Oh look, it’s another me.

First off, forget those self help social media posters. Many are full of shit trying to make money off your purchases of their classes. If they sound batshit, they’re not a good fit for you.

I’ve attempted hundreds of projects. Most don’t come through. Many are ongoing. Many are in the forgotten abyss. I used to be sad about all of that. I’d find parts to a project that got superseded by a totally different design. I still find project parts to vehicles I’ve sold. Games I’ve forgotten, games where I suddenly stopped 20% through, “worthless” games where I’ve got hundreds, maybe thousands of hours. I used to be sad about not paying proper respect to great games and instead falling for quick match or battle Royale types.

The root of the sadness is similar to yours: we have finite time. Gotta make the most of it, right? Play the best games, create the art I dream of, build the best version of my car the community has ever seen, ride the most miles on the bike, see the most mountains, try the most beers, have the most nights out.

Not so much anymore. I have finite time to experience things, but I also have a finite rate of consumption. I do not have time to do it all. When I was younger, living with my parents or living in a low maintenance apartment, the world seemed so open. It seemed so devoid of me. Moving into a house of my own was like the dolly zoom moment of my life. Partly because I came face to face with all my incomplete projects and forgotten hobbies as I properly packed them at my parents’. Partly because so many of the “must do” house projects are still not done, not even prioritized, 3 years later.

And yet, the world has not ended. I’m not a failure. I’m still enjoying things. But I have limited time for pleasure and limited money to do so. I cannot do it all, and that’s fine. I say yes to what I can. Does it really matter if I don’t make a drawing because I gave a new album a full listen-through? Does it really matter if my car isn’t the most special build because I took the bike for a dozen rides instead? I’ll do what I can when I can. I still have what I consider to be a high productivity drive, but I worked to be more satisfied with what I have done and less critical of what I haven’t done. I’m not lacking in these fun things because I’m lazy, I’m lacking because work and sleep take more time of my life than anything while chores/repairs/errands eat so much of the rest of it. It’s not my fault, and it’s not yours either - especially with you 65hr work weeks.

Actually, let me repeat that: it’s not your fault, especially with your 65 hour work weeks. Being bored at your job puts the mental restlessness into overdrive. That does not help you feel accomplished with these other interests because I’m sure you aren’t getting into them as deeply with what little time you have left in the day.

It’s OK to relax. If you’re in a comfortable situation, your life is healthy, your home is secure, and you relationships are maintained, then anything else is a bonus. There’s no wrong way to relax. Theres no wrong way to have fun. There’s no way to be perfect so sometimes, relaxing is the best way to better yourself.

PS: books sit somewhere between video games and movies, but not in a line. While I certainly struggle to read at times I’m not trapped in a plane, there’s a good chance you haven’t tried the right book. You don’t have to read the great dramas or the cleverest mysteries. My gateway was Revelation Space, largely because my visualizations and feelings were rooted in 1,000 hours of the game Elite Dangerous. The quasi-personal experiences in the game had some decent overlap with the voids of space and desolate planets, devoid of life. Not that close, but close enough when a plot less game gets paired with the excellent descriptions of an author.

Supposedly fixed now, but I haven’t seen any info on what has happened to affected players’ assets. I saw people had their credits wiped and carriers renamed. Were they individually fixed?

I don’t recall special EV fear at that time. I recall insanely cheap gas prices in the summer of 2020 and a drastic reduction in commute demand. Once the excess oil was depleted and production hadn’t come back up to speed by like summer of 2021, gas prices shot up. I’m deep in a sub/urban mix, so that affects my experience, I’m sure. While all cars had their market value increase at that point, used EVs and Hybrids had an additional 50%+ markup, comparatively. I was shopping for them and ended up passing on the idea due to excess price. I vaguely remember prices being about $12k for ~2010 Priuses and $5k for 1st gen Leafs with deteoriated 50-mile batteries. I don’t recall Volt/Bolt prices and was already disinterested in Teslas.

Lore for games whose fans seem few and far between. Namely, Ace Combat series and Elite Dangerous. ED because I have a ton of time in that game and while it’s shallow without a campaign, I guess my imagination fills in all the blanks as a plausible interstellar space sim. Ace Combat is mostly because of the subreddit. Same goes for Star Wars prequels memes. Funny how I lost that part of my persona when I left reddit.

I can’t comfortably tell you I have depe knowledge of space because it’s big as hell and professionals know way more, but it’s still something where I know a lot of, effectively, trivia.

Ace Combat: maybe it was just memes.

