What does OC mean in this context?

I think the analogy still applies. There are loads of people who I interact with who say things I don’t want to hear/profound disagree with. The block list includes people with whom it doesn’t feel viable to have a discussion with without things descending into flames.

A friend has extremely asymmetrical breasts, so a bra that fits their larger breast doesn’t fit their smaller one. They have a gel insert to put into that cup to account for this, but they also made a little pocket pouch in the same shape/size.

A lot of pushup bras also have a little pocket for a smaller kind of gel insert. I know a couple people who find that pocket useful for hiding valuable and/or illicit things (e.g. drugs)

I love the glee that women show when displaying their pockets. One of the first things I did when learning to sew was add pockets to many of my garments, so I get to do this quite frequently. It’s a sweet slice of trivial solidarity

This reminds me of an excellent episode of Dark Net Diaries, “Jeremy from Marketing”. https://pca.st/episode/52252c9e-e4a8-42f6-85f5-f162ec3f6b40

Vim has long since won the war. I say that as an emacs user who is familiar with using vim because it’s installed by default on the vast majority of computers I interact with nowadays

Some of the best artists I know are people who started out without a single iota of talent, but they practiced for long enough that they got good. I reckon that talent probably does exist, but it’s a far smaller component than many believe. Hard word beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.

People who are most likely to emphasise talent in art tend to be people who wish they were good at art, but aren’t willing (or able) to put the time into improving; it feels oddly reassuring to tell oneself that it’s pointless to try if you don’t start out with talent, rather than being realistic and saying “I wish I were good at art, but I am choosing not to invest in that skill because it’s not one of my priorities”

Not inherently, but I went to a school where the enforcement of the uniform code was overly Draconian. For example, there was a rule that boots were not allowed, so at the beginning of term, they had students line up and pull their trousers legs up so that an assistant headteacher could measure how high the shoes went (because that was one of the ways they defined shoes Vs boots). My step-brother’s new school shoes were 1cm too tall, and they sent him home with a note saying that boots weren’t permitted.

My step-mum called up the school and went ballistic at them for it, refusing to buy another pair of shoes. This was a socioeconomically poor area in which many families would struggle to afford one pair of shoes at the beginning of the year, so this assholish enforcement of the rules was absurd. If you can only tell that the shoes aren’t permitted when a student pulls up their trouser legs, what is the problem?

I think that some of the logic behind the strict uniform code was that there was a perception that higher performing schools in better areas would have nicer school uniforms, and I wonder whether they were trying to work backwards from that, as if maintaining the uniform code could defy all the socioeconomic adversity that families in this area faced.

Aside from the excessive enforcement, I like the uniform code. It can mask income disparities within the student body if everyone is wearing the same thing. I felt insecure about how poor my family was, and it would’ve been worse without the uniform, I think. I also liked not having to think about what to wear, and it seemed to make it easier for my mum to strategise laundry to ensure we always had clean uniform to wear.

I also liked wearing a blazer because it meant I always had reliable pockets. Important things like my phone and my bus pass went in my inside pocket, which had a zip. Then there were two large exterior pocket which were good for pens and the like. It made it easier to avoid losing or forgetting things.

I think a happy medium would be possible. School uniforms could act as a blank canvas on which students could experiment with other forms of self expression.

My own country (the UK).

That’s a weird response to the question, given that I do currently reside here. However, I don’t feel like I’m doing much living. There’s so much more that I could be doing if I wasn’t constantly struggling for money

I used to do this, because it didn’t seem to cause any issues — until it did, and I lost a lot of data.

I don’t have input on cameras specifically, but I have gone pretty deep into trying to understand how to maximise security and interoperability in smart home stuff, through open source control.

