As you are both quite young, I hope this doesnt come across as patronising but there are a few points in what you have said there that I think would be constructive to address. But take my opinion/advice however you will!

Firstly, the most difficult one. You mentioned that he went to Netherlands and tried weed and mushrooms, he’s young, it’s his decision if he wants to experiment with those experiences, your comment that you “thought you made yourself clear” sounds quite controlling, and I would suggest reflecting on those impulses (I know they come from a positive place!) And ensuring that communication and compromise with partners in future is key to a healthy relationship. Likewise, if a partner wanted to control or limit your experiences in life. This may be worded poorly, but point is I would reflect on where these emotions and behaviours may be coming from within yourself and address this moving forward.

With that our of the way, the REAL issue here. My assumption would be that this is an immature person, who was not quite ready enough to handle the experiences of these drugs and has become quickly addicted to the high and the escapism, with no impulse control over himself or his actions. In some ways, it can be beneficial to have these experiences in life now when young, as opposed to later, however, that is only if he can find a healthy way out. Judging by his experimenting with meth, I would say he’s likely past the point of being able to do that without proper medical assistance and counselling.

BUT, that said, HE IS NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO FIX. It is not your fault. He is living his life the way he has chosen, and that does not align with your morals and values. You absolutely 100% should break up with him, ensuring that you put across that this is not what you are looking for in a partner, set your boundaries, express your concern for his wellbeing, and request that if he is not going to seek professional help then to be careful and safe. But after that, wipe the slate clean and move on.

Yes, it’s extremely difficult emotionally, and you may feel like you are abandoning him, but you are not. He has made his choices and they have diverted from yours and he is, once again, not your responsibility!

Better that way, in the hopes that he sees the error of his ways sooner and seeks help, because the alternative is you being dragged down with him. You need to be clear, firm, and set your boundaries that it is over, and BREAK CONTACT FOR AT LEAST 6 MONTHS. Do not get caught in the spiral, look after yourself and stay healthy!

Well, besides the obvious of paying off mortgages and debts which wouldn’t even amount to a fraction of that, I’d buy an island to convert into a 24/7 mass paintball (or laser tag or something) warzone experience, like hundreds of people on both sides.

Sell the experience to people, classic Red team vs blue team, stay until you’re eliminated, barracks/camps, HQ, command structures, etc. It would be a live streamed competition with commentary, tactics, live go pro cams, everything. Maybe do it in seasons, have leaderboards, MVPs, whatever.

Players that have already been to the island before would be able to advise, or place bets on their accounts or whatever to build up load outs for their next trip.

The goal being a fun live game, exercise, stamina training, whatever, but mostly an outlet for the people in the world that get excited by war with the intention of hopefully reducing that with a safe environment.

I feel like if done correctly, and made as affordable as possible, it could turn into a relatively profitable business. I would then ensure the profits went to charities that provide aid to actual warzones and ensure that the primary message of the theme park is completely anti-war.

Any money leftover that didn’t go into that project I would donate and invest in animal welfare and conservation, renewable energy, and tackling the climate crisis.

Thanks so much, I’ll look into this!

I remember doing this before with an older Macbook Pro that had a motherboard failure and now keep the HDD from that in an enclosure as my time machine backup.

It’s probably worth upgrading the SSD, though I feel I should really upgrade the battery and a blown speaker at the same time.

My battery is actually eligible for a free replacement, but the hassle of sending it away for a week when I use it for work has stopped me from doing that. Probably easier just doing it myself.

Not sure if YouTube links are allowed here, but if you just search for automatic 1111 install tutorials, Sebastian Kamph’s channel is excellent and pretty much everything you’ll need to know is on there!

Keep an eye for his updated videos though, as you can imagine the tech moves so quickly that some of his more popular videos have been remade and updated!

Short form content platforms aren’t going anywhere, Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts are just a carbon copy of tiktok. No problems with them, of course, because they’re American.

I’m still unsure why anyone would pay for AI image generation purely because of the trial and error it takes. I get that not everyone has a GPU that can do it, but I use stable diffusion through automatic 1111 and I’ll likely be about 2-300 generations of text to image, image to image, some inpainting and editing, then some more image to image and upscaling before I get a representation of what’s in my head down.

I love the process of it all, but paying for tokens would completely limit me. Is there a specific reason that people use paid models? Or is it just because a lot of people are limited by their gpu?

Currently in Tokyo from UK, paid for an Airalo esim before I arrived, and I was pretty impressed with how cheap and easy it’s been- and that’s with 20gbs data, which I’ve barely used.

My service provider O2 would have charged me £7 a day with their O2 travel bolt-on, but would have still been my usual contract of unlimited calls, texts and data, just that the data would have been throttled a fair bit. This is a lot more reasonable than it used to be, but still would have amounted in a large bill compared to the one off $18 esim.

One of the things I enjoy most about Sanderson’s work is his attention to detail in his numerous magic systems.

I see what you mean, but at the same time, there is a wealth of animation styles within Anime series too. Some as that popular anime style that most associate it with, others that are a lot more western cartoon influenced in their style.

