Barbershop quartet singer, weight-loser, philosophy student of life
Fighting with Windows 11 introduced me to Linux Mint, which works perfectly! I'm not an OS geek, so I really don't care about the OS -- it's just the thing I deal with on the way to Firefox.
My 76 y/o spouse loves Linux Mint. The 2017-bought desktop was deemed insufficient for Windows 11 and now runs Mint.
This appeared this week on our home Windows 10 machine as well for the one account that does not use a Microsoft account. It's a new behavior.
This is very upsetting to me–more as a point of principle than in fact–but I appreciate that it doesn’t bother younger generations at all.
I am in a support group with over 100 senior citizens in it. Getting a file with a *.rtf extension used to be a thing, but it hasn't been a thing in years. I do get *.doc and *.docx files so they're probably getting lured into Office like you said even before Wordpad is removed.
That’s why downvote buttons exist?
No (and not downvoted) ... it's about controlling visibility.
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/03-votes-and-ranking.html
My take: Upvote the stuff other people should see. Downvote the stuff that should have never been here at all. You don't have to agree or disagree, you can even have no opinion. But if you find it worthwhile to others, upvote it. Detrimental, downvote it.
ET-2800 does have a USB connection and linux drivers
I have the ET-2720 which I like but appears to have been discontinued.
I've had one for a year. I print a lot, in color, and I'm impressed.
All the Williams titles are pretty terrific. Pinball FX (Zen) has done a good job with these.
We (76 and 60) shop with our plastic (credit, never debit). Next cash if it is hand-to-hand, or we can get a receipt. Otherwise check, but we don't carry a checkbook. I may do PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle, but only if I know you personally -- if you're dealing with my spouse, you'd better take a check or plastic or wait for me.
to the detriment of literally everyone else.
How so? It's an option. The other option may be "no sale." We grew up on these and we understand them. All the high-tech ways are ever-changing, and we're never sure where we stand with them.
Suddenly? Nothing sudden about it been going around for years.
From the article:
[In 2022], banks issued about 680,000 reports of check fraud, nearly double what they reported in 2021. And one expert predicted total check fraud will hit $24 billion in losses this year, roughly twice what it was just five years ago.
This video has 7.6M views and was posted 2 years ago
This really has very little to do with consumers and everything to do with a tug of war between processors, banks and businesses.
Sounds right. It's not like there is some lobby of consumers out there writing legislation like this. And the last ones to ever write legislation are legislators.
A lot of the comments so far are trying to stay with the negative connotation to exploitation. You exploit your comfortable shoes to walk further each day. You exploit the microwave oven's ability to more quickly warm your coffee than the stove.
This is the same with discrimination. You choose the raspberry danish over the cheese danish. This is you practicing discrimination, and it's fine.
Any evil in it comes from abuse or impact to yourself with respect to others, that second definition of exploitation in the OP.
Retirement Calculator that uses Retirement Date Mutual Funds
Our (spouse and I) are in a few of these funds. Is there a retirement calculator that figures out projections of these always-adjusting funds?
The Fidelity "Monte Carlo" simulation seems to not adjust with them even though these funds do.
according to what Congress decides
That's the rub. We have checks-and-balance and -- from the 10,000 foot level -- the current president is the enforcer/executor and, as such, has discretion with how to prioritize his efforts among existing and new laws.
When Congress makes an agency and tucks it into the Executive Branch, the president is the top of that org chart. Project 2025, in a nutshell, says that assignment gives the president the right to decide how much to do that business -- including abstaining to prioritize it. This view is consistent with how other government administration works, who may decide that due to a recession we don't focus on enforcement on fishing boats this year -- for example.
It may even be the case that no reason has to be given to abstain from giving a duty attention or funding. "Because they elected me and I say so," for example.
This would provide a check-and-balance against Congress making disagreeable laws.
Now Congress should still make those laws if they're sure they're right, because doing so would say how a thing is to be done and limit a president's power to do it differently, but the president seems to me to have the power to say whether and if a thing shall be done when it is placed within the Executive Branch (therefore, within presidential purview).
We have a judiciary that has been pulled rightward, and we shouldn't be surprised if we see more decisions aligned with Project 2025 from here on out.
Even if Project 2025 is right on the law, we have not being doing business that way for decades -- especially with federal agencies we consider independent by tradition or expectation. If we want to keep doing business the way that we are, we need to make sure our laws and any new constitutional amendments that need to be written are made. Even if we get an upright and generally good person as president, the points made in Project 2025 should be addressed.
I don't know that I fit any of those label, neatly, but I've always been skeptical of the idea that the president is not in charge of everything under the Executive Branch.
Keep in mind I'm not in charge of anything and I'm not right about anything! I'm nobody here.
