international' or 'USA'. One of the supported bands I'm looking at is operated in my country, but seems to be pretty rare, if I use that as a criterion the list of devices shrinks considerably as does the number of brands to choose from. One particular phone I looked at only lists support for the specific band I'm looking at in it's "-USA" list of supported bands. I'm confused by what this means for me, if that band is used in my country and I import a phone that only lists the band as supported in the US does that mean the phone wouldn't work here if I'm in an area where the only available tower operated on such a frequency? Why not? It sounds like it's physically capable.

    The other question is, how do you assess the likelihood of this being a problem? The relative rarity of support for this band and the fact that it's only officially supported here, but seems only to have recently been licensed for people to build infrastructure operating on that band makes me think that there are likely very few towers actually using it here, but presumably more will eventually start to do so. My current phone has lasted me 6 years, almost 7 so I'll want to future-proof in this regard. In the time since I bought my last phone, carriers have abandoned any non VoLTE support so if the phone I bough then, hadn't had this compatibility it would have become a brick well ahead of its time so I'm weary of something like that happening.

    EDIT: Something has occurred to me that didn't before and might answer my question, but then I guess it'd be good if anyone knew because this is only a guess on my part. Maybe the dash followed by region name is referring to model variants, as in, if you buy the US variant of the phone, then it supports these bands, and if you buy the international variant, it supports these bands etc etc. In that case, it would presumably mean that if I bought a variant model of a phone that lists support for a particular frequency band it should work anywhere in the world where those frequency bands are used not just the region mentioned after the list. I guess the trouble is that usually the sites I can find selling these phones to consumers in my market don't go in to anywhere near that level of detail so I'd have no way of knowing which model variant it was other than simply the manufacturer's marketing terms for their product lineup.

    2
    No Stupid Questions @lemmy.ml Jimmycrackcrack @lemmy.ml

    I have accepted a job starting late this year, but may be about to receive another offer much sooner. I definitely want to do the later one, how bad would it be to accept the first then leave?

    I have already been offered and officially accepted a gig which represents a continuation of a move towards work in a new sub-field for me that I really want to move in to, but it's just a short term contract like the many I've been doing over the years and afterwards I'll have to return to scrounging for the next gig after that with no guarantee of further success in that area (except hopefully doing well and getting more offers but nothing concrete). This gig won't start for a long time so I need to start filling the intervening time.

    I recently interviewed for another gig, which would be full time indefinitely, no more scrounging. It's a pretty great opportunity too, lots to like, but would likely represent an entrenching of my existing career path thus far rather than the move to the new one I've been embracing. Had this opportunity come up maybe a year ago I'd have grabbed it with both hands as I hadn't considered this other path but now I've begun on that new path I want to see where it can go. I think I did well in the interview and have a feeling I may be offered this full time job (not counting my chickens yet but it looks promising). That would be tricky though, the short duration, later-in-the-year gig will stretch just over 2 calendar months and I can't imagine getting that much time off from a brand new full time job in order to do the other one.

    It's a small town with a small industry, and it's a damn shame the timing couldn't have been reversed. If I were to accept the full time gig until shortly before the 2nd gig later this year and then leave to go do this short term but arguably more interesting contract job, is it likely to go over so badly that I'd get a bad rep locally for this? I could cancel the short term job but deep down I'm pretty sure it's the work I'd like to start doing going forward. I could decline an offer for the full time gig if presented with it, but I have nothing else going and should really take on some work. It's unfortunate that I likely wouldn't be able to just walk back in to the first gig any time soon if I left and I'd probably appear pretty unreliable to them anyway having done so.

    4

    Can you use PLEX to stream local media to gen 1 chromecast WITH subtitles?

    This is something I've been trying to do reliably for years. I can stream anything I want easily with VLC or even just Chrome itself but I can't get subs to work. I was able to make it work for a long time using a Chrome app called "videostream" but it now no longer works correctly on my system. It's a bit confusing to me but it kind of looks from what I have read that Plex can apparently handle this? Most references to the idea seem to be for later chromecast versions but mine's a 1st gen I bought in 2014. Could I use Plex to stream local media with separate or embedded srt files to my chromecast ?

    14

    How do you make the 'video' tab in VLC only display local videos on the internal memory?

    This used to just be how it worked, I don't know what changed. I have for a long time used VLC to navigate to files on my computer in the other room so I can stream video to my phone that are stored on the computer.

