Vox_Ursus

I can relate to you, having gone through something similar when I graduated about 20 years ago. My mom was also the one who thought it was important at the time, kind of like a coming of age thing, and while my dad wasn't all that interested, he absolutely wanted to be there, and absolutely did not tolerate my mom or her family.

So the way it worked out was that I bounced between my mom and her family, and my dad and brothers. While I felt a bit bad at some points for leaving my dad alone when my brothers went to talk to our mom as well, or that he ignored her and only spoke to my grandma, he kind of chose that for himself.

I had already made plans beforehand with my mom to celebrate a couple of days later with her family, so after the whole shebang (had no interest in partying), I went back home with my dad and brothers, had a smallish celebration and that was that; family pleasing done, and I had a relatively nice experience in the end, with little to no friction between relatives.

How does being a psychologist constitute a reasonable qualification to have any weight on the matter? Vaccinations belong to the field of pharmacology, on which psychologists have no training whatsoever (possibly aside from psychiatric drugs) and if they do, they're most likely a psychiatrist, in which case they're doctor first and psychologist second.

The author has no qualifications whatsoever to talk about vaccines, aside from her doctoral dissertation, which I would consider questionable at best.

This is the post source, in case anyone's doubtful https://news.cornell.edu/media-relations/tip-sheets/cornell-expert-says-trumps-frequent-phonemic-paraphasia-are-signs-early

So I'll give you my take, and it's by no means exhaustive, though maybe a bit lengthy, so TLDR; veganism is on a do or don't spectrum; piracy is (to many) more nuanced. Here goes:

For one, you can download software, but you can't download, say, a cow. There's definitely a distinction to be made between tangibles and intangibles. In addition to that, they're different types of commodities; food is a necessity, software is a luxury (IMHO).

In my experience, the reason consumption of meat (or not) is often such a contentious subject, has to do with how vegans position themselves on a moral high ground, based on their belief that no living creature deserves to be killed in order to satisfy our human need for food. If you consume, you implicitly kill, and so you have no escape from the morally condemnable bad action/inaction.

Since most of us aren't farmers or involved in husbandry, we need those people (by extension the industry) to provide slaughtering, refining, etc. as services in order to enjoy the final product. While you could in theory keep your own animals, laws prevent you to do so practically, due to agricultural regulations and sanitation requirements (may vary depending on where you live, I dunno).

When it comes to software, there are basically two camps (AFAIK): those who believe tech companies/devs charge reasonable amounts for their products or recognize and advocate buying as a way of supporting good products; and those who believe tech products are overpriced, and/or that the companies/devs engage in anti consumer practices in one way or another and consequently pirate.

Pirates necessarily go against the industry, and due to the nature of many tech companies actually employing shady business tactics, the grounds for arguments are a lot greyer, and so there's a lot more back and forth; trying to determine if something is acceptable and under which circumstances. Many times people conclude that not supporting the industry is the better move, often considering not a single producer/Dev but the market/industry as a whole (often because of megacorps), and sometimes that giving support is the better move (you'll see this sentiment a lot more related to indie devs, open source and federated stuff).

For many people, rather than not consuming a product, consuming it in an unauthorized way is a better way to flip the finger, and so it sometimes comes down to a tooth for a tooth response. Many people don't have the luxury of buying products they don't know are right for them or have the featurs they'll need, and turn to piracy as a form of demo/trial, buying only if the product meets their needs/standards.

In the end, most people I've come across (who are vegetarian or vegan) view their choice as a moral "should", because they consider animals equal to humans in terms of rights to life. It's a do or don't scenario, and if you do, you are by extension morally worse because you feed the industry (necessarily). People tend to have a more nuanced view on piracy because you're not directly affecting someone's right to life, and sometimes piracy can be construed as a form of protest. As such, you could argue that piracy, although not technically good, is in some cases bad, and in some cases worse.

So I'm from Europe, and I remember being drilled in the importance of sources (i.e. use of research papers and primary sources when available, no wikipedia, etc.) as well as theory and methodology, how to cite and paraphrase properly, checking who wrote/created a text/media and what bias it might have, etc., but not how to actually find, navigate and use databases, analyze media, documents and information, etc. At university it was basically assumed that we'd already know everything we needed and we mostly just got a refresher on research methodology.

Years layer i studied a second BA in Mexico, and (ironically, being a "third world country") had to take three courses on research (documentary, qualitative and quantitative), during which we went in depth into research method and theory, different research databases, types of sources, media types, critical evaluation of sources, etc., as well as hands-on use of all of them. In addition, there were three courses on thesis research and writing to put it all into real practice, with a graduation thesis as end product.

That said, the teachers were much stricter in evaluating proper referencing and citation in Europe; oftentimes minor errors would have them significantly reduce your score, and so students were much more careful. In Mexico, the teachers accepted anything even remotely resembling APA style because anyone could argue they were using a prior/newer edition and get away with it, and at least one of my classmates got suspended for plagiarism while three others got off with warnings.

I used to use QuickPic back in the day, and when it went downhill I couldn't settle with any other gallery app, so I ended up going with the gallery mod maintained by WSTxda. Might be worth checking out, perhaps?

Just remember that you gotta know your limits with the boombox, it's not a toy.

1.6 was the shit on every single LAN party when I went to primary school. Good times.

I currently have Pi-hole and Unbound running on my pi4

Sometimes, although I usually don't write that often, unless it's a dream or something emotionally significant since that's what my therapist recommended journaling for.

When I look back on entries it's usually to revisit a dream a/o interpretation, or thoughts about/experiences I had with people who aren't an active part of my life anymore

Of course.

Mostly pertaining to software related malfunctions, I've been on the helping end of so incredibly many "have you tried turning it on and off?" situations that I can't remember all of them. Aside from that, not knowing how antivirus works, not knowing how to search for fixes and solutions to common problems, not reading error descriptions or even how the basic device settings can/do impact performance, etc.

Many people I know don't know how to navigate their computer's or phone's OS and/or settings properly and don't understand basic descriptions of what functions and settings do, and they're around 25 yo. They can't troubleshoot hardware issues either, are unable to identify faulty components or peripherals correctly, and e.g. commonly confound RAM and HDD storage, be they related to phones, computers or other kinds of electronics.

Something stops working and it's immediately a) call the techy friend to get a free fix for zero effort, b) trade it in for another one/throw it away and buy a new one, or c) call an actual (or not so actual) expert. I mean often times it's not really that hard to solve the problems. It's always a faulty product, not the end user failing to identify proper use and how their electronics actually work.

They explain the physics of it pretty well here, I think https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LNfAwWk33nI&t=1m25s