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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • I care, a lot. But this wasn’t always the case.

    Before I was 13, I didn’t care much about music at all. Sure, I liked some songs I heard on the radio but I didn’t own any albums in any format. I considered music to be a harmless but mostly pretty meaningless.

    Then my 7th grade music teacher gave me a really low grade, on the sole basis that I couldn’t sing in tune or play an instrument. I got good grades on the written tests, but this apparently meant nothing to her.

    So purely out of spite I decided to learn how to play an instrument and sing. Getting music classes wasn’t an option due to my parent’s economic situation at the time, so I used my savings and bought my friend’s old acoustic guitar. I found good intro books from the library and started practicing.

    I listened to the radio and recorded a few acoustic guitar songs on tape, so I could practice playing and singing along with them. This must have been a terrible few years for my family, but slowly I started to get the hang of it.

    During this time I discovered some bands I really liked and copied their albums from LP’s from the library. My dad brought me an old discarded boombox from his work, it was big but had an excellent sound. I also scrounged enough money to buy a secondhand Walkman, so I could carry the music with me.

    In high school I formed a few bands with my friends, I played rhythm guitar or bass, depending on the genre. We weren’t good, but I loved it. In university I had a chance to minor in music, which opened up whole new worlds for me. I learned to sing properly and had piano lessons.

    By this time music had become a big part of my identity. I almost always had something playing on the background, if I wasn’t listening actively.

    Nowadays I don’t have as much time for music as I’d like, but I’ve got myself a really good vintage Hi-Fi setup. It’s amazing to discover small things in songs I never noticed before in songs I have listened for decades. My gear may not look like much, but it’s got what counts.

    When I was younger, I couldn’t afford good gear but now that I have some musical education and have learned to listen", I can’t really enjoy the music if the sound system is crappy. If it’s in the background it’s fine, but I just can’t use bad headphones anymore.

    I listen to music from a large variety of genres, but hiphop/rap is something I just can’t get into. I’ve tried several times to approach it with an open mind, but there’s something in that genre that just rubs me the wrong way.

    I don’t care if the music is a jokey meme thing or considered a masterpiece of it’s genre, if it clicks with you it’s good. I love symphonies as much as I love old simple folk tunes.





  • Yep.

    In one of the books he is on Earth without his shipmates and pretty quickly regresses back to sociopathic behaviour.

    But he recognizes this and does not welcome it. After killing a stranger just to get access to gear he needs, Amos realizes that he is making the wrong choices and states: “I need to get back to my crew.”

    He has an understanding of what is good and what is bad. He cannot understand why there are limitations to by which means “good” can be achieved. But he knows these limits do exist and should be respected, therefore he needs Naomi and Holden to lead him.


  • My right pinky is severely bent at the topmost joint. It made learning the piano somewhat challenging, since the pinky sometimes “locks” itself if I try to extend my fingers too much. And if it does, I have to do a little wiggle movement to release it painlessly. If I try to force it, it makes a very loud snap and it hurts for a second.

    Otherwise it has not affected my life in any way.

    And I can make goose bumps / make my body hair rise up at will. It only lasts a few seconds every time, but it did make for a fun party trick when I was younger and a very hairy guy.



  • Doesn’t even have to be rust, wallpaper glue turns that colour when it gets wet. My grandma’s farmhouse still has a few small patches like these in some rooms. The old tile roof had tiny leaks in the 60’s, they fixed the roof but never had time to start tearing the room ceilings open while running the farm.

    We had the patchy room ceilings checked for microbial damage and moisture ~20 years ago by a pro and they were all clean.




  • I share your “gift”. No matter how much or how many days I drank, next morning the only symptom was tiredness. My partying never really got out hand, but I just kind of lost interest in it after my studies.

    My both granddads died of alcohol-related causes before my birth, so the danger was very real. Without the fear of hangover it would have been so easy to just keep on going. Luckily I never felt any pull towards it.

    I got my first real hangover when I was closer to 30 and it was a mindblowingly horrible experience. Nowadays I get drunk maybe once or twice a year and I do enjoy a craft beer or two on weekends, but that’s it.


  • I’ve had my Amazfit Bip (the original) for 6 or 7 years and the only complaint I have is the shitty original non-breathing silicon strap. After I replaced it with nylon strap, it was pretty much perfect.

    The battery still lasts over three weeks. The display glass only has a few tiny scratches on it, despite that I’ve worn the watch basically 24/7 all these years.

    It has all the basic functionalities I need built in and the not-so-important-but-nice ones I can get via Tasker.

    And it was really cheap, I originally bought it just to see what the fuss about smartwatches was all about. But it’s been so damn useful and trustworthy that I won’t even consider upgrading until it fails someday.


  • IMHO, J.J. Abrams should not be allowed to touch any scriptwriting duties ever. He is not a bad director, but he doesn’t seem to give a shit about the internal logic of the script if it comes in conflict with the “cool ideas” he has.

    His two Star Trek films were perfect examples of this fallacy, as was the last and worst Star Wars film. With Star Trek he kinda butchered the heart of the franchise - the point of using starships to explore - with “Oh, the transporter can now beam stuff over interplanetary and interstellar distances, because it will be so awesome and less time consuming!”

    Yes, it’s science fiction and suspension of disbelief is required to fully enjoy it, but it is possible to obey the decades old in-universe rules and still write an enticing storyline if you put a little effort in it. Sad model example of lazy writing.

    Of course the fault is not all his, the other producers should have stopped his stupid ideas but chose not to. Still, ROS was so bad that the guy should have been blacklisted for life.



  • My old Xperia Z5 Compact was the only phone I’ve ever owned that had decent speakers. You could actually listen music with them without getting pissed off. It was small and had amazing audio capabilities and great camera, easily the best phone I’ve ever owned.

    But listening music / watching videos in public with your phone speakers on is an abomination. It should be made illegal everywhere.


  • Yes. I was almost three years old. I don’t remember much, but I do remember that I started to sing during the wedding ceremony when my parents knelt at the altar. Of course no one else sung.

    I also remember that the priest scared the shit out of me and that my godfather “fell asleep” in the toilet and had to be carried to a car. I learned years later that he had severe social anxiety which he treated with liquor.


  • I did this with my friends when we went to Thailand. We were enjoying the delicious taste on a beach, two Australian guys were wanted to try it. They both spat it out instantly and the other one got so mad we thought he’s actually going to attack us.

    After he calmed down a bit he demanded to see us drink it to be sure we hadn’t tricked him to drink poison. So we downed the entire 1 litre bottle to appease him. It was the start of a great day that lasted for few days.