    Occasionally I'll also use VLC to browse local media on my phone. I can still do this through the browse tab but I have to navigate my phone's internal memory folder structure that way, which is cumbersome and irritating. Previously I would just go to the video tab because any video that showed up there would be local to the phone. Now, all the video on my computer's storage is displayed there and seemingly NONE of the phone's own local video material.

    I tried going to settings and Media Library Folders and noticed that interestingly the network location for my computer was ticked and the internal storage was unticked. I have no idea how that happened but I thought I had the problem solved then. I unticked all potential Media Library Folders except internal storage which I ticked and then navigated to the video tab in hopes of seeing only local video and no network video. The situation was completely unchanged. There was a notification at the top of the screen from VLC indicating it was scanning so I thought perhaps it was going to have to complete this scan first before anything could change so I left the phone to it to it with the VLC app open. Some time later I returned and the notification was gone, but the video tab was the same. I navigated away from and then back to the video tab and still it was the same. While writing this post I checked the Media Library Folders setting again and the changes I had made were reversed, only the network location for my PC was checked and all other items including the internal storage were unchecked. WTF!?

    1
    Apple @lemmy.ml Jimmycrackcrack @lemmy.ml

    How do you disable focus/do not disturb mode?

    I'm trying not to just resist everything new in mac OS right away, but this whole focus concept and do not disturb mode turning on without me asking it to and not having any option to disable it is just too much. I can imagine maybe using this in some exceptional circumstances where it actually occurred to me to do so, but I definitely want it to be a conscious decision.

    In the preferences I could find no off switch. I tried setting it to only turn on when I'm in Antarctica and off when I'm not but it didn't seem to actually work as the little moon icon remained there even after this. I also tried to scheduling it to operate in a one minute window but even after that window elapsed it continued to be in 'do not disturb mode'. I don't tend to get a whole lot of notifications nor rely on them much but frankly the idea that they're being suppressed not under direction from me is infuriating and I don't want that to happen.

    10

    Did Australia ever have television commercials from the D.A.R.E. program?

    So I've seen passing ironic references to DARE in American media representing it as a bit of a joke. That media was intended for American audiences so didn't really elaborate on what the program entailed but I somehow already knew without any need of such context that it was an anti-drugs public outreach campaign and was able to laugh along having had various similar laughable campaigns aimed at youth in my Australian childhood.

    But then on reflection I realised that the whole DARE thing specifically, was familiar to me, like I'd personally experienced it too, but what I remembered was a TV commercial and also seeing it as late as the 2000s. From what I've now read about the campaign it seems to have been US-centric and maybe a bit in the UK and based entirely around talks at schools. I went through my fair share of shitty talks at school, but not DARE specifically, but I can't shake a memory of an ad I swear I remember seeing, in Australia, specifically about use of marijuana, implying that the effects of smoking it aren't fun or enjoyable and then at the end of the ad having a logo or graphic referring to DARE. But I can't seem to find any evidence that this, or even any DARE commercials ever existed. It doesn't help research that we have a brand of bottled Ice Coffee in Australia called Dare who have had lots of high profile ad campaigns so that's almost entirely what comes up from search results. I found Flinders university (An Australian university) paper about the role of schools in Alcohol education which talks about DARE and its utter inefficacy but seems to be referring to the American context and specifically about alcohol. So doesn't really prove anything.

    From what little I remember about the ad it was focussing on the fact that marijuana can give you an increased heartbeat and feelings of paranoia and trying to imply that this was somehow something that always happens and is the only effect of smoking it. Had some sort of tagline like 'there's nothing fun about marijuana' or some similar idiocy.

    15

    Why does the FX_cast extension work on some youtube videos but not others?

    I can't seem to find any rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes the casting button just doesn't appear as an option. I first noticed when I tried to watch something that was a youtube video that's in 4:3 so my best guess was maybe that somehow had something to do with it but I tried various videos at different aspect ratios, frame rates, resolutions even different videos on the same youtube channel as where I has actually succesfully found the option presented.

    This is probably happening for all sorts of video but I noticed it with youtube and did my testing there because that's where this extension works the most reliably and where I can be confident some other weird factors about how the website is setup aren't responsible for a video not being able to cast.

    3

    Anybody know of games similar to Dito Seregin's 'Escape Pod'?

