southsamurai

The only places there that haven’t changed are the tiny game subs, to my limited willingness to use the site. I have checked the niche subs I used to moderate, and all but one is swamped with bullshit. Even that one has changed some. The only ones of those unchanged are the ones I had set to private ages before spez threw his little hissy-fit. The ones that were public are either dead, botted, or just unchecked insanity with bad moderation. Spam everywhere.

Fuck that noise, grow it out and rock a skullet like a beast

Eh, they don’t suck as much now.

They’re on par with any of the shitty chains tbh. Crust is okay, but not much more than that even with the various options for it. Sauce is acceptable, cheese is good, some of the toppings even can be called good to great for a chain pizza. Still not my top pick of the chains, but not as bad as Caesar’s at all lol. Better than freezer pizzas at least, though digiorno does a good enough stuffed crust if that’s your bag.

There was a time dominoes was worse than Caesar’s. By a big margin, depending on the store.

It was a cider, but thank you :)

No bullshit.

Yeah, even the big names tend to not care much as long as nobody else is profiting off of their work. Agents and publishers, they tend to get right snippy about piracy lol.

Mind you, there is a segment of working authors that do suffer in their ability to go from a part time, almost hobbyist situation into a proper career of it. They tend to see the lack of sales as more of a problem, but they tend to be younger and didn’t ever see how impossible breaking in to traditional publishing was. It’s easy to look at your self published income and think “oh, if people had to buy these, I’d be making a living at this instead of it being barely enough to cover expenses for writing”. But, most of the time, back before self publishing was actually a valid and useful route, they wouldn’t have been selling anything, they’d be hoping for an agent to get their first sale for them.

And I’ll never tell anyone that they can’t profit from their own ideas and labor, and expect anyone consuming it to pay up. Authors that object, that’s fine by me (and I actually don’t pirate their stuff). But like you said, most writers would rather someone read and enjoy for free rather than not read at all.

As a published (if hilariously unsuccessful) author; no, no it isn’t.

Gods, I hate those. I won’t watch anything that does it

Man, I wish I could afford their rates. They’re just a little bit higher than I can justify compared to other options for a given service.

Plenty. Music and books in particular. I’m usually behind on making legit buys, but I treat piracy partially like a library where I can try before I buy.

That isn’t saying I buy everything I pirate, I don’t. But if I like it enough to keep the files, I’ll wait until I find a good sale and eventually get a legit copy in some format.

I also do it in reverse, where I’ll buy something, but pirate a digital copy when it’s more convenient. That’s typically for paper books and music on vinyl. Sometimes I’ll even pirate a copy of a CD if I’m not up to dealing with the ripping (disability means I don’t always have stamina for everything, so stuff like ripping a cd is low priority).

I very much enjoyed enterprise at the time, despite the horrible theme song and the flaws in writing that spotted most episodes.

Now, part of that is being a huge Bakula fan. I love the way he throws himself into roles. I think though, had there been another age actor in the role I still would have enjoyed the show.

It wasn’t great Trek. Probably the weakest of the older series, depending on tastes and criteria. Certainly wasn’t up to TNG, TOS, or DS 9. I’d put it on par with Voyager, though it was both bad and good in different ways, with the lack of attention being paid to established Vulcan history in Enterprise tipping the scales to it being lesser than Voyager.

But I really liked that they tried to go back to the whole “wagon train in space” vibe. And the cast was great. Can’t hold the iffy writing against the cast, and there were some great moments where the actors kept things from being worse just by virtue of how they carried their characters.

I don’t rewatch any of the series as a binge though, so my opinion might change when the flaws are showing up in rapid succession compared to the original pace of watching week by week and over time. I know binge watching made me almost hate shows I used to like a good bit (like Bones as an example).

I can’t compare anything to the newer shows since I’ve kinda stopped watching much in the way of “tv” the last few years, so I haven’t caught any of the stuff that has been done in the last decade. Could be that one of the new shows would be worse, in comparison to the earlier shows, I dunno. Doesn’t help that I despise the reboot movies, and the fact e that they happened kinda soured me on new Trek overall. The folks running things don’t seem to be interested in the kind of shows that made me enjoy Trek in the first place, but that’s second hand impression from seeing what people say online

Really?

