Ope, that was fun. Time to eat.

“One more thing, I almost forgot… My wife tells me my memory is so bad, she’s surprised I remember the route to work, I’ll tell you. But this one loose end just keeps bothering me–how exactly is the US defending democracy by interfering in free, open elections? Anyway I’ll leave you to it, have a lovely night.”

Parenti reminds me of a communist Columbo.

If you’re totally uninterested, independently of potential awkwardness, I’d basically explain as much. “I think you’re cool and we have a lot in common, but I’ve been thinking and realized I might not be comfortable with the age difference and potentially changing the group dynamic.”

If it’s purely the potential external consequences that have you ready to cut off the possibility, and you could actually see yourself in a relationship with them, I’d say you could mention that concern, but don’t let it make the decision for you. Sounds like this is someone likely to understand social anxiety and who also values the group dynamic, so I doubt they’d react super negatively to mentioning that you want to be careful about that and preserve it while seeing if there’s more there between the two of you.

I don’t want to kill my dad or fuck my mom…

!noncredibledefense?

Literally anytime CEOs, billionaires, or landlords come up. And not like euphemistic “eat the rich” type statements, tankie shit about literally murdering landowners (but also about how Tianemen Square was ok/just US propaganda, Russia has a right to Ukraine, and the CCP is truly progressive and respects human rights).

Lemme.ml: Where you can call for murder and warfare against meat eaters and landlords, but don’t even think about saying a no-no word, mister!

Edit: funny how all the negative comments flood in at once, almost like folks clocked in for work.

Pomegranate pips work well in most salty dishes, roasted apple is great with a strong, soft cheese.

Images stitched together in order capture the amount of time that passed, yeah. They’re just not from the right years for that.

Yes, trust AI, that’s what Ryan Gosling looked like 14 years ago.

Going to a legit optometrist that either cuts their own lenses or tells you where to get good ones rather than trying to find the cheapest option online is probably the biggest thing. They tend to recommend or automatically go for the other top tips, like avoiding any coating that will ripple/peel/fade over time, using high-index materials for high prescriptions (expensive, but drastically reduced the necessary thickness and curvature + distortion of the crystal), and spacing the lens centers to your personal measurements.

Shit in, shit out. But at least I know when to blame the producers this way!

Same exact situation here (incredibly luckily), so I guess I mean “support” not in the sense that my wife isn’t excited for me when I find something worth getting, but more that I wish her excitement came from a similar place as mine, a selfish excitement to use whatever is on the way herself, rather than a much sweeter excitement about me being excited lol. And excellent meme, wil certainlyl be sending it along.

I disagree personally. I don’t think they need to be side by side to appreciate the difference, so long as you’ve ever experienced both. I miss the things that I know I’d get with better speakers when I listen on a different setup, and I still enjoy the experience, but it doesn’t move me as deeply when I feel something missing. And I don’t think it’s (all/entirely) placebo. A subwoofer that reaches 10hz lower, moves more air, and fires faster gives you a lot more to hear/feel/appreciate, and to me really changes my physical and emotional reaction to music.

Yeah that’s my biggest bummer, too, both in wanting to share the experience and wanting support in dropping some cash on a pair of headphones or something lol.

Yeah this is pretty similar to my experience. My wife supports upgrades because she knows they make a difference to me and she can actually recognize it often, but it’s clear she’d be pretty indifferent if she was making audio decisions just for her.

That said, we’ve spent about 2 years with a nice Yamaha power amp, Elac floorstanders, and SVS sub, full setup around $5k, and she really appreciates it for our focused listening now. Passive listening might as well be out of phone speakers for her, but when we put a record on over Sunday coffee, she always remarks how grateful she is that we invested in the setup.

Agreed that audio improvements are higher priority than video ones imo, but real life visual improvements (e.g., better glasses/prescription, high quality binoculars if you have a use for them) seem at least as significant as audio quality differences.

Pretty much everything about Apple Music is worse than Spotify except for their catalog and their lossless audio, but it was still 100% worth the switch for me. Compression sucks.

This mirrors my experiences exactly. It’s just hard for me to understand sometimes that people aren’t experiencing a difference that is objectively present and significant. But I guess I may miss plenty of details in other things that are significant to others. My mind goes to frame rate for certain games, where resolution feels super noticeable to me, but the difference between 40 and 60fps just doesn’t seem as massive as I see other describing it.

It’s a good point about genres and production making a difference as far as whether or not it’s worth it, and that it’s the most popular genres for which fidelity is least important