My keto rebellion against 'COVID weight'
I’ve gained about 70lbs since the start of COVID. Clearly it’s just a little healthy weight gain due to being locked inside for a couple weeks five years ago, right?
Vast Numbers of Lonely Kids Are Using AI as Substitute Friends
Not even part of the actual article, but the footer at the end of it is a pretty telling sign of the times:
If you or a loved one has had a strange experience with an AI chatbot, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at tips@futurism.com — we can keep you anonymous.
[Nintendo] confirmed that their console was indeed banned because of the use of pirated games. Nevertheless, they were able to prove their innocence by pulling up the Facebook Marketplace listing for their games and sending the photos of their purchased cartridges.
I get that piracy is bad but this person is still out whatever they paid for the games and they would’ve been extra fucked if the original marketplace post wasn’t still listed.
Honestly I’m surprised Nintendo hasn’t started going into second hand stores and busting heads. I don’t see how reselling legally bought games is much different, and I can’t imagine they’re any more okay with that.
They should patent an official Nintendo cartridge shredder for when you’re done playing something.
In all seriousness I think simply disabling the pirated cart from running on the Switch would suffice.
I don’t normally buy games right at launch, especially remakes, but I couldn’t help it with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 & 4. Most of the ROMs I play are games I never even knew existed when I was younger, but this one is pure nostalgia for me. Best soundtrack ever.
If You Still Vape, You Might Wanna Read This:
“Common sense tells you — your mom would tell you — that a superheated chemical inhaling right into your lungs isn’t going to be good,” the doctor said.
I’ve kicked a lot of addictions over the years, but nicotine isn’t one of them. I used to smoke two packs a day, then I switched to vaping about seven years ago. I’ve since switched to nicotine pouches, which I gotta believe are at least a little less harmful, but they’re still hard on your gums. And heart. And wallet.
With vaping, I don’t have any horror stories other than hitting the thing too much and getting nic sick. But it is pretty much common sense that breathing in boiling hot vapor made of propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, food flavorings, and a stimulant can’t be that great for you.
Switched to CommaFeed for my RSS reader. FreshRSS started throwing these random SQL errors and the UI was too clunky for me anyway. CommaFeed has been around for a decade and it does everything I need. Super clean UI, feels like the spiritual successor to Google Reader, in the best possible way.
Ohio at ‘high risk’ for LGBTQ+ inequality, report says
That tracks. Can’t go anywhere here without seeing ragged old Trump flags and truck nuts.
Pro tip of the day: medical tape works better than packing tape for concealing ripped khakis at work 🥴
Digg.com closed beta rolled out today! The TestFlight and Android alpha came out a few weeks back, it’s nice to have a full on web version now, too.
From the announcement post:
While today’s launch means access for Groundbreakers, in the coming weeks, each of you will be receiving invites to bring new users onto Digg. We’ve made the decision for an invite-based rollout to ensure that the community’s growth is intentional and gives you the ability to curate who gets let into the door at this stage of the product lifecycle.
Awesome that Groundbreakers get some invites to send out. I’ll make a post when I get mine, if anyone want’s one let me know!
I posted about ChatGPT psychosis a couple weeks ago. I’m starting to feel like Castlevania psychosis is a thing 😅
I’ve been playing nothing but ‘vanias for months. Faced as many impossible boss fights and dead ends as I can handle in 2D for a while. I need to play something from this decade now.
Me: I’m sick of paying $50 a year for Feedbin
Also me: I’ll host my own FreshRSS instance with a .media domain name that renews for $60 a year
I decided against starting a second blog. I was trying out Ghost because I thought it would be cool to have a site I could eventually monetize in some way, but I don’t wanna ruin something I do for fun. Might do more with WallChicken.net one day, but for now it’s a gif of Simon Belmont dead 🫡
I’ve been a diehard Tiny & Sumo theme user since I came to Micro.blog but I’ve gotta say, MNML is so rad! Super clean and easy to tweak the style. Bonus points for being built by a fellow punk rocker too lol thanks @jim!
So You Got Drunk and Bought Eight Domain Names You’ll Never Use — a self help book, by me
I’m getting this PikaPods/Ghost setup figured out after all. It took me a minute to grasp needing something like Mailgun to do automated emails for logins, etc but it makes sense. I’m not doing too bad for my first time deploying a fancy web app instead of using some old school host with cpanel!
The more I explore self hosting, the more I appreciate how easy it is to use Micro.blog 🫣
AI-Generated Music Is Starting to Crowd Out the Real Stuff on Streaming Platforms:
[The Velvet Sundown] which now boasts over 750,000 monthly listeners, has no presence beyond social media. Everything it puts out — band photos, album covers, and especially the music — show telltale signs of having been spat out by GenAI. The group’s track names are suspiciously close to existing hits: “Dust on the Wind,” for example, not to be confused with the iconic Kansas hit “Dust in the Wind.”
What was that quote about letting AI do all the shit jobs so we can focus on art, instead of letting AI create the art so we can keep working soul crushing, dead-end jobs?
I don’t remember it verbatim, but this is gross. Even if you suck at writing, playing an instrument and singing, at least that’s real. No matter how nervous you are to play in front of people, or how rough and incomplete you think your own songs are, it’s music. That’s what art is about.
It’s something we create.
You’ll all be doing it tomorrow
I used to watch a lot of Rick and Morty. One of my all-time favorite episodes is the one where a bunch of parasitic aliens get loose from Rick’s lab and he has to quarantine the house so they can’t escape and wreak havoc on the rest of the world.
It would’ve been a shitshow for humanity, because the aliens could shape-shift and insert false memories of themselves into your mind, so you’d never suspect a thing.
One of the most memorable of all these zany characters was Sleepy Gary.
Tonight, we’re drinking Writers' Tears 🍻
UFO whistleblowers at the congressional hearing when asked what evidence they have, who’s piloting the crafts and where they were spotted: