for older folks like those currently suffering from dementia - try christmas carols or religious music played/sung during the big religious ceremonies.

i spent years thinking what sort of music i could play my great grandma, because what music was even there in the 1930s in rural poland? but the last christmas we had with her we put on some christmas carols, and she came back alive a little. it was magical

you’re a good person :) thank you for your work in shaping a generation of healthy people

android does it well, if you want “developer” mode that let’s you have better control over your system you have to do some funny IT rituals you can only access by 1. knowing they exist 2. googling how to do it

holy hell

machines today can be programmed to make the most intricate sculptures, and recreate the most famous of paintings on mass. and yet, actual artists are still here, because we know that it’s not the finished piece that matters the most, it’s the journey we went on to be able to draw what’s in our minds that matters, it’s human expression, painting, drawing, sculpting exactly in the way that we want to, flaws and all. every piece is a self-portrait, if/when AI aquires a self, then we’ll have this discussion

thank you for un-un-fucking it

all gamers’ nightmare

i honestly take that option for granted lol, it’s so weird when someone else’s computer bloops when a notification pops up. same with phones honestly, if i’m not expecting an important call it’s staying on silent

oh dang, just tried it out and it’s brilliant, thank you internet stranger!

new minecraft instance -> FOV 90

new browser -> remember open tabs when closing (and install adblock)

langauge -> English (i live in Poland so many devices come with polish as a default)

in games -> subtitles on

in tv shows -> subtitles off (unless the audio is poorly balanced with sfx)

i’ve also built muscle memory on my specific set up of Adobe apps, so if i were to use someone else’s photoshop i’d feel lost and confused

oh goodness i thought it was a meme and was trying to figure out what does the partial solar eclipse followed by a giant explosion of white mean 😭

great photos though!

as the old programmer joke goes:

a programmer walks into a bar, he asks for:

-> 2 beers please

-> 9999 beers please

-> -5 beers please

-> π beers please

satisfied with the results he leaves and invites the first normal user. The normal user goes up to the barman and asks:

“sorry where is the bathroom?”

the bar explodes

oh boy that’s a blast from the past lol!

naleśniki :3

and it’s the same in poland, i’d call what you made a pancake in poland, but in the UK i’d call it a crêpe

rules of punctuation aren’t here to chain us, they’re mere guidelines

i ask them what happened to have things turn out like that

if they are the same person as me, and simply decided to pick the most hateful way forward each time a choice was presented to them - i’d probably turn around and try to never think of them again. Because at least for others i can understand how life could’ve pushed them towards the wrong path. But for myself i know that good choices were always an option, so my evil alternate self would have to consciously act out of spite and hate every time

i simply stay uninformed. all the important news will come through memes and bypass all keyword filters i set anyway

we weren’t made to receive bad news from around the globe 24/7 beamed directly into our pockets. i prefer to be happy

absolutely! the One Ring is much better developed than horcruxes, i was being reductive on purpose there. The Ring is presented as integral to the story from the very beginning and acts like it, serving as a driving force for both the plot and character development for everyone involved. Horcruxes mimic similar characteristics as a literary device but fail to reach the same level of development

anyway this seems like a natural end to the topic, so let me just say thank you for the conversation :) i always appreciate a nice nerd out and analysis of media. hope you have a nice day!

hm i feel like the distinction comes down to vibes here. if i were to be reductive i could describe the One Ring in a similar way “it corrupts gollum, gives Frodo a quest, makes Boromir crave power and turn on his companions in a moment of weakness, and (from Sauron’s POV) hobbits destroying it is a deus ex machina”. imo horcruxes as an idea were not that bad but,

to me, the main difference here is how they’re used in the story. The One Ring is the driving force from the beginning, it’s already well established in the lore of the world, and the only surprise to the universe’s scholars is how it suddenly found itself in a hobbit’s hands. Where horcruxes appear suddenly in the second to last book (obviously not counting the diary because it’s clearly been deemed a horcrux when JKR came up with them and thought the diary fit the vibe well enough). First 4 Harry Potter books are bascially episodic, an overaching plot only emerges by the end of book 4. And LOTR is one cohesive story with a clear goal from the beginning, which allows it to unravel in a satisfying and effective way

not to compre whole books to whatever JK Rowling is doing on her tweeter this week (probably transphobia but who knows) but would it be any better if she twote one day “all magic in Harry Potter comes from the divine tree, at the beginning the tree blessed few people with its world bending power of imagination, this is how wizardry began, the tree spoke latin btw.”

Besides, the story is more or less a POV of Harry’s, a pre-teen to young adult boy who is way more excited to play sports than attend his lessons. Which to me is a good enough reason why we end up knowing fuck all about the magic of his world. If the POV was Hermione’s, i’d expect there to be an indepth 3-chapter long research project about her work on a “Origins of Magic” essay for her History of Magic class. But because of the characterisation of Harry and also the tension in the story by the end, it makes sense to me why Harry doesn’t really care about how things work, but how effective they can be. The question wasn’t “wow a horcrux? incredibly rare black magic, i must study it to understand how and why it works to one day maybe be able to undo it”, the question was “horcrux huh? and it makes voldie immortal-ish? alright lads, let’s find a way to smash it”

and to answer your question - horcruxes of all things are pretty well elaborated on. Voldemort splits his soul and attaches it to objects/people. The price? A part of his soul and another person’s life. The purpose? Ability to be recreated from each of those pieces, achieving immortality-ish, as long as he has someone living to do the ritual, and his father’s skeleton still has some bones left ig. The limitation seems to be that he looks evil after being reborn? and i think there was some implication that the process is incredibly painful on the spiritual level

i think a better example would be the sorting hat because wtf is that. is that a person turned into a hat? is it an enchanted object? it can talk in your mind, can read your soul to then sort you into a house, a sword can come out of it when it feels you’re in need and worthy of it? No explanation, no described limitations, a power to read one’s mind in later books is attributed mostly to voldemort & looking at how Harry handles it it’s incredibly emotionally exhausting. how can that hat be more powerful than the most powerful evil wizard?