I have had issues in the past with bad SD cards on my pi-hole that cause it to stop working after a few minutes. I know you said it works fine without Mullvad, but was that just a quick verification or an extended long-term test with traffic?
I always like to think: what happens if some random hacker (either a bored teenager or hostile state) was able to control this thing?
Operating locks? Hell no. Controlling my thermostat/furnace? Hell no.
Monitoring locks? Like, having a sensor that indicates that a door or window is locked or unlocked and can notify you when it changes? Well, personally I still don’t do that because broadcasting to the internet that my window is unlocked seems dangerous, but I could also understand how that could be helpful, especially for people with OCD.
Controlling my window-mounted AC units? Mild inconvenience at worse. I could go without them in the summer and just be a bit uncomfortable (and some years I do to save money). They aren’t powerful enough to be dangerously cold. I could always unplug them or kick them off my wi-fi if I had to. Worst-case scenario is that someone runs up my electric bill if in away from home for a bit. The ability to change the settings, set automation, and monitor room temperatures remotely is convenient enough to be worth the risk.
Lights? No problem at all, especially because I still have dumb lights in some fixtures that I just don’t use often. So the worst-case scenario is that someone turns them on/off when I don’t want, and the solution is just… Unscrew the bulb, unplug the fixture, or flip the switch to cut the power. Or turn on a dumb light. LED’s are so efficient that I probably wouldn’t notice a difference on my electric bill if all of my lights were on vs off for a full billing period. In exchange, I’m able to use light turning on as a much gentler alarm in the morning, or turn everything off from bed when I’m ready to sleep, or if I’m out at a friend’s house it’s nice to have lights on before I go home.
Each piece of automation is its own evaluation. What could go wrong, and how much damage would that cause? What information do I care about potentially being leaked? How much efficiency and convenience am I getting in return?
There is some evidence that it depends on the yerpenes, which vary by strain.
Humulene (also found in stuff like ginger and hops) might be an appetite suppressant.
I hope weed gets re-scheduled or legalized in the US so it gets easier to actually research this stuff.
Humulene, terpene found in some weed strains (and also other plants like hops and ginger), has some evidence of being an appetite suppressant.
When I first went through the process of getting my medical card, I was required to have a consultation with the pharmacist and she recommended strains with that if I have a problem with the munchies. Personally, I really like to get high and eat so I’ve mostly avoided those strains, so I cannot attest to the effectiveness of this myself.
OP appears to be another comic bot. A few hours old and posts nothing but a handful of comics.
Tons of these accounts have been cropping up since early January. A lot of the accounts delete themselves after a couple days. I have no idea what the goal is, but the comics these accounts post tend to be either really mediocre (like how this one is more of a premise than a joke) or purposefully have some sort of divisive content (often about gender).
I hope that the goal is just to get people engaged in the comments and grow Lemmy, but this being the internet I can’t help but wonder if there’s something more nefarious going on.
Ah. Another account a few hours old that just posts a handful of comics. Wonder if this one will delete itself later too?
I would disagree with this quite strongly. Most brands have several different tiers of products. Often, especially for the budget-level options like Squiers, the manufacturing is outsourced. For example, my first electric guitar was from Cort, a South Korean company whose main business at the time was doing contract manufacturing for Ibanez, Squier, PRS, and G&L, Kramer, Honer, and more. Literally the same wood and parts, just with slightly different shapes and branding.
The highest-end, elitist guitars would be small shops that focus on handmade custom work. Stuff like Dunable or what PRS used to be. Jackson is now owned by Fender, but it used to be a more premium brand. Custom shop stuff is always going to be premium regardless of brand- Schecter, Ibanez, Dean, Gibson, Fender, doesn’t matter.
To compare this to OP’s prompt, it would be like if Hershey did custom high-quality chocolate options, also sold good quality chocolate, and also sold a decent value option in grocery stores, and also sold the plastic brown goop they sell today as a budget option.
For breakfast I like egg cups. Take a muffin tin, spritz with cooking spray, and line each depression with a slice of ham, basically acting like a cupcake wrapper would. Crack an egg in each one. Add some salt, other seasonings, cheese, veggies, whatever else. Bake at 350F, usually for 20-30 minutes but I would recommend checking every 10 to start. Put them in a container and refrigerated for a week or two. Every morning I take 1 or 2 out, microwave them for 30-40 seconds, and put some hot sauce or ranch on them.