It’s dumb as fuck.

Hate it if we want (and I have major problems with how young phones and similar devices become glued to kids), but they’re here to stay. They’re a part of modern life, and trying to completely ban them is the most idiotic waste of time and resources possible.

You gotta find a way to limit use in a consistent and evenly applied way so that parents and school staff are all on the same page. Then you just keep enforcing the rules amd explaining them over and over. Eventually, it becomes a manageable annoyance instead of the chaos it currently is

Poweramp

The way it handles its own audio engine is pretty much the best available.

I don’t have that problem because if I can smell their product and it bothers me, I leave whatever place it is.

But, you should be aware that they may have washed their hands just fine. Probably did. A lot of soaps smell way stronger than you’d think. If the smell is on the hands, it’s more likely to have come from soap or lotion than a perfume/cologne. At least, that’s been my experience.

Cologne in particular, if it isn’t a spray, you just use a fingertip and then dab unless you intend to crop dust everywhere you go. That’s not typically enough to linger more than maybe an hour on the finger itself. Obviously, some people just douse themselves, but it isn’t the majority of adults using a decent scent because of the expense.

But, yeah, I feel you. My grandmother was the same way, and of all the things I could inherit from her genes, I got that same kind of hyper sensitivity to smells

Now, I smoked for a long time and it suppressed it. But then I quit, and holy shit, it came back worse. My wife had to change soap three times before I could sleep in the same room, after I quit smoking.

And don’t even try to get me into a mall with a bath & body works. Scented candle sections of stores can clog me up for hours.

Which is a long way of commiserating with you. I’ve had scents “taint” other things before. Often enough that I don’t bother to try and enjoy something after a scent sets off my nose. I won’t be able to taste anything but the smell for up to a couple of hours afterwards, if the scent is strong enough.

Just audio, or miked?

I found some by klim that have been very durable so far. Something like five years and no issues. Well built, come with their own case. Wired buds. Sound can be a bit muddy for music, but not unbearable. In calls, they’re great.

Bluetooth wise, check out tozo. They do respectable buds on a budget. Not the best sound, but acceptable, and their mics pick up decently. Battery life is decent.

Back to wired, if you can find a sale, the tin t2 model is damn good sound for the price range. You usually have to be patient to get the 50 price point, or go used. But they really do sound great on a phone with a decent DAC. But that’s sound only, no mic.

That’s easy. The people profiting from it are pushing it hard.

There are only two browsers now, chrome(ium) and firefox. Everything else is one of those with some changes.

Firefox based is usually the way to go if you want to avoid anything Google related.

Otherwise, they’re on par with each other, imo.

Man, they asked the wrong people.

I’d have trouble picking a favorite.

Live life to the fullest, and you’ll revel in your senses, all of them.

Holy shit,I didn’t even know it was still available

Nah, that’s the funniest attempt at dissing someone that said something you don’t understand I’ve ever seen.

Calorimeters do a specific job. That job is not the same as digestion and metabolism. Not all foods “give up” calories in the same way, and no foods do so in the same way as inside a calorimeter.

Measured calories via calorimeter are indeed accurate with exactly what they measure, i.e. The exact food that is placed into them.

What a calorimeter can’t do is guarantee that everything put into it is the same.

The more complex the substance is, the more variation there will be between measurements of different batches of that substance. Something like refined sugar is going to give the same results reliably because there’s just not that much variation. Same with refined fats and proteins. Once you get simple enough, the results vary by so little as the be meaningless.

Put two bananas in the same machine, the variance will be greater than that of simpler materials. Is that variance enough to matter on a practical level? Not usually, but it can be.

But, that variance is still there, and the range of possibilities is enough to be significant when calculating what you might slap on a nutritional level of a given food.

Hence, the results aren’t accurate in the sense that they can be reproduced in a precise way. There’s just too much natural variance in foods, even carefully prepared foods.