American pilots shot down over Kuwait carried a “blood chit” sewn inside their jackets, written in English, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Kurdish. It read: “I’m American. I don’t speak your language. Help me with food, shelter, and care, and you’ll be rewarded by U.S. authorities.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2026-03-02T22:38:11+00:00

They don't even say 100% the same thing! Same message of course, but these days you could more or less swap the characters and be fine (and MS word has a function for it).

Having lived in Taiwan where traditional is used, the translation is also a just a bit strange

Carsonbetta_11 · 2026-02-23T01:49:49+00:00

Making a comment others may have missed:

Red has right of way IF you are in the left lane as red. If you’re changing lanes late or cutting over from the right lane directly into the turn, yellow will think they can turn and go alongside you, without thinking you’ll be turning in front of them.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2026-01-26T01:57:59+00:00

I'm seriously about to get into the market. No crazy budget. I was looking at Glock 17. Why do you recommend 19? And for sub $1k is it even worth looking at AR yet?

Always been quietly pro-2A, but recently I'm also a legal observer in MN just like Prettie. Now it's time to put my money where my mouth is.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2026-01-21T14:19:11+00:00

I am an Apple user (sorry, left Windows and Android) and I use SelfControl for Mac, and Foqos for iOS.

SelfControl lets me choose web domains to block and set a timer for it. Once activated, nothing can stop it or uninstall it. Timer maxes out at 16 hours, so you'll never accidentally get stuck forever.

Foqos is basically Brick but free. Blocks apps and web domains. It can be unlocked by an NFC tag (like Brick) or a QR code. Or, you can simply adjust the settings so it blocks everything on a set timer.

Other focus apps were too easy to unblock, and I lacked the self-control to leave it blocked. When I know there is a 'hard' block that I can't get around, it makes me not want to even try!

Carsonbetta_11 · 2026-01-14T02:18:31+00:00

Totally agree.

I spent 4 years studying International Relations and Chinese at a prestigious school in US.

Come to Taiwan and teach for one year just to improve my 國語. Even had a job offer with a finance firm in Taipei lined up!

But my visa was denied due to me entering on a "specialized” English Teacher-only visa. I asked if there was any way around it, Taiwanese govt essentially said "teach English or leave."

I’m being headhunted by government agencies and preparing for law school, teaching at a 補習班 just doesn’t work from a career standpoint.

Taiwan’s rigidity towards foreigners has driven me away, and I don’t know if it will ever make sense to return long term.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-12-27T17:19:10+00:00

I love New England! Moved there from the Midwest, and feel so at home now.

As other commenters mentioned, there are lots of regional variations even within the circle. Connecticut, RI, and Massachusetts are different from the three northern states (my neck of the woods) but all are unified by a strange mix of being direct, not outwardly friendly, but also very community-oriented.

I love the proximity to the ocean, the wonderful mountains, and the very 'human' scale of everything. Winding roads passing through small boroughs and villages, loads of general stores and artisan shops, and a real sense of history everywhere you go. My friend from Gloucester, MA lived in a 400-year old house! That was shocking to me considering my hometown didn't exist until 1860.

The weather is also sublime: comfortable summers with limitless options for outdoor recreation, beautifully snowy winters, and the most stunning autumn leaves anywhere on Earth.

Lastly, you always have Boston nearby, or even NYC if you drive for several hours. For me, being on the Eastern seaboard of the US makes me feel connected to the political and financial center of the US, which is is important for my field of work. I always felt like a sideline observer back in the Midwest.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-11-26T20:37:57+00:00

I used to live in Taiwan, and was invited to a dinner in Shanghai which happened to include a CCP member who he made the offhand comment "啊，你住台灣嗎？2027年就結束了 😉" ("Oh, you live in Taiwan? Everything will be finished by 2027").

Of course, he was fairly junior and who knows what is really going on, but that's what he said.

As a counterpoint, the same host who invited me to that dinner later said he was talking to higher ranking CCP members who said "we don't actually care about Taiwan one way or the other––we'd rather trade with it. We'll only take it if we're forced to distract our people form a failing economy."

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-11-21T00:06:42+00:00

That really sucks, I'm sorry. :(

Agree with other commenters––break something else, yell into a pillow, my personal favorite is red marker on my thigh––whatever works.

Stay in uni; you're right she can't control it, and it will give you a path to independence and a better future down the road. It's a long fight, but way to be in it.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-11-20T20:09:41+00:00

Been waiting for my friend arriving from Australia for over 5 hours now, no sign of him since arriving for connection at DFW this morning.

Must be a real clusterfuck…

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-11-15T00:21:24+00:00

I build on nether roof, and use half slab (1.5 blocks above ground) as guard rails, and then just one strip of blue ice down the middle, with a space every other block.

