This was a trick I learned recently. If you have long enough hair, brush a little bit of mousse into it, then make a side pony tail and clip it in place. Let it dry for awhile or use a hairdryer, then remove the clip. Should stick like that until next time you wash it (as long as its not super windy outside).

• The Egyptian Book of the Dead
• The Book of Thoth
• Anything by HP Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe
• Dracula
• Interview with the Vampire

Those would be my picks. They’re worth reading in a non-performative way. But it can be performative too lol.

It works with any subsonic compatible app. I use symfonium on android. Its a paid app, but worth the price in my opinion.

Also pro tip if you use symfonium for caching stuff offline. Setup a smart playlist with rules for what you want to save offline (played in the last 30 days or something like that). Then toggle caching on that playlist. That basically gives you a smart, configurable offline cache.

Symfonium supposedly supports audiobookshelf, but I haven’t been able to get it to work. I just use the audiobookshelf app.

Oh yeah, and navidrome can be setup to scrobble to lastfm or listenbrainz if you use that. Convinient so you dont have to worry about scrobbling from your device.

Been using self hosted navidrome + symfonium for a few months now and love it.

It’s a piece of cake for end users. It makes me really jealous lol. Just keep in mind that I’m making that claim based on using the ansible playbook that deploys synapse + element call and an element web UI. Some of our users like to use some combination of a web, desktop and mobile app. So having that come setup after deploying the playbook was really nice. The hard part for end users (for us at least since we’re running a private, defederated server) is pointing the client to the right URL. I made a PDF with a bunch of step by step instructions for how people can login with all of the apps.

That ansible playbook did make deployment much easier, but it’s still a ton of reading because of what a complex stack of tech is actually required to run a matrix chat server. I had originally tried doing it with a bigass docker compose file, and manually configuring all the reverse proxies. After two days of failing to get that working, I went with the playbook. It’s much easier than doing it completely DIY.

The only real difficulty I foresee with users down the line is what happens when people lose their recovery keys. Obviously there’s ways to log back in, but people probably won’t appreciate losing access to chat history. We’ll see how it goes, but generally the onboarding process is really easy. And it can be made easier by the fact that admins can just create users, so the whole registration process is optional.

I deployed a self-hosted matrix chat server recently (synapse + element call) for my probably-soon-to-be discord refugee group. I know it isn’t a 1:1 replacement for the average discord user, but honestly I’m really happy with it. It does the important stuff that we care about (private chat rooms and video calls). My only complaint is that it was an absolute pain in the ass to configure, lol.

I consider the simplicity of the available apps to actually be a good thing. We had moved to discord a few years back from google chat. After that, a bunch of people didn’t interact in chat a whole lot because of what a busy pain in the ass the discord UX is. Several users have also consistently had major breaking issues with the discord app over the years. The element X app doesn’t do a whole lot, but it does work, so it’s an improvement for those people.

Hopefully the recent interest in matrix results in it becoming a fully-featured discord alternative.

LOL. I mean, reading runes as a form of divination is basically on this level. The idea is that you fill a bag with runes, then dump it out on a surface and make your reading based on how they fall.

Personally I prefer to use spaghettios divination in my practice.

I think I used one of those just to get through February

I think you’re right, but I have hope. I believe in us lemmings, lol.

Using reddit makes me feel bad. It’s full of such inflammatory rage bate. Even in the niche communities I was part of, there were multiple posts every day just stirring the pot. Lemmy right now reminds me of reddit in its early days, back when people were trying to have actual, meaningful discussions.

After the api-gate, I had a moment where I asked myself “what things have I actually learned on reddit that I otherwise wouldn’t have learned?” And the answer was nothing. Actual, helpful, insightful discussions just don’t get attention over there anymore. I get way more mileage out of my RSS feed than reddit.

I’ve found the tone here on Lemmy to be more positive and more informative. Don’t change, y’all.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is a great writer. Highly recommend checking put his other stuff too, if y’all enjoy this one.

They’re asking their users to leave. Its about time we oblige them.

I feel like I found a new reason to avoid amazon every time I looked for a product not being sold under some random fake brand name. I cancelled prime over a year ago and started shopping elsewhere. It costs more, but the quality of just about anything is higher.

I avoid amazon for the same reason I avoid walmart: everything is a simulacrum of an actual product. Somehow, amazon is even worse than walmart.

So yeah, boycott amazon and shop at places selling actual products.

Ex mormon here, and I had the same reaction. The shit that went on in that church is absolutely insane in retrospect. Like, it seemed “normal” at the time, but now looking back as an adult its all a bunch of “what the fuck” moments.

Like that one time I was a 15 year old kid, getting asked by a church elder if I looked at porn as a “purity test”. I have no idea how mormonism is even legal.

Same here. I figured it was a matter of time before reddit was entirely ruined after the api change and IPO. I stuck around for the niche communities, but they’ve all been overrun by bots.

RIP in pizza, reddit.

Houstonian of 30+ years here.

Even with the insane number of lanes available, driving anywhere inside beltway 8 between like 12 pm and 8pm is hell on earth. And outside those hours, you’re playing chicken with drunk drivers.

Before I started working remote, I used to clock my average speed to and from work. Most of the time it was 15-20mph on a 65mph freeway. Literally bicycle speeds. Without cars or gridlocked traffic, I could have commuted faster on a bike.

More than one person dies in Houston traffic every day on average. This is probably the shittiest and most expensive form of mass transit mankind will ever build. At least I hope this is as bad as it ever gets, lol.