has no holes/stains

Snob

/s

Some do like it, but I’m with you; I skip the logo’d clothing.

A band is not the same as a luxury fashion brand.

One is exploited by massive corporations, gets a single digit percentage of the profits they generate, gets known by word of mouth (or T-shirt) among fans, and creates a piece of culture.

The other is a (usually massive) corporation, exploits low paid workers, is a status symbol for the rich and the people who want to appear as rich, and sometimes they make an item that could technically be considered a piece of culture.

Advertising for and/or showing your support for them are very different things that imply different things, for different reasons.

Wearing band merch implies support for their musical stylings, a connection with the creative output of the band, and possibly their world view.

Wearing a logo-festooned piece of couture clothing implies wealth and status, and (often) complicity with sweat shops.

While the two previous paragraphs seem to be similar, because of the first two paragraphs, they are quite different.

I used to participate in (what was then) the largest and most active automotive enthusiast forum for a specific brand. They had forums for each major model run, and classifieds, etc. I’d go there for how-to’s, detailed info, reviews, tips and tricks, and of course, to tall with like-minded people. Meet ups even spawned from these groups, and friendships were forged.

As it really picked up steam, though, the forum creators decided to monetize, as every large website grapples with how to sustain their growth. Unfortunately, they decided to implement ads, subscription/pay wall, and within a month, there were five competing websites. The majority of us left in the first two weeks.

Now that forum still exists, but the content is gone, deleted by users who didn’t appreciate their content being monetized (sound familiar, June 2023?). The replacements? Some struggle on, and one or two are vibrant, but mostly, it imploded. There was one glorious pair of years though, when I (and thousands of others) spent hours every day on the forum, and every topic was covered.

In hindsight, the downfall was more than just the advertisements and pay walling. It was a few non-admins that were treated as defacto mods, and they had bad attitudes. Flaming anyone who asked questions that were asked before (this was before Google made searching easier), and also holding their own practices as the only way to maintain their cars.

The reddit versions of the forums were not remotely the same, with people coming and going and not really sticking around. The best place for the info is still forums, though I think they struggle with server upkeep and costs. It’s sad to me, but all things change. I’m glad for archive.org.

There can be a lot of ways this has nothing at all to do with you.

Begin anecdote: I just got back from two years out of the country and am back to visit family and earn more money for my next trip. I’m hugely depressed. I drained about $80k in savings that took me 15 years to build, have no job, no car, and am sleeping on a concrete floor in a family member’s basement. I’m grown with three adult children.

My older cousin has three kids in their late twenties and early thirties. Two daughters live together and have game night every Tuesday. They adore me and invite me weekly. I’ve not had the stamina to endure a long activity like that, and I also am waiting for both sisters to be available, as one had been working nights, but has next Tuesday off.

When I canceled this past Tuesday, the working sister told me the following day that her father and sister are angry with both of us – convinced I favor working sister more than the two of them. They assume (as is their dramatic nature) that anything that affects them was intentionally done with malice.

I had a doctor’s appointment the day of game night that ran until 3pm, and game night was 70 miles away at 5pm.

These two are sure that I’m slighting them, when in reality, I was home rocking on a cold floor trying to find the motivation to face the public so I could eat dinner. I never did eat. I woke to the revelation from working sister, and now, visiting game night seems 50 times more awkward and uncomfortable to me.

If they hadn’t taken it personally that I’m a mess, I’d be scheduled for game night in two days. As it is, I’m almost 98% guaranteed to skip it to avoid that drama. My canceling had nothing to do with them. My depression and self-loathing are of my own making, and when people feel the need to pressure me or shame me, it never helps in any way.

End anecdote.

If you took it personally that people didn’t show to your party, I get it. I’m sorry. But it likely was not you, and isn’t indicative of the care these people have for you. Its their own thing. My advice is to laugh it off as a plan gone wrong and put it behind you. There are real things that affect us. We don’t need to invent them.

“Remember that time I decided to celebrate my birthday for the first time in decades? I thought 50 would show, but it was 5? Guess that didn’t go as planned!” Its funny, if you let it be.

Take the win: you stayed on-task and for a big shin-dig planned. You have 50 friends.

Maybe you can keep gatherings small and simple for a while, and let the large gatherings happen more organically?

I hope your week is a good one and you can smile about this soon. Happy birthday.

I took OP to Kean they wanted an instance that doesn’t enable downvotes. Not sure…

Lemmynsfw.com

China=Bad

TikTok does what every other social media app does (which is 100% legal in the US, thanks to corrupt leaders and law makers), but:China, so: Bad.

Seems to work

Is something wrong at the well, girl?

My suggestion doesn’t make sense in the classic PATA sense either, since there were potentially several “slave” devices, but they weren’t slaves so much as dependent on the “master.”

Primary/secondary?

Kodi on my 2015 Nvidia Shield doesn’t stutter for me playing back 30GB+ 4k files on a 1Gb network from an ancient (2012) AMD Athlon TrueNAS box. It could be network related, but you can test this from another machine (laptop, desktop, etc) or by using local playback on the pi. I have cheap network hardware, and have never needed better. All this is to say Kodi mounting NFS shouldn’t need much bandwidth or high end gear. Perhaps the issue is on the playback side. Good luck!

Edit: and an

In the USA many states work very hard to remove voters’ registration and voting locations so the folks they don’t want voting can’t place their votes.

The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has proposed cloud and messaging service providers should detect and remove known child abuse material and pro-terror material “where technically feasible” – as well as disrupt and deter new material of that nature.

The eSafety regulator has stressed in an associated discussion paper it “does not advocate building in weaknesses or back doors to undermine privacy and security on end-to-end encrypted services”.

I so love these magic wand-waving legislators. “Spy on your users and control what they do on your encrypted platform, but in a way that doesn’t break encryption or violate privacy…”