This was just something silly I thought of when I saw a sign on a bar next to a restaurant I frequent.

I made this as a follow up to https://old.lemmy.world/comment/25243634

So it's totally shitty on purpose and definitely not because I haven't drawn anything in over a decade.

Thanks for the nudge to try again and the suggestion to try Krita. It seems intuitive enough. Although I very much cringed over myself forgetting to do some basic shit I learned in the past like making proper use of layers, but in the spirit of shittiness, I'm not going back for this one. Maybe I'll watch some tutorials in the future.

A few months ago I went to Japan with some friends. At a hotel we stayed at, they provided a big sampling of traditional Japanese food for dinner. One of the things I was surprised to like was a small vegetable dish. I'm usually pretty picky and that can make it hard to get veggies in my diet, but this was good and seemed like it would be pretty simple to make once you had the sauce.

I want to try to replicate it at home, but the problem is I don't actually know what it is called and I don't know the exact ingredients. It's been a while, but I think it was a mix of shredded carrots and some other small shredded or stringy veggies. Maybe bean sprouts? I think the sauce was sweet/savory and colored the veggies brown. I imagine at the very least there was soy sauce in there, but I don't know what else.

Any idea what this might have been? I'd also be happy to get some other recipes that would make for some easy veggie meals/snacks/sides for a picky eater.

I live in the suburbs (I know it sucks, but that's just my current family situation.) and lately I've been trying to get outside more for my mental and physical health. The problem is, the suburbs are kind of shit for this. Obviously there's all the car-centric infrastructure which makes walking more difficult and dangerous, but there's not much I could conceivably do about that in any reasonable amount of time. However, the other big issue I've found, especially as it's gotten so hot this summer, is there are barely any trees, and thus barely any shade anywhere along the sidewalks. Even the local park doesn't have much shade aside from a small area in the corner. So it's really unpleasant to walk anywhere. I get super sweaty even taking a leisurely walk on most days of the summer.

So I was thinking that maybe I could lobby the town to plant more trees such that most of the sidewalks are at least partially shady. I know there are some barriers to this like the tree roots cracking sidewalks and probably some NIMBYs who only view nature as being ornamental, and of course this would cost money to do. So it wouldn't be a trivial thing, but I don't think it's entirely outside the realm of possibility either.

What do you think are some strategies I could use to make this happen? What sort of things do I need to do or account for? Obviously it's going to be different depending on the town, but if there is any kind of general idea of how to go about this I would appreciate hearing it.

I spend a lot of time at my computer playing games that have a turn timer, so I have to wait around after I finish doing whatever I was going to do. I've been trying to get up and move a bit more while I'm waiting, but I kind of just move around randomly. There's no rhyme or reason. Besides it probably not being as effective, without some structure to it I eventually just get bored and go back to sitting. What are some good exercises or stretches that I can do in this situation? Also, somewhat important that it's nothing too cardio intensive. I don't really want to get sweaty while I'm gaming.

So, I've never gotten drunk before. I've had a drink or two on occasion, but never enough to get more than buzzed. And realistically now that I'm on antidepressants I probably won't any time in the near future.

Something I've wondered about is when it comes up in movies or real life news stories is: Exactly how responsible are you for things you do while drunk? Not legally, that's more concrete, but practically. If alcohol inhibits your decision making capabilities, to what extent is anything done while drunk something you "decided" to do? You could still be held accountable for getting so drunk in the first place that this was able to happen, but that seems at least somewhat different from the actual act made during inebriation. Like say, drunk driving: Is the act of deciding to drive drunk merely the act of drinking a lot plus a roll of the dice to see if you end up making a decision you wouldn't have made sober?

Like I said though, I have no personal experience with this, so maybe I'm way off base in understanding the nature of how in control a drunk person is of their behavior.

I don't mean in a retro way. I mean do you think it still works to use older meme formats where they perform the role you need? Or do you think this is like trying to use "groovy" or "tubular?"

A related discussion is about what I call "meta memes", but there are probably better names for them. Essentially core meme format structures that communicate the same idea even if the images are swapped out. (Although they may have subtly different connotations depending on the pictures.) For example there is the "Not A, B" structure which you can see in things like the Drake meme as one of the more common versions of this, but with many variations using different images. Perhaps some older meme formats simply underwent this transition and still exist, just in an updated form. In which case, I wonder what those newer versions are. Perhaps there are some that never got a modern equivalent, but were left behind anyway.

There are also some memes which by their nature kind of can't be updated. Like a Rick Roll has to be "Never Gonna Give You Up" because the joke is the very act of being tricked into specifically watching that video again. Are there other examples that fit this category?

I've wondered about this for a while: There are certain marketing terms I see that just don't make any sense to me and I don't get how they don't count as false advertising.

