A couple of years ago I got my wife to finally play Portal and Portal 2 for the first time. Its been long enough she was entirely unaware of any of the memes about the game so she immediately fell in love with the companion cube and cried when she realized she had no choice but to incinerate it, even going so far as trying to find a bug to exploit to bring it with her

When they do you can still play 2009scape! Has up to 5x XP modes in case you want a less grindy experience, a single player mode and a brilliant community

Worth noting that OSRS is really just a fork of RuneScape from around the mid RS2 days, (if I remember correctly it’s based on a full backup someone found of their codebase, so it started as “hey look we found this old version of the game in a box in one of our offices, wanna play?”) and now it contains more new content than original content. Heck way back in the day the idea of a sailing skill was always a silly joke that nobody took seriously, and I’m talking back when Hunter and slayer were being added. Yet here we are.

Banning advertisements to kids is the correct approach. I’ve observed with my own kids, they genuinely don’t yet have the mental faculties to be critical of advertisements. They see something advertised, they want it, simple as that. Their brains aren’t developed enough for content with advertising nor product placement.

Maybe there’s a sweet spot in limiting it to toy ads and ads for other content on the same platform that they’re watching. I’m not sure, I’m not a child psychologist, but kids should not be presented ads for energy drinks/drink supplements (I wish I was kidding but I’ve specifically had to have a conversation with my daughter about why we’re not buying the drink band owned by a certain YouTube celebrity who got himself banned from returning to Japan) nor for restaurants (especially not fast food!) nor for sketchy paid mod launchers for games (fuck you to the like only YouTuber who focuses entirely on Wobbly Life and is constantly advertising that!), nor most of the other things I’ve seen advertised to the kids recently

The way I see it, if my kids start finding ways to circumvent parental controls we should be able to have some frank discussions about what the parental controls would be setup for

I setup my wife’s old Android phone to be super locked down via parental controls. Only approved apps, no installing apps, time limited etc. set it up so my kids can use it on days when we need them to zombify for a bit in the afternoons

Its kinda mind blowing how YouTube Kids is their go to and they don’t move to any other apps until they’ve run out of time on it (family had already let the cat out of the bag about the existence of YouTube so I had to limit rather than block) and we still have had to block a number of concerning channels they kept watching. Its crazy how they’ll just zombify staring at YouTube but then for the age appropriate games they’re so much more engaged and actually seem to have a healthier interaction. Its also sad how some of the content I see the kids watching on YouTube Kids has writing and direction about on par with Disney’s current crop of age appropriate shoes for 3-6 year olds (and from what I’ve seen Nickelodeon isn’t much better right now). My kids primarily watch PBS Kids and a handful of shows we carefully selected on DVD because we want to minimize the brain rot (as well as minimize annoyance for us)

Would a safety deposit box at a bank be an appropriate option for your off-site backups?

This is the real consideration, depending on your career so far, such a role might be easier just left off the resume. But they did say it was an internship so they likely have no good career experience to speak for. Personally, I’d aim for purely talking about the experience and just say that “the internship ended”

I might as well just go ahead and replace the PSU too, so the rating is up to date

A good PSU will have an 8-10 year or longer warranty so that’ll should a couple of refresh cycles or more usually. Especially if you’re upgrading every 3 years (I’m on a 5-10 year cycle, or more accurately a “whenever a key component dies or is truly no longer up to the task at hand” cycle)

I freaking love wearing a wristwatch, but it’s most useful for stuff when you’re running around grabbing stuff trying to get kids out the door, or carrying a ton of stuff while setting up/tearing down a display for an event, basically situations not condusive to most smart watches where you have to do a gesture of some kind to wake the screen, you just want to quickly glance and continue

Also having been getting heavy into fitness (biking specifically but also some running and hiking), I get how cool having heart data and whatnot is, but ehhhh. Kinda not really necessary. I get handy GPS data from my phone and that’s sufficient. I can’t do anything meaningful with the heart data, but I can make very useful decisions with distance/time metrics! Or when lifting just knowing the weight I’m working with, how many sets & reps is more than enough

In context that makes a ton of sense for why you don’t want to go to concerts anymore! Burnout is a bitch! But there’s something beautiful about once you’re past the burnout and try the thing again, where it’s been long enough it’s like trying it again for the first time except with the knowledge of what to expect and how to best enjoy it already there.

Rock on and enjoy yourself! 🤘

The worst part is those single use batteries usually contain a rechargable batter but no circuitry to recharge it. Shit needs to be regulated out of existence!

I try to avoid the keyboard mash sellers on Amazon but for some products it’s pretty much impossible to find anything else.

Oddly enough the keyboard mash sellers can be great value depending on the item you’re ordering. Basically any kind of components or anything that would realistically be purchased by another factory in China has a pretty decent chance of being good enough quality. Hand tools or individual components for making stuff for example are pretty safe bets

At that point you’re already putting in more work than a standard drop coffee maker would take! You literally put a filter in, pour grounds in and hit brew.

Optionally you can get a reusable filter and rinse it after each pot of coffee

Honestly even at the current going rates of $50-100 a ticket going to some good concerts is still a blast and still worth it. Also usually there’s going to be at least one opener and depending on the show they might have 2-3 bands performing. Personally I’m happy if I get to do 1-3 big concerts a year, and that’s really not that much to budget for even at $100/ticket, and some bands are freaking incredible to see live.

Also worth poking around to see if there’s any free/cheap music events near you or comparing with the cost of tickets to a music festival if you really want to be cheap/picky. There’s a couple of free music events I try to go to every year at nearish cities to me and it’s literally free entry and they’ll have a full lineup of bands for the full weekend. I’ve seen Bobaflex, Powerman5000, The Haunt, Black Stone Cherry, Taproot, Red Jumpsuit Apperatus, Fastball, Fozzy etc. all at these free music festivals

Yup many manufactures stopped making anything other than trucks and SUVs in the US, and if that doesn’t make it enough of a challenge, many buyers (especially locally to me) prefer larger vehicles so I have fewer used options to choose from (and I’m too cheap to buy a new car)

P*rn premium subscriptions

If you can afford to pay for the content you consume it’s generally better to pay for it, especially with regards to the porn industry which takes every scummy practice of traditional media and is 10x worse because it’s not really happening in the open

any printed magazine

For some hobbies printed magazines are still the Pinnacle of media related to the hobby, so as long as the media company behind the magazine hasn’t changed hands and significantly degraded quality (looking at you Kalmbach publishing!) paying for a magazine so you get something fun to look at in the mail each month/quarter/whatever can be quite enjoyable

As a fan of sedans and hatchbacks…car shopping is very interesting right now

Illinois is funky because about a quarter of the state (by land area) is heavily influenced by Chicago but the rest of the state is just generic rural Midwest dotted with small railroad towns and farming communities

I’m still riding the bike my parents got me when I was a teenager, and these last couple of years I’ve easily put several hundred miles on it. Heck I’ll probably ride it in about an hour to go pick up my kids from school. For school pickups and dropoffs over calculated a conservative $10 a week saved in gas consumption by biking instead of driving, plus I start my day envigerated rather than annoyed about school traffic

I love the photos of flooded cars with “fuck you Greta” bumper stickers