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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • My partner is also allergic to mosquito bites and he got a HeatIt and it was life-changing. He previously had to stay home and permanently ice his bites to not get blood poisoning and was in huge pain, but now since it’s always with him on his keychain, he can treat the stings right away before they get too bad and can go out and do pretty much everything now. He still needs to treat the stings regularly, but it’s so much more portable and accessible than the ice packs he used before.
    Compared to the larger devices like BiteAway, it performs a bit worse and it’s a bit pricey and the durability is kinda shit, but the fact that it’s always on him and ready to use (as long as you bring your keys and phone), he can treat the bites right away on the go, which makes a huge difference in effectiveness.










  • I switched from Yt Music to Tidal because of audio quality and it’s audible. But the difference between Spotify highest quality and Tidal is truly minimal. I did the tests and I couldn’t hear it. I kinda prefer the UI and generally like supporting market alternatives if they’re good and if they pay artists better, then that’s even better. I don’t listen to podcasts either, so those are my personal reasons for choosing Tidal over Spotify.

    I have never really used Spotify, but my partner insists that the recommendations on Tidal are actually better. I also think the recommendations are great, but work best for genres that Tidal is strong at. Of the genres I listen to, I’ve had really good experiences with the genres hip hop, rap, lofi, misc. electronic music, western pop, and less good experiences with classical music, soundtracks and more niche genres like J-Pop, African Pop and random trash (on Spotify, our we used to like to prank our friends by adding stuff like gangster’s paradise kids bop version or “female orgasm sounds” to their playlists. I haven’t really found prank-worthy stuff on Tidal yet).

    So it’s really a personal decision and tbh, I think Spotify is the better choice for most people.





  • Not sure about this webcomic in particular, but I can highly recommend the app Tachiyomi. It’s a free and open source manga and webcomic reader and allows you to add a huge number of sources, so if you found a good webpage (good translations, good image quality, up-to-date chapters), you can search for that source in Tachiyomi. Because of the questionable legality of most content (copyright-wise) it’s not on the Play Store but you can find it on F-Droid or install from web.



  • Recently had a similar discussian with an Australian-German who went to elementary in Australia and a German life guard and the “how” is certainly interesting as well. Apparently, you get drilled to crawl in Australia (which is just called “swimming”) because that’s the only style that’s powerful enough to save your life in the face of strong ocean currents. Meanwhile, Germans start by learning the breast stroke in elementary because it’s the most efficient/least tiring form of swimming and the most dangerous water scenario here is people swimming too far out into lakes in forests in the middle of nowhere with no life guards, so the no. 1 priority is stamina to get you back on shore.


  • I don’t doubt your textbook correctness or the historical correctness of this, and maybe I should stress that I am not trying to exclude anyone from the bi term, but at least in my anecdotal experience, these terms are mostly used “wrongly”, meaning that there is a lot of confusion. And the meanings of words change as people start using them with different intended meanings.

    Therefore, given the premise that we want to simplify things by cleaning up some redundant terms, I would prefer to keep the one whose meaning is intuitively clear to everyone. I just don’t see why - given bi, pan and omni all mean the same thing - one should choose the most misunderstood/misused term.

    Personally, I would just keep the terms and let people choose whichever they like, I’m just trying to entertain this discussion of choosing to keep only one of them and the pros/cons for each choice.


  • Actually didn’t know that, even though I identify as bi lol. Pretty sure my other bi and pan friends didn’t know either from the kinds of discussions we’ve had. But then that’s just a bad choice linguistically, no? It’s very misleading because you literally have the terms bi and non-bi and you need to read some manifesto to understand that they’re not a contradiction. Meanwhile aside from the stupid overdone cookware joke, I think nobody ever questioned the meanings of terms like pan or omni, because they make sense linguistically.


  • Thanks for writing all this. I really like that you named actual tangible negative effects of loss of privacy. Most of the usual reasons I hear are too abstract/paranoid to me and this wasn’t. Suffice it to say, this is not a direction I have given much thought to so far, so feel free to tear me apart here.

    The insurance and apartment scenarios are both discrimination. Why is people’s first instinct here to hide instead of work to fight discrimination? We already have openly visible “attack vectors” for discrimination, like being a foreigner, disabled, or simply a woman. And while I wouldn’t say the systems work perfectly, I believe we’ve come a long way, and only because people’s weaknesses were laid out in the open and they fought to be able to live the way they are. For the insurance thing, couldn’t it simply be forbidden that rates are adjusted to people’s medical records? As for financial stuff, isn’t it already as you said? For renting and for loans, you need to prove your credibility. And unlike with the insurance, people on both sides realize that it makes sense in this case because it is in both parties’ interest that nobody commits to a financial commitment they cannot afford. And for those who cannot afford essentials, and who would be getting nothing under the harsh conditions of capitalism, there is social help. And I do believe in more/better social help systems.

    As for the AfD scenario: what good does having privacy now have, if their first move can be to just forbid privacy?

    In short, I think a lack of privacy is only bad in combination with the evil intent of people wanting to abuse others’ weaknesses. We should try to fight the evil instead of clinging to privacy in the digital era (which I believe will be impossible within the next decade or so anyway) so we can have the advantages of more data-driven tech advancements while minimizing the negative consequences of a loss of privacy. I think we can have our cake and eat it too.


  • I don’t care about data privacy. I care about consent and freedom of choice, so I care if someone else cares about privacy for whatever reason and cannot get it, but me personally, I care very little if at all. I personally do not feel a sense of “creepiness” or whatever from knowing that companies or the state know stuff about me. So I don’t see much value in my personal privacy. On the other hand, we’re barring ourselves from great technical advancements. I’m saying this because it feels like Germany is 10y behind other countries in digitization solely because regulators think I’m too stupid to give me the agency to opt in to sell my soul to our digital overlords.