I would be surprised at the absolute stupidity of that, voting for the absolute corpo party in some bizarre protest, but you guys already voted him in for a first term so nothing is really surprising when it comes to the US anymore.

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!

I actually had no idea the new series had even released. Is it dubbed?

Valorant?

I just started myself, after missing Overwatch 1 and thinking it was similar. To my surprise it is like an Overwatch with a Counterstrike feel to it, which I quite enjoy.

Has he now come full circle and lied so much that he accidentally told the truth?

As a non American I just can't comprehend how any of you even have to think about this.

On one hand, an old man, who, despite his age and stumbling over his words, has ran the country relatively successfully for the last four years.

On the other hand, another old man that was a global embarrassment, cosied up to Putin and Kim, spent most of his time golfing and shitting his pants, stole classified documents and likely sold state secrets, he is a sexual abuser, an actual criminal, clearly has corrupt justices on his side with crazy plans, chummy with epstein and took multiple trips to pedo Island, promoted racism at every opportunity, many of the people connected to him for his first term were imprisoned, refused to accept your democratic process, contributed in instigating a fucking coup attempt, and that's likely not even the half of it...

Like, how the fuck can ANY of you look at that and say "Yeah but Biden stumbles over his words so I'll just throw my vote away/vote for trump..."

I feel like I'm going insane just watching this shit unfold. It is all so bizarre.

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.

Ah, I am! The other users spoiler tag was fine so I just assumed something was up, had no idea sync didn't support the tag.

No harm done though, I've already read the whole series a couple of times.

Heads up bud, your spoiler tags didn't work!

Oh, look, another old comedian jumps on the bigot bandwagon. It's an incredibly transparent trend now for when they can't write the same material that got them there in the first place, or when they are no longer working with the person that wrote their material for them.

Take a few shots at trans people, purely for publicity, then use that sudden boost from the circle jerking media to secure yourself a Netflix special, where you can talk about how you've been cancelled for an hour and a half for a big payout.

It's just a marketing ploy for using peoples own outrage against them.

Since the whole API fiasco and losing reddit is fun, I wiped my reddit account, downloaded my comment history and then used a bot to wipe all my comments and posts, doing so got me banned from commenting on a lot of subs, something to do with the speed that the comments were edited at or something. Either way, I don't really care.

I still use my reddit account for lurking, there are some niche active subs that still have good information/discussion that unfortunately haven't been picked up elsewhere, but I have those subs opened in old reddit on Firefox and I don't venture outside of that, and I'll never contribute or comment again.

I get that I'm contributing to their traffic still, but I was an active member for 12+ years, and I'm still pissed they fucked the entire community to profit from our fucking content. Definitely won't be contributing to their content again.

I have a "world bible" that I created on onenote with all of my characters, locations, lore, etc. As part of that I have my stories plotted out in rough notes, then chapter by chapter in a table, (this often changes when actually writing but it's a great foundation).

Lots of people use Obsidian or Notion to do the same thing. I already had onenote on all my devices, so it was easy just to add notes to my notes section if an idea came to me on the move that I could return to later.

I've tried to move to obsidian or notion a couple of times, but I think I have a certain efficiency now with my crude system, and it just seems to work for me.

One-X is such a good album, I remember putting it back on again recently after all these years, and I'd forgotten just how many great tracks are on it!

Ah I'm in the UK, but I was actually looking at this same drive before I thought I'd ask here! Good to know it's reliable.

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.

It does, and this actually might be a super handy way to go about doing it! I had considered it but wasn't sure if it would be faster than USB or Thunderbolt connection. I'll look into it!

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!

Hahaha, I hadn't considered it that way. Touché.

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.

Don't get me wrong, if it was the situation where I had to pick between Labour or Tory then obviously I would be forced to vote Labour. But fortunately I'm not in that predicament.

I had heard the opposite from local counting volunteers. I was told that the MPs are told how many spoiled ballots there were as that is key analytics to knowing how many undecided voters they failed to win over.