The two examples I'm thinking of at the moment are:

• "Best Seller" on books. There do seem to be a lot of these. Definitionally can't that simply not be true? There can be only one "best" for a given metric such as book sales in copies or dollars.

• "Homemade" on various foods either from restaurants or packaged things in supermarkets. Like surely "homemade" implies it was made in someone's home right? There is also the less obvious implication that it was handmade as opposed to produced by some automated factory process. But surely this can't be the case right? There's no way someone made the jar of tomato sauce I bought at the store in their home unless they have people living in a factory.

I'd also be curious about any other terms like this that I've forgotten or don't know about.

Just in case there is someone on this site who isn’t a Trekkie somehow: In Star Trek the all purpose device they use for scanning and other similar things is a Tricorder. One of the applications is medical. You scan someone with this and can get most of the info you might need to diagnose and treat conditions.

I recently had to get some rather invasive tests and it just got me wondering if such a thing is hypothetically possible in the future. What are the barriers that stop us from doing something like that for now/ever? We already have some tests that use waves to image parts of the body like X-rays or MRIs. Is it just complete fantasy to imagine such tests for other parts or functions of the body?

Edited to fix a typo and to clarify that I’m mostly talking about the part where they can remotely scan someone instead of having to stick something in or take something out. The miniaturization is cool, but kind of secondary. I’d take having to go to a doctor and sitting in the equivalent of an MRI machine if it meant not having to get poked and prodded.

I have been suffering from a whole host of mental health issues for a long time in my life. Some only popped up around college, some were probably there for most of my life and were just not diagnosed yet.

Lately I've found myself struggling with thinking about or describing to others things I like or don't like or ways I go about life. There are some things I either used to like or think I should like but don't at the moment. I might even come up with reasons to rationalize these dislikes that sound plausible to me. But then I stop and feel kind of disingenuous about it. Like do I not like a thing because that's what my "real" feelings are? Or is it something due to one of my issues like depression and I might like the thing if I were finally able to find a treatment that worked. What is the difference between my intellectual thoughts and how my brain and body actually feel and behave?

Another manifestation of this has to do with the things that bother me about the world. There's so much terrible stuff out there and I feel bad about that, but am I depressed because I feel bad about these things or do I feel bad about these things because I'm depressed? Would I stop feeling bad about wars or climate change if I weren't depressed anymore? That doesn't seem like it would make sense. I guess I'd just be regularly sad as opposed to clinically depressed?

Things get even weirder and more existential when I start to think about what we even are. Our brains aren't just computers running software. We're a collection of cells all doing their own things that somehow come together to perform larger functions that compose a larger complex organism. Not even all of the things that make our body work and affect how we feel are even technically "belonging" to to the body. Things like the bacteria in our guts are super important to our health and as I understand it, have an impact on mental health to some extent.

So what am I? What is "me?" Is it possible to separate my thoughts from my body? What does it mean to think things that are in conflict with your feelings?

Obviously this is a pretty vague topic and can be approached from a variety of perspectives such as biology, psychology, philosophy, etc. So I'm curious what people think about this.

I use Voyager on my mobile devices to access lemmy and it's logged into the same account. If I want to write a post or comment, I much prefer typing on a keyboard, but for some reason, when I swap to my PC, sometimes I can't find the thread I wanted to reply to in question. Does anyone have an idea of what the problem might be going on and how to fix it?

I've been trying to exercise more lately. I'm now running on a machine at home for about an hour a day. I'm not really getting tired, but my big problem is that I sweat A LOT. (I'm overweight, so that probably has something to do with it.) I've been trying to manage it with towels to wipe off the sweat, but I would have to use an unreasonable number of towels to get through the whole thing without being drenched in sweat by the end.

So what I was wondering is: Could I cool my body down with fans, AC, drinking cold water, etc enough that I could greatly reduce the amount I sweat during exercise? I tried using a small fan I have in the house, but it wasn't really powerful enough to make any meaningful change. If I got a big fan or more fans or whatever, could I achieve what I'm after? Or does that not remove the body heat fast enough for my body to not start sweating?

Or if anyone has any other solutions to this that would help. I think stamina-wise I could probably push my exercise longer, but I'm not really willing to do that if it means being covered in buckets of sweat for like half an hour.

I occasionally try to play co-op games with my retired dad. He's pretty inexperienced with games (outside of playing a handful of Atari games when he was a kid) and isn't the most coordinated. It can be difficult to find games he can play and even more difficult to find games which will still be engaging for me.

What are some co-op games that are simple enough for someone unfamiliar with games to get into but which aren't going to bore? Also, they either need to be Switch games or games which have both a Mac and PC version.

