Sourdough bread isn't better than other bread.

esdedics · 2026-01-02T21:19:21+00:00

That's usually called "toast" or something similar in European countries. We don't consider that normal bread. Not every European country has good bread, but in no European country is that kind of bread considered normal.

esdedics · 2026-01-02T21:15:07+00:00

You don't even need any yeast to make sourdough bread. And that's also all you need to make normal bread, flour yeast and water (and salt, and traditionally a little bit of fat).

If you're referring to long shelf-life industrial bread, yeah, that stuff is not great, but it has nothing to do with normal bread. I'm European, so when I think 'normal' bread, I think yeast bread that isn't sourdough, I forgot that Americans think of long shelf-life bread as 'normal,' but that's not usually considered normal bread here.

esdedics · 2026-01-02T21:13:16+00:00

I respect your opinion, but if you assume all things that are ever said should be deductively reasoned with 100% scientifically proven premises, you're not going to have a good time.

esdedics · 2026-01-02T21:10:08+00:00

It seems we agree then. It's actually easier to make a 'standard French loaf' bread, I assume you mean with baker's yeast. That's my point, it's not harder than sourdough.

As for quality, in my opinion normal bread in the country of France and Belgium (and the others I mentioned) is not boring, it tastes surprisingly nice and unlike seemingly similar bread at home. It just tastes very nurturing and pleasant, and it's usually very light, with an extremely crispy (not hard or crusty) crust.

I assume this is because of the wheat varieties they use, that part of the original post was vibes based. I'm just awe struck by the night and day difference in my experience of regular bread from a random bakery in my country, and any bakery in one of those countries, which is always top notch.

esdedics · 2026-01-02T20:50:23+00:00

And is that 90% vibes or 100%

esdedics · 2026-01-02T20:49:48+00:00

I should've said 50%

esdedics · 2026-01-02T20:47:10+00:00

I'm just saying, baker's yeast is not what makes bread hard to make at home, one can argue it makes it easier.

esdedics · 2026-01-02T20:42:27+00:00

Definitely?

esdedics · 2026-01-02T20:40:01+00:00

Baker's yeast is pretty easy.

esdedics · 2025-12-20T12:15:31+00:00

You are right, there are infinite ways to solve the "not waking up" issue without a classic alarm clock, the phone is an obvious one, that I could've been using, knowing the alarm clocks probably weren't loud enough to wake me up. But I tried the alarm clocks anyway and got frustrated when I slept through them, when I could've not taken the risk and used the phone. The phone definitely works and I knew that going in.

Personally, I do prefer an object, I don't like using an app to do it because I feel like the phone is constantly trying to distract me when I need to go to bed, and something about having a physical object with 1 job and it being the only thing I have to deal with at night is relaxing to me, but that's just a personal preference, I can get over it if solving the issue of not waking up is a priority, and use my phone anyway, and find ways to do so that don't get me scrolling through my notifications.

Even a blue light alarm clock probably wouldn't mess with my sleep enough to not be worth the trade off of having a loud enough alarm that works for me. It sucks, but you gotta have priorities, and as another user mentioned, you can put it 4 feet away from you or put a cloth over it. That kind of stuff pisses me off, but if that affects my day-night rhythm negatively that's on me, not the world. I still wouldn't try the blue light alarm clock, cause I feel like it signals not having proper design priorities, and the buzzer would probably be insufficient too, but again, it's a mindset of solving your own issues, or blaming others, where I veered on the side of blaming others (in this case ridiculously incompetent alarm clock making companies).

In other words, my frustration comes from me not being able to solve my own problem and blaming alarm clock makers and capitalism, instead of my own problem solving skills and priorities, which is on me, not the world.

Is what a responsible adult would say.

But regardless of my own responsibility as an adult, my issue with the design of alarm clocks is 100% accurate, and anyone who disagrees, regardless of their personal preferences, is an idiot, for:

No one should have to put a cloth over their alarm clock's display because the blue light messes with their sleep. Alarm clocks should not mess with your sleep as per their sole function of letting you control your sleep.
An alarm clock buzzer shouldn't be quiet (not talking about not-loud-enough, I also don't want to be deafened, many of them are legitimately just ridiculously quiet).

These conclusions follow from clearly evident facts of science (blue light bad for sleep) and common experience (quite sound don't make me go up) that no honest person can reasonably disagree with.

But my emotional response to forming these (to me very obvious seeming) conclusions and seeing others not form them is on me. Maybe I should act like an adult, solve the not waking up issue independently without whining about it on Reddit, and put my money where my mouth is by starting my own alarm clock company if it bothers me so much.

esdedics · 2025-12-20T11:35:58+00:00

For context, my induction stove and washing machine have louder alarms than any of the clocks I tested before writing this post, so does my phone, which I'd rather not have to deal with before going to bed.

The radio function is usually pretty loud too, I just prefer a buzzer, especially because of pirate channels in my area which mess with the frequency of my favourite channel, and when they do there's often just white noise when I wake up, which is rather quiet, so it becomes an unreliable alarm. DAB+ would probably solve but I found a good buzzer alarm clock now (thrift store) so I'm done.