For lunch: protein smoothie. Orange juice, vanilla protein powder, peanut butter, ice. Optionally, a banana. I typically make one batch real quick and split it between my wife and I for lunch. Basically add them in and blend until smooth, and I would recommend starting with 1 serving of each basically (8oz OJ, 1 scoop protein, 2tbsp peanut butter, and as much ice as you need for texture). It’s like an orange creamsicle- the peanut butter adds a lot of texture but not a ton of peanut flavor that might be weird with orange.
My wife and I are on a low-carb diet, so we use low-sugar OJ and only 4oz. 2 scoops of low-cabe whey protein. Considering switching from peanut to almond butter, or just a bit of peanut oil instead.
For dinner is the real serious meal prep: chicken breast/tenders and vegetables. Put 5lbs of chicken in a casserole dish. Add whatever seasonings you like: pickled jalapeno, soy sauce, rosemary + thyme, Dijon mustard, ranch seasoning, etc. Chicken is an incredible canvas for pretty much any seasoning across the world. Bake at 350F for… At least an hour, probably more like 90 minutes. Get some decent re-usable sectioned containers (microwave + freezer safe required, dishwasher safe is required for me personally too). If you have whole breasts you might want to cut them into portions before cooking (halves or thirds usually. You could cut it into bite-sized pieces if you’re ambitious). Or you could cut after cooking, just let it cool off a bit first.
For sides, I like frozen bags of broccoli and cauliflower. Carrots, squash, and peas are good when I’m less concerned about carbs. Some things are better fresh, like mushrooms (with soy sauce), cucumbers (with soy sauce), or other local seasonal stuff. Brussel sprouts are good frozen, better fresh. Artichoke hearts are great. Stuff like onions and bell peppers can be good additions, but j typically need them to be mixed either with each other or something else to work.
The idea is you can put all those containers in a freezer and then microwave them for roughly 3-5 minutes depending on how much is in them. We have a dedicated freezer in our basement for this. It’s nice that my wife and I can independently choose whatever flavor we are in the mood for that night.
When the price of chicken has been really high, it’s easy enough to switch to another meat. Sausages are good. Pork loin cut into medallions.
All our friends have so many conflicting diets and dietary restrictions that are a certain point we are better off having sinners that are Being Your Own Meal, so those frozen dinners are really nice.
To make these vegetarian… If eggs are alright then you could probably remove the ham from the egg cups, but the egg might stick to the muffin pan. Maybe you could find some other sort of liner. My mom uses canned crescent roll dough in a similar way to make miniature quiches, so maybe something like that would work?
Protein smoothie does not require any animal products. Could be vegan pretty easily as long as you check the ingredients. The big issue is cost, especially for protein powder.
Frozen dinners might be trickier to make vegetarian just because I’m not sure what protein sources would do well frozen and microwaved. Maybe tofu? Or noodles?
Here are some things that I’m not eating on my current diet, but are great for saving money.
Oatmeal for breakfast (make steel-cut oats in a slow cooker,you can add milk, egg, peanut butter, maple syrup, brown sugar, butter, salt, spices, frozen or fresh fruit, protein powder, whatever).
Chilli. If you want ground meat, brown it and season it first (if you aren’t familiar with seasonings, start by grabbing a chilli powder mix from the store, look at the ingredients, then buy those things and experiment with proportions). Then add it to a slow cooker. Add at least 1 can of tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, and beans (I like black beans, but kidney is good too). Add more tomatoes and/or beans, or if you really want to save money add rice (might need a bit of water too). Cook on low- it’ll probably be ready after 4 hours but will be fine for 8 hours. From there you can dip tortilla chips in it, make some cornbread, pour over rice, make sandwiches like Sloppy Joes, etc.
Rice, bread, noodles, and potatoes are all great cheap fillers.
Also at points in the shows production he was 39 years old and dating a 17 year old.
While I know the big takeaway in the comments here is “it’s easy to do when you don’t have a job”, it’s also worth highlighting the various options to spend time in general and how being in prison changes that decision making process.
I know a lot of people who complain. About not having money, not being in shape, not having the time to do what they want, always feeling anxious and depressed. And I don’t mean to undermine that- material conditions can be very real, you cannot simply budget your way out of poverty, and mental health is a real issue to be treated professionally.
But I do think there is also room to reflect on our habits, decisions, and environment. Right now I could be working out or reading a book, and instead I’m on Lemmy looking at memes and commenting. How many hours have I wasted in the past on social media? How many hours have I wasted watching video essays on things I can’t remember? How many hours did I waste watching all of the Marvel movies and TV shows through Endgame because my wife’s friend was insistent we HAVE to watch them all and they’re great (spoiler: they were all pretty much soulless forulaic corporate cash grabs).
