Badabinski

I just kinda vaguely name them after what they do and how big they are:

smol: my tiny little 2 bay Synology NAS that I’m no longer using
medium: my R620 with 4x 18TB drives that is my current NAS (medium, because it’s larger than my previous NAS). Is also a k3s worker and provides NFS PVCs.
big: my old full-tower gaming rig that’s a k3s worker and runs my Home Assistant VM
molecule: my current mini-ITX gaming rig and primary computer, also serves as the k3s master node and runs a lot of my home automation stuff. I think I picked molecule because it’s REALLY tiny (it’s in a Dan Cases A4v2, I think?) and it has a bunch of small stuff running on it (containers and pods)
monolith: my old T440p laptop. It’s a large, black, featureless slab that doesn’t do much
slab: my new Framework 13 laptop. I just kinda looked at it and said, “that’s a nice slab of metal”

All of the above running Linux. I tinkered with Ubuntu for the NAS (because I heard Ubuntu was good at ZFS), but I still absolutely hate Ubuntu, so it’s all Arch Linux.

For Linux applications that respect XDG? Sure. There are plenty that don’t because they either predate that specification, or they just don’t care. Linux filesystems are generally much faster at executing reads on many small files, meaning fast search tools like ripgrep and fd make it so I don’t really have to care. They’ll run through my whole $HOME in 5 seconds flat. There’s also stuff like locate, although I don’t like maintaining an index. SSDs are so damn fast that I can just rg --hidden --glob '*.toml' 'the_setting_i_want_to_change' ~/ whenever I want.

Eating this stuff would be about as bad as eating any regular cat litter that uses Fuller’s earth as the primary absorbent. The extra special ingredient (powdered quartz) is effectively nontoxic when ingested. The real issue is the chronic exposure to very fine silica dust.

Edit: to clarify, I do not believe that it would be safe for humans or animals to use this as cat litter. Just realized that this comment might have been taken as a “well akshually it’s fine.” It is not fine, silicosis is a dreadful condition.

So I’d like to chime in. It looks the the two primary ingredients for ZEP-o-zorb are Fuller’s earth and powdered quartz.

First, Fuller’s earth. This is good stuff! It’s actually often used as an industrial absorbent for chemical spills (the purpose of ZEP-o-zorb), as well as in some types of cat litter. It totally makes sense why this stuff would work well for you, and I understand why you’ve been using it for a year. It’s perfect for the task and has basically no downsides.

Now, about the powdered quartz… Chemically known as silicon dioxide. It’s often refered to as silica. Silica is also good stuff! It’s in concrete, it’s the main component of glass, and of particular interest for your application, it’s very good at absorbing volatile organic smelly stuff. Seems perfect, right?

Unfortunately, powdered quartz has a downside. When it’s in a very fine powder, it produces a lot of dust. This silicon dioxide dust is incredibly harmful to your lungs. Long-term exposure to silicon dioxide dust results in silicosis, which is a really serious illness that kills tens of thousands of people every year. Inhaling that dust can also give you lung cancer, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, or other autoimmune disorders.

I totally understand why you felt that this product was a great option! I don’t doubt that it serves as an absolutely excellent cat litter. I had two kitties that took the smelliest shits, and I was always searching for ways to fix that (either through diet, litter, stress reduction, or other things). I also understand how upsetting it can be to share something with people and be met with disbelief, denial, and accusations. However, I really want to urge you to look past all of that and reconsider your use of this product. The silica dust is practically invisible and tasteless, and it had the chance to cause you many years of problems. You and your cat deserve to be healthy.

I’m sorry you had such a poor experience with men and relationships. It’s not my place to speculate, but it sounds like you may have had some really harrowing experiences. It’s good that you’ve found a lifestyle that makes you happy. Your first comment in this thread is really painful to read and makes me very sad. It’s also not my place to debate with you about whether or not your comment is right/good, so instead I’ll just share some of my background and why I feel pain when I read it.

