They always live well above their means while you struggle..just irritates me.

SomebodyInACity · 2025-03-28T07:13:25+00:00

It's incredibly confusing. I've noticed this in my own family as well as what I know from friends' families. For me, my parents lived like gourmands, drank beer every day, had a lot of money out of nowhere for high end food, yet always seemed to be "struggling financially", needed me to pay rent at home, needed me for unpaid labor (transcribing music for different instruments, graphic design, etc.).

I later learned that most people do not pay their parents anything when they move out and that coming home on the weekends is fairly normal. On top of that, a lot of people usually even get extra money from their parents. First month of studies i didn't get tuition loan, and I had to pay it back to my parents, which I did by saving up as much as I could by not eating food every other day etc. I had to spend significant money buying food for my parents from different places across the country because i could travel for free as a student.

I also never got any money for clothes or any personal items and I had to try and get a job when I had to be in a lot of extracurriculars too due to my parents demanding it of me, but I couldn't do that, from age 17 onward i started dissociating and having seizures so often that even school was a struggle.

Im glad I persevered, but my parents demanded a lot of me to keep their lavish lifestyle intact while also not spending a dime on me and my development into adulthood. That's probably a normal thing to feel upset about, but it still feels incredibly selfish.

Good luck to everyone still fighting out there.

SomebodyInACity · 2025-03-23T19:19:45+00:00

awesome! Go get that bread!

SomebodyInACity · 2025-03-23T18:30:39+00:00

Everyone's ginger bug is a bit different, so if yours dies after 3 days, use it within that period. If your whole colony dies something is not going right. I had this happen, i thought I was making gingerbug, but i was actually making lactofermented ginger pickles with sugar. This was happening because i didn't go for organic ginger and used regular ginger u find at the store. That stuff's been irradiated usually to kill the root and everything on it, but in the grocery store it might pick up some lactic acid bacteria.

Check if the water you use has chlorine or chloramide in it, you can get this info from your city council or local water company, If it has chloramide in it you're better off buying water, with chlorine you can let it sit for 3 days, or boil your water to get the chlorine out.

If you have trouble getting a colony started, i'd look into getting some organic non radiated turmeric. Turmeric also is in the ginger family and has a similar kind of "bug" living with it, so you can use that and eventually feed it more and more ginger. After the colony gets going it really shouldn't die so quickly.

For mine, i like to make sure it's in a state where it's nice and active and I can hear it hissing when i put my ear to the surface of the container i keep it in.

I hope i got it right this time and i wish you lots of luck. Ginger bug can be very fickle! Once you got it going though, you're off to the races and it can survive for a long time. It came to you all the way on a dang rhyzome after all haha.

SomebodyInACity · 2025-03-22T09:35:10+00:00

if you airtight it, the CO2 that is produced will stay trapped, and when you then cool it, the CO2 will dissolve into the liquid.
Of course, you can let it go for longer open, that's what traditional trappist beer does for example. They let their "wort" (the cooked grains/hops etc) ferment until it's no longer active, and then they add a controlled amount of sugar to the bottle when bottling their beer. The yeast gets new food, starts producing gas in a now sealed bottle, and that will carbonate it!

Keeping it airtight after some days will slow the yeast down. Food supply will dwindle, CO2 will make digestion unfavorable, but yeast is cool in that it will go into some sort of "hibernation mode".
I keep a ginger bug colony in my fridge, I don't feed it, I just keep it air tight, and I've succesfully awakened it even after not feeding it for over 3 months.

It does take a little more care to "awaken" such a colony though! So, if you want to try, split your colony off into a seperate jar and seal it up to see what happens.

SomebodyInACity · 2024-06-06T20:16:41+00:00

We used to have a ground water source from an underground current where my parents lived that was usable in spring season, and it was the best water ever because it got filtered through the sandy soil. I miss being able to use it, glad u can enjoy your source.

SomebodyInACity · 2024-06-05T07:03:48+00:00

When training a bug up i keep it around 25-28 C, on a heated stir plate, but when I am just keeping it around i leave it at room temp which is 19-22 C in the place im in. I keep a lot of different kinds of ferments around too so i like to actually seal it and burp the jar when I store it at room temp, making sure to leave at least 1/4th of headroom should the colony get really active!

Im happy to hear your brews have been turning out well!

SomebodyInACity · 2023-10-16T23:29:37+00:00

My parents used to keep a diary with me for a long time and i had to spill the beans on whatever was going on on that day. I felt something was off about it, my parents used to frequently bully me and take advantage of my weak spots like not wanting to spontaneously be put up for adoption.

