Yeah of course, it is by definition coping. Zero disagreement from me. But from my perspective of trying to find practical ways to achieve a fulfilling existence, good coping strategies can be a very positive thing. Bad shit will always be there, and we all have our own unique collections of it and unique internal reactions to it.

And the spirit of this from me is to encourage others to explore what’s possible, not to say “you should X.” We all have unique minds going through unique life experiences, so it would be silly for me to try to lay out some kind of roadmap to happiness like I know you (or any other people who might read this).

It took me several years to get my head to where it is now, and that includes ongoing medication. My goal is to help others however I can, so whether that is by providing possible techniques or just convincing them that a better existence might be possible, I will take whatever I can get. Incremental improvements are a good thing, even if tiny.

And indeed a big part of that is to explore what restrictions and burdens we place upon ourselves. If people in way worse conditions than us are happy, and people in way better positions than us are miserable, there must be some wiggle room where we can find a better outcome given our own unique inputs.

I found a lot of inspiration in the philosophy of the stoics and Buddhists, plus Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. That doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you to be stoic and control your emotions, because that would be some ignorant shit. But I think there’s a general idea there that’s worth encouraging others to consider, that you may be able to pilot your brain through the craziness of life in a way that suits you better.

And like I think I said before, the “decide to be happy” platitude is important but it is only the first baby step of a long journey. Genuinely changing your emotional state is not just a simple decision, but it may be possible over an extended period of time if you are consciously working towards it and making small beneficial decisions over and over.

If I may end with another platitude that is way easier said than done, we have to play the hand we’re dealt. Not because there’s anything good about that plan, and not because that is fair, but because that is reality. I found it difficult to find contentment with my life while also wishing my life was something else. And I know that probably sounds negative and discouraging as text on a screen, but think of it more like putting your effort towards practical improvements and not wasting your energy dwelling on things you cannot change or on the inherent unfairness of life. That includes acknowledging your privilege along with accepting your burdens.

I hope something in there made sense to somebody!

That’s one reason I threw in “to the extent that you can control it” because sometimes bad shit just happens.

But for what it’s worth, between 2019 and now I’ve had three financial disasters and my financial picture is way worse than it was. Debt free with emergency savings, used that up on a mess with the house, then lost my job twice over the Covid years after having been at the same place 15 years. But I’m also on the other side of it all where I have a job I like and I can start to rebuild.

But I also have a family and a ton of animals, so I’ve been holding all of that close. I wish you well!

Insert “that’s the neat part” meme.

I think of it like a positive nihilism. Nothing inherently matters, but existing and being self-aware is such a crazy thing that just being able to consider the question is an extremely lucky state to find yourself in. So to the extent that you can control it, why not actively choose to live a positive and fulfilling existence and be a source of positivity in the experiences of others?

After working through my personal shit for several years, the stereotypical circular platitudes you might expect to hear from a monk like “to be happy, choose to be happy” make sense in a whole new way. That kind of thing isn’t the single magic step to finding fulfillment like it might sound in the surface, but it is a critical first step that informs a million future small decisions.

It’s like that is the hippo’s Slayer form from Baldur’s Gate 2.

But they have a Bruce-Banner-esque secret… they are always the Slayer.

If you are the “computer person” in your family, you probably have experience screwing with, breaking, and fixing whatever OSes you have used over the years.

The refreshing difference with Linux is that the software and the people who created it are not trying to prevent you from doing what you want with your computer.

I use mint on two different machines with Nvidia GPUs. One is a several year old desktop with a 1080 and the other is a two year old Dell laptop with a discrete nvidia GPU in addition to the Intel one on the processor.

Now granted I don’t play a ton of games right now, and when I do they usually aren’t cutting edge, but I don’t recall many problems so far. I use NVENC for Jellyfin and editing videos more often, and that has been pretty smooth. The one issue I had was related to that though. Kdenlive (flatpak) updated and could no longer export videos because it was looking for a newer version of something my mint-supplied nvidia driver wasn’t yet updated to have.

Trying to install a newer driver manually was a whole damn thing though, so I rolled back the kdenlive flatpak to the one that worked.

I learned the command line on Sun Solaris Unix in the 90s, after messing with DOS first. At work I have a terminal open all the time, though I’ll use GUI versions of some things too.

I use mint btw.

Every developer I’ve met who uses Windows always had a tongue in cheek sort of “well it kind of sucks in some ways but it’s what I’m used to, one day maybe I’ll get off my ass and change OS”.

This used to be me, kind of. I’ve been an engineer for over 20 years, with the last couple being full time “developer.”

