When I was about 3 or 4 I had a dream that a purple alien landed in my backyard, and turned the neighbour’s dog against me. I was too young to understand what dreams were all about and I was terrified of sleeping for a long time.
Every so often I remember my dreams (I don’t usually remember them but I know i had them) and they’re always really, really bizarre. Never scary in the classical sense, to me at least, no nightmares, just intense and bizarre experiences.
One that stands out is that I was in a cave and the cave dwelling tribe had a king that was dying. I was to become their new king, and the king wore on his head a crown that was the head of a giant centipede, with the body of it running down his back. So the king dies, and they take his crown off his head and place it on mine, and in that moment I realize (via the centipede “talking” to me in my mind) that the centipede rules these people by controlling the mind of the king, that my mind would now be erased/meld with the mind of the centipede, and as I reach for my sword (?) to cut the centipede off before the process can happen I know that it cannot be stopped, is irreversible, has already happened and that the centipede cannot be killed. Then I woke up.
I read a lot of philosophy until I had an existential crisis, which ironically made me feel worse at first and then better later on, because I realised basically "nothing really matters" and the majority of things that stressed me out are so small. Sure, some stuff has negative consequences for me and messes with my emotions, but even that passes with time and much of it is simply in my head (I got a nice cocktail of ADHD with depression and anxiety and get stuck in feelings of dread and doom).
Well, I also go to therapy, and there I learned to focus on myself and what I need and like, with the goal to either distract myself or enjoy small pleasures. Like I walk to a quiet place somewhere when noise stresses me out or listen to music, I make myself a nice meal or some tea (iced tea in summer) or take a cool shower or sit down to draw something or write comments or talk to a person I like, all those small things that make me feel a bit like "I can live one day longer".
Basically, instead of looking at the world and the things you can‘t change of affect like your past, look only at yourself in the here and now and ask "how could I make this a bit more bearable for myself?" and then I do that. Though there is some limit there like don‘t do drugs (which I DID do, it gave relief, but made me feel much worse over time! just a warning), but even outside of that there is usually something you can do.
Many desires are also artificially induced by marketing and peer pressure and the more I understood that, the less I felt like I had to do x or y or whatever everyone else is doing to be happy. That includes my comment and those of all others by the way, one or more points may resonate with you and help and others may be completely useless to you, what matters most here is finding what works for you and doing more of that. If you try some of this and have a moment where your mind calms down and you feel alright, take note of that and do that again.
Though I‘m not entirely well, this stuff comes back sometimes, but I got a bunch of ways to deal with it now which help me out.
I don’t browse it (I have a redirector rule that links me right out of Reddit), but if I need to access it for something, I just tack on old. as a bypass.
Honestly Darktable works pretty damn well after you adjust to the work flow differences. I would still prefer Lightroom but after switching jobs and no longer using a company subscription for Adobe, Darktable is perfectly fine for my hobby photography.
I tried to switch a couple of times. The version I tried was not estable enough, too much crashes for my taste. Lightroom now has selecting automagically, now that I tried it I can no longer live without it.
Somehow I stopped watching movies a few years ago, which kind of annoys me but we can’t find time that much for a long movie. Of course binge watching TV series is another thing…
For me, the three rewatchables were:
Stanley Kubrick: Barry Lyndon - If you’re into cinematography and ultra techy perfection, this is the movie. And the main character is such an asshole.
Celine Sciamma: Portrait of a Lady on Fire - This beautiful piece hits hard. Celine has an eye for women, and the story how the ladies take care of their own business since the beginning of time is really captivating.
Pedro Almodóvar: All About My Mother - A queer classic. I really like the old Almodóvar telenovelas on acid, but this mid-career masterpiece has everything: the cinematography, the crazy characters and the melodrama.
That mid-Almodovar peak was incredible, now that you mention it. My personal favorite from that time has to be Habla Con Ella (Talk To Her), in parallel Woody Allen filmography terms I would equate it with Hannah & Her Sisters, in artistic achievement.
Barry Lyndon is currently a rising "underrated masterpiece" topic with most of the best film critic podcasters. My personal favorite film has nearly always been 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I just recently rewatched Barry Lyndon and man... in any other filmography this would have stood alone at the top.
And we still have the rest of Kubrick's work to contend with... Dr. Strangelove, The Shining, Paths Of Glory, Eyes Wide Shut... it's just ridiculous.
For a long time now, I've regarded two people as my artistic heroes of the 20th century: Stanley Kubrick and John Coltrane. Mark Rothko could be up there, too, I cannot imagine my day-to-day life without his work to stop and look at, or to simply have as a presence in my surroundings.
Do you have some good podcast recommendations on Barry Lyndon? I really like the movie. For people who are reading this and thinking Barry Lyndon is some kind of super boring and high-minded art movie, just watch it. If you appreciate photography, pictures in general, the movie is done really well. It’s like watching live paintings from that era, nothing else looks like that movie.
Edit: And what is fascinating with Barry, is how the actor Leon Vitali who did Lord Bullingdon in the movie, just abandoned his acting career and started working as an assistant for Kubrick until his death in 2022.
