I would never be able to take such a picture of my dog. He would be ferociously licking the tiny bit of delicious food that he not allowed to have off of his back.

Civil matter, not criminal

Flac 44.1 16bit level 3. Host with something that meets your needs. I have my files in jellyfin and navidrome and can then access the library remotely either through jellyfin web client, navidrome web client, substreamer, Finamp, kodi, etc. but this way if another amazing format comes up down the line I will always have my library in a good state to transcode from. Tag and sort everything with beets.io (or musicbrainz picard is great, I just like that beets is cli). This results in a library I can access on my phone, laptop, tv, carplay, etc

Technically you could go for 24bit but imo the extra file size isn’t justified. though one could make that argument for flac vs 320cbr mp3, transcoding 320 mp3 is more likely to create artifacts, thus the reason for keeping around flac

Alac may be easier for you if you use mac

The characters being ancillary and easily edited out/cut is by design so they can still use the movies in foreign markets that are hostile to lgbt rights

If the gay character is only identified as gay in one scene where they say “I’m gay” or kiss for 10 seconds you can just cut that part out and still screen it in Saudi Arabia. Disney doesn’t actually give a shit about lgbt issues, they give a shit about what will sell

Thus a prominent main character who is gay or a movie about a character coming to terms with queer identity is far less likely because that basically means they instantly lose out on much of the lucrative international market

If she has a lube dispenser by her bed of any kind you’re in for a pretty fun time I would think

I used my old ones a ton. I had the original nook and had been using it for 13 years. I finally upgraded to a newer one with a color e ink screen and I like it a lot. It’s a boox ultra tab c. It was pricey so I wouldn’t get it unless you really read a lot and like e ink

I use it for reading almost exclusively. I read 1-2 books a week and a few volumes of graphic novels/manga per week as well. I have poor vision and the e ink is much easier on my eyes than lcd/oled screens. I can read on this for hours but reading on a traditional phone/tablet/laptop gives me eye strain/headache after a few hours. It’s nice to have a screen you can read with no back or front light. I do use the front light at times but I usually have it off

It’s handy for taking notes and annotations. I’ve read it’s good for drawing as well but I am terrible at drawing so I don’t know. The stylus seems comparable to my friends Apple Pencil except you can use the back as an eraser like an actual pencil

battery life is much better to a traditional tablet - a charge lasts 2-3 days usually, can last longer if I keep the front light off and all the wireless radio stuff off. I’ve gotten it to last a week. It’s a bit heavy bc of the battery though

Wrt color it’s a mixed bag. It’s a very handy feature for manga and graphic novels. But the color panels are new tech so they come with issues; primarily ghosting/image retention. After some time I’ve found an ideal mix of settings to minimize the issue and make the color look as good as possible. The boox os also has a little nav ball that can quickly force a full refresh the screen at any point to remove any retained image. But the color is still not comparable to an lcd/oled by any means

Mine is based on a kaleido3 panel. There’s a newer gallery3 panel that has more vibrant color but with a trade off of noticeably slower refresh rates. It’s not actually an eink panel but something called acep; it was more meant for advertisements/billboards so quick refresh rates weren’t a priority. There’s also no real options for a device with it at the moment aside from one that has real mixed reviews and one that has an open preorder with no eta on delivery as far as I know.

It’s also a somewhat capable android tablet but I don’t really get this part. Like you can run YouTube and games and stuff. But i don’t know why you would bother? It’s workable but not nearly as good. The exception to this is web browsing depending on the site. Heavy text based sites work well in Firefox.

The weather will probably be a lot worse

And maybe PlayStation 6

Middle management has gotten absolutely out of control in America

Imo (and this is largely conjecture) it’s an end result of stagnant wages. It used to be that you might stay in the same position but get actual pay increases 50 years ago. Now you don’t get the pay increases really, maybe a 3% annual bump if you’re lucky. They need something to retain talent so a lot of places end up creating bullshit management positions out of thin air to retain staff that come with a slightly more modest pay bump.

So instead of the 3% bump you get a 5% bump and now you’re “director of clinical programming” or “associate manager of marketing and sales for eastern iowa division” and have 10 employees “report” to you but in reality you’re neutered and have no actual power to do anything to them but tattle to the actual boss. But then the company doesn’t have to give you a 7-10% bump that outpaces inflation and feels like an actual raise. They save the real promotions for nepotism.

But this happens constantly and now industries are jam packed with employees that just bother other employees all day and/or create systems that slow down employees en masse to “increase accountability” that are constantly updated and replaced without removing old ones.

Whenever someone goes on about fixing healthcare this comes to mind. I’ve worked in healthcare for years and it is absolutely full of this. Pharma, insurance, hospital admin, all of them are loaded up with tons of these kinds of staff. I can’t tell you how many useless staff I’ve seen get promoted to positions that were literally created for them to supervise a handful of people. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to fill out 7 sets of paperwork that takes 2 hours and is all redundant copies of each other because 9 middle managers from the hospital, insurance, and state administration are all constantly convinced I’m a fraudulent liar despite being a licensed professional with a decade and a half of clinical experience and absolutely no investigations or citations on my record whatsoever.

Single payer healthcare is definitely a great idea that should be pursued but this is a huge problem that also needs to be addressed regardless of who’s paying the bill if you want to see changes with actual costs, wait times, clinician burn out, etc.

