Gaia Online still exists??

I use SpiralLinux (basically Debian with some tweaks). I like it a lot! If you want to stay in the Debian/*buntu lineage, consider it.

It might be another food allergy as well. I have skin reactions to dairy, and it took me years to figure it out because a) it’s a slow reaction (6ish hours after I eat it), and b) I also assumed it was something my skin was coming into contact with

And in keeping with the OP, I also still eat dairy from time to time. Not a severe reaction, it won’t become a severe reaction, and there’s still no good replacement for actual cheese, dammit. (Daiya is close enough…sometimes…)

When Brood X happened, I think one of my cats thought I was responsible for the cicadas. They kept bonking against our windows and she’d look at them, then look at me and meow. I tried explaining but I don’t think she understood :(

The anoles are one of the few things I miss about living in Florida. There are lizards here in Kentucky, but they’re more elusive.

My devil’s advocate argument for the elves being there is that there were a bunch of battles in the north that didn’t make it into the movie and only get mentioned a little in the books, and one of the important themes of LOTR is that all these disparate groups had to band together to fight Sauron. So having elves be at Helm’s Deep is a way to show the different people fighting together in a movie series that was already pressed for time. Necessary? Maybe not. But it doesn’t bother me as much as some of the other changes, because I can at least see a rationale for it.

OK, here’s the thing. Overall, Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy is extremely good. I think it’s the best Tolkien adaptation we’re likely to ever get.

HOWEVER.

The random “Arwen is dying!” subplot was incredibly fucking stupid and while it didn’t ruin the movies for me, it did dampen my enjoyment of them. There had to be a better way to get more screentime for Liv Tyler, surely.

I love the Dark Tower series and hadn’t seen the movie yet. They dropped Susannah out ENTIRELY? Seriously???

Well, at least next year you’ll meet a dental hygenist with a spatula tattooed on her arm

Director’s cut of Goncharov

Being able to make notes about users like you can on Mastodon.

Check Caitlin Doughty’s “Ask A Mortician” videos, in addition to some of the other suggestions.

NVIDIA

Welp, there’s your problem. I have an NVIDIA card as well and it’s been the source of at least 95% of my Linux headaches.

I’ve tried a few distros and Linux Mint was definitely the most “just works” for me. Make sure you’re using the proprietary NVIDIA drivers, regardless of what option you choose. Currently I use SpiralLinux (Debian with a few tweaks) because I really like the BTRFS snapshots and fell in love with KDE during my distro-hopping, but Mint is what I would recommend to the vast majority of people.

Wow, the 200m freestyle, the 500m freestyle, and the 1650m freestyle, huh? Did she ever compete in anything else, or were those numbers perhaps cherry-picked to make the situation look more dramatic than it actually is? Because if you look at her results holistically, she’s a very good swimmer, but she’s clearly not dominating 100% of the time the way she’s been portrayed.

At the NCAA competition where Thomas won one (1) race that conservatives cried and shit their pants over, a cis woman named Kate Douglass set 18 new records. Lia Thomas set zero new records. And crunching the rest of the numbers bears this out: she was a good swimmer before and after transition, but she’s not some unbeatable powerhouse that cis women have no chance at winning against.

Eight, but this account is only a couple weeks old.

Game no one’s mentioned yet: Look Outside

I didn’t but I knew a guy who did.

I’ve used EyeBuyDirect before and they were alright. It’s been a couple years tho.

Seconding (or third-ing, or twelfth-ing) the recommendation for Linux Mint, but also gonna throw one in for MX Linux if the hardware is older.

Also: you might like Caitlin Doughty/Ask A Mortician’s videos and/or books. A lot of discussion about different cultures’ approaches to death and how people’s attitudes have evolved over time.