Maybe that's not the case anymore and a spoiled ballot doesn't have the same message.

I mean, they already have Easter, and then basically the whole month of December. It's not anyone else's fault that it got turned into a consumerism and capitalist mega payday.

Yes I did, wasn't paying attention while I typed it! Fixed now.

Yep, had it the wrong way around! Oops, was typing while walking.

I appreciate you taking the time to write all this up, though I am aware of all of it. I will vote SNP in a futile attempt to remove the Tories from my constituency, but Labour in Scotland are not the same as the rest of the Labour party. Their only identity here is "anti-SNP at all costs." Hell, a bunch of their councillors were suspended for creating a coalition council with the the Tories as well.

They will always be the same party in Scotland, until they change their tact and start supporting progressive policies as opposed to "SNP are the devil and nothing else matters."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not disillusioned to the fact that the SNP have many faults within their party. But they gave me free education, free prescriptions, and mitigate a lot of damage the Tories in Westminster try to force on the public. (Bedroom tax, as an example).

Labour are just tory lite. And 2019 may seem like a long time ago, but bare in mind this was still 3 years post-brexit referendum. There was still a lot of anger, and openly trying to convince your own constituents to support the Tories (the party they are supposed to be the main opposition to) in that time is still a massive breach of trust, in my opinion.

Hopefully a Labour Westminster government will happen, and will make positive changes, but considering Scotland only returned 6 of 59 seats as Tories in 2019, its not up here that needs convincing.

The bizarre thing about Rowling is her hatred for trans people only extends to MtF trans people. She has no problem with FtM.

*Apologies, I did have these mixed up, I typed this while walking and only just read it back now.

Depending on what I'm playing, I cheat and pull my thumb round the back for that bottom string 🙃 if it's a song full of barre chords then I'll play it properly, but if I'm just playing basic chords then I'll do it the lazy way!

I didn't expect much if I am honest, I wasn't that politically engaged during that election. I took the time to read and appreciate the manifesto, went off to vote, then realised afterwards what you had outlined there. Again, fortunately it didn't matter because my constituency didn't return a Lib dem MP, but I was still pissed.

Witnessing Labour campaigning for the Tories sealed that decision for me for life. 100% fuck them, Red tory cunts.

Lesser of 2 evils when it comes to Westminster. But I won't vote for them, and fortunately I'm in a constituency where Labour have never won, and have absolutely zero presence regardless. Their local branch building is essentially a shed.

Peddled by disaster capitalists and Russian money/propaganda.

And now the Tories want to pull us from the ECHR, to tear away workers rights and further privatise everything to funnel money into their own bank accounts.

It's damn sad there will never be a "we fucking told you so" moment, because the useful idiots that were used as fodder in this whole mess are too fucking thick to ever understand the gravity of it all.

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.

I didn't vote Lib Dem to end up with the fucking tories, which is exactly what happened. I'm not surprised their support plummeted after that.

I was a student at the time, but fortunately, I'm Scottish, so the student loans fiasco didn't apply.

It's definitely between Green and SNP for me I think. I'll wait and see what the manifestos put forward but likely SNP will be the only option for getting the tories out anyway, once again.

I'm just tired and frustrated of doing this in every single election and having the rest of the UK shit the bed and vote Tory anyway. I've put a £100 bet on with a friend that the Tories will win again even though they're polling real low. I just have no faith in the electorate to do anything but vote against their own interests.

My stance has been Tories out since the Cameron and Clegg love affair, I have voted on that basis ever since. I'll likely vote SNP to get rid of them.

Not to mention SNP are the loudest advocates for PR in the UK, even though they stand to lose the most from it (by far).

Every spoiled ballot has to be counted and reviewed, a spoiled ballot is a "this is a person that took the time to turn up to vote and we didn't manage to win them over."

There is a massive difference between spoiling a ballot and just not voting.