I definitely relate to that. I spent a good chunk of my formative years just hanging out at the mall after school with my friends, sitting on the outdoor balcony with ridiculous coffees, openly smoking although we were underage, and just shooting the shit. Maybe we’d have hit up the music store beforehand and we’d chat about what we’d bought, read the liner notes and talk about the artwork. I miss music stores too, but I think a lot of people my age do. The mall used to be somewhere you could just hang out. I don’t know what’s changed, maybe it’s me. In my area they seem to be as busy as ever, but they all seem so sterile and hyper-optimised now, even though the floorplans are still the same as they were decades ago.

Me, I miss the proliferation of arcade video game cabinets. I miss arcades too, but I don’t think that’s out of the ordinary for old nerds. Going to them for a lock-in session was always a fun event, even by myself. Also having one at nearly every mall and being able to just go there and drop a few bucks and kill half an hour while you wait for a bus. What I really miss though, are the machines they’d just have randomly in places; corner stores, video rental places, restaurants, bowling alleys. We’d spend entire days riding around, scouting out new places for good games, which place had the cheapest Street Fighter 2, discovering weird obscure import titles no one had ever heard of. Of course now if I have a few minutes to kill I can game on my phone, but it’s such a non-event. Arcade cabinets were special, they had -presence-. When you found a good one you kept that location burned into your brain, told only your closest friends, and when they removed or changed it, it was such a tragedy.

non-cloud based approach…

You’re using cloud based storage

Pick one.

What is OneDrive if not cloud-based?

It’s still shitty because they ship with a 3.5mm -> 3.5mm cable (literally straight through, no inline silicon) that’s billed as replaceable. It is, but only with -their- cable. It’s a way of making a standard connection proprietary.

Aside from the pigtail USB-C -> 3.5 socket adapters which absolutely do suck, you can also get USB-C -> 3.5 plug cables (link for example purposes only, not an endorsement of amazon or this product) which can be pretty decent length and quality. This, together with headphones with a replaceable cable (also just an example) might open up a few more options for you. Added bonus that if the cable fails it’s … well … replaceable.

Just be mindful that some manufacturers do the extremely shitty thing of placing the socket on the headphones in a very specifically shaped recess that only their cables will fit.

We thought the internet would change the world. It did, but the world changed the internet, too.

French hip hop fucking slaps. Do people still say that? I don’t know. Anyway, here’s Keny Arkana.

I’m either really late genX or really early millennial depending how you define it, but Pump Up The Volume was the one that did it for me.

There’s a couple things at play here.

Firstly, the math. Nutrient requirements in a given population tend to be normally distributed (there are a couple that aren’t). RDA is considered enough to meet the requirements of 98% of people. EAR (estimated average requirement) is the middle of the bell curve, so most people’s actual requirement will be closer to that. RDAs are used for diet planning in individuals though, so as to minimise the risk of deficiency. There’s a huge margin of safety between EAR and anything that would cause problems from excess (e.g. Vitamin A toxicity) so using RDA won’t cause issues there. Actually working out an individual person’s requirement for a specific nutrient is a bunch of really complicated biochem, so it’s easier and safer to just aim for the RDA in that context.

Secondly, RDA is kind of a misnomer. You don’t actually need to eat that every day, because the body stores and uses a lot of nutrients as needed. It’s really supposed to be used as more of an average over time. This is why it’s important to eat a good variety of different foods within the main food groups. Meatless mondays don’t cause you to instantly collapse from iron deficiency.

Third, there’s a commercial aspect to it. Food manufacturers love using RDA because it lets them imply their product is healthy, and they love it when public health messaging is “eat more X” when X is a major component of whatever they produce, or something that’s cheap to fortify (e.g. iron fortified cereals). This way they can encourage people to freak out over “oh no, I need this product or I won’t hit my RDA!” Really, most people better off eating generally healthy (roughly 50% fruit and vegetables, 25% protein and 25% whole grains) with a good variety of foods than aiming to hit the RDA of everything, every day. There are a few caveats to that for certain nutrients in some circumstances, but on the whole, no. You don’t need to hit your RDA every day, but it probably should average out over a week or so.

I have the same thing. Someone once called it “resting murder face” because apparently if I forget to smile I just look like I want to stab someone. That plus having a deadpan sense of humour and generally flat tone of voice makes me come across as a total asshole unless I make extra effort. Even when I’m sincerely trying to be nice people assume I’m being sarcastic.

I’m old enough that I remember when 28FPS @ 320x200 was considered a target, and my vision isn’t as hot as it used to be. So long as I’m not noticing any obvious issues, I don’t really care enough to check.

Depends on the reason and what you find most motivating. Addiction is tricky and it’s rarely just one thing. Caffeine is physically addictive but there’s also psych and lifestyle aspects to it.

If it’s about the caffeine, try switching to coffee or tea. If you want to go cold turkey, caffeine withdrawal peaks at about three days with symptoms lessening to minimal after about nine.

If it’s a convenience thing, try keeping a water bottle on you and just drink that. If you find water too boring or your local water tastes bad, try it carbonated and/or with a twist of lemon or other fruit. I’d suggest avoiding places where they serve it, but that’s near impossible. You could take note of what situation you’re in when you tend to do it, and try to rejig your routine around that. You could also not keep it in the house; it’s a lot easier to not put it on the shopping list than resist the temptation when it’s right there. Then there’s health and money. Of course you know they’re not great for you so I’m not going to harp on that, but you could try focusing on it more (but try to frame it in a positive way; not “ugh soda is bad”, but rather “hey drinking water is good!”), or give yourself a goal to save up for purely with what you save on soda.

I haven’t been in the loop since 2016.

Any job is like this if your time management is bad enough

It’s been a while, and like I said, I haven’t done proper analysis (that would probably be another three or four days work at this rate) but from memory soylent is a lot closer to an actual meal (at least an attempt at a complete protein, a reasonable amount of carbs, essential fatty acids, a wider variety of micronutrients) even before you add whatever liquid you’re using. Total is just fortified wheat flakes, sugar, honey and salt. Pragmatically, if you absolutely had to subsist on one of them, I’d say soylent is probably the less-bad option, but I wouldn’t recommend either.

Plenty. I have actually tried soylent. Before I got into nutrition properly though and I haven’t done any kind of thorough analysis on them. In my personal experience they’re … fine? … flavour wise pretty bland and neutral, better if you blend them with some fruit or something. The sensation after having one was pretty weird though. Like, you’ve just taken in a ton of nutrition, but you don’t feel “full” – just kind of not hungry. It’s also a lot of liquid that hangs around in your stomach for longer than it feels like a liquid should.

Nutrition wise, off the top of my head, I don’t think they’re a bad idea, at least conceptually. Lifestyle wise they’re a pretty good solution to the “no time / skill to cook a decent meal” problem that a lot of people run into. They’re also good for those “need to eat but don’t want anything” moments. I’d hesitate to have them for every meal because IIRC they do lack a couple things (fibre, maybe?) but once or twice a week shouldn’t be a massive deal.

I’d have to do a ton more work to break down the actual nutrition, value for money and any other possible knock-on effects though. Off the top of my head there might be long-term issues with digestion and possibly oral health, but that’s just a guess.

Updated. There’s more to come.

Updated. There’s more to come.

Updated. There’s more to come.

Updated. There’s more to come.