Elite Dangerous: there’s currently a player-run expedition sitting on the far side of the galaxy. 8k registered players. They hit some tourist spots but are going somewhere into under-explored regions now. Some people are grabbing exploration payouts. One group wants to find the furthest possible earth-like planet and name it Earth 2, as a backup, in case the aliens come back. The aliens had a huge event that changed the course of the colonies. There’s some neat items added by the developers in honor of players in the first few years. Beagle Point is an easy one, named after one player spent a ton of time with his elderly dog playing the game. The dog passed and got a star named for it. There’s the Fuel Rats and the Hull Seals, two player groups that have a huge network of players that can assist stranded players. There’s noob training groups that train noobs because the instructions are not clear in the game. There’s 3rd party apps and sites to make QoL better. Some players hate it like it’s cheating, I say future humans would definitely make support systems like this because current humans are currently do it (and can we just pretend it won’t fucking get paywalled in the future, for 3 god damn minutes?)

The star wars prequels are political drama with laser swords. The cgi animals were excessive. But it pretty clearly parallels the historic rises to fascism/dictatorship. The Anakin/Kenobi lava scene works way better than it looks. A akin brings balance to the force by eradicating the huge volume of jedi vs 2-2.5 sith. Kenobi loved him like a brother. Well, relationships are forbidden for the jedi, so yeah, Kenobi just admitted anakin is trash to him (OK, that’s a twisted stretch).

Space, real space, is deep. The Hubble images were amazing, how could we learn more with JWST? Well, I literally couldn’t imagine that every single direction in space is filled with more galaxies. That’s insane. That’s terrifying. That’s not understandable in human terms. There is an unfathomable amount of space and we’re never going to tough anything outside our solar system.

Orbital mechanics are cool. You’re thrown sideways so fast you continue to miss the ground. The Earth is moving so fast it’s actually really difficult to bring enough fuel to slow down enough to hit the sun. The Parker solar probe used venus to slow down and it’s still trying to shed speed and get closer. Or maybe it already peaked (valleyed?) at 430,000mph in the solar corona. But every time it gets close, it’s speeding up and still missing. The video from “inside” the sun is kind of comfortable. You can use gravity to slingshot craft. I don’t know about you, but I airways pictured some scifi visualization of hooking around a sun in a parabolic u-turn. That’s not really a slingshot. You leave with the same relative craft-body speed as you approached. If you’re flying 100 000mph towards earth, you’re leaving it at 100kmph. But the earth is orbiting at 67kmph. You can hook a 90deg turn around it and leave in the same direction to add 67k to your speed. You can hook the other way to shed 67k. You showed up as to approach it, but then it pulls you big and eats that speed. But as long as you’re faster than escape velocity, you can choose what happens next.

Lithobraking means crashing into the ground. It’s a real tactic.

Voyager has left the solar system and is a steady ~40,000mph. Space is big. If it was pointed at the next closest star, Proxima centauri at ~4ly, the trip would still take like 70,000 years. It’s not pointed that way, but it is pointed at a star that is traveling somewhat towards us. In that time frame, it is actually predicted to come within 1.6ly of each other (voyager and this other star) in like 40,000 years. For reference, Voyager 1 was launched almost 50 years ago and is still within one light day of earth. It’s close at ~23.5ld, but still not there.

“We know more about space than our oceans” is scary until you realize nearly all stellar knowledge is useless for human life. It’s a massive hobby.

Lead pipes are fine. Step 1: Install. Step 2: ignore one generation of aggressive residents. Step 3: never touch the pipes again

I’d bet a dollar it saves one traffic light and I’d bet a second dollar she lives within a quarter mile of the south end of the road. Opened for the relief of the most minor of conveniences.

You win on drug count, but still tie on “doing all the drugs available” with multiple other mammals

It’s fine to highlight it’s correlation, but your guess is a theory of causation. It’s likely either some genetic combo that drives the desire for coffee or some lifestyle arrangement that drives the need.

Even the idea that an inactive mind leads to deterioration isn’t definitively causation. Correlation goes both ways. Are they mentally healthy because they’re mentally active? Or are they mentally active because they’re mentally healthy? The degree of mental deterioration goes up as you age, which is also when you can retire, when you don’t have to support your family, when you’re physically incapacitated, and when you slow down overall. So yeah, I plan to stay active because I’ll take my chances that it helps, but at some point, something will simply break. Maybe I’ll inherit the dimentia. Maybe I’ll inherit the neuropathy. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

Rail. Buzzword marketing is for the leasing agencies. Everyone else wants test results. The playing field for sales is greatly leveled when everyone has to be certified to industry standards, are selling only approved designs, and are largely playing within a mutually-assured-destruction set of requirements defined by competitors working together. Defects are reported to the regulating body. It’s almost beautiful.

On the other hand, demonstrably good improvements are slow to be implemented.

For me, yes, cards are still used. I work in transportation. Half the certified companies are small hands-on repair shops, so there’s probably a beige office with a real rollodex. Most traveling auditors are semi-retirees so cards are the default, but certainly not required. Most presenters at conferences are from the biggest ~5 companies, fighting each other for market space, so they like handing out cards with a big company logo and their latest job title. I hand them out because this is the first job that provided them to me, so it’s been exciting. Plus, people seem to actually like my company. And, with a box of 500, I’m likely to change job titles before I deplete them at this rate.