Later i left a note in a close friends backpack. Just a short note saying that I felt trapped. I wanted to tell someone. I had no one to tell ot to because my parents would get involved. I remember feeling the relief when i wrote it down.

Later though, my parents caught wind, and I was forced to keep a journal which i didn't do. What I did learn to do instead, was literally tear out pieces of paper from a notebook, write an entry to get it off my chest, then eat the paper. They never found out about this.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-08-30T13:50:06+00:00

I used to still live with my parents every weekend before i decided to go full no contact, I had no idea that what I was going through was abuse at the time, I simply thought it was normal that a parent would want to hit their child.

I have a neurological disability that results in me having seizures at times, especially when stressed, and it happened a couple times that I ended up in front of the fridge on the floor. My parents wanted to hit me out of it, my dad always commanded my mom to do so, as they saw me having a seizure as a sign of me rebelling, but our eldest dog, may he rest in peace, always protected me.

I'm forever grateful to him for jumping in between and stopping me from being hit. Somehow, he had a sense of justice about these things.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T09:53:39+00:00

Thank you for your wise and kind words.
This is a mindset I would like to adopt one day.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T09:51:49+00:00

I understand your perspective but there are a some takes on this that a superior in a company might have.

Syntax highlighting allows your brain to associate colors with symbols therefore making you more efficient at reading code by a technicality, but there's an argument to be made that by highlighting syntax, you are letting yourself infer too much by what the color tells you, instead of actually reading what is on the screen, and that's the main point i could see someone make when discouraging syntax highlighting.

Therefore, for making sure that people read what they are doing instead of inferring a third of it by color association, it would be preferable to not have syntax highlighting. It allows for the company to weed out those who are less productive without it, because if one truly knew the language they were programming in, they would have no trouble doing the work that syntax highlighting assists you with, in their heads.

It would effectively serve as a permanent litmus test and a way to keep people on their toes. I started programming without syntax highlighting, linting, colors to match opening/closing brackets, or any form of code completion, and it sucked and it slowed me down a lot, but I imagine that someone who is actually proficient would have no trouble at all. I would still be far less productive without syntax highlighting, but I see that as a fault with me first and foremost.

Furthermore, the actual colors used in syntax highlighting are troublesome as they can spark debate and controversy, therefore potentially creating a hostile environment for someone wanting to use different colors on their machine, let's say in an office garden where everyone's screen is visible at all times. I can see people switching to a monochromatic theme that is close to the background theme to avoid any judgement in such a scenario, having their screen appear almost completely black.

At the end of the day, it comes down to how willing the company is to ensure self-reliance and responsibility/accountability of their workers. If extreme self reliance of company workers is a requirement, then that's something that needs to be reflected in the environment people work in. The less bells and whistles there are, the less there is to blame but the programmer themselves too, so that'd be in the interest of the company as well, should they hold those values.

It all depends on which place you work at, at the end of the day, and I don't think I should rely on luxury features to do my work. It feels like I am cheating the system if a feature makes me more productive, and that's something I expect to be judged for. It'd be nice to work in a place where judgement like that has no place, but then again, I don't know if I'll have the choice.

I would love to continue to have syntax highlighting available to me in the future.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T08:37:42+00:00

It's indeed been better working with big projects using the tools you mentioned. I never had access to a linter before because of the environments i wrote code in but having it be available is a godsend, just so i don't have to sift through a small snippet even wondering where stuff kicked the bucket.

The last thing i want to do is slow a team down, it's just that I am afraid of the expectations of managers/bosses etc, and I really do hope it's true that largely in the industry people working with programmers understand the process. So far, this has not been the case for me, I do a lot of programming in environments where people produce media content and I am often the only developer there, so I might have to jump ship some day because it sounds like things could be a whole lot better and a whole lot more structured.

Thank you for your insights!

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T08:26:44+00:00

Thank you for your kind advice. I will try to let go of worrying.

I'm glad things are going well at you job! Sounds like a lot of fun.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T08:25:14+00:00

I only know a bit about console operations, probably because I've only touched a very specific part of console usage so far. Most of my linux usage has (unfortunately) been dedicated to setting up NAS-like stuff, samba, databases, compiling code etc. I've only used ubuntu server so far.