Linux, every time, without fail, commits suicide after a few weeks/months. It’s never something big, always small stuff. A conf file which got fucked by a package. Init.d calls something stupid. Mbr bullshit.
And the same applies to get stuff to work. It’s not hard, but researching the issue and fixing it takes time. Those issues do not exist in windows.
It gets annoying. Windows, for all it’s shit has gotten more and more self repairing over the years.
So, I’ve been running Linux as a desktop for a number of years, never had a problem of it dieing weekly or monthly. I’ve had my share of “ah shit, I should restart because some package updated and tings got a little spooky”, but never out right ded.
In saying that, I’m used to this modus operandi, and how to fix these things, but I’m curious as to why you were having weekly/monthly issues. E.g. were you running the latest distros, and not LTS versions?
A comparison with windows is that they control the whole OS, and on theory everything is LTS. Linux gives you those freedoms, and also those problems if you choose to use them etc.
This, and gaming. Linux has come a long way, but has a long way to go. Linux seems to be a long string of hicccups that need to be solved, instead of something that works for me. Although the POPos distro was by far the smoothest, it still became troublesome trying to play games on it.
A few years ago I installed Ubuntu on a laptop, used it a bunch of times then it got put away for a year or so. When I booted it back up it told me the OS was out of date and needed to be updated. When I tried it gave me some errors. I searched online and basically I couldn’t update because it was too old. I needed to update in stages but the next release was also out of support.
I realised I don’t use it enough to care. I installed windows on it.
I do use Linux at work and on things at home like routers, retro gaming, etc. They’re not really comparable though.
Linux, every time, without fail, commits suicide after a few weeks
You must be doing something really wrong with it because on popular distros this is not really supposed to happen. If you encounter such issues report them to the devs. You probably want to try a more stable distro
They’re not doing anything wrong. This is my experience, as well as many many others. Why else would so many people and businesses overlook a completely free operating system? I’ve used all the “stable” distros.
If I reported issues to the devs, I wouldn’t be doing anything else, and it wouldn’t solve the problem I have TODAY. This is not a solution.
You are doing something wrong. Linux doesn’t blow up by itself… my grandparents and wife both run it for the past 5 years and haven’t had a single issue with it. So how is it that I know people that are completely tech illiterate and have no problems running it, but so many self-proclaimed “power users” here have issues with it?
Linux isn’t going to wall you in and prevent you from breaking it. That’s what I love about it, it gives you power and control over your machine, but if you don’t have the knowledge to wield that power, then you shouldn’t be fucking around with changing things. Stick with the package manager, and don’t fuck with system configs… unless you actually understand how it effects the system.
Why else would so many people and businesses overlook a completely free operating system
There are many, many reasons… not a single one is stability.
If you think that’s the case. Check some big forums for each big distro right after a point update to read the tales of woe and breakage.
My personal experience with this has been:
Pop_OS broke after an update. Unrepairable as far as I could tell. And I tried hard. Happened to multiple.people there was a reddit thread about it.
Fedora broke on an update. Not sure if repairable. I didn’t try. I had the most boring vanilla installation possible.
Arch has been unbootable twice over the years. And had to do many manual interventions. Both times it was fixable.
People are not lying to you when they say it breaks randomly. Just because it wasn’t your personal experience doesn’t mean it isn’t a common experience. You just have been lucky so far.
If you think that’s the case. Check some big forums for each big distro right after a point update to read the tales of woe and breakage.
Again, Linux gives the user full control over it, and that includes the ability to break it… again, many people can not wield that power properly.
People are not lying to you when they say it breaks randomly. Just because it wasn’t your personal experience doesn’t mean it isn’t a common experience. You just have been lucky so far.
You’re right, they are not technically lying, they are just too dumb to realize the thing they did to break it. When immutable distros become more popular, those people will be less likely to break things.
You just have been lucky so far.
It has absolutelynothing to do with luck. Don’t get me wrong, some Linux distros are known for updates breaking them. Arch based distros are infamous for it… but those are bleeding edge, rolling release distros. Distros based on Debian? Redhat? Never fucking break… there are reasons 90% of the top web and cloud infrastructures run on Linux: security and stability.
And Windows breaks all the time with updates… multiple times Windows updates have deleted peoples’ user files. That’s the most erogenous thing an OS can do… delete important user files.
“Why else would so many businesses overlook a completely free operating system”
Well, they don’t. Plenty of businesses use Linux systems. It’s not (only) because it’s free, though. The issue of licensing often isn’t a factor that comes into play over having a system that just works. It’s easy to customize, flexible and comparatively secure. Your experiences with Linux are valid, but many businesses and individuals do use it daily and for good reason.
This is just nonsense. Linux servers are all over the place. Google has its own internal distribution of Ubuntu! I feel like you’re not arguing in good faith, here.
Yeah, businesses that use Linux generally hire people who know how to use Linux. I don’t think you actually know what you’re arguing about anymore, but you can do it by yourself. Hope things get better for you in the future.
asklemmy
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.