Thanks for sharing that talk, it’s pretty good.

I always find his talks interesting, because it often feels like it’s the same core talk each time, but changed through iterative refining of his ideas and rhetoric due to how often he gets the chance to talk about these issues.

Even though I’ve seen many of his talks before, I am surprised at how skillfully he is able to weave in new angles and themes. I mean, he has been doing this stuff for literal decades, but still, it’s impressive.

Nice job. T shirts are deceptively tricky to sew because they’re often a bit stretchy.

I think you should leave it as is. I find the slightly rough look of hand repairs to be quite charming. Plus there have been times when I have been a perfectionist and undone adequate work, only for it to come out worse (which just ends up stressing the fabric more). I think this looks pretty good though — certainly neater than what I did when I had the same problem.

I love Pothos, they’re very forgiving and they communicate very well. They’re very good for people who tend to kill plants by loving them too much — I tend to water mine when they’re visibly beginning to look a bit sad. I don’t do stuff like spraying (I’ve found that this can lead to rot, and that I have an easier time keeping plants happy by thoroughly watering them even when the soil is dry at least an inch deep)

What I really love about them though is how easy they are to propagate through cuttings. Great for sharing with friends, plus it’s a great way to make an existing plant more bushy — just take a cutting that has at least one leaf node on it (I usually go for at least 2) and then stick it in the existing pot. I was especially grateful for this after I had to live in a fairly low light room and my Pothos had become a bit leggy due to stretching out to try to reach more light.

It sounds like looking after this plant might only be a temporary arrangement, so pruning is likely beyond your job description. If that’s the case, you should ask your mom if you can take a cutting or two when it’s time to give it back — I bet your daughter would enjoy that.

Edit: I felt like I explained the cuttings thing poorly, so I took another look at the pic to see if I could give an example, and I saw a stem with no leaves on it, and that’s a great example of where I’d prune. Here’s a pic that shows where I’d make a couple of cuts, and then I’d stick those stems into the soil, an inch or so deep.

Unfortunately, while I was there, I noticed a few signs that might be indicative of overwatering/potential rot. The surface of the soil near the bottom of the pic looks like it’s got some fungus growing on it. That in and of itself isn’t a problem, but it is a sign that the soil could probably do with having more chance to dry out between waterings.

Furthermore, some of the stems look like they’re beginning to get a bit wrinkly, and that tends to be a sign of root rot. If you give the stems a gentle squeeze with your fingers and they feel soft, then that’s likely the case. There’s no need to worry if this is the case though — this guy still looks pretty happy, so this is likely fixable by watering less often. When I first started out with houseplants, I watered them a little bit, quite often, but I didn’t learn until after I’d lost a few plants that thoroughly watering, less often is best.

By thorough, I mean watering over a sink or similar until water is freely running out the bottom of the pot. “Bottom up watering” can also work: this is when you place the plant in a container of water (about an inch deep) for half an hour or so. It’ll suck up the water it needs, and you’ll be able to feel how much heavier the pot is (this is especially good if you’ve gone for too long without watering, because the soil can become weirdly hydrophobic)

I’m sorry to come into this post of pride and be a buzzkill like this. My intention isn’t to be an “um actually” kind of asshole, I just think it would be tragic if the plant ended up dying, despite you and your daughter’s efforts to keep it happy. You definitely shouldn’t feel bad about this happening, because it’s pretty common, even for people who are experienced with plants. It’s especially likely to happen during winter, when plants are respiring less, and houses are more humid.

My biggest piece of advice would be to use the finger method I mentioned above — poke your finger in the soil, at least an inch deep, and only water if the soil feels fully dry, and teach your daughter that too. I find that this is the most reliable way to avoid overwatering because it’s like talking directly to the plant to know what it needs — with this method, you’ll find that you’ll naturally end up watering more frequently in the more Summery months.

