Hey, that makes total sense. And thanks for filling in what I missed! Really too bad about those changes, too. Google set out to create an open mobile ecosystem in opposition to Apple (and, at the time, and to a lesser extent, M$oft). It was such an incredible success at the start. Lately though, it seems they want to run in the opposite direction by tightening their grip - not the best thing for the community of Android users at all.

Of course, the minority group of nerdy, early adopting users who are a dedicated bunch will bear the brunt of it (as always). It’s no surprise they’ll be facing backlash from those groups, which in part explains the surges in demand for better (yet somewhat adjacent) alternatives. I was all in when Google said “don’t be evil”. Now they seem to have abandoned that ethos. I’m still stuck in their ecosystem, have started looking for the exits and I’m definitely not alone in feeling that way.

Wouldn’t that be more of an inside job?

For fun and profit

Then scaring it out

The nightcap is cheap and low effort. All you really need are two pieces of scrap fabric to sew together. A knit beanie has to be, well, knit. Now we have machine/robotic knitting, but hand knitting consumes a huge amount of time and energy. The nightcap clearly came about at a time when clothing was straight up made in the home, often from scrounged fabric. Nowadays the higher quality beanie is the obvious choice. It’s snug to your head, can be purchased at many different price points, is manufactured using cheap outsourced labor halfway around the world and can be at your door step 12 hours after a mouse click. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone unironically wear one of those floppy night caps in my life unless it was part of a cheap children’s novelty pajama set or costume.

Deep cut

You swipe right on hinge

While I swipe grease

We are not the same

What about lubricating wood drawers?

I’d puff a few hits of the oil vape out on the porch and stick a fat prilla of swedish snus under my lip. By my side a cup of herbal chai tea or seltzer, maybe a nice beer or just still water. Throw on a record - I’ve got The Beatles, Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, pink Floyd, Radiohead, spoon, dr dog, the shins and a lot more!

OR turn on my ham radio for some scan and chill on the uhf/vhf repeaters where the other weirdos of my flavor chat about nerd stuff and life, trade gossip and just generally hang out at night.

There’s a reason pixels are preferred, it’s not some kind of malicious conspiracy. The most common sense reason being that there’s a lot of overlap and cross-pollination of devs in the android world. between Google and graphene os in particular.

Pixels are also targeted because it’s a mass-produced flagship with decent specs that is the closest thing to being already rooted off the shelf. It’s the path of least resistance. Plus the used market is robust. A used carrier unlocked pixel 1 or 2 models behind the latest one can be obtained for several hundred dollars cheaper than it originally retailed for.

It takes effort to support additional brands/models.

Most brands lock their bootloaders and make “owning” the device difficult.

I can definitely get down with some earth tones, but not every single one next to each other

That’s good advice generally

I wonder if AI applications other than just “be a generalist chat bot” would run into the same thing. I’m thinking about pharma, weather prediction, etc. They would still have to “understand” their english-language prompts, but the LLMs can do that just fine today, and could feed systems designed to iteratively solve for problems in those areas. A model feeding into itself or other models doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Yeah it’s definitely derogatory in that way, though not a direct insult. I first encountered it while researching cockney rhyming slang. Not sure how common the term is nowadays, but let’s just say the older living gens of East Londoners had a certain way with words.

In all fairness, what I was looking for was in the first few results

Fair enough. But when the real stuff is $15 for a sliver that lasts the afternoon… we take what we can get I suppose

Have you tried sartori or belgioioso Parmesan? They aren’t parmegiano Reggianio, but they definitely scratch a similar itch. If you’re talking about “American cheese” itself then, yeah, you either know that that’s not cheese or are living in ignorant bliss not knowing what cheese actually is

Made me chuckle, but wasn’t Luigi just last October/November?

Perhaps someone with multiple instances of curiosity?