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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 8th, 2023

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  • It’s fine if you’re careful. I never got Lasik because you can only get it once and it only lasts 10-15 years until your eyesight degrades again. Then it’s back to glasses or contacts. Especially after 45-50 when it really goes downhill.

    I skipped Lasik because my yearly contacts cost is 120 €, which over 15 years would net me 1800€. Lasik was quoted to me at 5000 € for both eyes. You could be a statistical fortuity and it lasts more than 15 years, but considering you get used to something it’s not permanent and have to change back i figured might as well stick with lenses.

    There’s also orthokerathology, which is some rigid contacts you use only when sleeping that shape your eyes for up to 48 hours so you see well. They’re more expensive than contacts, cheaper than lasik and much safer because you don’t sleep with them. Alas, i can’t wear those because my astigmatism is too high for current technology, but i hear they’re getting better with it.


  • Woah, i didn’t know that. I just lost all respect i had for that guy.

    That is some serious cognitive dissonance on Zelenskyy’s part. So let me get this straight, he thinks it’s fine that Israeli murder and steal from innocent civilians and just annex land from another country because they think it should be Israel but disagrees when Russians do the same, is that right ? I would think a former humorist would have a firmer grasp of irony. Zelenskyy is a jackass.

    Gotta separate the man from the post though. This is more Ukraine than Zelenskyy.


  • FYI if you use contacts (from https://www.allaboutvision.com/contacts/acanthamoeba-keratitis.htm with some extra tidbits from other websites i found while getting informed about this)

    Never use tap water with your contact lenses. The FDA has recommended that contact lenses should not be exposed to water of any kind.

    Do not swim, shower or use a hot tub while wearing contacts. If you do decide to wear your lenses while swimming, wear airtight swim goggles over them.

    Soak your lenses in fresh disinfecting solution every night. Don’t use a wetting solution or saline solution that isn’t intended for disinfection.

    Always wash your hands before handling your lenses.

    Always clean your contacts immediately upon removal (unless you are wearing disposable contact lenses that are replaced daily). To clean your lenses, rub the lenses under a stream of multipurpose solution – even if using a “no-rub” solution – and store them in a clean case filled with fresh (not “topped off”) multipurpose or disinfecting solution.

    Wash your case with solution and not tap water.

    Replace your case at least once every 3 months with a new one.

    And if you do get a red eye with a burning sensation and blurry vision that does not go away and you use contacts, do remind your doctor that you’re specifically worried about acanthamoeba and would like to make sure that you’re not at risk, as this woman visited several ophthalmologists every 2 days and not one of them thought about it. The treatment was eye drops. Now she is blind and needs a transplant.



  • This one time in university i was in a train back home. Cute girl is sitting next to me and i had some reading to do for calculus so i open up the chapter and make some headway on my work as the trip was going to be 3 hours.

    I overhear her conversation on the phone. She says she’s going to my hometown and she doesn’t know where X place is. X place is super popular. When her conversation ends i say, sorry for overhearing your conversation but if you need help getting to X i can give you directions. She asks me to give her directions i do and she thanks me.

    She starts asking me some questions about my home town and i tell her. Then I’m like, ok I guess she’s done and go back to reading. She tries once more to ask questions about my calculus book. I’m wondering why is she so into calculus. The conversation fizzles out and we sit quietly for the remainder of the trip.

    The neuron that was supposed to fire to warn me of being hit on fires when I’m hailing a cab at my destination. I still think about how i totally missed it and she was really cute. I guess it wasn’t calculus that she was into…


  • And it’s been greatly eroded recently when the powers that be determined some genocides are ok and others are not. A long-standing pattern of selective rules application, ranging from matters of nuclear disarmament, trade sanctions on places for no reason, land seizure for military bases with no permission and indigenous displacement, land seizure for colonization, indiscriminate civilian murder, detention and torture with no trial or accusation, sex crimes against civilians, application of tactics of terrorism and so on.

    On the other side, indiscriminate land grab invasions, war crimes, sexual crimes on civilians including children, concentration camps, destruction of civilian infrastructure, genocide and so on.

    It feels nobody really needs to follow any rules anymore. Everybody is violating international laws and the conventions that separate us from the worst of the worst evil and it’s disheartening. It’s whoever is the strongest does whatever they feel like with impunity, mostly, and everyone else just shrugs along. We absolutely suck as an intelligent sapient species at a global level and it’s a shame to be what we have become.




  • It is that, but it’s not just that. Whole regions are becoming so dedicated to tourism that investment is going to little else, which doesn’t really create a lot of well paying jobs for the young people. In fact, tourism only pays well to business owners. For everyone else, it’s an incredibly precarious job where you make money sometimes and other times you don’t. Even when you do, tourism is considered unskilled labor for teens and young adults without degrees, mostly. It’s a major cause of low fertility, I’d wager, since poor young people make no kids.

    Everything becomes a sort of resort, with businesses catering mostly to tourists, with business owners feeling even apathetic about serving locals, as they pay less and don’t tip. The same is happening in several regions in southern Portugal. A resortification, if you will, of entire regions.