I’d imagine it’s similar for other industries too. How much wasted resources are in middle management at tech companies, at food production, at basically anything? How much of rising costs are basically going to pay the glut of middle managers that being nothing to the table but resource drain? Who do nothing in terms of bringing in money, who do nothing in terms of providing value? How much cheaper could my cellphone, bread, wood, etc be without these parasites sucking up resources

But then the societal impact comes up. If you addressed this problem tonight that would mean millions of people go from comfortably middle class to jobless overnight. America isn’t known for great social supports as is, what happens when you throw a 7-8 figure number into the mix (with the reduced tax income from the loss of their job income).

Fwiw I genuinely think that point is a huge factor in why our government resists proper single payer healthcare; a true program would displace millions of workers overnight as it would make companies like Aetna, Cigna, etc largely redundant and reliant on their much less lucrative life/home/auto/renters insurance divisions. They would slash workers left and right. If we ever get one it will be a two lane system where the private insurers stay alongside it as a “boutique” option for the rich to receive better service, guaranteed. Plus you know, those companies literally own politicians lol and that’s the other much larger problem

Comparison of excellent quality vanilla vs excellent quality chocolate should leave you with the takeaway that both are excellent. you may have a preference for one over the other but that’s hardly objective

My personal preference shifts based on mood and (more so) based on quality. Excellent chocolate bar vs budget ice cream that uses vanillin instead of actual vanilla beans? Probably the chocolate unless I’m searching for that nostalgic artificial vanilla flavor. A shitty chocolate snack cake with like 2% actual chocolate and 98% palm oil vs a well made panna cotta? Going vanilla.

You mean you don’t want communities infested with bots promoting thinly veiled advertisements and reposting crusty old content to farm upvotes to make their accounts look more legitimate?

Logitech has been making atrociously shitty fucking internet based software for pretty decent hardware since the first harmony remote back in 2001. Only buy their hardware if it absolutely will never require software of any kind imo

Almost any cash only retail business in 2023 is highly suspect outside of some outlier situations like rural markets

Palliative just means relieving symptoms without dealing with the cause of the condition. In this example they might administer medication to lower a spiking heart rate without dealing with the obvious causal factor of the unfinished surgery bc they are not qualified to do so. This would be palliative in nature.

That said “palliative care” is a sub speciality in its own right as you describe

I would imagine there is a contingency plan for if the surgeon becomes incapacitated, eg has an aneurysm/heart attack, so they’d probably do whatever that is

Probably something like palliative care until an on call surgeon can come in and finish out whatever was going on

You don’t understand it’s “lifestyle creep”. First you buy a ps5 then you end up with a 3 yachts and a controlling interest in a media empire. It sneaks up on you.

The doctor has no idea what anything costs

Edit: unless it’s a one of the admin slash doctors or a private practice

There were a few professional psychology related subreddits that had moderation that verified licensure to allow posting only by actually professionals and that was pretty nice

There was also askatherapist which was interesting to get unfiltered client perspectives and offer clinician feedback

Morbidquestions was an interesting sub sometimes. 80% of the time it was stupid edgelord bullshit but sometimes someone would ask a really interesting dark question

Creepywikipedia was a good one and is explained by the name

Thank god! I got this one years ago but good to know. It’s built like a fucking tank. I’m pretty sure it will last forever based on that. what I’ve read online seems to confirm it but good to know there’s a backup. Plus anything I can do to avoid Amazon is always excellent

Been to a few psychiatrists and work with a lot as a clinician. For a first meeting you should expect to give a lot of history including familial history, treatment history, substance use history, medication history, diagnosis history, trauma history, developmental history, etc. Skip any that aren’t relevant to you and if you can’t give tons of info that’s okay (eg if you don’t have tons of info on your early development just give what you can, you can skip substance use if you’ve never had issues with it, etc). description of presenting problems including what you’re coming in for but also cooccurring physical issues that may be relevant (eg chronic ailments like diabetes/gerd/migraines) as well as sleep quality.

You may not touch on all of this, it may include other stuff, depends on the doctor. Each practitioner has their own personal approach but those are the broad strokes. Assuming you’re in the USA remember your rights as a consumer: you have the right to know why you are being prescribed a medication, you have the right to know it’s side effects, and you have the right to know alternatives to it. But at the same time remember side effects aren’t always experienced and for some people being aware of them makes them more likely to occur (I am one of those people fwiw)

I have an American toilet but a Japanese toilet seat (toto washlet) and it is pretty awesome. It has a heated seat, a bidet with a built in on demand water heater (you only have to hook up cold water), it has adjustable nozzle length to make sure it gets the right spot, has soft lighting so I can use the toilet at night without turning on the bathroom lights, it has modes to oscillate and pulsate the stream which is much better than it sounds, it pre-mists the toilet when you walk up so your poop doesn’t stick to the bowl, it lifts the lid when you walk up and can lift/lower the seat with a button press, it has 2 user profiles so you can set up your preferred heating settings and nozzle length and such, and it drys your butt off when you’re done with a blow dryer. If you buy a fancy toilet it can auto flush too but I only got this bc I had a contractor friend who sold it to me for $350 bc some rich dude ordered too many for their house remodel and they were selling it as overstock or whatever. I couldn’t justify changing out a perfectly good toilet. It was already too much to spend but now if it breaks I don’t know what I’ll do because a new one is like $800-1200 and I am so used to having my ass blow dried lol