If Congress wants an independent agency, they need to create it and put it under themselves, not under the executive branch (so it seems to me). So even if Trump does not get into office (and let's make sure that he doesn't) Project 2025 is still going to be out there and it may be legally right in some important respects. Not paying attention to this reality is how we lost something like Roe v Wade ... What the Supreme Court can give, it can take away. There is no such thing as "never going to happen".
Please defeat Trump and Trumpism, but take this concept of Project 2025 seriously beyond Trump.
While that is an opinion piece, it had a lot of great information in it that I did not know about the special district.
A funny The Cage production story from MAJEL BARRETT
Susan Oliver was playing a green-skinned Orion slave girl, but I had to test her makeup because she was too expensive and I was under contract already; I was cheap, they had to pay me anyway. The makeup they put on me was green as green can be, but they kept on sending out the rushes and we would get it back for the next day, and there I was just as pink and rosy as could possibly be. This went on for three days until they finally called the lab and said, “What do we do? We’re trying to get it green.” And they said, “You want that? We’ve been color-correcting.”
Excerpt from: The Fifty-Year Mission: The First 25 Years
The Greatest Show from The Greatest Showman performed by 300+ People!
(Recorded before the pandemic lockdowns.) Peter Hollens in a Greatest Showman cover with a chorus of 300.
The joy in these faces! Great voices! Well done.
How to get Started Losing Weight (A guide)
My first post about this was here. I and others got together and created the Quick Start Guide currently on Reddit. We need a Lemmy version, so this is my attempt at this blending ideas from the two. Suggestions welcome.
NOTE: This guide is meant for adults who have completed puberty years ago. Teenagers should start with their doctors, as they have additional considerations not included in this guide.
Since our current habits led to being overweight, and our habits in the future will maintain our desired weight, this needs to be a gradual effort to change habits. It's not a quick "diet" or a complete shift to a new way of living. Instead, it's about fine-tuning and modifying what we currently eat. We can lose weight and maintain it by adjusting our favorite foods, flavors, and the way we usually do things. By personalizing the approach, we're mo
Infinity (1996)
I recommend this. I found this rather unknown flick looking for something to watch with my YouTube Premium subscription. Rotten Tomatoes had it on their list.
Infinity was directed and starred Matthew Broderick and was written by his mother, Patricia Broderick. With a $5 million budget, it earned less than $200,000 at the box office.
The younger years of Nobel Prize-winning genius Richard Feynman is the background to this underrated love story.
I don't know how these things work, but the ending credits make it look like a Broderick family indie project. Despite being formatted for a 4:3 TV, some of the New Mexico exteriors are lovely!
Free on YouTube Premium or with ads
Rotten Tomatoes 63%
IMDb 6.1/10
The psychological weight loss strategy | Laurie Coots
The number of steps you should walk every day to start seeing benefits to your health is lower than previously thought, according to the largest analysis to investigate this. The study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, found that walking at least 3967 steps a day started t...
World’s largest study shows the more you walk, the lower your risk of death, even if you walk fewer than 5,000 steps
Eating Your Way to Happiness | Ocean Robbins | TEDxAlexanderPark
This is a 13 to 14 minute TEDx Talk by Ocean Robbins, a grandson of the Baskin-Robbins family, arguably the biggest names in ice cream.
Quote: What if we ask, not "What do we want NOW?" but "What do we want MOST?" -- Ocean Robbins from Eating Your Way to Happiness | Ocean Robbins | TEDxAlexanderPark
Edit: TEDx
Eclipse 6 - What a Wonderful World (A Cappella Cover of Louis Armstrong tune)
This song is like a musical hug!
De-Lurk: what's your story?
Hello to my friends who are winning at losing!
So what's your story?
Are you just starting? Are you in the middle of your journey? Are you taking a pause? Are you in the final rounds? Have you been keeping it off for a while?
Is this strictly a fat loss effort or are you working on fitness too? Any other self-improvement things going on right now?
Are you doing this just with behavioral modification? Are you being assisted with some of the latest medications or surgeries available to us now?
Let's get to know each other!
Just for today
This was passed out at my TOPS meeting ...
Just for today - I will stay on my diet.
Just for today - I will write down everything I eat.
Just for today - I will count calories and measure my food.
Just for today - I will busy myself during my difficult times.
Just for today - I will take the time to think about what I do before I do it.
Just for today - I will be in control of the emotions that send me into the kitchen time and time again, searching for something that isn't there.
Just for today - I will act like the intelligent person that I am, realizing that I am not perfect and that I can fail without the world coming to an end.
AND IF I FAIL?. . . . .
Well, just for today I will pickup the pieces and try again.
TOPS NEWS, June 1981
Hope it helps someone... if even just for today.