Pothos are pretty drought resistant, compared to many (non succulent) houseplants though, so for these, it’s usually better to err on the side of too little water than too much. Here’s a before and after watering image of my pothos. Despite looking super sad in the first photo, it perked right up less than 24 hours later. In this case, I’d left it for longer than ideal before watering because I was making a point to an anxious friend, but I usually wait until they look at least a little sad.

If I were in your daughter’s position, I might be dismayed to learn that I had been inadvertently doing the wrong thing, so this might be a good opportunity to get her a plant that does enjoy a bit more regular love. Off the top of my head, that could include plants like fittonias (nerve plants — they come in loads of colours and are very pretty), birds nest ferns and calatheas.

Sorry again for being a buzzkill, and I hope this is helpful and not too overwhelming. I genuinely don’t believe that you’ve been doing anything wrong here, even if you change your practice as a result of this post — two months is long enough that it would have died by now if you were genuinely doing stuff wrong. It’s likely more due to things like the weather outside, or what your house heating is set to — Winter is a hard time to be a houseplant.

Piggybacking off this to add more lightbulb jokes.

The best joke I’ve ever heard was delivered by a German friend with an incredible deadpan delivery

How many Germans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

!“One. We are a very efficient people”!<

Another one!

How many emos does it take to change a lightbulb?

!None. They all just sit in the dark crying.!<

(I should clarify that I find this one funny because when I first heard it, it very much applied to me. I felt mildly attacked, but not in a hurtful way)

Piggybacking off your comment to leave a pirate joke of my own.

“What’s a pirate’s favourite letter?”

(Ideally, the audience will reply “Arrr!” this this. It works best if you prime them for this by doing a bad pirate impression earlier in the conversation, or tell a joke such as “What’s a pirate’s favourite animal? An aardevark!”)

“You might think so, but a pirate’s true love be the C (sea)”

Bonus joke! What’s a pirate’s least favourite letter?

!Dear Sir or Madam, your IP address has been recorded downloading infringing copyrighted material on…!<

Movie dialogue tries to be verisimilitudinous, rather than realistic.

I’m mostly making this comment because “verisimilitudinous” is an excellent word that I love getting the opportunity to use.

The datasets they are trained on do in fact include CSAM. These datasets are so huge that it easily slips through the cracks. It’s usually removed whenever it’s found, but I don’t know how this actually affects the AI models that have already been trained on that data — to my knowledge, it’s not possible to selectively “untrain” models, and they would need to be retrained from scratch. Plus I occasionally see it crop up in the news about how new CSAM keeps being found in the training data.

It’s one of the many, many problems with generative AI

Thanks for sharing this. This bolstered my spirit.

I liked the bit where it discusses how, regardless of the effectiveness of whistles in deterring ICE, they have proven to be helpful in regular people feeling less alone.

The idea of copyright is to protect the financial rights of creatives, thus incentivising people to make more stuff, right?

Well even before AI, it wasn’t doing its job very well on that front. The only ones with the power and money to be able to leverage copyright to protect their rights are those who are already so powerful that they don’t need those protections — big music labels and the like. Individual creatives were already being fucked over by the system long before AI.

If you haven’t read the article, I’d encourage you to give it a try. Or perhaps this one, which goes into depth on the intrinsic tensions within copyright law.

An extended story that I recently read (or rather, listened to) was “There is no Antiemetics Division”, by qntm. The channel J&V SCP archives have an excellent audiobook-style reading of it, if that’s your thing. It’s not especially scary (though it does have its moments), but stumbling across it really reignited my enjoyment of SCP.

I’m younger than you (born 1995), but I share some of your feelings. The internet today is so different from how I remember it as a kid. I am immensely grateful that I got to experience some of that period of rapid change.

The fact that you, a human, asked this question, and got a variety of human replies is why I would say no.

I know that the dead internet theory doesn’t say that all internet activity is bots, but certainly the internet that I experience, there is abundant humanity.

