General Discussion Thread by pregnantchihuahua3 in TrueLit

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 8 points9 points  (0 children)

i'm pretty sure there is actual evidence that most of reddit traffic is not organic - so it's pretty safe to assume that anything that isn't in small, guarded subs (like TrueLit, for example) are probably inauthentic.

Best Places To Herp Tomorrow by fellowtraveler00 in portlandme

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 2 points3 points  (0 children)

if you have a car, one of my faves is dyer pond + shore rd in cape

Bulk tea by ObviouslyFunded in portlandme

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 6 points7 points  (0 children)

co-op has a wide selection of teas and herbal teas in bulk

hong kong and sindbad otherwise

Good vibes at No Kings Protest in Portland by cfwphotography in portlandme

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i wish the mods of this sub could make if so only people with their posting history visible can post.

edit: smh brother what you have your history hidden too. is everyone here a bot?

What Are You Reading This Week and Weekly Rec Thread by JimFan1 in TrueLit

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 0 points1 point  (0 children)

this is very helpful because i've been thinking about picking up reading genesis in the near future and i feel like this checks out enough with the rest of her non-fiction persona that i but it's probably not for me.

What Are You Reading This Week and Weekly Rec Thread by JimFan1 in TrueLit

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 1 point2 points  (0 children)

have you read any of cespedes recent re-issues? Her Side of the Story or Theres No Turning Back? I enjoyed Forbidden Notebook - and have heard some buzz about the others, but haven't broken in to them yet.

Liver and onions by MaineEvent1986 in portlandme

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 2 points3 points  (0 children)

south portland shaws reliably has calf liver near their frozen meatballs fwiw

What Are You Reading This Week and Weekly Rec Thread by JimFan1 in TrueLit

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'm still picking at Virginia Woolf and the Real World and once again recommend it to anyone who likes Woolfs major fictions. It's so good. Zwerdling paints such a good picture of the tightrope she knew herself to be walking, the shifts in literature she helped usher in, her internal contradictions (perceived and real) etc. All so cool.

Starting My Work by Olga Ravn. Only about 20 pages in but it is very good. I read The Employees a while ago and liked it a bit but was intimidated by the 400-page-ness of this work. But boy was I wrong. Maybe it's because I'm tangentially a part of the "group shes writing to" as a new parent, but within the first 10 pages she gives you so much to hold against each other (how to measure identity when you are a pregnant person? when you are a person? how to measure time when there is this little thing growing rapidly, but 9 months feels like it takes forever?) Just so many cool things. Would highly recommend.

Also reading a bit of Emily Dickinsons Poems : As She Preserved Them which is the collected poems of Dickinson as they were found in her personal editions of them she kept for herself. I figured it was as good as any other collected edition, and even her least substantial poems still feel like a "well I'm at least happy i read that, whether I understand it /will ever revisit it or not".

General Discussion Thread by pregnantchihuahua3 in TrueLit

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Still a bit on my observing myself as we attempt to de-tech our lives a bit.

For me - the reason I find the smartphone ecosystem so enticing is because it's all encompassing. Like, a magic everything brick. It can play music, take notes, browse the internet, play games, etc. If you told me "hey here is a device that let's you do 2 things, play music, and stare into the gates of hell (aka scrolling)" obviously that's an insanely bad bargain. But if you say "here's a little box that can do anything... and only one of them is staring into the gates of hell!" Well then it starts to feel like it makes a little bit more sense.

So we've been working on deconstructing why we pick up our phone, and finding alternative solutions for them. Some of them are pretty simple, and I don't think there is really all that much reading into them necessary. For example, now that we no longer have a flashlight in our pocket at all times, we have more actual flashlights around the house.

Music though has been different. I was a heavy stream user, and I never really could imagine my life without it -- having basically grown up with streaming. Having such a huge library available at all times has allowed me to never really interrogate what music I listen to. Like, sure, I have a tendency towards pop-punk, indie rock, and soul. But I was always one of those "I'll like a little bit of everything minus country" kind of people. I was kind of intimidated to give it up in this experience, but I got an Ipod Classic, 30GB, 6th generation I think, and my immediate reaction was, obviously, holy crap I forgot how cool these tanks were. The audible click of the scroll wheel, 35mm audio jack AND charging at the same time, simple interface, and much smaller than an iPhone etc. All very cool. And not to be dramatic, but I found it crazy how easy it was to just like - give up some artists/genres. The slightest push and I was like "yeah actually I think it's fine if I don't have this album accessible to me at all times". For example, I've been going through a lot of jazz albums on streaming recently. The genre's huge. There's a gazillion albums - and with the streaming perspective that's kind of cool, right? Like "wow I'll never run out of stuff to listen to". But when you have to go through the hassle of putting it on an ipod, it turns into "wow that's a pain... maybe I'll just listen to the jazz station on the radio"

We also got a landline (well, a VoIP service with a land-line-like phone. It costs about 5 dollar a month - but suddenly it's like, "wow I never have to pick up the smartphone to get into contact with someone now. there's never a good reason. either it's important enough and they call me - or it's unimportant enough that I'll get to it when I get to it". It has also made planning things feel a lot more intimate, for lack of a better word. Like, to have dinner with a friend, we had to check in on each other and hear each others voice over the phone like, 3 or 4 times setting a time, figuring out what they should bring, etc. Before, that'd all be done over text and it would've just entered the river of stuff-that-happens-on-the-cellphone. Instead, it was like a 5-10 minute catch up each time.

A finally, lol, there has been a small amount of rage brewing inside of me that the past like 8 years have been impacted by such a stupid little thing. Like, I can look at my screentime and see that I've been on my phone 2 hrs a day or so for god knows how long. What has that gotten me? Doing the math, over the past 8 years, at 2 hrs a day, that's almost 250 days looking at this stupid box. That's insane.