My industry is not trying to be on the bleeding edge or marketing and buzzwords. Product goes through years of tiered in-service testing before market release. It’s all about results, not techy contact scans

Better, it hits harder every year.

I just wanna fuckin sleep

Bath Salts by Highly Suspect

Do you happen to be frequently. On the edge of sleep deprivation? Either by continually running short on total hours and/or by ignoring the first wave of sleepiness? In my experience, such habits bring upon The Horrors. I’ve recently been honing in on those as random bouts of artistic endeavor. If I’m gonna dream it up, I may as well put it to paper

Anyway, my suggestion is The Jaunt by Stephen King. I think it’s only about 20 pages, part of a collection of other short stories. I have yet to read it myself

I’m tired, remember?

The thumbnail is a picture of me, after work, doom scrolling, to deenergized to do anything else. My go-to is coffee as a pick me up. Then, 15 minutes later, the thumbnail is a picture of me, doom scrolling, but now on the toilet. I hate it here

Definitely agreed on good chargers, but, regrettably, standards keep changing, so here’s my anecdotal experience/advice. I’ve had multiple issues - my pixel 3a charges faster than my Pixel 7 (comparable battery life) and my 7 doesn’t rapid charge on my ~2020 bricks. I have great cables, too (finally) and after swapping bricks/phones/cables, the problem stays with the brick/7 combos. Same for my SO’s S21 Ultra or whatever. So, after years of practice of reading wattage specs, I’m now stuck reading the bullshit product descriptions saying iphone 17/s24 compatible or whatever is contemporary to my devices. I charge slowly nightly, so the ability for proper fast charge is important for the random needs otherwise.

If you’re using a type-c device, you need a C brick and C-C cable. But, what I’ve recently discovered with my latest pair of excellent bricks, is that “dumb” type-C devices may lack the negotiation ability to get C-C power. I must use A-C in that case to charge my flashlights. Probably why they all come with shitty A-C cables. I already carry A-micro for my older devices anyway

There is no significant loss in total skill with each newer generation. The paradigm is constantly shifting. Humans have always adapted and learned to manage whatever is readily available to them and how to maintain it. Your parents complain you don’t know their vintage skills. You complain they aren’t learning new skills. You complain younger people don’t know your “necessary” (vintage) skills.

“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise” - some guy in 1907 summarizing Greek beliefs.

The generation that can navigate whatever it is kids navigate (flipper zero?) can’t modify an OS. The generation that can modify an OS probably can’t tune a carburetor. The generation that can tune a carburetor probably can’t change a horse shoe. Your skills are based on what you have to do every day. As technology removes the need to manage those things, the skill is lost and new skills replace it.

The diagram is accurate because the last arrow turns around. Duh

SpongeBob should be smiling, aloof, and looking the other way

Native English speaker, but I’ve visited India, so I have a different, related topic. Of course, there’s two caveats: I have an outsider’s perspective and the British have a very lengthy history with the region. In major cities, spoken English seems as popular as Hindi. In Delhi, signs seemed to be entirely in English, although maybe I just didn’t notice the Devanagari script as much because it’s incredibly foreign to me. Kolkata had less spoken English, but still more English signs than Hindi or Bengal (I can’t tell the difference). Traveling to rural West Bengal, the advertisements have skewed towards Bengali (I believe) and road signs are dual language, but but I don’t think I’ve seen a single business sign that didn’t have English as the primary text.

I thought it was silly that English and Chinese became the main languages in Firefly (which, for the show, was English with Chinese words thrown in). Now I realize, not only is that possible, but it’s already here. English is the global standard for air traffic control and imperialism has pushed language influence far and wide. International business has made English effectively a requirement for competitiveness. I was just oblivious as an English-only speaker at the time. I’ve wondered if Hindi would now be a more accurate 2nd language for the Firefly future, but I’m not convinced because of how prevalent English is there, like it might have already reduced the power of Hindi on the global scale. Plus, there’s so many dialects there, Hindi is the most common but it doesn’t have a majority

Elite: Dangerous, the space ship game with a life-size universe. 1200 hours so far in 6 years. No real story, no campaign, just you, random players, and a trillion planets to find. Or perhaps you’d rather blast pirates. Maybe scrounge around for some plant scans. Whatever you like, I hope you also like 30 minutes of travel time because “fast travel” on an interstellar scale is humanly slow. Plus, it’s huge. All star systems are known, but few are visited. Visited divided by know, times total game existence predicts we’ll have it all mapped in 45,000 years.

But at the end of the day, it’s all about listening to lovely spaceship sounds. Graphics are nice. Sound is amazing.