How much time and money do we spend going to bars and restaurants? How much time spent sitting in cars or buses or trains or planes? How much time with my face in some mobile game to kill time?
I don’t bring these up to say none of us should ever do those things, but I think a lot of people need to look at their priorities. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed the people around me who seem the most dissatisfied with their personal lives are also the ones who never make time to get to “lower” priorities. Sometimes it’s the sheer financial truth that people need to work several jobs and basically dedicate their entire lives to chasing income. But other times people are trying to maintain too many relationships. Too many friends and friend groups, not enough time spent on maintaining or improving their self. It’s a balance everyone needs to find, but I feel like social media (especially for-profit platforms) has driven a lot of people to be dependent on the constant stimulation and validation that comes from constant connection to several other people.
I’m really trying to avoid using for-profit 3rd parties. CURRENTLY I could sign up as a free user and probably be fine. But Tailscale could wake up any day and decide to start charging, or put restrictions on the free tier that would force me to a paid tier.
Part of the reason I bought a Blu-Ray drive, some big HDD’s, and started collecting discs in the first place was to take back control from tech companies. It’s why I chose Jellyfin over Plex. Going with Tailscale would defeat the principal.
I would probably be this guy if I ever got around to doing the research into how to make my Jellyfin available over the internet safely.
Eh even before the Internet people had other tools to help with this. Physical books with people’s addresses and phone numbers. Specialized holders for various business cards. Yellow pages and white pages. I suppose a lot of incidental memorization is lost but I don’t think it’s really a skill lost so much as the tool changed.
And those tools pre-date the invention of the telephone, so it’s not like people spent hundreds of years memorizing phone numbers before writing was invented.
I know what you mean. When I was really young my parents took us to Florida to see our great-grandfather a couple times and that was the closest thing I had to vacation for a long time. The past couple years my wife and I have had a couple of long weekend trips to cities we can drive to in a couple hours, but nothing extravagant. Well, except flying out to Boston for a wedding, but I would have preferred to opt out of that.
Seems everyone I work with, my parents, my in-laws, friends, everyone goes on cruises. I honestly think I would hate it even if it were free. People dropping a few grand real casual just to binge drink for a week. I could do that for like $200.
So you’d rather be spies on by the formerly largest panopticon ever created AND not be able to side load?
If you think Apple is some paragon of privacy you might want to do some research on that lol.
I know this is a meme, but j do often find myself frustrated with how often my friends and family want to go out to eat.
I did some annual budget analysis and found my wife and I averaged almost $500/month on bars and restaurants in 2025 (also including takeout). I make over 2x the median household income in my area, but I still think it’s extravagant and luxurious to constantly be going out to eat or drink, or to be ordering takeout. The same friends who are working multiple low-paying jobs and complaining about money are also the ones making plans that involve Ubering both ways to a bar to drink.
You can’t budget your way out of poverty and we should absolutely try to fix the systemic issues we are faced with. Poor people deserve to have a good quality of life too. But also people need to review their consumption and ask if they really should be going out to eat 3x per week, or going on cruises every year.
Bigotry is bad. Segregation is bad.
In progressive spaces this is USUALLY met with agreement. That’s easy whenever we are talking about equal rights for people who have been historically been oppressed. However, a dark corner of progressive spaces likes to hate. Hate on men, cis people, white people. It’s usually just one or two people, who have probably been personally hurt by people who happen to fall into those groups, and the rest don’t feel like they can say anything.
I strongly believe that things like segregation are fundamentally wrong and make the world a worse place. Not that they were tools that were used for evil and can now be used for good in the right hands. Not just temporarily as balancing measures for society. Equality isn’t just something you can pick and choose when to believe in, when it’s pretty and convenient and makes you feel good.
I’ve noticed a ton of these too: it seemed to have started right around New Year’s.
As someone who typically scrolls All, I’m not even sure if it’s specific to this community. There are a lot of Comic and Meme communities where these things are getting posted across various instances. I’m still not sure whether this is nefarious or someone trying to grow Lemmy. Could just be some college student trying to test out making bots, posting things they genuinely like. Though I have noticed most of the comics tend to em have divisive elements or say things that are obviously wrong. It seems like their goal might be to drive comment engagement.
So I’ve been marking them with UserNotes as “Comic Bot” and usually just do voting and moving on. Occasionally commenting to draw attention to the user history for others.
Geese