There are some games which, for whatever reason, I just don't vibe with enough to keep playing even if I want to see the story. Some of these games will have a "story mode" difficulty which is just meant to be a really easy version of the game you could play to just get the story without worrying too much about needing to overcome the challenges.

Recently I tried going back to a game I had previously dropped because I wasn't really enjoying the combat. I had dropped it down to story mode, but this wasn't really enough to keep me engaged. And on some level, I don't really enjoy games when they're too easy anyway. It may not be that important or necessary to engage with the mechanics to succeed, but you often still need to go through the motions with them and the act of doing this with systems that don't actually serve a purpose at that difficulty. The result of this is that the story that you're continuing to play drains your energy and is potentially paced poorly.

When I was talking about this with a friend, we discussed how let's play videos could serve as a substitute for playing the game if you just want the story. But of course this has it's own problems. The pacing may still be bad, the video maker's commentary might be distracting, and if you decide to go this route before even purchasing the game, the dev isn't even financially rewarded for the work they did at least creating a story you liked.

So I had a thought: It might be nice if for exactly these kinds of games: Linear, cutscene heavy, and story based games, that currently choose to include a "story mode" instead just straight up edited together a movie from some combinations of the cutscenes and either recorded gameplay or perhaps some additional cutscenes to fill in the gaps that would normally be filled with gameplay. That way, if all you care about is the story, you get the best version of that story that you possibly could.

Of course there are plenty of kinds of games this wouldn't work for, but for the ones where it could, I think it would be a nice replacement for "story mode" difficulties, or at least an addition. What do you think?

I’ve been dealing with depression (and anxiety) for well over 5 years now. I’ve tried so many different medications and treatments with no apparent success. Inevitably, in the course of the treatment, the doctor will ask if I’m starting to feel better to see if it’s worth continuing the treatment, up the dose, or swap to something else. And… I never know what to say. If it’s not going to get dramatically better all of a sudden, I don’t really know how to recognize any incremental progress if it’s happening at all and without being able to do that, I might be passing on treatments that could have helped if I gave it more time.

So if you’ve been in this situation, how did you recognize progress? To the extent that you can put it into words, what did it feel like to slowly get better as you were treated?

This is a more focused follow up to a question I had the other day about moving to other countries. I'm wondering what the best options are for learning a new language at the moment. I'm vaguely aware of companies like Duo-lingo losing their reputation lately and it's hard to trust the top google results nowadays with all the SEO junk. So does anyone have suggestions for trustworthy/useful sites for learning a new language? If it matters, in particular I'm interested in trying (In roughly this order) Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, or Spanish.

I live in the US and even beyond the current stuff going on, I've just become so depressed living in a place that feels like it doesn't care about people. I've been watching videos about some other countries, in particular Vietnam and China, and I've thought it might be nice going somewhere that's more committed to making life better for people. At the very least going somewhere that's building a bunch of trains would be cool. (Yes I'm autistic, how could you tell? /s)

I don't know if I'd actually end up doing anything because it's tough for me to get anything done at the moment, but I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts or experiences to share about living in other places, especially if you moved there. What's your pitch for why it's a nice place to live? What problems does it have?

If you moved there, what were the challenges in moving and adapting to the new place? Did you learn the new language? Was it tough getting used to the local foods? (This is something I worry about a lot because I'm kind of picky) How did you meet people? Etc.

Outside of college, I've lived in the same place all my life. I've only traveled outside the US twice and it was to other western or westernized countries. (France, Amsterdam, and Japan.) I'm relatively introverted and socially anxious, but it is nice to try to get to know people I could be comfortable around. I have a college degree but I haven't had work experience due to my depression, so I'd be kind of starting from scratch in that regard. (I'm maybe about to get some treatment which might help, fingers crossed.) So all around it's hard to say if I'd be able to move anywhere, but maybe at some point I can work up the energy and courage to make the leap and it would be helpful to have some ideas of how to approach that. Maybe I'll try to slowly learn the language as I can.

EDIT: Thanks for the replies. The solution was to turn off Lenovo Vantage Server Boost.

So I have a fairly specific problem that has been surprisingly hard to troubleshoot for some reason.

Very specifically, when I am streaming on discord, while any game software is running, (we've tried it with a few different ones, online/offline, steam/non-steam, 2D graphics vs 3D graphics. Same issue although maybe with varying amounts of time before the problem starts, but hard to be sure.) and when at least one other person starts watching the stream, my discord connection gets unstable. Voice and video start cutting in and out and the connection icon starts turning red. This doesn't just affect the person watching the stream, others have trouble hearing me as well. No stream? No problem. Stream but no game? No problem. Stream and game but no viewer? No problem. Just when all of these are together. Also this doesn't seem to impact my other processes or connections. The game keeps running like normal and for the online ones they don't lose connection. I can still go access sites on my browser, etc.

