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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • I pretty much only use YouTube to look up specific clips of things (eg: simpsons clips, bits from movies), the very occasional video game “how do I do this specific thing?”, and specific songs i don’t have a copy of. I never watch any of its original content. I’m sure some of it is fine, but sturgeon’s law says most of it is crap, and there’s so much non-crap already on my radar to read/watch/listen to.

    So fuck youtube.





    • it’s free
    • runs on a wider range of hardware
    • is more customizable
    • can run much windows software with wine or proton
    • has a large ecosystem of native software
      • much of it free and open source

    The advantage of Mac is it’s more widely used and thus more widely supported (for things that are supported at all). You can just buy an apple computer from a trusted source and it’ll work. Linux doesn’t quite have that yet. If more people move to Linux , you’ll find better drivers and stuff.


  • Much of this slots into time outside work rather than the workday itself.

    • walk a different route to a destination
    • pick an algorithm and walk with no destination (eg: straight until you hit a light not in your favor, then turn. Works in urban envs)
    • go somewhere you don’t normally go. Eg: library, different coffee shop, that little art store you always see
    • go to the library. Walk along the shelf with eyes closed and pick a book at random.
    • pick a genre of music you never listen to. Listen to it.
    • cook or prepare a meal unlike your normal fare
    • go to a thrift store. Buy a cheap article of clothing you wouldn’t normally wear. Wear it. See how it feels
    • find free or cheap art (music, theater, whatever) in your area. Go.
    • journal. Spend a few minutes writing down your day’s details
    • hit wikipedia’s random article button. Read it.





  • Python.

    • It’s pretty easy to get going.
    • the debugger is very good. Being able to put a breakpoint and interactively fuss with it is so much better than print statements and crying
    • you can (and should) use type annotations, but they are optional
    • it’s on most machines already, but you don’t want to fuck with the system install of it. On Linux and Mac you can use pyenv or similar if the system came with a version you can’t use. (Don’t teach anyone python 2.)
    • the standard library is very good.

    You could also do JavaScript, as that’ll work on any modern browser. However, JavaScript is a deeply cursed language. It’s really bad at like every level.

    I don’t recommend it unless your top priority is “it is definitely available everywhere” and “these are future web developers”.




  • Adding websearch to the start bar’s search was solving a problem that didn’t exist.

    Maybe the average user is so ignorant and bad at computers they don’t understand this. They don’t know what a browser is. They don’t know what a website is. They don’t know what a program is. It’s all just stuff.

    Personally, I’d rather spend billions on education than AI slop and other patches on “people are kind of dull”


  • This is very heteronormative and gender binaried. Queer people exist and date.

    That said, anecdotally, from the handful of women I’ve talked about this with: many don’t like making first moves on these apps.

    Using dating apps is a skill, and if you haven’t been practicing sending messages you’re going to be bad at it. The vast majority of first messages I got from women were “hey”. Trash tier. Probably because they just haven’t done it very often.