A starting point for the you-in-control app to use for smart devices is Home assistant. I was surprised by how easy it was to set up self hosted smart home stuff, largely because there’s loads of guides that build around home assistant. So whether a particular camera works with home assistant is a good starting search filter

Margaret Thatcher getting rid of milk snacks in schools. I grew up in a mining town, so from a very young age, I was acutely aware of how much everyone hated Thatcher. However, I just thought that people really liked milk, and that’s why they hated “Margaret Thatcher the milk snatched”. I don’t like the taste of milk on its own, and I can remember being 3 or 4 years old and bemused by the intensity of feelings towards her — I guessed that people must really like milk

Edit: turns out that the milk removal was before my time

Friends tell me that seeing Kneecap live was incredible

Any recommendations for punk electronic music? I’ve been wanting to get into making electronic music because disability means that’s a more accessible genre for me than playing traditional instruments, but it’s daunting to get into a new genre

Edit: this accessibility thing is also why electronic music, as a genre, has so much potential to be punk, which I find very cool

I’m sorry that you find this relatable. Unfortunately, I do too. It seems pretty unlikely that your parents aren’t your real parents, but regardless, it’s valid and okay to wish that you had different parents.

I don’t necessarily wish that I had different parents, but more that I wish my parents were different people when they had me. That probably doesn’t make much sense, but what I mean is that I am estranged from my parents because it wasn’t possible to have an emotionally safe relationship with them. My mom in particular tried her best, but she was pretty messed up from abuse that she suffered as a child. I often wonder how things could’ve been different if she’d been able to get a bunch of therapy and find a supportive community before she had kids.

Like I say, it’s okay to feel wistful, just try not to ruminate too much. The key thing to remember is that you deserve good parents, and it’s reasonable to feel grief if that’s not something you have; I’ve found that trying to force myself to not feel hurt by the unfairness can just make the sadness more intrusive.

Having shitty parents is a pretty tough disadvantage, and certainly I often wonder how many of my mental health problems are attributable to my childhood. Your background doesn’t need to define you though. I know many people who, like me, became properly estranged from their parents, and felt liberated afterwards. It sucks that I had to go no contact with them, but after I had the freedom to build a life of my own, it was a healthy step. I also know many who were able to build a healthier relationship with their parents as adults — basically what I tried to do, but it worked out well for them.

The point that I’m trying to make is that you’re not defined by your parents. Not now and not ever. Just never forget that you deserve love, care and respect, especially from your family. I’ve found this is a key thing for avoiding the wistfulness spiral into a deeper depression. If your blood family isn’t able or willing to give you the support you need to thrive, then take it from me that family isn’t just something you have by blood, but it can be something you build, and that found family is valid.

For a while, I was subscribed as a patron to Elisabeth Bik’s Patroeon. She’s a microbiologist turned “Science Integrity Specialist” which means she investigates and exposes scientific fraud. Despite doing work that’s essential to science, she has struggled to get funding because there’s a weird stigma around what she does; It’s not uncommon to hear scientists speak of people like her negatively, because they perceive anti-fraud work as being harmful to public trust in science (which is obviously absurd, because surely recognising that auditing the integrity of research is necessary for building and maintaining trust in science).

Anyway, I mention this because it’s one of the most dystopian things I’ve directly experienced in recent years. A lot of scientists and other academics I know are struggling financially, even though they’re better funded than she is, so I can imagine that it’s even worse for her. How fucked up is it for scientific researchers to have to rely on patrons like me (especially when people like me are also struggling with rising living costs).

Ultimately it’s up to you, but my view is that our best way of resisting AI is to build community and human connection. A friend who is an artist told me that AI has changed how and where they share their art, but that it would feel like a form of “complying in advance” if they stopped sharing their art at all.

They said that they feel completely confident that AI art will never be able to replace human art, because to them, art is fundamentally a conversation, and Generative AI is incapable of participating in a conversation, no matter how good it gets at emulating real artists.

It’s from 2024, but some of the best coverage of the use of AI in this genocide is from 972mag, a journalistic outlet whose team includes Israelis and Palestinians. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

I’m turning the terminal font green so I feel like a Real Hacker™

(Though when I’m actually coding stuff, I change it back because syntax highlighting doesn’t work when everything is green)

Thanks for that, I appreciate it.