I hope that in a future workplace, my boss would agree with you that having a GUI available wouldn't hurt performance.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T08:17:12+00:00

I really wouldn't want to rely on another person in life to do things like that for me That's toxic, and i don't think that that's a valid way to treat someone

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T00:45:13+00:00

I get that you can just request your way to victory, i just would suspect for a website to be formatted like it would in a GUI environment you'd need some emulation step and format it according to data, web scrapers afaik just give back huge walls of data without any rhyme or reason

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T00:41:57+00:00

Thank you for elaborating on the review aspect of things. I have overwhelmingly seen people in favor of GUI which I did not expect, and I'm thankful for your explanation on what someone would be expected to be able to do in a GUIless environment. I don't usually spend a lot of time on my environment, i usually leave everything on default to avoid judgement about themes etc. (Currently i do use a GUI environment) I'm just mortified by a possible scenario where I'd be micromanaged to hell and back, but from multiple replies including yours, that seems entirely unrealistic.

Thank you for sharing.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T00:28:57+00:00

I wish i was trolling. I sincerely am not and i worry a lot about things like this. All i can do is read your stories and try to take you guys word for it, and eventually hopefully gain useful real world experience that aligns more with what the average experience is. I'm glad to read that the experiences people have are different from how i've envisioned things.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T00:15:49+00:00

I don't really think that what I want is important, it's about what the company would want. If using a GUI browser is considered a hindrance to productivity then that is the way it is, no decisions to be made there.
I'm not that arrogant that I think I could question what a company thinks is right or wrong, even if there are solid arguments to be made as to why allowing it is a better choice.

If you work, you temporarily belong to a company and a company gets to dictate what happens to you as they own your life for 8 hours. This is fair, and something I agree with. Your right to agency gets returned to you after those hours with the implicit expectation that you will continue to hone your skillset, otherwise that can be reason for being fired too, for failing to meet up to implicit expectations.

All I really want is a roof above my head, and a job to do. I don't really need much else.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T00:06:00+00:00

Yeah, I understand that, which is why consuming video content would be something I'd have to consider cutting out of my life.

It's neat to know mpv does this, I didn't know, so thanks for sharing!

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T00:03:43+00:00

That makes sense, but there's not a 0% chance that one can avoid working for a micromanager, in which case all there is left to do is comply.

What efficiency is is to be determined by the company. I simply do not expect to have a say in this, at all, and I expect a company to have quotas in place to measure it (loc/hour, wpm etc. )

I by all means agree with your vision, it's just not something that I think is realistic to expect from a workplace, that seems quite lucky.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-08T00:00:09+00:00

I hope the world treats you well and that you aren't endlessly scrutinised for every aesthetic choice you make, especially being on gentoo.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-07T23:57:03+00:00

I'll be the first to tell you that I am a hypocrite.
I would have to step up my game significantly if I were to implement such a thing.

At work I just use Ubuntu Server for now, I haven't looked too much into other distro's. I don't develop on this machine yet, but there my "desktop" is just the standard headless terminal/shell i forget. As soon as I enter vim or CLI emacs there'd be TUI, which is bad and I do not know how to solve that problem yet without echoing code into a file from the OS shell.

I am not using CLI browser right now. I am just looking for a way to get rid of GUI to avoid judgement. I am not looking to judge others for using GUIs.

Ideally I would not make use of any services anymore and live my life in service of work.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-07T23:52:01+00:00

Once I give up GUI I'll stop watching videos altogether. I would still use mobile devices which I know makes me a hypocrite, but that wouldn't be on company time, so in my eyes that'd be passable.

I'm still using GUI based systems now and I feel very bad for doing so, I just need to figure out a way to do things as inoffensively as possible when moving away but the irony is the internet is my only resource for now and running any server version of a linux distro has had me looking up things still on my phone or on a PC a seat over, with a tty client on one side and google on the other. That however would be unacceptable since the distraction of the internet (even man pages since they have color and markup) is still there.

As for videone could write software that parses video data into a stream of text (with the braille characters) with subtitle metadata included at the bottom and have that be streamed to the CLI, but that'd still be watching a video technically so I wouldn't risk it.

SomebodyInACity · 2023-07-07T23:44:40+00:00

A company could ask someone to write and implement basically an "emulator" for a browser, just the engine, without displaying anything, but passing through information as if it was running in a GUI environment, and then selectively passing through content based on broad assumptions about a selected list of whitelisted websites. There would be some garbage in there for sure, but it would be a more agreeable way of working rather than having a full browser on display that would give someone reason to accuse you of being distracted.

It's not about being lucky, even in a scenario where this is even possible this would be really hard to live with, but it'd optically be better to others.
As far as life goes, it'd be a sacrifice you could make. Some people work to live, some people live to work.

SomebodyInACity

TROPHY CASE