But I finally made that switch at work over a year ago (booting into Linux instead of using a VM) and at home a few months ago. This probably goes without saying, but I am never going back! It’s one thing to know there are options out there that people like you prefer, but it’s another entirely to get used to the better option then try the enshittified one again.

Plurday is when me and the boys go to the clurb.

I had a Celeron 300A running at 500mhz

Ah, Celerons and the heyday of overclocking. I think I had a 266@400, 300A@500, and a dual socket motherboard with two 350s@550 or something like that. Experimental multithreading in Quake 3! I was in college and constantly working on my computer.

For all you “kids these days,” imagine you got a new high end CPU that had a max boost clock of 6GHz. You go into the BIOS and say “How about we make that 9Ghz instead?” The CPU is just like “bet” and runs at that speed kicking ass for years without issue.

They are this clean cut folksy little musical group that had to start getting all political one day just to ruin Paul Ryan’s workout.

My company is your standard Dell + M365 outfit, but we on the dev team can install linux because our product is an embedded linux system. It is so damn nice.

It is so tempting to wipe my Windows partition and add that space to my home directory. It just feels like there must be SOME reason they wouldn’t want me to. I don’t ever actually use it. I will occasionally fire up a windows VM to check the windows version of one of our build artifacts.

“well ill switch when that extra 0.000001% works”.

I am well past the point in my personal life where if it doesn’t work on Linux, or in many cases isn’t FOSS itself, it just doesn’t exist to me. I can be motivated to learn new programs when it feels like there’s a good purpose behind it.

I’m in my 40s so maybe it’s combination of “I’m too old for Windows’ shit” and “I’m not too old to learn a few new tricks.”

The fact is when Windows users come to Linux they dont want Linux, they want Windows but not made by Microsoft and the fact is Linux is not that.

Linux Mint Cinnamon may not be that, but it is very close.

My parents mentioned the windows end of life message to me a few weeks ago, and I think I’m going to try mint for them. As far as I know they basically need a file explorer to copy photos from SD cards, and of course a web browser.

What I’m hearing between the lines here is the origin of a legal “argument.”

If a person’s mind is allowed to read copyrighted works, remember them, be inspired by them, and describe them to others, then surely a different type of “person’s” different type of “mind” must be allowed to do the same thing!

After all, corporations are people, right? Especially any worth trillions of dollars! They are more worthy as people than meatbags worth mere billions!

[Dillon!] You son of a bitch!

Now I kinda wish I slipped that in there. But I won’t edit and steal your thunder, lol.

Caring for others is good for you. Even if you look at it selfishly, it is still true.

Having “chores” associated with those people or things you care for is also good for you.

Think of the memes and the stories of tech workers turning into goose farmers. It’s not a beautiful-feeling idea because goose farms have better air conditioning and more expensive chairs, lol.

Coincidentally, I plan to head off to my engineering job like usual tomorrow morning, but I am also sitting here with frozen fingertips because I was outside cleaning the filters in my koi pond for the first time this spring. In general, it seems like the more animals we get (we have a lot, in small suburban home) the messier my physical surroundings are but the clearer my brain is.

Edit to add: an unsung benefit of such hobbies and obligations is the ability to go deep into learning about things that interest you, without having to worry about taking a test about it. It can be very satisfying and enriching for the ADHD brain. In my case, from high school science onwards I was way into physics & electricity and turned hard away from chemistry and biology. But now I could talk all day about everything behind that “cycled tank” line in the OP. Likewise, my high school chemistry teacher told us horror stories about organic chemistry, but now it genuinely interests me because I care about oxidation of organics in my water.

Iirc, what we normally call “sugar” is sucrose, made up of glucose and fructose. Glucose is used all over the place and too much is definitely bad (ask diabetics), while fructose is processed in your liver. Like a poison.

Just trying to remember that from stuff I’ve seen from Robert Lustig MD. There’s a very old “sugar: the bitter truth” lecture of his on YouTube, plus lots of media since then.

Only fanboys.

Oh I wish. It’s more like 2/3 of American society, and I’m sure plenty of others around the world. But if you wanted to cast a wide net and call them fanboys of the rich, I guess that’s fair.

If you are worth billions, and even moreso if you are a business leader and therefore “earned” those billions, then “worship” is the right word. They are not just good people, but the greatest among us who should be put in charge of everything. (Enter our new emperor)

Yeah, same with text here. I tried the option to sit on top of the window in focus too, which is nicer. But as much as I love my non-maximized windows, my setup at work is a bunch of 1080p monitors. So even with terminal windows it works nicely to just fill the left or right half of the screen.

Might just have to install this on the work computer today!