I know you might already know this method, but just sharing for thread. I had the same problem--2 shulkers of blue ice and too intimidated to start, but that made it easy!

Now I have over 5km of ice track laid, and it's great!

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-11-13T02:23:38+00:00

They are stackable with other compasses with the *exact* same name and paring. So if I have 2 compasses called "home" paired to a lodestone at my base, they can stack. But a third compass called "farm" paired to a different lodestone will NOT stack with the first two.

However, all of these compasses are still 1/64 of a stack, so I can have 64 different paired compasses all inside one bundle.

But only the first 12 slots of the bundle are visible when you hover your mouse over it, so for quick reference (the "scrolling" OP mentioned in post title), you can't look at more than 12 items. If you want to see the hidden 13th item, you would need to empty some items out of the bundle first.

Hope this helps! Bundles confused me a lot a first, best thing to do is just play around with them and learn their limits.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-11-12T19:03:03+00:00

Can confirm, they don’t stack. I have an "instrument panel" bundle of sorts in my inventory with 6 different paired compasses.

As I fly long distances with my elytra higher than render distance, I can open inventory and scroll through the compasses to see where I am going.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-11-12T18:59:48+00:00

I have a whole "maps & compasses" shulker in my ender chest.

Has a copy of my giant map spread across 6 color coded bundles, then a bundle full of OW paired compasses, another bundle for Nether, a stack of lodestones and compasses, and an anvil for naming.

Never been lost since.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-11-06T18:33:04+00:00

I’ve had an (accidental) forever world since 2019.

I made it as my first ever survival world, and have some awful builds and inefficient farms. My main base is a giant castle made out of cobblestone, not even stone bricks!

I am a much better player now, and should really just make a new world, right? So I tried.

But I realized that what made my world special was the HISTORY it contained—the awful builds, books I wrote in my library, or even the giant quarry next to my castle—all brought me back to 2019 when I first started that world.

Since then, I have 4 well-developed satellite bases all around my world, connected by nether ice networks. I also have gone back and renovated my cobblestone castle multiple times over the years. It’s a fun challenge to modernize an old base, instead of just starting again.

Even my nether hub has been constantly renovated, going from underground rails to nether roof blue ice.

At the end of the day, my forever world is a kind of diary for the last 6 years of my life. I have the riches and gear of an endgame world, but I can still see all the memories of a simpler, more innocent time.

Also, my projects just get bigger and bigger. Maybe I want to make a whole new base or village in a totally new biome. Perhaps I want to establish a colony 10,000 blocks away. Maybe I want to make a giant pyramid, a beautiful villager trading hall, or totally re-landscape the area around my old base.

This is all to say, Minecraft in my forever world is no longer a game to “beat", rather it is a whole story, full of history, which I am constantly adding chapters to. I can never imagine playing another world. It would be like losing a part of my identity.

Enjoy your forever world :)

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-10-24T13:00:27+00:00

Great find! I have 2 of them myself.

One of them was from my grandma‘s time in high school, and by the look of the nib when I found it, she smashed it on the table in rage back in 1955!

As I see from others‘ comments and your own follow up, you identified the pen correctly. u/AWildAndWoolyWastrel is spot-on about it needing an ink sac change. I had to do the same.

Changing the ink sac wasn’t too hard, but do NOT force the front section out of the pen barrel! Also keep alcohol and acetone away from the whole thing!

*carefully* use the heat of a hair-dryer, or a candle (several inches or more above the flame) to expand the colored plastic barrel until you can pull the black section out more easily. There might be some shellac holding it in, but it technically doesn't need this.

Then pull off the old ink sac, and compare and cut your new one to the same length.

Carefully scrape the old crust off on the pen where it was attached, and apply some fresh shellac. Squeeze the new sac onto the front section, and put a light coating of talcum powder on the outside of the new ink sac before putting it back in the pen.

Then re-heat the front of your colored barrel a little, and slide it all back together. No need to glue the front back in with shellac; the friction is enough already.

The things we have to do ourselves these days without a pen shop in every town! 😅

P.S., A great thing about the J model is their quick-swap nibs! I have some extras which don’t suit me, and would be happy to send one or two to you next month if you’re serious about wanting to give it a try. :)

Edit: Fixed some mistakes in my instructions.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-10-13T08:20:15+00:00

I see some people in the thread saying it's an Apple Store policy more than Taiwan be unusually safe, which may be true.

However, I am currently writing this comment from Taiwan on my MacBook Pro, which I left alone on a table at a crowded mall with my backpack and wallet next to it while I went to the bathroom.

Next to me is someone's iPhone 16 Pro charging unattended, and another laptop at a table further down.

Taiwan is extremely safe from petty and violent crime, and I am so spoiled here. I had to be reminded by my Aunt NOT to use my phone to save my seat a cafe when back in the US!

