Dropbox, Spotify, and a VPN are worth it: fight me.
Sure, Spotify doesn’t pay artists enough and I miss having Neil Young available for streaming, but what are the other options that work well in the car? I’m not going to go back to using discs or plugging in MP3 players to the aux port, and I don’t mind paying the bands directly for merch/albums if I’m really a fan. Considering I mostly listen to vinyl at home, I’m not paying Spotify for music; I’m paying Spotify for the convenience of being able to not listen to terrestrial radio and to be able to listen to what I like in the car or at work without the need for Youtube.
And my personal Dropbox account that I also use for work is well worth 15$/mo for 2TB of storage. It’s saved me so much grief to be able to back up phone photos, access my work files from any computer, keep records of my personal documents, etc., and the software is both more cost effective and better designed than Google Drive or OneDrive. PDF’s of my RPG books/characters/maps? Dropbox. Grocery list text file? Dropbox. Place to stash tabs/sheet music that is easily kept organized without the need for a physical copy? Dropbox. Phone number of that parent who saw my partner’s car get tagged in the parking lot at school? Wait, I think I have her phone number in an spreadsheet from when I coached her daughter in tee-ball…gimme a sec…yep, it’s in my Dropbox. In a side note, Dropbox may have turned me into a digital hoarder.
But the rest of this subscription-based garbage can get bent.
That’s actually a pretty good idea, although it’s not like a right-click on the desktop is really that much slower (assuming we’re taking about Windows)
I hear what you’re saying, but as a fairly big literary and film snob, I’ll argue that A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back were bubblegum pop approaching art like a well-realized pop music album that transcends being “just entertainment.” I’ll use some music analogies, since that’s where I have the most background:
Francis Ford Coppola : Steven Spielberg : George Lucas :: Bob Dylan : Neil Young : Paul Simon.
You’ve got the auteurs that are out make artistic pieces that may or may not be appreciated in their time, you’ve got the prolific hit machines that churn out album after album (movie after movie) of insightful, well-made work, and then you’ve got the pop, “lowest common denominator” creators that can be game changers (esp. with the right collaborators and editing), but also have a lot of dreck in their back catalogs.
I would argue that despite the OT being pop-friendly action sci-fi, there was artistry present, especially in the special effects, the story telling, and the world-building. I mean, shit, the diegesis alone is pretty much a masterclass in how to build a living, breathing fiction universe, in a way that I’m not sure has ever been surpassed.
Bottom line: are they kids’ movies? yes. Are they strong enough to stand on their own as significant artistic works in the same echelon as The Godfather? I would argue that Ep. 4-5 are, yes. Am I still answering my own rhetorical questions? Also yes.
I know, right? As a huge Star Wars nerd who was in middle school when 1 came out, I didn’t even bother to go see 2 in theaters, and to this day I still haven’t seen 3 all the way through because I have such a bad taste in my mouth.
In fact, the way Lucas shit all over the established lore and canon to produce such a flaming turd turned me off to the entire IP and I didn’t read a Star Wars book or watch a show/movie until I gave Ep 7 a try because my FiL wanted to see it in the theater. That one I actually enjoyed (contrary to popular opinion), and I’ll say that the first season of Mandalorian and Bad Batch was decent, too. I haven’t seen Andor, but I probably will based on everyone’s reviews.
But the last Star Wars work that I still actually like and that I still think stands on its own two feet was Empire Strikes Back.
No joke, my wife’s grandpa was a mechanical engineer with a degree from Notre Dame, and he chose engineering apparently because as a 17yo, he thought he was going to learn to drive trains.
Definitely. I don’t really do anything that is particularly sensitive, so I only have 3-4 standard passwords (that meet the most common complexity criteria) that I separate by how sensitive the information/service is, but if I truly needed more, I would absolutely be using a 3rd party password vault. I just don’t have the need right now, so I haven’t bothered.
What gets me is the people that don’t know their own passwords, don’t know how/where to look them up, and don’t even understand how to reset their passwords (because they can’t log into their own email). I don’t even know how they function in modern society.
I hate to be a “kids these days” person, but you’re absolutely right. My Gen Z students don’t even understand how folder/file structure works; they just download everything onto their desktop and use the search function to find what they need later. If they can’t remember what something was called, they’re SOL.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of faith in Gen Z and Alpha, but their strengths are definitely not the strengths of Millenials or Gen X.