I was absolutely raised to be “manly.” My father, the Boy Scouts, popular media—all of it seemed like it was encouraging me to just “toughen up” and be strong. Nobody ever talked to me about feelings except anger. My dad was a great role model for anger. However, I was small. I was weak. I had allergies and asthma. I was sensitive and scared of violence. I cried easily. I was cuddly. It was very difficult for me to square what was expected of me with the reality of who I was, so for a long time I was just angry and numb and tried to hide.

I had a series of relationships where I failed to be emotionally present with my partner and rather than fixing it, I just emotionally whipped myself raw in front of them. I thought that punishment was the only way to be accepted. I finally met someone who showed me what it was to feel and helped me see a therapist. I was able to unpick a lot of the “manly” crap, and nowadays I’m pretty happy in my skin. I crochet with my partner. We talk freely and openly about our feelings. We call each other disgustingly cute pet names. We hold each other and cry when bad things happen. We both continue to go to therapy, and we’re always looking for ways to improve and deepen our relationship.

For all of that, there’s still the old raw spot in my mind. Inside of me, I’ll always have that kid who just wanted a hug and instead got contempt and judgement. He was so lonely and miserable and felt like there wasn’t anything nice in the world for him. He felt so confused and broken and wrong, because why couldn’t he just be manly? Why couldn’t he be a rock? That’s the raw spot that your comment pokes for me. I suspect I’m not alone in that.

Having typed all that out, I guess I’ll make one request. I don’t know what exactly you went through, and I sure as hell won’t invalidate it, whatever it was. All I’d ask is that you consider that there may be more than just sex and hate in the heart of the men you walk by. You don’t have to be in a relationship or like men or want to be around them, but the world might seem like a bit better of a place for you.

I think my initial read of your comment was wrong (I thought you were saying that the term was fine, which didn’t hold up on my second read where I was paying attention), so I want to clarify by saying what I think you mean. You’re making the point that I should be saying that the statement is racist and that they should consider whether or not they want to use it, not that they are being racist by using it in ignorance.

Is that right? Because if so, that’s a fair point. More flies with honey than vinegar and all that. I’m normally better about giving people a chance to consider rather than just dictate my beliefs, but I’m sleep deprived and cranky and I think it’s making me act in ways that aren’t aligned with my usual values.

Edit: and it’s a sign that I need to get off of the Internet for now, since I’m being waaaay more negative than I want to be.

Yeah, that’s why I wish the community would just use a different term. I’m not a fan of where it came from (Asian people bad asian motorcycle bad), and the arguments where one person says “I’ve been saying it for years,” versus “bro it’s been fucking racist for years,” have gone past the point of a beaten and dead horse and into the realm of a fine mist of blood, fat, muscle, and viscera. Like, I just don’t understand why people are attached to it, it’s such a weird hill to die on. If it’s a matter of having a term that people outside of the community wouldn’t immediately understand, then I’m sure a different word could be found.

Edit: christ, I was not familiar with its usage in the 1930s. What a mess… Also, really loving the section on its Korean war usage, that’s just great. Thanks for the link, it reaffirms my desire for the community to just use a different goddamned word.

The only thing that comes to me is that someone who was really into tuning/spiffing up Japanese cars was involved in the community early on. I’ve always found it weird, and I’d honestly kinda prefer to just use “theme” or “spiff” or one of the many other words that the Godfucked curse of the Earth that is the English language provides for the purpose.

Yep, if we could go back to having 1-2 streaming services that charged a reasonable fee, I feel like TV and movie piracy significantly drop. It was so nice being able to just, like, fucking watch a movie and not have to check which of the eleventy-billion streaming services it’s on.

Arch Linux, for many years now. No DE, lightdm for login, i3 for WM, no graphical file manager, Alacritty + zsh w/starship for my terminal emulator, shell, and prompt. I’m extremely comfortable with this setup and have no plans to change it (except for a probable move to sway, once I can finally get a system without an nvidia GPU).

You’ll need certs if you want to use a Chromecast in certain circumstances, btw.

I always thought this was such a cool concept when I was administrating a Hashicorp Vault server. I made 7 fragments for 7 keyholders, and required that 4 or 5 of them (can’t remember) enter their fragments to unlock the Vault server.