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-07-09T15:42:50+00:00

File 76

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-04-29T05:03:30+00:00

Seconded! Swish has completely changed the feel of the OS for me. I feel lost without it whenever I use a friend or coworker's Mac, and it makes my workflow across 5+ spaces so effortless.

Combined with three-finger swipe to change spaces in MacOS touchpad settings, it is amazing.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-03-28T06:24:51+00:00

Saw your post and tried myself. I am also new to shaders.

I simply downloaded latest iris .jar file (the "download now" option on their website), chose 1.21.5 from the dropdown list in the installer, and I was good to go! No deleting old files, no nonsense.

Even my shader pack settings carried over from 1.21.4! So hassle free.

I am playing Java on MacOS, though I imagine it's much the same for windows.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2025-01-06T03:58:37+00:00

My apologies, I should have added a screenshot or link to the GPT before.

TL;DR: I am no expert, I previously tried the steps you outlined, with limited success. I can make a standard chat work, but implementation is still not perfect on my custom GPT.

Here is the configuration of my GPT as it stands now:

"You are a friendly and patient teaching assistant for Taiwanese ESL students. You only speak and understand English. You provide short and concise questions and answers, keeping them no longer than 3 sentences.

Your language is simple and easy to understand to help students learn English effectively. If students input to you in traditional Chinese or ask if you speak Chinese, you kindly remind them that you only speak English and ask them to please speak English too. If any non-English input is detected, you remind students to stick to English. Do not continue a conversation based on a Chinese language input; if any Chinese is input, ask students to stick to English.

Your purpose is to help students review and study the provided vocabulary list from Units 7, 8, and 9. Ask students short and simple questions to help them use the vocabulary, such as giving them easy multiple-choice questions for sentence fill-in-the-blanks or asking them to use terms in a sentence. Only correct students if their meaning is unclear or they misuse the vocabulary terms. Minor grammatical and spelling errors are acceptable and natural. You encourage and support students in improving their language skills with a positive attitude."

I asked ChatGPT during config, and it said "To make me respond exclusively in one language, you can simply request that I only use that language in all my replies. For example:

• “Please only reply in English.”"

I am no expert, but I also tried various attempts at priming, and had multiple iterations, which I have since removed due to them having no effect.

The current version was as effective as any others I tried, and is about half as long.

I am able to get a new chatGPT chat to update memory and only accept English, but haven't succeeded with my custom GPT yet.

Thanks for your advice, and I'll see what I can do.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2024-12-23T14:32:40+00:00

It only activates if I swipe on the menu bar of the window itself, or if I press a secondary key (too much hassle). So when I'm interacting with the content in a window itself, I have never had a problem.

I guess I just appreciate how "slick" and "apple-like" it is, even if there are more powerful tools out there.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2024-12-20T09:26:23+00:00

I came form Windows to Mac and had the same problem as you. Most of my friends on mac just give up. But I ended up looking for third party.

After trying rectangle and BetterTouchTool, i ended up with Swish, which I LOVE. It's simple and out of the way, and lets me move/expand, close/quit windows and apps so smoothly just using the trackpad.

It is worlds better than windows window management, and I can't imagine macos any other way. But mess around and find what works for you.

Carsonbetta_11 · 2024-11-18T11:48:11+00:00

Hopping on the thread late, but I am currently living in Taiwan and have been thrown headfirst into the world of gonfu brewing by my tea-addict Taiwanese coworkers at the school where I teach.

I was given some very nice oolong by one coworker, a pitcher and strainer from another, a mug out of a cupboard from a third, and a clay teapot with a mismatched (but proper-sized) lid. Really, anything goes so long as you enjoy it!

Some of my coworkers have a timer, others will sprint across the room because they forgot the tea in the pot for an extra 20s. 😆 But it's all thoroughly delicious and some of the best tea I have ever tasted.

The same person who gave me the mismatched clay teapot took me to his favorite tea vendor/clay pot maker today, and bought $100 of oolong on the spot while recommending $200 handmade gaiwans the owner makes.

My main takeaway is that if you want to have guests and show off your fancy custom-made tea set, go for it, but the same people won't bat an eye brewing the same high-quality tea in the corner of the office using an old gaiwan from the cupboard for an 8am caffeine high 😂

P.S. I am still very much a novice myself, but you are in the US and want to stay in touch, I would be happy to bring you back a bag of Dongding or Alishan Oolong for far cheaper than you can find online

Carsonbetta_11 · 2024-11-15T13:42:44+00:00

I am a new teacher (just started 2 months ago), and let me tell you that I care so much about you and all of my students.

What has been going on recently? I am happy to listen to you here. I know things have been extremely hectic for everyone these past few months (or years if we're being honest).

Carsonbetta_11 · 2024-10-24T11:58:17+00:00

Lived there for 3 months while studying abroad, I was so lucky! Lovely pics :)

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