I’ve gone out of my way multiple times to put up multiple cats

Did they scratch you?

I love the idea, I much prefer it to the mainstream. The problem is, the typical process of documenting FOSS and self-host projects (websites, wiki, mailing lists, etc) move too slow and are too cumbersome for how quick things are developing right now. So people are kind of having to invent the new tech a d new ways to communicate about it, and they’re not always making choices that either scale or are easy to find and reference.

Okay, since you seem to be so helpful here, I’ll lay out where I’m at. I’ve been using LLMs like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Bard more professionally. I find them equal parts useful, confusing, annoying, and skeevey. I’ve got a lil VPS I run for services, I could put a front end on there easy. I’ve also got an old 8core Xeon machine with like 48GB ram and a leftover AMD R9 270 sitting there with Unraid barely installed. I can chamge the OS of course, but what am I realistically looking at being able to run locally that won’t go above like 60-75% usage so I can still eventually get a couple game servers, network storage, and Jellyfin working? I’ll be honest I don’t care about image generation much, but if I do I can always look into upgrading

Golf is so much better played with friends than watched

I’m not taking issue with anything else, but I just have to say something about the last bit of what you said.

Westerns. No. Not all of them. Or even most of them are from Italy. That’s a special and significant subgenre called Spaghetti Westerns. Or Italian westerns, mostly because of Sergio Leone, these happened in the 60s and 70s. But if you look at the history of westerns and western movies, they were made in the US starting all the way back in the 1910s with silent films and continued on into the golden age of the 40s and 50s.

Since we’re talking Ubuntu, I’d add

“flatpak update” and “snap refresh” to the cron

I’ve had really good experience with Genymotion android emulation on Linux, even on underpowered devices. Might work well to do video calls

Check out Heliboard (also on F-Droid) and follow the instructions to enable gesture typing. I also suggest Futo for on-device voice to text.

What specific apps are you using that you can’t deal going away from? Other than some social media or gamr or something. Even then it seems like there are replacements a lot of the time

Unless its something like Bitwarden where you can use it even if they go offline, can take an encrypted or unencrypted backup of your local passwords/accounts, and are FOSS so you can easily self-host your own version if anything happens where you want to cut ties (thanks Vaultwarden!). They’re an awesome company and one I highly suggest supporting with a paid account

This is what I landed on, really happy with it. Sync super fast, keeps adding features, clean UI, great WYSIWYG rich text, and dead simple imports. Plus they regularly do discounts, so even the low cost gets lower. Way better than the headache of SN or whatever else is out there

iPhones tend to send close to the same types of info back home. When started, idle, inserting a SIM, on the settings screen, even when not logged in. Like, its very similar even when you look at comprehensive lists which a lot of people either don’t know or ignore. I’m not saying that there aren’t specific benefits or reasons to feel more comfortable with Apple. But saying its because they intrinsically are more private, I feel like that’s a bridge too far

oh goodness, Maynard should have been the composer for the Dune movies

Just don’t use a window envelope

I’ve had a Timbuk2 laptop bag for a long time, over a decade and no issues. Loved it so much I bought a backpack from them when my Swiss Gear straps broke. I’ve had it for probably 5 years, adore this thing and I can’t see needing to repair it anytime soon. Recently took it abroad stuffed with laptop and camera gear and it was great. Regular sales online, highly recommend

Anything by Andy Weir, he’s basically juvenile fiction with really good ideas and research

How do you carry a keyboard on a motorcycle? With a shoulder strap and turn it into a keytar. Immediately 200x more cool

The Republicans got Smirnov Iced

There’s anonymity and privacy. This keeps you private from other users, and they already keep you private from themselves other than the initial sign up. What this service isn’t, and never has been, is anonymous. They don’t want that and there are big usability issues with an extended anonymous user base. Decide for yourself what you need

Everything comes from somewhere else. Beans, corn, peppers, potatoes, squash, and tomatoes all came from the Americas. So any culinary traditions using those ingredients only goes back at maximum early 1700s, but more like early 1800s. They pale in comparison to the many centuries of history they have on this side of the ocean. Native people have been nixtamalizing corn for longer than anyone has been speaking French.

The UK has distinct food culture, that’s not at issue. But you can trace it to the density of people and length of time inhabited. But if you look at specific regions of the US, you can see similar. Take a similar size area. Like the northeastern seaboard from Boston to north Carolina, that’s a HUGE amount of regional food differences. Beans, soups, seafood, sandwiches, barbecue, fried chicken, breakfasts, desserts, slaws and salads. And that’s not even mentioning the alcohol traditions. Scotch wouldn’t exist without used American white oak bourbon barrels.

But yes, I am making the argument that both Mexican and Chinese food in the USA are separate and culinarily distinct things than what you find in their home countries. They’ve been in this country for well over 100 years; living, evolving, changing the attitudes and palates of Americans the whole time. You won’t find most US Chinese dishes anywhere in China, and you won’t find a dish that looks like US Mexican or TexMex in Mexico, even if it’s got the same name. But they will be regionally different. They’re influenced by each other, but they’re separate.

More than that, I’ll give you three foods that evolved from elsewhere but finalized in the US, and three honest foods that are 100% from the USA, showing off deep food culture. First for the evolved dishes that now are around the world. Hot dogs, hamburgers, and fries. They all had precursors, but the combination of German/Belgian food, French baking, and food science with industrialization to make for a cheap food that is tasty and easy to eat? Purely American. And now exported worldwide.

Next are the cultural dishes. First is chili. Every state has some version, some variety. With or without beans, different protein, brown or white, and different spices. But it’s a dish that comes from hard work, long hours, and wanting a filling meal that’s easy to make but well spiced. No bean soup quite hits the same highs, it’s almost more of a stew. Then you have biscuits and gravy. It originally came from the Revolutionary War, but today it’s best recognized as southern love on a plate, and and just as many calories. People from the UK often confuse US biscuits for scones, but they’re not. Scones have egg, and usually sugar in the dough, and get worked 2-3x as much as a biscuit, which is crispy on the outside but inside is airy, light, fluffy, and savory. Goes well with the rich, creamy, peppery sausage gravy. Last is barbecue. That’s got 5 legitimate culinary traditional regions and probably like 4 more that could argue for another. But it comes from poverty and slavery, when people couldn’t get good cuts of meat and had to invent methods to make them good. Then they combined that with Afrocaribbean flavors and local ingredients, and you have a unique tradition that is probably some of the best open heat cooked meat in the world.

After all this, I’m really not some sort of American chauvinist. Honestly I prefer pasta, ramen, and some African foods most of the time. But everywhere I see this lie that the USA has no food culture and it drives me wild. It’s a rich and diverse food culture, but just very different than the media says and very different than the rest of the world, and especially Europe. So it can sometimes be hard to understand. Hopefully this helps.

That’s the point, the US is geography about the same size as mainland Europe, and only about 80mill less people. Would you criticize Europe for not having a unified food culture across the entire continent? How about North Africa? No, that would be ridiculous. It’s the same for the US, you’ll find some similarities but even with the same food there will be differences and some places where you shouldn’t buy that food.

For instance, California has great Mexican food and especially street tacos. But you’ll find it hard to locate really good pizza. Florida is technically in the south, but there’s not a lot of good Mexican around, but fresh seafood is really nice. NY has some specialties but is probably the best place in the entire world for culinary diversity and quality. There are more immigrant populations there demanding quality food representation than anywhere else in the world. Even relatively sparse locations like small Midwest towns will typically have an okay pizza place, a good Chinese place, and a great Mexican restaurant. That’s way more than most countries can say.

US food culture is far more than what you see on TV

Ew