Split between either housing or bureaucracy

Housing is… not actually about affordability, but rather the plain difficulty of even getting a rental. I’m living in supposedly a part of Europe with a good housing market, but even here every decent rental on the market would instantaneously get 20+ applicants, so it’s quite competitive… not as bad as NL, but still pretty rough

Bureaucracy because of expat/immigrant/etc shenanigans

I don’t know if this is spooky, fucked up, or just really funny (in my twisted sense of humor)

In college. I was a workaholic and didn’t sleep a lot, and I lived in a student dorm (layout was like a hotel, each student had their individual room) that was fairly well-liked by upperclassmen. Anyways there’s a random girl I know outside of class with a friend group. Generally a bright and upbeat person, quite well put-together, also an international student, etc…

There was one night when I was just passed out on my dorm bed. And at 3am in the morning, I saw that particular girl standing in front of my dorm room with the door open. Crying, being really sad and all… Later was escorted away by the RA.

What I still couldn’t comprehend is… First of all, why the heck was my door unlocked. Second of all, why was this random person standing in front of my door. Did she want anything from me. Also later I never heard from that girl again, what happened to her

• Getting a good night’s sleep
• Getting a nap in, for those who can fall asleep quickly
• Drinking a nice cup of hot/warm tea or water. Seriously it works surprisingly well for relieving stress

I’m using mailbox.org with a custom domain. German company, all of their email services seem pretty industry standard, so the biggest advantage for me is that it works quite well with 3rd party mail & calendar clients. Forgot when I switched but so far I have no complaints

Don’t think it’d be more tilting than other games with ~50% win rates. Just one example, Tekken is also ~50% win rate that is nearly completely skill dependent, but on average it involves even higher amounts of adrenaline

Personally the games I found the most tilting are perma-deaths: Minecraft/Terraria’s hardest difficulties, Noita… Losing a 10+ hr run after making one bad decision really gets you. I think I stopped playing this type of games for that reason

Seriously though please don’t tilt. Tilting reduces the fun of the game and makes skill improvements in skill-dependent games slower

Kind-of. Researcher in EU, the funding source on paper mandates 7.6 hrs of work per day, so with lunch breaks it is almost exactly 09:00 - 17:00

Depending on whom you ask academia may or may not be considered a real job though… and my hours may be nice, but the folks who do experiments rarely get the 9-5 as stated on paper, and there are other aspects of the job that are much more fucked up

Now that I’m thinking about it, I mainly have a gripe with people getting addicted to gambling. Can be in many different forms IMO; can be spending too much money at the Blackjack table (which is somewhat skill-dependent), whaling on lootboxes/gachas (where you’d literally never “win” money back), or even day trading (which is technically positive-sum)

In theory everything is fine in moderation, but then most gambling systems reward people to whale whether they intend it or not, so…

I don’t play that many but I generally 100% games I play. So… a bit embarrassing, but Dicey Dungeons. The later chapters are genuinely difficult & are more puzzles than roguelikes… so I just gave up at one point

If specific endgame challenges count, I’ve never beaten Dead Cells BC4 boss rush, or the fabled Noita 34 orbs run (was very close though). Oh and every other rhythm game if you count skill analyzers/Dan courses, but most players don’t clear those

I just had my quarter-life crisis and was starting to have a very FOSS period of my life. Forgot from where, but I heard someone mentioning Mastodon so I joined; this was months before the Reddit API fiasco

Oooh nice!

Something I am very curious: how do the guitar controllers compare against each other? I’m saying this as someone who has been buying and reading up on quite a few rhythm game controllers (DDR/ITG, Taiko, more esoteric things) and knew of the whole slew of comparisons/tierlists between controllers… I knew close to nothing about Clone Hero controllers for high-level gameplay so

So far, my phone, a Google Pixel 6a bought and promptly Graphenified 4.5 years ago that is still going strong. Not perfect but it does it job

Steam Deck is a close second, it has rotated between being my primary/secondary gaming device and even my primary desktop for varying amounts of time, and it served every single role well. All while being dirt-cheap for the specs it have

As someone who had a poorly-paid yet high-stress job for 6 years straight (thanks grad school!) and still recovering, I have a lot to say on this!

I honestly don’t know if what I did could even count as cooking, especially since cooking standards where I grew up is quite high… I just go to the store and buy a bunch of meat + random assorted vegetables and throw them in a pot. Meat is almost always chicken since it’s cheaper, and the local supermarket used to sell massive packs of chicken legs for just $5. Veggies… used to be just some type of cabbage or cauliflower. Recently I’ve been switching things up a bit, but it’s mostly still just these. Usually somewhere between 30-60 minutes is the sweet spot where things don’t cause food poisoning, so within 60-90 minutes of very easy prep, I can get food that would be good for a long time, depending on how big the pot is. Back when I lived in an apartment with a big fridge I sometimes store up to 3-4 weeks of food… Current accommodation only has a mini-fridge, so 4-7 meals max. I cook whenever I run out of food. This is usually the “meal prep” part, which I can then store in the fridge/freezer.

