nuclearsugar

His portrayal of Picard helped me to understand what real maturity could look like. He will be greatly missed. Pour one out for Patrick.

Discord is ok once you get used to it. But golly the various settings panels is a scattered confusing mess, beware.

Would be fascinating to be a fly on the wall at the Adobe offices currently

It's not an ideal replacement as of yet, but the writing is in the wall and I bet in a few year time it (or some other clone) will be quite mature and stable.

Overall yes. When I attend a meetup then I have a mindset of putting myself out there and should I meet an interesting and kind person, then just ask to get coffee with them sometime and talk shop. Also I remind myself that the current conversation went well from my perspective, so probably from theirs too.

Indeed I've had a similar realization and it's a very helpful reminder. Also every time I go to a meetup, I remind myself: to be interesting, you must be interested.

My experience is that meetups have largely the same dynamic, but the attendees very rarely reach out to get coffee. I can't think of a single instance in recent memory where someone has asked me, and yet I have many experiences where people later thank me for instigating. That used to bother me until I spoke with some people about it and realized it seemingly doesn't happen much these days outside of business pitches.

But personally I cannot afford to worry if they think it's cringe. For a long time I was lonely, even in a healthy marriage, but having friends that I see regularly is something that I have found to be a vital aspect of having good mental health and avoiding stagnation. So I continually take the risk and put myself out there when I meet an interesting and kind person.

These days I must make a real effort to be social on a regular basis. Personally I've found satisfaction in going to meetups to find like minds. I also go with my gut and in the moment ask to swap Instagram usernames with interesting people and promptly schedule with them to get coffee. If they prove to be as interesting and kind as I had sensed, then I invite them to a potluck dinner party which I throw every other month. In this way, I invite people under my umbrella, keep them in my life by regularly seeing them, slowly build a friendship, and hopefully they make friends with the regulars at dinner party. I must continually remind myself that I am the instigator and it's feels quite strange as a heavily introverted person. I don't particularly enjoy being the instigator for most social occasions but the pros outweigh the cons.

The book that he wrote next, Star Maker, is a wonderful read and is quite early for the genre of scifi. Incredible scope and I still think about it often.

> “None of our data acquisition programmes buy and destroy rare or antiquarian books.” German booksellers are not convinced. They are sure, based on the vast orders, that the process is happening anyway via third-party service providers.

Hope the open-weights reduces the VRAM requirement compared to Flux 2.

I agree with this and have received insights on difficult challenges, but I've found that each year it gets more difficult to find an email address for someone.