I got a new PC recently, I haven't had this issue before that. It didn't happen right away though, things worked fine at first. It happened for the first time a few weeks ago and after running through the basic troubleshooting steps, the thing that seemed to fix the issue was updating my nvidia graphics drivers, but it's hard to say for sure. The problem popped up again tonight. For reference the last time I streamed to someone was on Thursday, so it was working very recently.

I checked and there was a graphics driver update, so I went to install that, thinking that would fix it again. It did not. There also seemed to be some problems around the graphics driver installer. Both times this happened the download initially stalled at some % and I had to restart to get it to work again. Plus this time I went to try to reinstall the graphics driver to see if maybe the first time it didn't do it right and I briefly had bigger problems with the PC. During the install, the screen just went dark and didn't come back. The rest of the computer was running, I could still chat on discord, but I had to kill it and restart to get the screen back. That restart took a while longer than normal and when I got back the start menu wasn't working. That got fixed on another restart though.

Anyway, that's concerning and maybe relevant, but back to the discord issue: Other troubleshooting steps that didn't work:

• Turning hardware acceleration off/on.
• Telling windows to use my graphics card on high performance for discord and the games I was testing with. (It already seemed to be doing that on it's own anyway, but I made sure.)
• Lowering stream quality and FPS.
• Making sure discord was added to my firewall allowed software.
• Cleared discord's cache.
• uninstalled and reinstalled discord.
• Checked for windows or other driver updates and didn't find any.
• Tried switching routers and did some speed tests that turned out fine.
• Checked resource usage and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

I'm kind of at a loss here. The most I can turn up on google is all the generic troubleshooting advice you get for every problem and none of it has worked so far.

System Info:

• Windows 11
• It's a Lenovo prebuilt desktop PC and it comes with their driver/system management software.
• Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-14700F, 2100 Mhz, 20 Core(s), 28 Logical Processor(s)
• BIOS Version/Date LENOVO O5TKT3BA, 12/17/2024
• Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 32.0 GB
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER
• Headphones/mic: Razor Blackshark V2 Pro

Any ideas?

I'm hoping this is an ok place to ask a question like this.

I recently had to get a new mouse because my old one broke. I couldn't get exactly what I had before but I got something fairly similar. However, I've been struggling to tune it to feel good to use. It's actually been putting a lot of strain on my arm even after short play sessions.

Does anyone know what might be causing this and how to fix it? What kind of things should I do to find the appropriate sensitivity/settings or maybe I'm holding my arm differently for some reason or maybe I need a different kind of mouse?

If it matters, here's the old and new mice:

Old: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GU8W5AE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

New: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D3PNVQWK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have 2 questions that may or may not be related:

1. My gaming PC periodically has full system crashes while I'm playing some games. I've tried looking at crash reports but I couldn't really figure out what was different from looking at them. I've seen it suggested that it could be overheating, although it's kind of hard to tell since the temp range when I check isn't that high, but I do feel a lot of heat coming off the machine when I stick my hand over the vent and I hear the fans working hard when I'm playing some games.

2. I was thinking that it might be worth it to try to upgrade some parts to maybe alleviate one possible source of issues. So what I'm wondering is what the best approach would be. For example would getting a better graphics card make it work less hard and produce less heat? Or does a more powerful card just produce more heat? How much can I reasonable upgrade cooling systems given a fixed amount of space in the case? It's been a while since I've manually swapped out parts. Last 2 PC I opted for just buying pre-made although in the past I built one. The one I have now is an Alienware Aurora R11 from a few years ago and it's got an RTX 2070 Super for a graphics card. Does it make sense to try to upgrade it? If so, is it worth going for the newest series or would it be fine/better for my purposes to go to the 30 series?

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but does anyone have any advice on how to get involved in union organizing efforts? I actually went to school for labor relations, so I've got some familiarity with the concepts, but for all sorts of reasons, the main one being mental health, I haven't really been working or doing much of anything for a few years now. I want to try to get out and do my part and I view the labor movement as a really important avenue for political change.

But I don't really know where to look/start. I'm also pretty shy/socially anxious, so I kind of need some way to ease into this since it involves talking to people a lot. I've also been thinking of trying to learn a language that would help me interact with more workers who might be recent immigrants like maybe Spanish or something. (Although I'm not really sure which would be most useful for this and I'm not exactly a fast language learner, so if I was going to do that I should really prioritize one.)

I'm in the US close to the New York City. (Long Island) Does anyone have any suggestions for resources, organizations, advice on how to talk to people in this context, or other ways to help in a less direct way, etc. that could help me get started?