I think I speak for most people when I say that I’m a good representative of the general population.

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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2020

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  • Like fifteen years ago I would buy physical books, I still have a huge collection. I was getting really into math and would buy textbooks. Sometimes they could be pricey, but for a good hardcover, it can really be worth it if you’re coming back to it a lot.

    Very early 2010s the amazon books became awful overnight. You could pay $70 for a hardcover and the damn thing would start falling apart a few days into reading it. I really don’t think I’m hard on my books, I treat them with care. These things just couldn’t handle normal wear for even a short amount of time. Paperbacks were even less reliable and only slightly less expensive. So I completely ditched amazon and started ordering books directly from the publishers. Normally they’d be like $10-15 more than on amazon, but it’s worth it, they weren’t falling apart.

    Probably around 2012 I finished reading volume 2 of Francis Borceux’s “Handbook of Categorical Algebra”. Those first two volumes are genuinely some of the best math books I’ve ever gone through, it took me like a year each though. Volume 3 was very expensive to get from the publisher, I think it was over $160, but since I had gotten so much mileage out of the first two I decided I wanted to just pony up. It was clear as soon as it arrived that it was a piece of shit, and did start falling apart immediately. I left emails and phone calls and they just ghosted me and I couldn’t figure out a way to get my money back. That was the last book I bought for like a full decade, and I don’t think I’ve made a book purchase from anywhere over $15 since.

    Pretty sure that was Cambridge University Press, and I had purchased something else (although much much cheaper) from them the year before that was good quality.

    I still greatly prefer having a physical copy, but I pirate almost everything I can’t find in a library now.





  • One of mine likes chewing on wires to electrical devices. He used to do it only occasionally, but at some point he got the hint that I’m shooing him away when he does it and now he’ll start whenever I’m at the computer and he’s upset I’m not giving him adequate attention. He stops by and stands up against the chair to let me know he wants attention, and if I explain to him that I’m working on something and you’ll need to wait, he’ll immediately move to chewing at the wires.

    This along with the fact that he’s more interested in me the second I start talking on my phone means I have to leave the room absolutely any time I want to answer or make a phone call.

    I love him and he might have the happiest disposition of any cat I’ve met, but he’s really an asshole sometimes. He pounces me when I’m sleeping sometimes too which can really hurt if his nails get me.





  • Eastward? I actually learned about this game on lemmy a year or two ago.

    I thought the pixel graphics were incredible, gave the game such a beautifully creepy atmosphere when it needed it. Even though I was really disappointed that the game just ended without tying any of the story together, I did think the story was great before I finished it. At times the game was unsettling and eerie and at other times it was heartwarming, and the dialogue throughout seemed very well-written.





  • Christian@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlJust install EndeavorOS lol
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    8 months ago

    I switched like ten years ago because I wanted to learn the details, but in all honesty I still feel like I barely understand anything. Not sure how normal this is, maybe I’m unusually dumb, but I feel like what I’ve really learned is how to troubleshoot and solve issues by reading documentation and tinkering, rather than understanding what I’m actually doing. I’ve had a stable system for years but I kind of feel like if a typical arch forum poster looked my system configuration for five minutes they’d be like wtf are you doing.