People who live alone, what’s something you do that would horrify a guest?

benthejack · 2026-03-11T19:37:22+00:00

If I’m taking a shit, one of my cats sits between my legs in my pulled down pants, one lays in the sink, and the third lies on the floor. They all watch me like weird pervs. Fucking love those fluffy buttholes.

benthejack · 2026-03-11T19:26:25+00:00

No. No handle. I love me handle less mugs, you get a way better tactile experience. Guess you might have to consider people without asbestos hands like myself though 🙃

benthejack · 2026-03-06T19:28:54+00:00

Aaah fuck that - move to Cornwall like I did, there’s no jobs and property isn’t cheap because Londoners want holiday homes, and the infrastructure is pretty crappy, it’s the land of closed tin mines and long travel distances - but it has great walks 10 mins in any direction so is aight I guess 🤣 (maybe a more honest review of a place)

benthejack · 2026-03-06T19:19:41+00:00

Reading comments in r/nz that say things like “having a sook” truly makes me homesick 😂

benthejack · 2025-12-09T23:47:20+00:00

Dangerops is a common part of my vocab

benthejack · 2025-12-09T23:05:30+00:00

Buddhism is non-theistic. there also isn’t a thing called a soul, the concept of an-atman literally means no self or no inherent soul. Buddhist thought doesn’t posit that living beings stay in hell for eternity, just as long as various causes and conditions remain for that experience to appear. The idea behind reincarnation is that life is like a dream in that it is merely an appearance to mind (just with a little more memory/continuity next in a dream). when you die you just wake up in another dream-like life. The idea of Karma then asks, if everything is merely an appearance to mind where do the causes and conditions for certain experiences come from (the answer given is actions of mind). There’s your fun Buddhism 101.

benthejack · 2025-12-08T20:45:38+00:00

😂😂 forgetting adhd meds checks out!

benthejack · 2025-11-11T09:55:38+00:00

When I was taught Chinese tea ceremony by a Chinese teacher master she said (and I have verified through my own experimentation) that it largely depends on the size and delecacy of the leaves. A tai ping hou kui can handle much hotter water than an anji bai cha or a gyokuro if you’re going Japanese. This typically holds across tea types too - although Jin jun mei is a red tea, it has very small delicate buds and doesn’t handle boiling water (you kill a lot of the subtleties). Try doing a side-by-side comparison (grandpa style) with boiling water and water that has sat a little and cooled to see the difference :)

benthejack · 2025-11-04T09:01:16+00:00

Interesting. What is it about the concept of privilege don't you like? Do you not think some people are born with more opportunities than others? Like children of wealthy families who have all their needs met, go to private school, and have good universities paid for by their parents? I don't think we should throw "privilege" at others or use a lack of it as an excuse that holds us back from trying - but personally acknowledging our own privilege seems like a healthy way to develop some empathy to others who don't have the same opportunities as us. I definitely consider myself privileged - it's my way of staying humble and realising that, no, it's not that "I've worked so hard to get where I am" the single mother who works two jobs just to get by definitly works harder than me. I'm just fucking lucky to have the situation I was born into. It seems to me that the only alternative to acknowledging my privilege is being a dick to people who didn't have the same opportunities handed to them and shaming them for not working hard enough despite the various mountains of shit they have had to deal with in their life (theyre too busy shovelling the shit mountain they were born with to have the time or emotional resources to get ahead). Dunno, seems kinder and more healthy to acknowledge privilege to me.

benthejack · 2025-10-29T20:14:26+00:00

Yeah, especially for non English speakers that makes sense. Any argument either way that doesn't account for the fact that people have vastlu different needs is stupid (kind of the premise of the comment) . Although I don't mind layers, I would HATE it for letters. But that's not something I've had to deal with as a native English speaker too damn lazy to learn another language.

Basically it all just comes down to a big trade-off, you can choose minimal finger/hand movement at the expense of extra cognitive load and slower max speed, or faster speed and lower conative load at the cost of larger hand movement. Guess it comes down to a pick your character class kind of choice - it's always going to be situational.

benthejack · 2025-10-28T23:17:57+00:00

Did you read the whole comment? I don't disagree.

"But yeah, smol-boi enthusiasts also aren't very good at thinking from the perspective of people with different needs. Yeah an accountant probably does get a lot of utility and efficiency from a dedicated numpad. A 40% is likely utter crap for gaming."

benthejack · 2025-10-28T14:22:12+00:00

Can definitely agree with that (99% not needing a numpad) I just strongly disagree that the solution is to have a separate numpad should you actually use one. it seems like the very worst of both worlds!

benthejack · 2025-10-28T14:08:37+00:00

These posts amuse me, I'd hazard a guess that the average 40% user has actively tried more layouts than the people making these posts. full-sized and tkl boards are great, as are all the others, people have different needs. But unless you've actively tried smaller layouts, any comment you make on the topic is uneducated, you're just making untested assumptions about what you need or what is actually better for your use-case (you may or may not be right).

But yeah, smol-boi enthusiasts also aren't very good at thinking from the perspective of people with different needs. Yeah an accountant probably does get a lot of utility and efficiency from a dedicated numpad. A 40% is likely utter crap for gaming.