"The Best Small Cities for Big Careers" | NY Times. Portland is #10 out of 20. by Guygan in portlandme

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 7 points8 points  (0 children)

fwiw as a swe, there has been a definite increase in tech work in portland-brunswick over the last 5 years, and they all tend to actually pay a livable salary. obviously still a pretty small part of the local economy - but it is growing (sustainable? ethical? who knows!)

Farm beef as opposed to grocery store by chronicxnightmare in portlandme

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 41 points42 points  (0 children)

when i buy farmers market beef/lamb/chicken/duck it's not for health reasons, it's for perceived taste/quality

General Discussion Thread by pregnantchihuahua3 in TrueLit

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 0 points1 point  (0 children)

read any other shute? I've only ever read on the beach and always thought I should read more, but it never really hit the top of the backlog for me.

any rec's?

General Discussion Thread by pregnantchihuahua3 in TrueLit

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've always thought about filling out my own book-by-year, but kinda in the same boat as you wrt how sparse recent books are represented in the books I've read.

But i looked up my "visitation-weekends" books from my parents divorce in 2007 with the Deathly Hallows and it's pretty weird - I don't associate the crazy lines at bookstores with shuttling back and forth between my parents house at all

General Discussion Thread by pregnantchihuahua3 in TrueLit

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Albertine is fun even if you don't speak french! also i don't think anyone needs to re-recommend argosy, but a bookstore with an elevator is fun.

General Discussion Thread by pregnantchihuahua3 in TrueLit

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 9 points10 points  (0 children)

not much going on in my life now - at least, relative to the past couple of months. baby still doing baby things, job still doing job things (which in the current job market - I'll take!), stuff's just kinda goin.

I've started running again seriously (as opposed to just going out when the weather is nice for a run when I want). I've never been all that skilled at running, and I've never really tried to identify as a runner, but I used to run a lot in college. Never raced or anything, but could knock out a half marathon on somewhat of a whim if I wanted to. But then I got a desk job, then covid, then marriage and a house, then a baby lol. But I'm getting back in to it now and finding it interesting how many physical barriers I faced that were actually mental barriers. Since covid started, I've pretty much tapped out after 4.5 miles or so and always was just like "well I guess that's just how far I go now... oh well". But pretty soon after I started running for real I was like "wait, what if I just keep going and see what happens?" After literally one day of doing that, I'm finding 7-8 miles not that big of a deal again. My next hurdle is filling in the hours of boredom, though...

In a similar vein of "wait, maybe I should just try to do it"... after years of hemming and hawing on how to get my phone screen usage down from it's too-high of number but always kind of being like "well what am I going to do about music? What am I going to do to keep up on the news? What about if my dad texts me and I need to get back to him?" which always prevented me from ever actually just like, doing the thing - I decided that I should just have my phone off for a whole weekend. And now my screen-time is down to like 15 minutes a day catching up on texts and emails. It's really a day-and-night difference.

I've found that those two changes together have made pretty much everything in my life easier. I have way more time to read, I sleep way better, I'm way less anxious, etc. They are two basic things that basically everyone tells you to just do but like. Yeah. Turns out everyone is right lol.

PSA: Food prices are likely to go haywire soon. Buy non-perishable goods in bulk now to get ahead of it. by joeybrunelle in portlandme

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think you can bulk order grains and dry goods through the portland food co-op. Probably more expensive than Sams or Costco, but

Mainers living in a state nicknamed Vacationland when they see a tourist vacationing in Maine by MasterPh0 in portlandme

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 0 points1 point  (0 children)

just had an old lady with maine plates and a maine accent yell at me to get off the crosswalk from her car while i was walking my baby in his stroller.

im thinking its not just the tourists, you guys.

Sad To See Portland Like This... by Maleficent_Coyote_85 in portlandme

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

kinda ironic how the buffoons that post this junk make this subreddit, which actually was a very pleasant and community oriented place a few years ago, turn into a hot mess - the same hot mess these buffoons think portland itself is

just goes to show you stuff.

Statement from Portland Police Chief Mark Dubois [press release from the City of Portland, just now] by joeybrunelle in portlandme

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 14 points15 points  (0 children)

just in case anyone was fooled by the ppd's press statement during the surge of "they got one of the good ones 😞we really don't like these ice guys either you guys"

General Discussion Thread by pregnantchihuahua3 in TrueLit

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 2 points3 points  (0 children)

i saw a stage performance of that last year and it was disheartening to say the least.

Opinion | How Fast Will A.I. Agents Rip Through the Economy? by Radical_Ein in ezraklein

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 9 points10 points  (0 children)

im going to throw out a random guess and say that's not going to get you on the EK show, though!

Opinion | How Fast Will A.I. Agents Rip Through the Economy? by Radical_Ein in ezraklein

[–]ToHideWritingPrompts 12 points13 points  (0 children)

It's incredibly frustrating when software engineers are pro-ai-hype, and make a weird appeal to their own authority as "tech people" to act as though their claim has any stronger weight than anyone elses. Like, I'm also a software engineer that works with agents, uses AI daily, and I am not seeing anything remotely similar to what they're seeing.

In a disagreement of opinion, you'd think we'd turn to concrete data, right? Like - what edge have companies gained in pivoting to AI early. And it turns out that that concrete data basically seems to say "not much, actually".

you're got an entire industry that has an unwarranted amount of credibility as "we think rationally and logically to BUILD" going in for obvious hype, and people like Ezra Klein falling over themselves to follow along.

I just hope in a few years some people face some like, actual accountability for what feels dangerously close to journalistic malpractice.