Overzeetop

Lots of advice here, some of it good, some of it questionable.

Two things I’ll amplify from other comments: there’s a reason your therapist missed. It’s could be anything from messing up in their calendar app to a pet or a family member being injured it passing unexpectedly. This falls into the “shit happens” category. You’re allowed to be angry, upset, disappointed, or any combination - your time was wasted. There are generally two outcomes - 1) the miss was unintentional or unavoidable or 2) the therapist is unreliable. Until you find out that it’s case 2, recognize that a couple of wasted hours - in the course of your life- is small potatoes (perspective).

Another is the concept of “agency”. There are things you can affect in your life, in your relationships, and in the world. There are things you cannot. Nobody can force you to allow yourself to ignore the latter. They will always get under your skin. However, if you find yourself dwelling on those items, try and take a step back and identify things in your life you control or which you can alter/adjust. Finding those areas where you have agency allows you to impart your will, to be a positive force in your life trajectory.

I won’t even begin to tell you this is easy. It is a process and a way of interacting. Here’s an example - recognize your disappointment with your therapist but take the initiative to reschedule. Taking it a step further, the day before your next meeting, confirm the appointment. It can be a text or email - simple, low contact. If you don’t get a response, escalate near the end if the work day (or first thing the morning of the appointment) with a call. These are things you can do to manage your therapist and your collective schedules. Most professionals (I am one fwiw) will not be offended in the least with good (but not excessive) communication. If they are, or if the therapist still flakes out on you - well, we’re back to case (2) above and you’re on the troublesome path of finding a new / another therapist. BUT - you’ve done all you can in your power to make this a success. Recognize your initiative as a positive, personal attribute you will continue to leverage in your life.

I wish you the best!

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

When you feel out of control in life, identify where you have agency and focus your efforts there.

3D printers. Yes, there are lot of $100-$300 models out there. Unless you want 3D printer repair and maintenance to become your new hobby, just go buy a Prusa (or other well supported, full featured printer).

Cheapest city with moderately decent public transit is probably Washington DC. With an average home price comparable to the one I live in without public transit of about $600,000 more than my current home. Even if I didn’t own my truck outright (8 years old, 58k miles) and the price of gasoline doubled, my payback period for 100% free public transit is greater than infinity with a 5% cost of money calculated in.

It’s a bit like solar. I’ve run the numbers, and had others run the numbers, and the conclusion is that it would require replacing solar panels twice before I made back my investment, even with a 0% loan for the panels and install.

I’d love to be part of it. I’d love to have European-style public transit. Even in the few places where viable public transit exists in the US, it’s not affordable to move to those places. shrug

If only I could afford to live near transit…

Sorry, I was thinking rice and beans and my mind went to protein sources. Yes, you can live vegan, and yes, you can get protein from non-animal sources. I think I originally noted that I bake nearly all my bread every week and it costs under a $1 for ingredients but decided not to keep it. If rice and beans are your jam, go for it.

I like the muscles of dead things, a majority of my species also partake, and it’s usually one of the first things which is omitted due to cost - which doesn’t need to be the case if you are smart with which parts of the meaty flesh you gorge yourself on and when you are (financially) opportunistic enough to know when the less valuable animals are murdered for their soft flesh.

Learn to buy in bulk when it makes sense and learn to cook. You don’t need to eat rice and ramen (tho I do love me some…). Turkeys around Tgiving in the us are stupid cheap, pork butts smoke easily (you can even cheat and do them in a standard oven), and cheap beef makes great stew for less than $1/meal. Fish can be affordable too, if that’s your thing. It’s mostly about building a modest cabinet of spices and learning to turn simple foods into restaurant-level results. You’ll learn to prefer eating in because it’s literally better than paying someone else 5x as much for (honestly) mediocre food.

I also plan ahead (like 8-12 months) and I take vacations based on what’s cheap and always travel off-peak. I traveled around the world for three weeks last year - Tokyo, Bangkok, Copenhagen, Prague, and Iceland - for $5k, including two flight segments in first class. Took my family of 3 to Lisbon, Dublin, and all over UK (Cardiff to Aberdeen) for two weeks this year for about the same total. And that was without using any CC points (which I do game from time to time, but I loathe manufactured spending). Neither of those are “cheap” trips, true, but I have friends who don’t plan and will complain that it’s “always” $1.5-2k each to fly us-eu.