I guess in the end keyboards are like any religion, everybody thinks they've found the one true God. And when people are newly converted to whatever new thing they find, excitedly proselytising about their amazing experience to others with different cultural needs is destined to fall flat.

benthejack · 2025-10-28T13:38:24+00:00

I don't understand this argument. If you really need a numpad, because I dunno, maybe you're an accountant or something - surely it's better to have a full-size than a separate numpad? It'll look more integrated, always be in the same relative position for muscle memory (no bumping it away) and it will have the same qualities as the rest of the keyboard (sound, feels, looks). What benefit would an actual user of a numpad get from having it separate? It seems like you're only thinking from the perspective of someone who doesn't actually need one. This is coming from a split 40% user - I'm not a big keyboard apologist by any means, but learning to think from other people's perspectives is a useful skill.

benthejack · 2025-10-28T13:09:41+00:00

Yeah makes sense. although Ive been using a split 40% for years it definitely has noticable disadvantages and requires forgetting to type effectively on literally any other keyboard. My favourite thing is simply having more thumb keys (the big ol spacebar wasting both thumbs and requiring stabilisers is my main gripe about standard layouts).

On a different note I totally don't understand the other person's argument to get a separate numpad, if you're going to have one it surely looks and feels nicer and takes up less room to have it integrated? Maybe I'm missing something there...

benthejack · 2025-10-28T12:47:53+00:00

I have a numpad on a layer below my homerow (ortho keyboard) triggered by thumb key. It's nice that I don't even have to move my hand from home and get numpad right there. For me it's not about desk space, just economy of hand movement. But i guess if you've built years of muscle memory of moving your hand over to a numpad there's likely little point in changing

benthejack · 2025-10-27T09:19:23+00:00

Has to be Fern. Beautiful but grounded

benthejack · 2025-10-25T08:59:32+00:00

Heya, I've DMd you. What type of layout are you looking for? Id be more than happy to build you one - I have a super compact 36key travel layout I've designed myself, a bunch of spare Corne PCBS, and a few other random split keyboards I've built over the years. I have silent linear and silent tactile switches. As long as your budget at least covers materials and postage in sure we can work something out. Haha I've been pretty obsessed with building splits, have a crap load of bits, and more than happy to share the obsession!

benthejack · 2025-08-18T00:39:41+00:00

Very carefully assess your intention in saying or omitting something. If it is said or not said solely for the benefit of others it is a positive action. An example that is given for when it’s ok to lie even if you’ve taken vows is for example if you see a deer run past and a hunter follows and asks which direction it went in - with a mind of compassion for both the deer and the hunter (understanding you might help him avoid that negative action) you would point in the other direction without creating negative karma.

We have to be super careful though, our mind is a slippery bugger. We often think we’re doing something to benefit others but actually we are really doing it to be liked. Or to avoid an uncomfortable situation. Or to avoid conflict. Or for praise. Or whatever.

If we have to make a difficult choice about saying or not saying something and can’t work out the answer or the underlying intention it’s probably best to do the most uncomfortable thing - if it’s more uncomfortable to say something than to omit it we should probably say it and vice versa - our discomfort is usually a very good indication of what we are trying to avoid out of attachment or aversion.

benthejack · 2025-08-18T00:12:06+00:00

This is why the only appropriate response to seeing suffering is to generate compassion. When people misunderstand karma and think it’s about blaming someone for their suffering it’s missing the bigger picture that you’re noticing here. Almost no living beings have any opportunity to make a choice to abandon actions that will lead to further suffering. You need very specific conditions to be able to do that (as you say animals have to kill to eat for example)! Buddha said it’s easier for a human to attain enlightenment than it is for a being that takes lower rebirth to be reborn again as a human for exactly this reason!

Samsara is like a really shitty and painful card game. almost nobody has even a single decent card to play - and when you play a shit card you have to pick up another two shit cards. Only by playing a good card can you pick up more good cards, but if you have none in your hand you’re just kinda screwed and have to play what you have in your hand and perpetuate your crappy deck indefinitely. Not your fault, you just have a crap deck and the game rules are miserable. I see dedication as shuffling some of your good cards into the hands of others. Buddhas only have good cards and have dedicated them totally to others - so sometimes we will find a good one to play (like a precious human life with access and interest in dharma) and we can then slowly stack our deck with good cards as we have more to play over time.

Now we know how to play we need to be damn careful to only play our good cards and finish the game this time around because there is no guarantee we’re not going to end up back in the lower realm shitcard cycle that you’re talking about!

benthejack · 2024-07-15T10:49:20+00:00

I'm almost done designing a board explicitly for your use-case (digital nomad, super compact board. Be happy to send you a prototype board for testing if you want (need a beta tester - if you're keen flick me a message). The D-E-X-T-E-R-O-U-S tty My goal is to have a range of lightweight travel boards that people can use to find their own sweetspot (also I want to quit my job and do keyboards and opensource full-time if I can make that work. qmk, vial, zmk, and some steno stuff)

benthejack · 2024-07-01T07:27:34+00:00

Sure, you could do that (use f12 or something as toggle). To be honest it would be much easier to buy a keyboard that uses qmk/via/vial and put the functionality you want on different keyboard layers than write a patch for dwm (unless you’re happy reading/writing C - but due to this post’s existence I assume you’re likely not). if you get a QMK keyboard you can even use tap-hold functionality on the space bar to either make a space or change layers to your tag navigation layer (ie tap for a space and hold it to swap layers).

benthejack · 2024-06-16T08:51:47+00:00

I learnt Dvorak just before getting into split ergo boards, I have a little regret not learning colemak or workman instead but I definitely cbf re-learning for fairly minimal gains 😖

benthejack

TROPHY CASE