I would argue that CGI, pixar, dreamworks, etc is far enough away. But the Simpsons is a traditional cartoon, and it likely wouldn’t be too difficult to find an anime that is stylistically similar within the massive archive.

As others have said, it’s another form of media. I enjoy a good story and good characters and there are some anime series that are incredible and wouldn’t work in live action for a number of reasons.

And as someone from the west, the cultural influences can often add story elements that would be outside of our norm of storytelling.

That said, there are so many genres of anime that do not interest me in the slightest. Just as there are many series of other shows that don’t interest me in the slightest. There are many book series I have read that I would much prefer an animated adaption of. As an example, an animated adaption of Game of Thrones would have been really interesting, as they could have stuck closer to the outlandish elements of the source material, and not had to worry about casts aging or moving on to other projects.

Having grown up with Pokemon, Dragon Ball, Digimon, and many others, there is also a nostalgic element to this as well, which is why we will be seeing anime (and animated media in general) increase in popularity along with the generational shift in society.

To sum up, people that dislike anime usually fall into categories:

1. Animated series/films aren’t to their tastes. This is perfectly fine, as long as they also feel the same about western animated series/films.

2. The stories don’t interest them. Maybe the cultural influences I noted before are just a little too far outside of their comfort zone, and they understandably haven’t actively gone out of their way to find something that does.

3. They’ve never watched anime, wont give it a chance, and consider it childish and immature. Closed minded and elitist (in my opinion).

But most importantly, all media is subjective, and someone else’s personal opinion should not matter in the slightest to what you enjoy or don’t. The Internet has given far too many people the false idea that their opinions actually hold any value.

It means the social contract has been broken beyond repair. Wealth hording, inequality, the power balance, lobbying, mega-corporations, data harvesting to profit from us even further, working until death for pennies while other profit from our labour. We are slaves to a system that has the illusion of comfort and freedom, when in reality, a small subset of the population control it all and are actively clamping down on what little freedom and comfort we actually had.

The 2008 financial collapse lifted the curtain to most, and it became glaringly obvious just how transparent and artificial the entire concept of economy actually is.

You are, and that’s by design, as the core of your country from the education right down to the media and pop culture, all revolve around the financial system, designed to keep the wealth in the pockets of the few while everyone else argues over the same pointless and divisive issues that are pushed every single day. It happens in most countries, but the US is the best example due to how transparent it all is.

Capitalism has really done a number on these poor Americans, the right wing have managed to push the compass so far in their favour that even a lot of the most basic items in this list are considered “far left” to them.

One prime example of the extremes of propaganda within the US has to be the mass opposition towards unions (which has thankfully began to ease in recent years.) I could never comprehend why so many people would argue against having a union to protect their own rights as workers. it was bizarre to me.

No offence to any Americans that read this. But I’ve done my fair share of arguing for you over the years, and some of the opposition I have come up against is just completely bewildering. Almost like some sort of capitalist Stockholm syndrome.

Sure, those are good examples of negatives, but that is just the way of it. This happens all the time when new technology emerges. Just think about the audio industry, all of a sudden people could produce music from their spare bedrooms- jobs weren’t needed anymore. But the music industry is now far more saturated than ever as a result, as it is so much more accessible to people, without the need for specialist equipment and stacks of cash.

Not OP, But, Stephen Hawking could have kept his voice, as an example.There are probably lots of beneficial uses of this technology. Automatic TTS voice messages would be another 🤷‍♂️

A very long time ago, a large group of us had a night of drinking around 3 miles from our small town. With a drunken adolescent sense of mob mentality, a sprinkle of rebellion, and a bucket load of mindless teenage stupidity, we descended upon the town to cause some trouble. We wanted to put our stealth skills to the test, and devised a plot to separate into multiple teams of 4. The name of the game was Gnome Hunt, and the aim was a heist that would make Danny Ocean shit his pants.

We agreed on a time limit of 2 hours where we would rendezvous back at the threshold of the town, count up scores, and fade back into the rural night from whence we emerged.

Quickly, the game evolved from simple gnomes, as drunken brains decided larger scores would net more points, so why settle?

After the 2 hours had passed we all met up again with our prizes. We had no scoring mechanic, of course, so we just all decided “good game”, shook hands, and sauntered back into the dark countryside.

Left behind, on a wall at the entrance to a housing estate, was a glorious display of all sorts of garden ornaments, arranged in a way that would make B&Qs seasonal team take pause.

The following weeks were a blaze of entertainment. The local paper had a photo of the full display, and a piece written as to the mystery of it all. Locals played along, with “wanted” and “have you seen this gnome?” Posters put up around town. All in all, the town seemed to enjoy a good laugh at the whole thing. None the wiser that it was simply reckless abandon from stupid, yet polite, drunken teens.

I used to get this a lot, until someone reversed it on me, and I’ve thought about it this way ever since: If you can’t let yourself suffer because others might have it worse, then you also can’t let yourself be happy, because others have it better.

It’s all about personal experience and perspective.