I get it, but I also don’t understand the idea of letting Google suggest a random secure password for me. Probably just the Genx/Millenial in me, but I subscribe to the xkcd school of random password generation (password generator), which makes it really easy to have secure passwords that meet complexity requirements and are also easy to memorize.
I’m not IT, just a college instructor, but you’d be amazed at how many Gen Z students have told me that they can’t log into their email because they don’t know their own password. Not even forgot; they don’t even know it in the first place because every device remembers everything for them.
Exactly. Cordless drills are super convenient and super cheap. For anything more heavy duty than that, I want something corded (which usually has the added advantage of being both cheaper and available in good condition second-hand).
Yes. I watched the whole series before starting the books and I found the books to be much, much better once I got to the part that the series hadn’t touched.
The problem is that the plot is close enough to the books that you know what’s coming, but the characters and details are enough that it’s still worth reading the books. But it is a slog if you’ve seen the series first.
The prevalence of coyotes and other predators in my rural mountain town means that there are effectively zero strays around me. We had to drive an hour plus from our house to a shelter at the closest “big” city to adopt our latest.
I think it’s actually gotten worse among Millenials and Gen Z. I teach chemistry at a college, and half of my students don’t understand how folders work, let alone a file extension.
As someone who reads much more than listens to podcasts, I’ve wanted to get into this series for years now, but it feels like I never have enough time, especially as I’m not sure my wife would be onboard with the idea of an audio serial.
Then again, it is spooky season, so now’s the time to pitch it, I guess. Any suggestions for diving in for a podcast novice who has a negligible commute and small kids at home? My kids are not sheltered but any stretch, but are probably too young for eldritch horror.
Edit: really, it’s the same issue I have with Critical Role; it sounds great to me, but finding enough time on my own to be able to get into it is way harder than reading a book.
This, especially asking them why they think it is that way or how they can test it. Get them thinking in terms of the scientific method instead of just repeating facts they heard somewhere else. edit: asking them to repeat random facts about a topic is still a great way to keep them interested and feeling good about their knowledge, but asking them “why” questions is really next-level and can be really interesting to see what they come up with
It can be a passive-aggressive way to call you out, but not necessarily. If you and your SO have a healthy relationship, discussing problems in front of others shouldn’t necessarily be seen as an attack. In my experience, if a situation like this comes up, it’s usually either:
A way to help a friend who that might not realize they’re in a toxic/abusive relationship. For example, “Sometimes, Niels is really impatient with me being late, but he doesn’t demean me or put me down” can be a way of inviting me to provide some context or show that I’m not perfect but also that there are hard lines that shouldn’t be crossed
A way to empathize with a friend that is coming to grips with the fact that no relationship is perfect. It might not be a conscious invitation to participate, but it does potentially allow you to provide another way of thinking about the issue. For example, “Tell me about it; I’m always picking up after this guy” is not mean-spirited or passive aggressive, IMHO. If it seemed like they actually wanted me to participate rather than just have a way to vent, then depending on the friend I might jump in with “oh man, my ADHD has been really bad since the new project started at work! I’ve been a mess and it’s been really awesome that you’ve been able to help me out”
It’s still not an excuse for an SO oversharing something that you told them in confidence, and it’s not an excuse for turning an ongoing point of contention into a full-fledged argument in front of others, but it’s not necessarily cause for concern. If you’re a very private person, and you ask an SO to not discuss certain things with others, that’s a little different. But on the other hand, they do need to be able to discuss concerns with others to some extent, so maybe differentiating between “good friends are OK, but not that friend” would be helpful.
I’ve always subscribed to the “shared formative experience” model of describing generations. The description I always remember best is that the most impactful experience that separates Millenials from Gen X is that Gen X remembers getting their first computer at home but for Millenials there was always a computer at home, while the dividing line for Millenials and Zoomers is that Millenials remember a time before the internet and Gen Z doesn’t. Being more or less tech literate does tend to shift how we interact with some of these paradigm shifts, at least in my anecdotal experience.
Personally, I’m right on the boundary between Gen X and Millenial by this definition, as I remember my family getting our first home computer, but barely. That’s not really all that relelvant to the discussion, but it really does help me understand some of the fundamental differences between the various generations, especially as a boundary case that doesn’t particularly feel like I belong to either group. Plus, I work in at a community college with a bunch of Gen X and Boomers, teaching everyone from Gen Z to Boomers, so knowing what some of the most common formative experiences really helps me communicate better.
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