For eating. I’d just make some type of carbs, reheat the mix a bit, and just place them together and eat. Throw in some spices and olive oil (or one of those funny Asian spices if you are into it!) and almost everything would taste just fine. The entire prep almost never exceeds 10 minutes, half of which can be spent showering which cuts down on the morning routine. Probably even faster (1 min?) if one pre-cooks rice, but unfortunately I really don’t like badly cooked rice so it is mainly spaghetti for me…

Recently I did start to cut down on the total number of meals that are prepped though. Recently for breakfast I’ve started to make fried eggs + bread + mayo (which is also 3-5 min cap, although a bit less hands-off), and have been going to the workplace canteen for lunch. But yeah, still pretty much depression meal so to say

I do it sometimes, but mainly for music I really enjoy or have a keen interest in. Technically I also did it for a music competition a few months ago but that probably doesn’t count…

There is research on this btw! I had to dig a bit, but this is a 2011 research article (might be paywalled, I can try & help if anyone is really interested in) on why people (psych undergrads, but still) listen to music. They identified 6 mostly independent factors, one of which (“personal identity”) may be more linked to ppl listening just for enjoyment; one of their experiments showed that 75.66% of participants listen to music as “background noise”. So music as primary activity is probably relatively uncommon (but not non-existent). Funnily enough I rarely use music as background distraction these days

Probably more like a super well-guarded secret than just an aspect at this point. There was one anime series that was both my favorite and quite foundational to my personality for a long time. I legitimately have never told anyone about it; not even my parents

And no I have no intention on disclosing it here. Probably not too hard to infer for hardcore anime fans who would know me in person, but still

• A lot of travel-related ones. Still haven’t gone to even every country in Europe yet, and I’ve never had a chance to even set foot in South America, Africa, and Australia
• Getting really, really good at something. I’ve gotten quite good at some video games before, but I want to be close to a pro (and I don’t mean it lightly) at at least one thing

That’s probably it

No clue, but… maybe they are easy to catch?? From the video it seems like the bats kinda just sit there and do nothing

Eating one is a terrible idea though, bats host way too many pathogens… which I guess is what makes this research interesting and disturbing

I’d like to think I would stand by my principles… but realistically, in this economy?? My degree is too specialized & the job market is pretty tight. I’m pretty sure most people in my field would go to a job at Nestle or Palantir without a second thought for something as simple as 10-20k above market rate and/or visa sponsorship 😭

If I have options, probably at least a net $50k/yr premium for a dubious company, and a net $150k/yr or more (which I will bail quickly) for a company that is straight-up evil

BMS (Be-Music Source), which is technically a file format, not a game. Started off as a Beatmania (now Beatmania IIDX) simulator in 1998, and evolved into its own thing due to some alleged copyright beef with Konami. Someone has made a 20-min video essay about this that is better than anything I could explain

Every song in BMS is original & is fully key-sounded, so the community ended up gathering a lot of (overwhelmingly Japan and Korea-based) music creators. Some of them are… quite experimental. The entire ArtCore genre (which is almost nonexistent outside of rhythm games, but extremely prevalent within) was invented and pioneered by BMS creators. Recent ones… I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a “Hi-Tech Full On” or a “Poetry reading” genre song outside of BMS, but there are at least several songs that fall within these two respectively

Just a heads up… BMS as a game is brutally difficult even by rhythm game standards, which is already a very demanding video game genre to get into

I used to be quite picky & only really listened to J-core and high-energy EDM. Last few months I’ve been getting into a new rhythm game that is known for being… adventurous with its music genre, & even invented some new genres, which has done a number to my music diversity. I think I’m much, much more adventurous with music now

Fun fact, these are genres of some of the charts I’ve played recently. They are… varied, and I think these are only within the past week:

• A lot of trance
• A lot of J-core. Some are “hybridized” which are J-core mashed with other genres
• Artcore, often referred to just “rhythm game music” because they don’t exist outside
• Hi-tech
• All kinds of pop. Including J-pop, K-pop, C-pop(?), pop française (??), …
• Techno & rave music, of all kinds
• Breakcore
• House, also of all kinds
• Ethnic music. I think I’ve heard an Arabic EDM chart yesterday
• Classical
• Experimental things: “poetry” (does this genre even exist?), Buddhism chants, whatever ppl like 立秋 and 大前司 make, shitposts/memes but in music form, …

I tried it once before and liked it! Certainly helps that I’m also lactose intolerant

Although, I prefer to just drink black usually. With good beans (locally roasted) and a good grinder the coffee itself provides a lot of flavor so… other additions are a bit unnecessary