However, I am a nerd who inhabits quite niche spaces, so my experience is far from the typical. Having the knowledge and stubbornness to find spaces like this puts me in a kind of bubble, where it’s hard for me to gauge whether we’re actually at the point of “dead internet”.

In all likelihood, my answer is “no”, because I need it to be. I love the internet. I grew up online, and as a very lonely child, the internet was a key part of my identity formation. As an adult, the internet is how I access community and learning. As grim as things are, I think I’m a utopian at heart.

Like I say, I realise that my online experience is far from what most people experience, and I do find it sad that most people probably do experience a much deader internet than I do. But the reason why I’m here, putting time and care into comments like this is because this is one of the ways that I am trying to keep the internet alive. “Dead” is a binary, which suggests the battle is already over. I believe the internet is dying, for sure, but I can’t reconcile the notion of a dead internet with all the vibrant communities of people who are making stuff they care about, in defiance of the slop economy.

This is a dangerous way of thinking. It’s not far off from the logic that Israelis use to justify the killing of children, who they argue are predisposed to become terrorists.

There is nothing intrinsic to IDF soldiers that make them capable of perpetrating a genocide. The vitriol that fuels them is built up over years of sociocultural conditioning, and no-one is immune to that. It’s important that we recognise this if we want to avoid creating a world with more people who think like this.

I’m intrigued by solo TTRPGs. Is there a particular one you can recommend?

Glad you’re still with us!

I remember seeing a post of yours elsewhere where you mentioned about difficulty mustering the energy and mental strength to go out beyond your home (possibly linked to your parents being quite overprotective? I may be remembering wrong). Regardless of the specifics, I think that factors like that can worsen relations between family members. My brother and I don’t get on well when we’re living in the same house, for instance. That’s made worse by my mom being a difficult person to live with.

But I think you’re right also, that there is a significant component of the grass being greener on the other side. I know plenty of people who are only children, who wish they had siblings, and people with siblings who wish they were an only child.

In that case, the finished product would be of pretty mediocre quality, in my case. That’s because most of my projects are things that I actively want to learn, and I tend to be overambitious when setting aims. Despite this though, even when I completely botch it up, I struggle to think of a time where I have regret my endeavour. I like the learning

No. The main reason I do projects is for the learning. Any useful items I produce as part of the process are just happy side effects.

Something that I’m super chuffed with is that a few years back, one of my most cheapskate friends asked me for advice on buying a new laptop. When I presented their options to them, they were reluctant to cheap out and get a mediocre laptop that wouldn’t last them very long, but they also balked at the price of even the midrange laptops (they weren’t keen on spending more than £250 on a laptop, which wasn’t enough to get anything that they’d consider to be decent and worth the effort/cost).

As a long shot offer, I told them that I could always try installing Linux on their laptop if they wanted to wring another couple of years out of their existing laptop. I was a tad surprised when they opted for this, and even more surprised at how well they took to it; I jokingly call them one of my “normie” friends, because they’re one of the people whose perspective I ask for when I’m trying to calibrate for what non-techie people know/think. I only had limited experience with Linux myself at that point, having only played around with things on live USBs before. I had heard that Linux could give new life to slow computers, but I was surprised at just how effectively it did this.

(A small amusing aspect to this anecdote is that when I was installing it, I said that one of the side benefits of running Linux is that it could boost nerd cred amongst folk like me. They laughed and said that they didn’t expect that this would be a thing that would ever end up being relevant. Later that year, they got a girlfriend who saw that my friend was running Linux, and expressed approval, which is quite funny to me)

That’s sad. Regardless of whether it’s one of the reasons for Microsoft’s nosedive, it does make me feel some unexpected sympathy for Satya Nadella. I also feel pity, because most high up CEOs do not seem happy with their lives — Many of them spend an absurd amount of time at work, even if they never seem to actually do much work, and I can’t imagine how hard it must be to weather grief under such conditions. No amount of money can buy you more time with a lost loved one.

It really seems like a hollow existence.