Yes, they can indeed be a problem for people with allergies. In my case dogs (and cats unfortunately) trigger respiratory issues. I had that issue at a workplace where dogs were allowed, not fun times. And unfortunately medication like antihistamines are not an option for everybody, personally I get extremely drowsy from them, even from the latest generation meds.

I read so much in my youth, I could read cover to cover in one go thanks to the power of hyperfocus. Reading was fun and synergised greatly with my ADD-fueled daydreaming.

Unfortunately though high school came along and had to fuck up my intrinsic motivation by force feeding the boomer drivel that ‘everybody should have read in their lives’, and having to write book reports where you’d have to analyse those books to death. Assignments could vary from analysing all the different narrative arcs in the story to the relationship between each main character in the story and even more obscure stuff that I don’t even (want to) remember.

Anyway, this meant reading the ‘classic’ Dutch writers like Reve, Mullisch, Wolkers etc and then analysing a story you didn’t even care about. Fun fact: those writers seem to have an extremely limited repertoire: do you want to read about addiction, WWII, or sex? Ok ok, you had ‘het Gouden Ei’ by Krabbé, on which the movie ‘the Vanishing’ was based. Guess that was a breath of less stale air.

But in the end it sucked the enjoyment I felt when reading from my very soul and replaced it with the feeling that reading books is a chore. At times a slight shimmer of that old spark returns, but never for long. Depending on how often I feel like reading, getting through a book usually takes me months to years these days and rarely captures me like in the past. I’ll never forgive the sadistic bastards who came up with this part of our educational system.

Anyway, sorry for dumping this on you, turned out to be more of a rant than I initially intended. If anybody knows how to convince my brain to consider reading to be fun again, I welcome any insights.

I’d say it is either zombie apocalypse or those viruses immediately get obliterated by our immune systems because they lack 50.000 years of evolution and natural selection. Only one way to find out I guess…

but I generally see suicidality as a symptom of something else. If we can improve the “something else,” the suicidality improves or even goes away in the vast majority of cases.

If it was as easy as that she would never have gotten her request approved. It is extremely rare for someone at her age to have her euthanasia request approved on account of mental issues. Hell, it is near impossible to get your request approved for this at old age, let alone when you are in your 20’s or 30’s. So please be careful with comments like this, as having exhausted all available treatments is a prerequisite and there are a lot of them. Mental healthcare in the Netherlands is in a fairly shitty state thanks to 20 years of budget cuts and ‘let the market solve it’-policy, but it is not so shitty that we just resort to killing off troubled people.

If medical professionals would even have had the slightest feeling that there was a way remaining to get her some semblance of a normal life, she wouldn’t have been eligible.

Actually both options are possible here in the Netherlands, it’s a matter of preference of the patient. In both cases a doctor will be present, whom will also supply the drugs if a patient chooses to take them themselves.

This case is incredibly rare though, it is already extremely hard to have a euthanasia request granted for mental issues at an older age, let alone someone so young.

A bit more background on ‘the aftermath’ by the way, as the article doesn’t mention that: after the euthanasia has taken place a coroner will establish that this was indeed the cause of death. Once that is done the public prosecutor needs to give permission before the remains may be buried or cremated.

Also, the coroner will send the report of both the physician who approved and performed the euthanasia and that of the SCEN-doctor, who performed the obligatory 2nd opinion mentioned in the article, to a special committee that will check if everything went by the book. Not only the procedure leading up to the euthanasia, but also the act of the euthanasia itself. If there are doubts about whether or not all means of treatment were exhausted and if there really was undue and indefinite suffering, or if there are any doubts if the patient really wanted to go through with the procedure at ‘the moment supreme’, a doctor can be held accountable for that. Fortunately that is rare, as the whole procedure is not taken lightly.

The early Lenovo period W series were (imho) very good as well, still have my W500 series which is built like a tank. Survived years of college, years of lugging it around to customers and data centres and having somebody spill a full cup of coffee over it (yes, the drain holes do work!). It only required replacing of the monitor cable once, which was a pretty easy thing to do. Unfortunately the CCFL backlight has lost quite some luminance by now, but guess after 16 years that is to be expected. Can’t get myself to part from it though, so many memories attached to it.

I prefer the IUPAC name: Oxidane. Terrible stuff, it’s even used as an industrial solvent and yet we are exposed to it every single day of our lives!

Kill the Abomination!

Or SuSE Linux, the non-slackware or jurix version was bleeding edge at the time.

Could be Bupropion or Atomoxetine. I’ve been on the former, but it didn’t do a lot for my ADHD. It did give me a wonderful few weeks filled with panic attacks and having my mind convinced that every little ache I felt must be because I was dying of something. Of course everybody responds differently, so don’t let that deter you if it is prescribed, but for me I never want to touch that stuff again.

“You’re not being sacked, no, we are releasing you into a world of opportunity!” Yes, a friend of mine actually heard that one a while ago when he was ‘let go’. 🤨

I would have settled for (Eyes of) Ibad Blue.

Option 1 doesn’t even exists for me. The feeling of accomplishment only comes after option 2. ☹️

Well, ok, wouldn’t be opposed to that, but there’s already been a number of UT followups whereas Unreal never got a sequel worth mentioning. Unreal 2 wasn’t a terrible game by itself, it just wasn’t very… unreal.

Just give me an Unreal Engine 5 remake of the original Unreal (no, not Tournament) and I’ll be a happy man.

And that’s just the quick summary, first time I just restored a backup. But as my system immediately failed again after updating I started digging and came across some obscure posts of Lenovo users (ok, maybe Lenovo isn’t that great with implementing Secure Boot after all 😋) having the same issue and devised that rescue plan. Quite the nightmare indeed, but at the other hand it also taught me some new skills. After going through the same routine on each update of that package I ended up excluding it from updates in DNF.

Don’t now if the issue was ever resolved, I’ve since stepped away from Fedora as I’ve just had too many of these weird issues with it on each new release. Creating bug reports and the accompanying warm feeling of helping to improve the Linux ecosystem is nice, but in the end I just need to get work done.

This has nothing to do with Lenovo perse, this is the average experience for every laptop I’ve owned which had Secure Boot turned on.

You know what is fun? Having your Dell basically bricking because Fedora starts shipping a new version of shim-x64 which completely fails the UEFI handover to bootloader. Leaving you unable to boot at all, so no chance of reaching rescue mode. Then more fun times of booting a live environment from a usb stick after going through the same hoops you went through, finding out how to decrypt your BTRFS partitions, manually mounting and chrooting them so you can finally downgrade the offending package.

Linux and Secure Boot just isn’t a great combination if you ask me.

Isn’t dendrite formation and the shorts they can cause a much bigger concern when dealing with old batteries that are being charged 24/7? Asking a genuine question here, so please don’t shoot me if I’m wrong. 🙂 I’d love to hear more about the most common failure modes and causes for li-po/ion batteries.

And mistreating fellow actresses, “because that’s what my character would do and I’m a method actor”, bad.

Definitely a case of ‘to each their own’. I’ve got one at home, I never want to go back to mucking around with two monitors whether it is for work or gaming.