$10k is low end, and won’t even cover paying for 4 years of a state college. In state most places is pushing $35-40k/yr including room and board. Out of state is closer to $60k/yr. If you make enough not to get any financial assistance, Ivys in big cities are going for close to 6 figures once you pay for stupid-expensive rent. Even in a good growth fund, $10k/year starting at birth may not even fund a BS degree.

Now, ongoing maintenance on multiples gets cheaper in quantity, you just have to steer them towards the trades so their college costs disappear. Or hope they get full ride scholarships with housing allowances.

I wouldn’t mind the various levels of there were a simple, consistent marking standard for speed and power rating.

My takeaway from the article was that Your photos are no longer real because the AI portions have altered the image captured. Your face has been cleared of wrinkles and blemishes, your eyes made larger and rounder, your aging features reduced without your knowledge or input. Of course, with your input your proportions could be manually or automatically enhanced, but also the sky replaced with a more interesting one, or people or objects “in the way” of your desired composition removed and replaced with mimicry in the background.

The adjustments available - both automatic and manual - for balance, clarity, and color temperature have always been available in analog film, even if only to a limited extent in either film selection or in developing. The AI enhancements available in modern software, especially those baked into the Camera apps which are automatic, can be far more manipulative.

Al Jazeera has had some excellent in-depth reporting and is not some radical propaganda outlet, any more than the BBC or NPR. Their perspective is different but not incorrect or intentionally misleading and tends to be factually on par with the AP and Reuters.

The Onion article on their position accurately sums up most western media outlets approach to Israel. It’s a weird blind spot for much of the west.

That very well could be. I’d forgotten about the D7, though I don’t know how many people are using it. The real digital nomad visa just took effect so it hasn’t caused the problem, but I’ll bet there’s a shit-ton of British (mostly) who don’t even have to blink to get a short term annuity that meets the income requirements for a D7 in Pt. And they’re definitely willing and able to pay a above market.

There is a great deal of backlash to the Golden Visa programs which were set up in Europe to boost foreign investment and skim more foreign money into government coffers. While it did result in some building and some influx, the impact has been wildly overstated.

Before I’m beset with angry residents, I’ll note that last year, there were 168,000 real estate transactions in Portugal, but there have been less than 10,200 golden visas granted via real estate purchase over nearly twelve years. That’s less than 850 real estate transactions year, on average, or around 0.5% compared to the 168,000 last year.

There are, I’m sure, edge cases where a large residential building was bought, renovated, and then resold mostly to foreign investors- I’ve seen the ads. But as a driver of housing rents I’m skeptical that such a low volume has been the primary driver of rent inflation. I’m seeing ridiculous rents everywhere, and I think it’s a combination of Airbnb-style landlords snatching up inventory for short term rental income (which no private renter can afford nor private buyer/homeowner compete) as well as the condo-bros leveraging their way into tens of hundreds of units for the passive income fad that has swept most of the western world.

Do you go with a catheter and a ziplok or just sleep it off in a puddle of your own urine?

Fuck off. I accidentally tried it out for the first time this weekend. I’m not even a fan of card based games. I have no idea where 5 hours went.

I was too young/poor to afford an assembler for my 6502 so I wore out the assembly long hand on a legal pad and then manually converted each operation to machine code.

Needless to say my programs done this way were exceptionally simple, but it’s interesting to understand the underlying code.

I still have not found a competent (free) program on android that lets me mark up a pdf. They all claim to, but most (including fully-paid Adobe) won’t let you turn off finger marking. MFers, I have a stylus; I want my fingers to pan/zoom and my god damned stylus to make a line. Why is that so foreign?

I’ve kept 10 on my workstation, and let my laptop go to 11. I have only one beef with 11 and that I’d that I’ve had some taskbar folders I used as shortcut menus, and they take an extra click to get to on 11. Otherwise it’s practically transparent. Feels more like W10 SP3, really.

The phone number gatekeeping is annoying. I think ChatGPT requires it. I can’t use it because it won’t accept my phone number as I only use VoIP numbers. Never mind they used to be land and cell numbers I posted there. Same with some banking sites. No sms 2FA allowed because the gateway they use can’t jump to voip - the codes just never arrive.