That’s awesome. My brother has the AKG K7XX, I’m guessing they sound similar, because I remember being impressed with these. I assume the QJ are just a different tune, and more padding on the headband.

I recently ordered the Sennheiser HD 58X, but I was looking at the AKG options too.

Glad to hear it. How’s the sound of these? I’ve never heard any Quincy Jones signature headphones from AKG.

Exactly. I used to be bad at it, but then I discovered Chef John from Food Wishes and this got me to cook better, and these days there are so many incredible cooking creators on YouTube that I have an endless stream of inspiration.

P.S. If you like Italian cuisine, I highly recommend watching Italia Squisita.

Awesome that you have a job. If you like cooking, I highly recommend getting as much knowledge from free platforms like YouTube, there are a lot of great and passionate creators to learn from, and their enthusiasm is infectious. Watch videos, try to pay attention to techniques more than the recipes themselves. Keep an open mind and jump at opportunities when you see them.

I believe in you!

It can be very demoralizing, but remember that IQ is only a part of intelligence, and grades in school matter a lot less than you think. Also C’s and B’s are respectable grades. Focus on the things you are good at and enjoy doing. Do you like animals? There are people who pay for grooming or dogsitting. Maybe you have a good sense of humor and can make it as a comedian. Perhaps you like outdoors and plants?

Please don’t give up and lean into your strengths.

You’re correct, GrapheneOS is just for privacy and security, not to keep devices out of the landfill. LineageOS keeps devices up for super long. The first gen Pixel is still officially supported with Android 14, and I’ve seen an unofficial build for a Nexus 4, a 2012 phone…

A discontinued product from AKG called the K-330. The sound, even though nothing to get excited about, was decent, but the durability of these, in my opinion is legendary. When I was a teenager, I was not careful with them at all, and would often forget them in my sweatpants pockets before throwing them into the washing machine, and that happened hundreds of times and it’s not an exaggeration. The cable was mostly tangle free, while everyone else had to untangle their earbuds (something that most modern earbud cables can’t seem to do as well). These went through abuse more than any other device I’ve ever owned, and they kept working no matter what. Audio quality wise, they are overpriced in my opinion (I think the MSRP was $100, but because not many bought them, I got them on sale as a teen), but the durability is Nokia level in my opinion.

High res is amazing for productivity, but unimportant for gaming.

Higher refresh rate is nice at all times, but in gaming it’s especially great.

Since I don’t play nearly as much as I did, and don’t play any competitive games, I lean towards higher resolution. Maybe I’ll be able to get one of these fancy 4k and high refresh rate monitors used eventually.

While I have no personal experience with tobacco addictions, there is an interesting literature review of CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and MBI (Mindfulness Based Interventions).

I don’t know what hardware my first computer had because I didn’t even know what a GPU was at the time… But the first GPU I ever bought was the 8600 GT.

I’m now imagining two random strangers meeting in a random place, one of them with an overheating laptop, and asking the other “got some paste?” like smokers sometimes ask for a lighter.

Love whistling. I learned it as a teen and drove my parents mad practicing.

While I am not inept in the kitchen, I only recently figured out how to get the classic French omelette consistently right. It’s harder than it looks to get it looking flawless like that with an ultra thin exterior layer and perfectly creamy inside, and not ruining the structure when rolling it on the edge of the pan. I followed the instructions of the legendary chef, Jacques Pepin, in this video, and supplemented by the wonderful videos of chef motokichi (link). They make it look super easy because they are extremely skilled.

Israel are absolutely and undeniably the bad guys. To use an analogy, imagine a school bully who is stronger and gets the support of the teachers and principal of the school, and the bully beats up the smaller kid every day until they hit a breaking point and throws a punch back. A reasonable school would support the bullied kid, but in this case, the principal just gives the bully a gun and looks away.

Israel has been dehumanizing and oppressing the Palestinian people since it’s inception and things have been getting worse. When October 7th happen, it was indeed horrible and many civilians got hurt, but Israel’s response was so completely disproportionately mad that they are actively committing genocide, treating the list of warcrimes like a to-do list.

Was she particularly skinny? A friend of mine with a similar problem explained that because she was very skinny (actual eating disorder), any slightly hard surface puts pressure on her bones (especially ribs) painfully even when doing it gently, and she would feel pain even by sitting on a chair without a pillow between her body and the wood surface. Muscle and fat help coushon and spread the pressure across a larger area so most people don’t experience this pain.

Terraforming other planets would be astronomically more challenging than fixing our own planet and we don’t seem to be able to get our shit together to do that. Even if we are capable of terraforming other planets, it would take many centuries at minimum. O’Neal cylinders are far more likely to work once we start industrializing the moon.

And the more times you do it, it’s like playing a Russian roulette over and over again, you’ll eventually be caught.

What I meant is that it would get more and more difficult with more mass surveillance. Think about it, in 1950 it would take relatively little effort to fake an identity by inserting fake documents into a few physical cabinets. In 2000, cyber security was so weak that hacking to some government agency to modify their databases would be relatively simple. Now it would require advanced social engineering, and is extremely risky, and on top of that, they have a lot of mass surveillance.

If we assume everything will have a biometric database, you’ll have to find ways to change your fingerprints and face every few decades.

Over a long enough duration, you are guaranteed to be caught.

(Edit: grammar)

Having to keep creating fake identities to prevent people and governments from finding out that you’re immortal. That would be a massive pain in the butt, especially in a world where mass surveillance of the population is common.

As someone who regularly uses both British and American English both at work and in my personal life, I sometimes mix them unintentionally.

I almost always use the same spelling for either word and use context to make sure it is always clear which mold I am talking about.

I do think there is value in distinguishing the words with different spelling, but without getting everyone to agree on which spelling would mean what, I think this won’t be very productive.

Trying to get people to change problematic behaviour, language, or opinion through yelling, or shaming is ineffective most of the time. Obviously I can’t expect people who belong to minorities to not be angry, not everyone can be Daryl Davis, but if you are white and don’t have a personal trauma, you should use more effective methods to correct people’s problematic behaviour.

Source: I was able to get my family to stop using the N word, and even my elderly father who doesn’t actually remember that it’s bad to use the N word has stopped using it thanks to this very simple technique: every time he says that word, stop the conversation and explain why this word is harmful and dangerous to use, don’t let them steer the conversation back. Being visibly angry with them will only make them dig in their heels and seek comfort with other people who are racist, making it more difficult to get them out.

Eventually they will subconsciously stop using that word, simply because this causes the conversation to be interrupted every time. So while I don’t punish them (can’t exactly tell my father to go to his room or something), the repeated inconvenience of having the conversation halted every time will get it in their head eventually.

I think this is the most effective method to correct problematic behaviour in adults.