Four planets?

Here in Devon, the local phrase from a certain age of woman server is “Hello, my lover”. Catches the odd person out but you’d have to be a dick to kick off about it.

Why Kashmir?

Thanks for the reply - interesting response. I think I might be projecting my own likely response to the plate question, so in hindsight it’s probably not very useful other than identifying we react differently.

An interesting question, thanks for asking it. I’m guessing I’m not the only one thinking about their own behaviour in framing an answer.

Two questions for you:

1. You accidentally drop a plate in the kitchen and it smashes. How do you feel? Are you angry? Frustrated that you’ve behaved less than perfectly?

2. Your friend does the same thing. How do you feel then?

If you’re like me and more likely to be forgiving to them than yourself for what is obviously an accident, why?

Why do you treat yourself harsher than yourself?

For me, it’s because at some level I consider myself better than them so shouldn’t have made such a mistake, even though at other levels, I think almost everyone else is better than me. Looking at my own mind logically for just this scenario, I have to conclude it cannot be trusted on the matter of self image. I think that’s accurate.

And how do you define behaving perfectly? That’s a subjective standard, you cannot achieve it to everyone’s satisfaction. You’ve set yourself up for failure - that doesn’t feel healthy, it feels like a trap set that’s impossible not to walk into. I’m pretty sure nobody trustworthy has ever has a moment of absolute clarity that allows them to answer all these questions satisfactorily - I’m getting old now and as far as I can see, we’re all just trying to figure this stuff out as best we can.

There’s the phrase - be kind to yourself. As I’ve got older, I think that’s more true than ever. I’ve tried to honour it, alongside being kind to others. I don’t always succeed, but I figure that as long as I’m trying, it’s /good enough/.

Like you, I’m an Athiest. I’m not living to a standard to score points. I try not to mostly live within society’s norms because I’m selfish, and it’s easier than not doing so. Upset people cause fuss. Breaking laws has consequences. I dislike fuss so I try not to cause it.

I hope you find your way. I think your therapist is on the right track, but what answers are right for you aren’t always clear to see.

There’s a linux command, called “touch” which sets the timestamp on a file. It’s used for several things, including testing that the user has write privileges and that the filesystem is working.

I heard of a sysadmin who used to use “touch kids”, creating or updating the file ‘kids’. Some sort of internalised joke, I assume. His boss told him not to because it was inappropriate. Then again formally when he kept on doing it. Dude couldn’t stop, like some form of muscle memory. Kept on using kids as a test filename.

So yeah, he got sacked pretty quickly.

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You’re making the mistake in that his intention is to improve things.

He doesn’t have to make things better, he just has to say he has made them better. That’s all he’s ever done and it’s worked.

Well, this aged quickly.

I think your reply would have been more useful if you’d given some pointers about how, instead of just “do it right”.

It’s fine, but not going to be the cheapest.

Cheap to buy: Any old PC desktop, really. Most will run linux and windows fine, depending on what you want. Anywhere from free to £100. If you have an old desktop or laptop already, use that to start with.

Cheap to run: Any mini PC. I run a Lenovo ThinkCentre M53 for low power duties. Cost £40 and runs silently at 10watts, idle. (I have a secondary, much beefier server for other stuff that runs at around 100w which lives in the garage)

But plenty of people do run mac minis as home servers, often on Linux. They’re fine - just do your homework on the CPU ability, how much ram you can add, and whether you’re okay with external disks if you can’t fit enough inside.

Find your thing.

For me that’s been different things as I’ve gone through life. Currently in my 50s and enjoying riding a motorbike at weekends. When I’d ridden all the local roads so many times it was starting to get boring, I added another layer and am now riding my bike to every Village in my county. It’s going to take a while, but has given another layer of interest and purpose. Many people won’t understand why it’s interesting to me, and that’s fine, they don’t have to. Finding what works for you is half the challenge.

BTW, if you’ve got depression, then finding happiness without resolving that is really, really difficult. Been there and absolutely everything felt bleak and pointless. Fixing that is the first step.

Ringworld.

Are headphones a possibility in your workplace?

Thanks, that’s some good thoughts. I do already do that, contribute to FOSS, write fiction and I’ve taught some stuff to younger folk at work so it’s not entirely wasted. If I can achive net zero on whatever cosmic scoreboard is in place, I figure that’s okay.

Mixed, but mostly okay.

Pros: The world is massively overpopulated already. Our genes aren’t particularly noteworthy. I’m not very optimistic about the future. People’s happiness generally seems a lot less than it was when I was younger and I don’t see that changing.

Cons: Not being able to pass anything on - my knowledge and experience, ironically much of which was gained through having time that would have been unavailable if I had had kids. As we both get older, our own care is concerning. Doing physical things around our smallholding is getting harder and a pair of young hands would be nice.

I don’t begrudge other people having kids. We tried once but lost it and that kind of took the excitement out of it for us. Before we knew it, it was too late anyway.

The UK has seen a stratospheric drop too. Banned from all non-private indoor spaces, taxed through the roof. At least in the South, it’s rare to see or even smell someone smoking now, even on TV. Although in some cities it’s just as likely to smell cannabis as tobacco.

I don’t think you’re “exporting it” though - it’s not an American initiative. This was a pretty universal shift of “why the fuck do we do this stupid shit?”

India has the BRO too.

Watching a guy called Joe Ryan on Youtube at the mo, who’s riding a motorbike around the Himalayas. The BRO are building roads there at an incredible rate in the most impossible landscape. I’m genuinely amazed at the scale and adaptability of them and how much they’re doing right now.

This is literally changing the lives of those who live in the area, although I do wonder how much this will trigger tourism and change everything as it has elsewhere. But still, those guys can build roads.

Much of the UK’s regular government stuff is online and very simple too - their website is actually very good. It doesn’t integrate everything though. The health service is particularly fragmented and communication is often by post and not that good.

Actually - a lot of closed source programs are still vulnerable to the supply chain attacks you mention where a bad actor has got access to their codebase. This has happened and been reported on, plus I’m sure, plenty of occasions where it was hushed up for reputational reasons. And - much commercial software still uses FOSS dependencies, so is also vulnerable to the same situation you describe for that. Worst of both worlds.

I don’t think either system is inherantly better than the other in terms of computer security. Each has different and overlapping vulnerabilities.