I learned this when I went hard into biking, I initially was trying to go for a ride every day but once I got to riding 20-40 minutes at a time the physical stress on my body of not taking rest days was starting to be felt so I started taking rest days. Now I’ll try to do one day of no riding immediately after a 20 mile ride, then one to two days of really light riding (only 4-6 miles) before even considering another long and hard ride. So far my record is 75 miles in a week!

For me the caffeine addiction was a big part of it and I couldn’t kick both the caffeine and sugar at the same time

I never was a soda drinker but I did pick up a nasty caffeine addition via overdrinking coffee when I was a young adult that I spent several years architecting my quit.

I spent about 2 years reducing how much coffee I drank each day until I was down to about 8oz of coffee a day, then I got a nasty stomach bug and went 3 days without drinking coffee because I wasn’t confident I could keep water down, and on the 4th day I decided “I’m already 3 days into quitting, so I’m already halfway through the week that the internet says it takes, so let’s just power through the last 4 days” it took more like 2-3 weeks to fully feel like I’d kicked the habit (and some of that time might have simply been relearning how to wake up in the morning rather than actual withdrawal symptoms)

Now I only drink really good coffees on rare occasions as a treat and struggle to drink more than a couple of ounces, but most importantly, I can get up, take a big gulp of water and get on with my day without having to spend 10 minutes with the coffee maker each morning (which with the amount of chaos kids introduce into just getting out the door in the morning is a ton of time saved and added flexibility!)

When I was reducing my coffee intake with the intent to quit one of the things I’d do is put a nice bottle of ice cold water right next to the coffee mug. Every time I’d go to reach for the coffee, I’d first redirect my hand to the water and drink that, then if I still really needed that coffee then I’d drink it.

This method alone was extremely effective at reducing my coffee intake, and I went from about 24oz of coffee a day down to about 8-10oz per day just with doing this. I also had the added bonus of drinking less sugary creamer and therefore getting my body used to a lot less sugar, so when I quit coffee completely I was already so used to water and drank so little sugar I basically switched to only drinking water

The important part is ice cold water. That sensational shock of the ice cold water makes it an easier transition

So I’ve had two things that kinda go hand in hand that have really made a big improvement in my quality of life:

1. I started working out. During the pandemic lockdowns I picked up a basic fitness routine called Hybrid Calisthenics (they no longer list the basic 5 day routine I was doing but still brilliant explainers on that site for starting a new routine!), and went from struggling to lift 50lbs to being able to perform my first pullups ever. I changed jobs and lost my time for workouts but then I went and took my old bike for a tuneup to start riding it again with the goal of biking my kids to/from school and immediately realized how out of shape I was, so that became my new goal (and I rapidly fell in love with cycling) then I saw an ad for a 4th of July 5k and went “oh that’s like a quarter of how far I ride my bike I should totally do that!” And now I run 5ks too! The old me could never do that and would never have dreamed of doing any of these things but now I have races to look forwards to!

2. I’ve started a long term process of reducing my screen time. I’ve noticed how no matter what I’m doing with screens it just isn’t making me happy and everything off screen gets neglected. So I’ve started focusing more on trying to pick up more hobbies to do with my hands. I’ve started building a model railroad, I’ve been reading a ton of books (I think about a couple dozen books or more in just the last 12 months) and not spending as much time soaking in news and doomer takes on the internet has greatly helped me be a much happier and more realistic person. This one’s an ongoing struggle though. The screens are right there and offer so much momentary entertainment (such is why I’m typing this right now) and doing stuff like drawing is really hard as my hands struggle to draw what I have in my head since I haven’t really drawn in a long time. My ultimate goal is a healthy balance of screen and non-screen time during my free time

Oh and a bonus item that I didn’t even think of initially: going back to college. A few years ago I decided to go back to college at the worst possible time. I had a baby on the way and was working full time, but I made it work. Even when my wife had to quit her job and I was the sole income while going to school full time, I threw all of my irons into the fire, pumped the bellows as hard as they’d go and worked myself to the brink of burnout and got a degree, immediately landed a job paying twice what I was making before with way better benefits and coworkers, a super chill work environment and through an insane series of events I now only work about 30 hours a week fully remotely and make enough money that not only can my wife be a stay at home mom but I could afford to go on my first international trip last month and have 2 more (much smaller in scope!) trips planned for this year still. I seriously never thought I’d be able to realistically afford intercontinental travel before, and now it might well be a thing we do every year or two!