    The game is here. . Tremendous fun and despite it's lack of depth, I've had fun trying to beat my records but ultimately, it gets tired fast given there's only one "level" so to speak albeit a randomly generated one.

    I really like the mechanics of this one and managing them against fuel load. It's similar to a game called Space Rescue by Ostrich Studio which I also liked but both these games seem to be kind of little prototypes so there's very little to them.

    2

    Why do all my (desktop) casted youtube videos cast low quality?

    The weird thing is that I'm sure it didn't always do this. I thought it might be because I'm trying to cast with FX_Cast but even with Chrome this also happens. In the past this sometimes happened when you'd expect, if the internet was particularly slow that day for some reason, or if I try to play something with a high frame rate, but in general I could expect HD 1080p quality. While I can't know exactly what quality is casting, it looks more like 480 and sometimes 360.

    Don't know if its relevant, but it's a chromecast 1 I've been using since 2014.

    0

    Did ublock origin used to work with chromecasted youtube videos?

    So, it definitely doesn't work now, but it's just, I swear I used to able to avoid ads while casting to chromecast by using my computer with ublock origin installed in favour of the android youtube app.

    5
    Apple @lemmy.ml Jimmycrackcrack @lemmy.ml

    Can you prevent the lockout screen from occurring during display sleep when streaming to chromecast?

    On my MBP, if I'm streaming something to the chromecast for any appreciable length of time the display sleeps. That's not a bad thing, it's supposed to do that, but the trouble is, if I want to pause playback, it's not a matter of simply hitting the pause key to immediately pause. This is because pressing any key wakes up the display and presents the login prompt.

    To pause, I have correctly type in my password, and then in the appropriate app hit the pause button. This process takes several seconds and if I needed to pause because of wanting to freeze on something I'm viewing, or because something around me is happening that demands immediate halt to playback for me to attend to it, then this lag between the decision to pause and when I've finally paused is really just way too long. To make it worse, if I'm streaming youtube and this happens, the playback controls presented via the browser on the video page stop controlling the chromecast stream, the pause key does nothing. I can eventually pause (though not seek) via the player notification controls but it's not ideal.

    2

    why do hangover symptoms come on in waves

    Something I've always noticed and am going through now. Sometimes I'll drink too much the night before and be concerned about a hangover the next morning. Morning comes, and almost always my first thought is "gee I feel like shit but actually this is way less bad then I was expecting" this misplaced optimism gets washed away at an indeterminate length of time later when a wave of awful nausea crescendos to a peak of crappiness before gradually receding leading me to think "maybe that was the worst of it" only for the cycle to repeat.

    This happens even when the hangover is not one severe enough to have caused vomiting. Feeling sick from drinking too much I understand, but I wonder what's physically happening during the peak of these waves that's not happening during the troughs.

    17
    History @lemmy.ml Jimmycrackcrack @lemmy.ml

    was there a well known earthquake in the 90s that caused a landslide which buried a school full of children on a hillside

    I'm trying to recall some of my earliest memories of world events. The further back I go, the more vague things get as you'd expect.

    I think I recall seeing on tv over the course of several days in the 90s a tragic and mostly unsuccessful rescue operation to try and dig out kids who were buried in rubble and mud from a giant landslide that occurred after an earthquake.

    I think it was in a part of the world you might have called 3rd world at the time and this featured in the media coverage in respect to the inadequacy of the rescue operation and the infrastructure allowing access to the site of the disaster.

    What sticks in my mind is footage, almost always from the same angle, a very wide shot from far away of the school on a very steep hillside just about completely buried in mud. I think the buildings nearby that still stood looked kind of tropical, I think I recall tin roofs but the memory is a bit too vague to say that for sure. I think the angle all the news coverage seemed to be using over the several days must have been one of the only cameras near the scene and in a fixed spot since it was hard to see much of what was going on and it was the same angle throughout the reporting.

    While researching this I came across photos of the Aberfan disaster in Wales and thought that might have been it until I saw it was from the 60s, and also the hillside wasn't really tall enough and the obviously the location, UK doesn't match my memory. I also found stuff about the same thing happening in Yunan Province in China. But that was in 2012. The photo in that article is basically exactly my memory in terms of hillside and type of region I'm thinking except that I recall it being a bit more cropped in and much more blurry SD-analogue TV-ish looking as it was actually footage not a photo.

    2