TimewornTraveler

Not sure a good discussion place to post this. I just want some brainstorming.

Looking for ideas on how to set up a faux-TV in the living room using a computer. I want to put an entertainment center across from the couch and have a place to watch media. But I have no interest in paying for cable/satellite/public broadcasts. (Why pay to be advertised to?)

I have a good collection of shows and movies on external hard drives. I figure I could buy a big monitor and plop it up there with a laptop attached. I could do a makeshift mouse using a game pad and Steam.

I just wanted to check if anyone had alternatives in mind. The mouse situation is suboptimal. Having to get another laptop is also suboptimal. The "TV" would also be about 200cm (6.5ish ft) away from the seating area, so I wonder how expensive an appropriately sized monitor would be. But I can't think of any other way! Any ideas or have I pretty much figured it out?

The more I think about it, the more I feel like people seem to have some level of desire to see "THE END". Call it morbid curiosity. Call it nihilism. Call it death anxiety. Whatever. It seems like with all the effort people give to thinking about "the downfall", there must be some fascination with it.

There's so many forms of it. Doomsday preppers. Prophetic apocalypses. Global warfare. Climate disasters. The rise of fascism. People see "THE END" in so many different ways. And with the world not becoming any less precarious any time soon, we can only expect these mass-anxities to continue. (And the rich guys certainly have a vested interest in the end of everything. They get to keep their High Score.)

Or maybe not. Maybe human civilization (in at least some form) will continue for millennia more. Maybe we're far off from the end. But one thing is certain: for each and every one of us walking this earth, the end is at most a century away, give or take a few decades.

"How grand would it be to witness the end of everything!" cries the mortal pretender. For it is not just his death, but the death of all that he knows -- and he gets to bear witness.

I'm losing my will to fight. You're losing your will to fight. In the last few weeks, you've been nothing but despair. I am trying to hold it together so I can keep up the fight. But it's been getting harder. All the levity has been lost. I guess I got more levity from you than I realized. I don't know how I became so dependent on you. Isolation has become the norm for us, I guess. But right now, all I know is that I can't do this without you. You've gotta stay strong, and stay light. So that I can stay strong, and stay light.

Yes, you. The faceless mass.

Listen. Y'all need to understand something. I know systemic issues are bad right now. But the constant posting of "I'm not supposed to be happy when society sucks!" needs to stop. This is supposed to be an affirming space with positive attitudes towards mental health and mental health treatment in general.

When you encourage others to STOP GETTING TREATMENT because society is bad?? You are posting anti-MH content.

When you say "It's not normal to be well-adjusted to a sick society", you are posting anti-MH content.

The point is not to be "happy". It's to find meaning, build a life worth living, make choices consistent with your values, and manage the stressors of a fucked up society more effectively so that you can actually do something about it.

But instead, I am seeing posters around here telling each other to drop out of therapy because what's the point with Trump in the white house. Are you freaking kidding me???

Please remember that the universe being harsh and society being awful has always been the default. It is our challenge to find a way to thrive in those conditions. If you still don't get it, I encourage you to look into the work of Viktor Frankl, a psychologist who drew from his experiences in Nazi concentration camps. The work of therapy begins with rising above the suffering. Not from turning away from it.

UPDATE: oh shit Verizon only has 5G but there's also apparently some companies called Brightspeed and GloFiber. anyone heard of them?

살 and 쌀 are the same word

Hear me out. There's nothing innate to an object that makes it "food". It's an attribute we give to certain things that meet certain qualities, i.e. being digestible, nutritious, perhaps tasty or satisfying in some way, etc. We could really ingest just about anything, but we call the stuff that's edible "food". Does that make it a social construct?

I accidentally added something to the filtered keyword list and i dont see a way to remove it.

(Please don't include the word "fat-taco" in your response...)

Help me understand Voice Recognition tech

I am interested in getting an app that would allow me to make notes via voice-to-text. I work in a field with HIPAA protections. I'm having trouble figuring out the nuances of privacy related to these apps.

First off, is this kind of software considered "AI"? How does it even recognize that a sound equals a word? Do they use LLM tech? Does the tech learn to recognize my voice better over time? Does it use my recordings to learn to understand other's voices? Is this all a black box? How can I take precautions such that no one except me hears the things I transcribe?

This is just such confusing tech! It seems like it's fairly old and common but the more I think about it in relation to current age AI, the more creeped out I get! And yet my doctor uses one regularly... I'll be asking her about it too, don't worry.

Thank you!