Internal combustion engine cars don’t consume gas at a constant rate. You can think of it like as you press the gas pedal you’re making the fireman on a steam engine shovel more coal into the fire. The harder you press on the pedal the faster the fireman is grabbing shovelfuls of coal and tossing it into the fire, and the harder that engine has to work. The more the car can just coast with just a tiny bit of fuel tossed in to maintain speed, the less fuel goes into the fire.

A relaxed driving style where you slowly accelerate, brake gently, and don’t speed/change lanes a lot means a lot less time pressing hard on the gas pedal and a lot less time burning lots of fuel. Also gentler braking will mean less wear on your brakes and tires so they may last a bit longer (tires and brakes are wear items that need to be replaced regularly, but the frequency is impacted by your driving style)

Such a relaxed driving style is also much safer because it gives you and other drivers more time to react and it’s more predictable to all road users

I realized recently I do envelope budgeting except by flinging money between different bank accounts instead of any normal and sane method of doing so. On the upside, I have enough money earmarked for computer upgrades to upgrade every computer in my house, but none of them really need it and I don’t want to pay AI bubble prices so I’m just letting that cash stack grow for now

Dude I played Minecraft as a teenager and now my kids play Minecraft with minimal encouragement by us. It’s got hella staying power

I feel like I need a shower followed by a nice loooong bike ride after reading that…

I would be pissed if it was presented as a thing that required expert consultation from wendel.

The thing is, such consultation is also providing the same information to the audience, so its not just for Linus, Luke and Elijah. If you’re diving in without the last 10-30 years of background knowledge of what’s broken, what’s been forked, which forks are worth running, which organizations are in chaos and which keep quietly pushing good code, having someone give you a quick rundown of “here, you’ll want to run this or this distro, use this software for XYZ and right now its best to run games this way, oh and this launcher/game is completely broken on Linux so skip it for now” skips a lot of the friction that Linus is subjecting himself to. And any normal person would ask their Linux-user friend, ask in a relevant discord or ask on a relevant subreddit and get roughly the same thing. The collaboration and consultation provides this same information in a video-friendly manner is the main difference.

Do the viewers learn anything useful by seeing Linus experience a problem, spin theories on the spot while troubleshooting, then cut to finding a forum post explaining a possible fix, and Linus tries it possibly fixing it/possibly not? The viewers certainly learn less than if they saw some of that, then got to see a more experienced creator explain what’s going on, what should have happened and how to fix/prevent it moving forwards. The video stops being just watching people flailing and instead becomes “here’s what they did, here’s what they should have done so you now know don’t have to go through the same thing!”

Its a similar concept as any video where LTT has an enterprise vendor help out with the initial configuration or leans on the enterprise support to fix/explain something. Instead of guessing and potentially misleading the audience of millions, they can get a much more accurate solution/explanation in the same video

Now that’s a sentiment I can get behind!

Unfortunately in the US it’s “fuck you, you can’t make me.

A surprising amount of that is literally just asshats banking on nobody telling them to cut it out, because there is also very much a culture of just quietly being upset by the bad behavior then later posting loudly on a local public Facebook group instead of just walking up and asking them to turn the music down/pick up the trash/not set off fireworks in the middle of the airshow (a real world example where I spoke out on and the person immediately backed off and stopped setting off the fireworks)

Sounds to me like a legal workaround is to have an invite-only barbecue then have a stack of invites and write them out as people come up. “Its not public, its invite only! Why yes I’d be happy to give you an invitation!”

Idk I was on reddit 11 years ago and I wouldn’t trust any shit I posted back then…

Nice parking job rita!

Very real! I’ve only convinced my wife to play with me some so far lol

Would that be like on a tripod in the audience area recording the screen?

Fun fact: this is how films get digitized, they play the film in a tiny movie theater just big enough for the camera. The whole apperatus is about the size of a washing machine

I’ll respond because it seems like you’re trying

Most guys have in mind with some gay twink trying to Hit on any guys they can.

I’m not sure how common this mental image is, but try to get it out of your head. The fact is there are some people who just want to have lots of sex with lots of people, some of these people happen to be straight, some happen to be gay, some happen to be guys, and some happen to be gals and some happen to be anywhere in-between any of the above. And that’s okay, because different people are different and who cares what happens between consenting adults? And you know what else is okay? Some people don’t want to have sex with anyone, some people only want to have sex with certain people, and some people are anywhere in between.

Most gay people are just normal regular everyday people with just a different preference in people that Theyd Date

All. All gay people are just people. Sexual interest is a spectrum, some people are only interested in other people of the same gender, some people are only interested in people of the opposite gender, and some people are somewhere in between, maybe mostly-straight or mostly-gay. And that’s okay no matter where on that spectrum you fall.