    It’s like the whole world designated that country as a holiday country because of the weather and beauty, but the locals also want high paying tech jobs and factories. The government is making too much bank to change it and business owners are making a lot of pressure not to.




  • I’d wager that the investment of paltry sums compared to the cost of raising a child while public preschools are filled to the brim and there’s a lack of teachers and affordable after school facilities for parents to leave their kids probably has something to do with it. Luxemburg, for instance, is one of the wealthiest countries in Europe and parents there have to register kids for preschool when they’re born to even get a chance at a spot.

    I mean, sure, there’s tax breaks for parents and if you’re lucky, something like 200€ per child per month, depending on the country. That’s ridiculously low. Salaries keep stagnating, the cost of living keeps increasing, and young adults basically have to work several internships for free to even get a chance at landing a half decent job and afford a one bedroom apartment. Meanwhile, the pandemic saw the richest people get even richer with their tax rebates and deductions upon rebates and deductions.

    This is an economic issue, i believe, rooted in the progressive increase of wealth inequality in our society. It’s just that the help being provided to parents is nowhere near enough. I want to be a dad, but i can’t while wealth keeps being redistributed to millionaires while we get, what, a miniscule tax rebate and maybe a couple dozens to hundreds euros to afford ever skyrocketing rents anywhere there’s a half decent paying job? This isn’t the industrial ages where if half your kids didn’t go to school, it’s fine. The population will decrease until salaries that are in line with supporting children in a developed country start being a reality to the majority of the population.

    And that Kurzgesagt video says young people prefer to travel and live life. Man, i wish i was traveling and going to concerts. I barely go anywhere since the pandemic and i have nowhere near the wealth required to even move to a 2 bedroom apartment, furnish a baby room and buy all the required knick knacks to raise a newborn child and i have a pretty decent income.


  • I wasn’t talking about making diesel at home. That’s pretty much the immediate aftermath of a collapse.

    In the case of a societal collapse, eventually, new city states will be formed using salvaged technology and eventually technology produced of their own. My argument stands that to restart civilization, you will more quickly go back to fossil fuels, which are simpler to salvage, manufacture and utilize than high tech solar panels and batteries.

    This includes gas vehicles. It’s just a fact that electric vehicles and semiconductor technology are luxuries of the modern era and not long term post apocalyptic tools of survival due to their manufacturing difficulties, durability and maintenance necessities. Just as an example you have Toyotas from the 60s that can still work just fine and i guarantee you a Tesla made today won’t work in 60 years, unless you replace nearly every electronic component of which it depends.

    I’m all for renewables and sustainability and ditching fossel fuels, but from an engineering point of view, i just don’t think I’d be trusting in electrical vehicles and semiconductor tech in a post apocalyptic scenario. The reliability just isn’t there.

    And diesel generators/fuel refining is most definitely not more difficult to manufacture than semiconductors. Just to make a simple silicon wafer you need more tech than to make a piston engine. Let alone doping it to produce enough photoelectric effect to power stuff with. There’s a reason we more quickly figured out diesel/gasoline engines than semiconductors. You need clean rooms, high tech engineers and a lot of robotics for things we can’t do with enough precision with our big clunky hands at the nano scale. With piston engines a workshop will do and fuel refining is just basic fractional distillation. As a side note, i could most definitely refine diesel at home. I’ve distilled things more complicated than diesel. But that’s beside the point. I understand you meant the average person with no training wouldn’t be able to do it and i understand and agree.



  • Solar panels and batteries require massive supply chains. They require our rarest minerals and highest tech, with highly educated workers to develop and produce and state of the art clean rooms and factories.

    If we stop producing them, the current stock will be useful for like 50 years tops. Then it’s back to fossil fuels, I’m afraid. Diesel generators last for a long time, and they’re easier to maintain and produce.

    I remember i read a doomer theory stating we should be stockpiling coal for the humans that remain to rebuild society since there is nothing we can do at this point and fossil fuels is the only thing that will outlast the collapse. I’m not that pessimistic, but i can see what they mean.



  • Fyi the syncthing-fork guy (catfriend1) who’s still updating has a donating button on F-droid via Liberapay. It’s up to you if your financial situation allows you to donate, but the more of us help the remaining developers for their time, in particular those of us that rely so much on their work, the better off we’ll be. Let’s give them a little motivation to keep working on this.

    FYI2 syncthing-fork (as written and confirmed in this thread) has an import button for your folders from syncthing Android.



  • They’ll be hit with that “trying to negotiate a ceasefire” and “investigations of allegations” that lead nowhere, sometimes, for sure. Maybe they’ll even have to watch a pier that does nothing being built. I can imagine things like that can be a little annoying and hamper the workflow when you’re trying to carry out a genocide, as opposed to full steam ahead genocide.

    I bet they’re really shaking in their boots at the inconvenience a president Harris would be.


  • This app was incredibly important to me. I don’t really understand what the developer was saying about Google Play either. What does Google want from him?

    I’ll be saving this post for all the suggestions in the comments. Hopefully, a viable alternative presents itself. I’ve been making a lot of tech illiterate friends reliant on this app, and they’re going to be asking me for an alternative.