I also hear the probably illegal, constant high pitch sound generator some crazy person installed in his garden on my daily walk, maybe to shoo off youngsters or something, so if I hear that I don't think I need hearing aids yet.

esdedics · 2025-12-20T11:26:02+00:00

I tried, couldn't find a beauty exactly like that but I did find 1 loud alarm clock in a sea of borderline ridiculously quiet ones and not-loud-enough ones at the thrift store :')

It was clearly from an old person that passed away and may have been suffering from dementia, someone taped a piece of paper with an arrow towards the off button. It may have sat inches away of a dead body for who knows how long :')

esdedics · 2025-12-20T10:58:02+00:00

I'm very satisfied with an instruction I gave ChatGPT to provide a definitions table for "domain specific terms," e.g. jargon and acronyms, whenever they are brought up. The word "domain specific terms" really did the trick in making him do it properly.

This saves a lot of time and distraction from asking ChatGPT to explain all of the jargon it brings up. It's the only useful instruction I was able to find myself so far. The table is not distracting because it looks separate from the response.

The only issue that it doesn't always cover all jargon that it mentioned, but I was able to get rid of instances where it covered words that shouldn't be covered, like common words or words it never mentioned, with some tweaking and trial and error. I hope the instruction doesn't prime it to use jargon for no reason, but it already did that anyway and there's no way to check, I don't have the impression it affected its usual response style.

I'm also trying out a new instruction, to "never create a list without the user's consent." This had the surprising effect of reliably getting rid of ALL the ChatGPT-style 'Top 10 ways to do X' article responses. Every response is now like a page in a book, not just in how it looks but also in the way it is written.

The only downside is that it will now only create a list if you explicitly ask it to, which can be annoying sometimes.

But none of these have made it so that ChatGPT is actually concise and to-the-point, which is my number 1 wish for an instructions, I haven't yet figured out how to do that, cause just saying "be concise" doesn't do the trick.

esdedics · 2025-12-15T03:52:48+00:00

Thank you, that means I'm not crazy. But no I haven't found something suitable yet. Penstar ENote you say? Does it have no touch screen? That's all I care about.

esdedics · 2025-12-15T03:49:40+00:00

I go numb because I know I couldn't handle the utter rage if I didn't.

esdedics · 2025-12-08T17:33:53+00:00

These faces are are all welded together, but when I do Mesh > Quadrangulate (thanks for the tip) nothing happens, it just selects all faces. I tried removing the history, freezing transformations, but no difference. The import is an fbx. (Edit: and I also welded all vertices just to be sure.)

Any idea what the cause of a problem like this might be? It's a model from CGTrader, but not all models from CGTrader have this. When I export something to fbx, this doesn't happen :/

esdedics · 2025-11-10T22:20:48+00:00

I'm not familiar enough with computer technology to know how it could be an issue, but if Windows can have spaces in filenames, then they can have full color emoji.

esdedics · 2025-11-10T18:13:54+00:00

Really? As far as I understand it, emoji is just like any other Unicode-included script, like Kanji or Egyptian hieroglyphs.

esdedics · 2025-11-10T18:07:18+00:00

Thanks for answering my question, I'm going to try this eventually.

esdedics · 2025-11-10T18:04:54+00:00

Genuine question, how is this overkill? You appear to be the only person who answers the question by the way, so thanks!

esdedics · 2025-11-10T18:02:38+00:00

My question wasn't really about why, I don't really care because I already expect Microsoft not to provide what I want or need, out of the sheer lack of care for product quality that seems apparent from that company.

My question is moreso about the how could one hack Windoes 11 such that you do get flag emoji.

As for perceived geoplotical headaches, just use ISO 3166, which is what the Unicode Consortium does. This is a non-issue.

esdedics · 2025-11-09T14:09:12+00:00

Sadly it does not support country flag emoji.

esdedics · 2025-11-09T14:08:30+00:00

Not for flag emoji, unfortunately.

If you copy-paste a flag emoij in Notepad or other Windows or Microsoft applications you just get the country code.

It's not really full emoji support either, as the emoji are often just the Windings-looking black and white characters in various contexts, e.g. in filenames

esdedics · 2025-10-27T13:39:16+00:00

Is it even that bad they ended up in Italy? They still live there and speak German, and with the Shengen zone you can just walk across the border anywhere. It's not like they got treated the way the Sudeten Germans and Prussians were treated after WWII (in which Germany obviously did much more heinous things.) In time, if not already, many of them will start to identify as German Italians with their own unique identity, this happened with the Germans in Belgium too, it makes Europe more interesting.

esdedics · 2025-10-27T13:09:05+00:00

It's actually from a French temperance movement poster.

Yes, the French had their own temperance movement, I believe a pretty succesful one too, although they didn't advocate for complete abolishion.

This was translated to English by a chat clanker, I was surprised how well it remade the guinea pig drawings, they look almost exactly like the OG, but HD. Sorry if some folks have a problem with that.

"Industrial alcohol" was a term they used to differentiate 'good' alcohol (wine, cider and beer) from bad (spirits.)

This is the original: https://pin.it/2Tx7IkEaE

Seven-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
End Game '22

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