On top of that both romantic interest and ones own gender are spectrums as well. These spectrums can have very different settings from each other and that’s okay too. On the subject of gender, people have a physical and a mental gender, and sometimes those don’t match. That’s okay too (y’know as in it’s okay to have that problem and be working to align the two in whatever way that makes them happy)

Most cis people totally envision either some annoying gay twink or a drag queen

First of all, don’t use that slur. Full stop.

Secondly, drag is not a gender nor a sexuality nor a sexual or romantic interest. People who do drag are just people who do drag. They can be anywhere on the various spectrums I already outlined.

I have a feeling though that nowadays regarding representation, people that are pro gay & lgbtq do not really help at educating unaware cis people

They are trying to educate unaware cis/straight people, its just between algorithms, echo chambers and those who wish to eliminate everyone who isn’t white straight cis, there’s plenty of corners its not reaching.

This is not a failure of gay people, and this isn’t any one gay person’s job to educate the world. This is the world trying to pretend that gay people don’t exist, when in fact they do exist and have existed for as long as gender and sexuality have existed

The reason we have pride is because we are in the first time in human history when anyone who isn’t cis, straight, etc. isn’t forced to ignore or suppress those feelings but can actually go be exactly who they want to be and be with whoever they want to be. Even now, as kids start to realize there’s something different about them, they’re first led to believe it’s because there’s something wrong with them. This might last a short time, this might last a lifetime, but pride is about squashing those self-doubt demons and shouting out to the world “I AM WHO I AM AND YOU WILL DEAL WITH IT!”

The importance of representation is in helping put the image in people’s heads that it’s okay to be different and that you don’t have to be a white cis straight male to do certain things. Whether it’s Mr Rogers sharing a pool with a black actor on a hot day, or Lt Uhura being played by a black woman in Star Trek, or Kora kissing Asami in Legend of Kora, or anything else, it’s about showing and helping people know that they can be who they want to be and they can be happy about it. Media drives a sense of normalcy, so what’s normal in media becomes normal in society. If it’s normal for gay people to exist in media, people will see it as normal for gay people to exist in society.

Now, more on topic, Kingdom Come Deliverence is in a weird spot because it sets out to be the most realistic representation of a specific period and place in medieval history as possible. In the medieval period (and for most of history for that matter) people didn’t really have an individual identity, so the idea of gay or straight people didn’t really exist. They were however extremely sexist and mostly considered whoever did the penetrating to be powerful and whoever is being penetrated to be weak (and there’s some hilarious historical texts where people are just generally confused about what to think of lesbians because there’s no penetrating going on so did anything actually happen?) so CK:D in being an accurate period piece happens to place itself right in the crossroads of this culture war, as it presumably depicts gayness as many conservatives would prefer, something to be hidden away and ignored and maybe prosecuted if it gets too inconvenient for them, but CK:D depicts it this way not as a handout to conservatives but as an accurate depiction of history without commentary.

So TL;DR: gay people are people and different people are different and that’s okay

Bro if you’re in the market, you’ve gotta check out Conksat’s offerings they’ve got some absolutely unmatched products like Missiles As A Service, next generation bombers based on the bleeding edge Cessna platform, and even a ground based satellite power system with integrated return reel!

The average rent in the US is about 1600/mo, and the median household income is 83k/yr. Obviously these averages/medians will change dramatically when looking at individual places, but if you live in a major coastal city that’s infamous for being unaffordable you will absolutely need roommates to afford rent.

However there’s also plenty of major cities which are not unaffordable so while you can have your eyes pop out of your sockets looking at LA, SF, NYC, etc. Toledo OH or Milwaukee WI are just quietly going on about their day being relatively affordable places to live with plenty healthy local economies

Prices adjust to what people can afford

Ehhhhh only to what it can be reliably sold for, not to what most people can afford. If 10% of people are multimillionaires (and they are in the US) but 40% of people don’t even have $500 to their name (also is the case in the US) you can absolutely continue to see a housing market that is in part just passing wealth around that top 15%, especially if they can turn around and rent the investment properties to the bottom 50% to make even more money

Now, things do get really interesting when the wealthy aren’t interested in the property in a given area, and the market flips from ponzi scheme to actually being houses that people can realistically afford and do live in. Of course such places also tend to be on the knife edge of also being mortgage deserts because they tend to be very small towns with dwindling populations