@variablepulserate Hm, maybe I could become one of the few foreigners to speak Manx. That should get me citizenship pretty quickly, right?
@matigo Almost entirely political. I don't think I've really felt "safe" since the protests started and that was pretty much 3 years ago now. I don't think that's going to change until I get out: I don't see this place changing direction anytime soon.
Every time I look around the apartment and take account of what I have, the first question that comes to mind is "How much do I need to get rid of before I leave?" The second question is "How much is it realistic and affordable to ship?"
It seems almost comical to some that my deadline for getting out is when my gym membership expires, but that's the longest commitment I paid for upfront. It's all arbitrary anyway: in theory, there's nothing stopping me selling all my stuff for pennies today and just getting on the next flight, even if the finances don't feel like they quite work out at the moment. (Although I don't think I'll ever feel like they do, especially with income taxes being what they are in the parts of the world I think I'd be happier in. If the poverty mindset is in any way genetic, then I've likely inherited it to some extent from my dad, who actually grew up relatively poor.)
All rather depressing and certainly not doing my mental health any favours, but I've watched myself get progressively unhappier (net) over the last few years, so staying would almost certainly be worse, and selling stuff takes time, so delaying that isn't an option.
It's funny how some small behaviours have changed in light of all this: I try to look out of the window more when I take the bus, and to prefer the bus over the train. Every moment with friends here feels just a little bit more important.
(It's not like this would be my first time leaving — it's just that, in previous times, coming back felt like a door that would always be wide open. Now I'm not so sure.)
@variablepulserate I used to be completely addicted to sugar: close to 1L of soft drinks per day, bags of Oreos in a sitting, most fast food milkshakes tasted "normal"…. My parents never complained about me eating too much fast food or anything of the sort; all they knew about nutrition back then was that I was underweight and could do with eating a little more.
Quit soft drinks cold turkey in 2008 (my own decision) and severely restricted my snacking at the same time; the rest happened pretty slowly after that until I started dedicating a lot of time to tasting (alcohol, coffee, tea…) around late 2013.
Sugary stuff is basically incompatible with a lot of nice drinks, so there's little temptation to go back, though I do splurge once in a while. Soft drinks, though, are a few-time-a-year thing: stopping cold turkey is still one of the hardest things I've ever done and I don't want to go through that again. Also most soft drinks taste awful to me now, Fentiman's being a notable exception.
// @hazardwarning @matigo @phoneboy
@variablepulserate Interesting. Most chocolates I've had under 70% are sickeningly sweet and I find myself preferring 80%+.
// @hazardwarning @matigo @phoneboy
The last time I was in Japan — Tokyo, 2016–2017 (Christmas/New Year) — I tried a Happy Hacking keyboard at one of the big electronics stores. I was so tempted to get it then but couldn't justify the price.
4 years later, I have one, second hand and in perfect condition. HHKB 2, not the latest and the Hasu programmable controllers seem impossible to get right now, but it's lovely.
@variablepulserate Could well be. A lot of computing is more ordered and demanding of conformity now, thanks to our walled gardens.
@variablepulserate I think there is definitely a trend element; I don't see it so strongly that way because UIs don't seem to have been around long enough for us to observe the cyclical nature that we see in fashion (slim fit -> baggy -> slim -> baggy). In UIs the major styles that come to my mind are
- CDE: beveled (some attempt at 3D), colourful
- Windows pre-XP, Mac Platinum: very grey but still with clear window borders, buttons look like buttons.
- Early mobile: whatever could work on 320 pixels.
- Windows XP, Mac Aqua: very colourful, loud, 3D-esque with gradients (scrollbars on XP and Aqua, the close/minimise/maximise buttons on Aqua, 3D dock and Time Machine from Leopard onwards). More 3D emphasis in Vista, pulling back in Windows 7.
- Early Android, iOS: pretty skeumorphic (I think iOS 7 was the peak?)
- Mac OS Lion: the old scrollbars are replaced with thin grey lines; every version of Mac OS after that seems to get progressively flatter.
- Windows 8: the tile design seems to mark the start of the flat design era; Windows 10 and Windows 11 seems to continue this trend.
So we haven't gotten to the point of developing on, for example, the CDE-style buttons-look-like-buttons approach or the loud (almost maximalist) Windows XP/Mac Aqua style yet. It looks like flat design is here to stay for the moment.
All off the top of my head though.