How I stretched a Voila!-brand skillet meal and improved its nutrition at the same time.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/1422052
We enjoy the Voila! Three Cheese Chicken from Birds Eye $6.49 But we add our own additional frozen vegetables (plain, 1 pound, Italian blend) and cubed boneless skinless chicken (marinated for a day, then cooked and cubed) to make it come out to about $2.25 per serving (4) and about 300 Calories.
For $2.50 in the added ingredients, double the yield and improves the carbs, sodium, and protein. The calories are virtually identical.
The 21 ounce Birds-Eye package says that it serves three, but in practice we find that it serves two. Add your own generic frozen veggies and cubed cooked chicken and you serve four.
How I stretched a Voila!-brand skillet meal and improved its nutrition at the same time.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/1422052
We enjoy the Voila! Three Cheese Chicken from Birds Eye $6.49 But we add our own additional frozen vegetables (plain, 1 pound, Italian blend) and cubed boneless skinless chicken (marinated for a day, then cooked and cubed) to make it come out to about $2.25 per serving (4) and about 300 Calories.
For $2.50 in the added ingredients, double the yield and improves the carbs, sodium, and protein. The calories are virtually identical.
The 21 ounce Birds-Eye package says that it serves three, but in practice we find that it serves two. Add your own generic frozen veggies and cubed cooked chicken and you serve four.
How I stretched a Voila!-brand skillet meal and improved its nutrition at the same time.
We enjoy the Voila! Three Cheese Chicken from Birds Eye $6.49 But we add our own additional frozen vegetables (plain, 1 pound, Italian blend) and cubed boneless skinless chicken (marinated for a day, then cooked and cubed) to make it come out to about $2.25 per serving (4) and about 300 Calories.
For $2.50 in the added ingredients, double the yield and improves the carbs, sodium, and protein. The calories are virtually identical.
The 21 ounce Birds-Eye package says that it serves three, but in practice we find that it serves two. Add your own generic frozen veggies and cubed cooked chicken and you serve four.
Prompted by food shortages, author Ruth Reichl considers the changes in what we eat, where it comes from and how it gets to us over the last 50 years.
This article gives a history of how our food environment changed in recent decades, just as our waistlines started to increase.
Local Hero (1983)
This enchanting comedy takes place in Scotland and America, and is full of character quirks that are engaging and charming. The humor is infectious. It was nearly two hours well spent with people who were fascinating and made you smile and laugh, and appreciate a life different than your own.
Burt Lancaster has a supporting role in this in a character unlike any I've ever seen from him. To say that it is out there a bit is to foreshadow, and I won't spoil it (and the role didn't spoil it, either).
I subscribe to You-Tube Premium and this was one of the free movies that came with the deal. There have been two DVD releases of this title so your local library probably has it too. On Rotten Tomatoes, the Critics universally loved this movie and the Audience Score agreed 87%.
Free Sheet Music (from The Barbershop Harmony Society)
Get free sheet music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
The song Kentucky Babe on that page is an awesome song and easy to learn.
Exercise may or may not help you lose weight and keep it off – here's the evidence for both sides of the debate
Some researchers assert that the body responds to exercise by burning fewer calories when you’re not working out. Regardless of its effects on weight loss, exercise provides many health benefits.
This is an excellent article highlighting both sides of the divide...
Starting from 298 lb, about 135 kg, I walked for exercise and when MyFitnessPal awarded calories for that exercise, I ate them. Despite eating them, I lost weight at the predicted range and sometimes better than the predicted rate in MFP profile.
But after 9 months, it was apparent that all of that walking was paying off less and less. In part, it made sense, because I was walking around a much smaller body by then (having lost 105 lb or about 45 kg). But now, 9 years later, my exe
The Nice Guys (2016)
Currently on Netflix. The movie got nearly universal positive professional reviews and scored a 79% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
This movie stars Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe as investigators of the disappearance of somebody named Amelia (Margaret Qualley).
It is very hard to care about anybody in this film as they all pretty much are terrible people. It is practically a farce parade and I kept waiting for someone to care about and any reason to care. Finally after about 60 minutes, I asked my spouse if he was getting into this at all. After about five more minutes he also was in the same space: enough is enough, turn it off.
The Four Feathers (2002)
Last night, I watched The Four Feathers movie starring Heath Ledger, Wes Bentley, Djimon Hounsou and Kate Hudson. This is one of those movies that the critics were lukewarm about but the audience seemed to love better than that. Count me among those lovers.
It is an exquisitely done period piece based on a novel. Not only is the photography stunning, but the story is well told.
The feathers in the title are from an old tradition of shaming cowardice by handing the purported coward a white feather. To say anymore would be moving into spoiler territory.
The movie is a little more than two hours, well spent in my opinion.
In the USA, I found this on Paramount Plus.
