I looked twice at the mixer
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Me too. Even broken, it has value (and most failures are easily fixed)
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Didn’t we all.
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We ended up not throwing that one thing out: Andy (my partner) said basically the same thing.
It’s been sitting unfixed (and I certainly don’t have the skill to fix it) for… gosh… two years? I guess it can sit for a little longer. I wanted it for pizza dough, but the Adam Ragusea recipe I use is too much for it (I know this because that’s how it died: it started throwing sparks around inside its housing as it struggled with kneading the dough). But, hey, who knows… maybe it will get fixed at some point.
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No, no. That’s what late night visits to random dumpsters behind businesses are for!
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I am now 10-emails deep into a “conversation” with my Truther brother.
It is… not going well. But, on the plus side, it is making me very sad and upset that he is so entrenched in such nonsense.
… wait. That’s not a plus side. Oh, right, it’s all bad side. Right, right.
And, hey, we all believe stupid things. I believe, without any evidence whatsoever, that humans are fundamentally good. But I acknowledge that is faith. There is no evidence, but I choose to believe.
My dear brother… oh no. He is the only person on Earth smart enough to know the truth about 9/11, and the Lusitania, and Pearl Harbour, and COVID, and… even trying to restrict it to just one of them (9/11, chosen because it’s easier to argue than aliens at this moment) it’s been hard. I might be wrong. I’d be surprised, but it might happen. But he refuses to give an inch. HE KNOWS THE TRUTH.
I’m just glad we’re not having the conversation in person. He’d be screaming in my face at this point. Ah well.
Fun aside: my partner and I have been doing a set of relationship-health “dates.” Today’s was supposed to be about sex and sexuality. An open, healthy, warm discussion about what we enjoy, what we like, what we want more of. All the positive stuff, and avoid the negative stuff. Focus on the good!
That lasted until Andy opened her mouth. It did not go well. I remain hopeful in the process, but today was a hard “date.”
Hope everyone else is having a better Sunday than I am!
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Saturday was pretty boring, we did nothing (except binge the Night Agent) because we were both too tired after last week. But at least I had bought some nice stuff for dinner on Friday so we could grill us some dinner. Dinner was great until I did a stupid relationship brainfart that I wish I had left unsaid. I‘ll be „paying that off“ for a while. (Nothing serious serious, just dumb stuff really, I am just sad about stressing out my partner with that).
Sunday morning BiL showed up with a 10 minute warning given while we weren‘t quite awake yet. Because they were in the area with the 2 kids. (We ended up having pesto pasta for breakfast/brunch because they stayed long enough so the bakers closed and we didn‘t have bread). The kids couldn‘t find stuff to play with so my partner let them play with his lego cars (the Bugatti and the Mustang) which … went okay enough they only pulled off some of the pieces and then went on to play with some walnuts from a bowl which they distributed all over the apartment.
After our pasta meal, friends called if we had time for a spontaneous meeting—which was really cool though and we enjoyed the time thoroughly. Good talk.
Because the pasta was backup for a dinner I failed to plan (stressful week), we went out to have some pizza at a place we didn‘t know yet. The parking was empty, the entrance was really weird—it is a Vereinsgaststätte of a Sportverein (restaurant associated with a local sports club). The pizza was very very good. When leaving my partner overlooked a young tree and we left our right mirror hanging on the tree.
Ah well… great week-end.
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I’m looking for some computer related advice.
I want to mount this monitor/ PC on the wall. It has standard fixings on the back (10cm square).
Can anyone recommend a mount please? Flat to the wall or moveable would be fine. I really don’t want it to fall off!
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What’s the wall made of?
Picking the right screws and fittings for the wall will be very important.
When I put some 85" TVs up on church we used the cheapest ones and they haven’t fallen down yet (coming up in one year in).
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I have someone who knows what they’re doing to put it up, have just been instructed to buy the bracket
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Assuming you are talking about a lcd flat screen monitor weighing less than 20 lbs, just about anything will work. The two things to look at are can you get it in the position you want it? (Even if you aren’t adjusting it, you probably want it pointed particularly.) and: does the way it mounts to the wall make sense for your wall? Wall mounts either mount to a single spot, which generally needs to be a stud, or they have rails, which get screws into studs, but usually span a stud bay, and allow you to slip the monitor or tv side to side.
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Frame-and-cover wall construction is quite rare in Europe.
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I’d mentally placed captbnut as being in Austria or NZ, where they build houses out of trees. Solid walls make locating wall mounts easier, though drilling the holes is harder.
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Having had such conversations I know they can be difficult, but I’d always say contrast it with the other conversation you had. It’s always better to be in a situation where you can say things.
Happy to talk in PMs
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I don’t know if it’s any use to you for interacting with your brother, but there’s a book called “How Minds Change” by David McRaney which I found very insightful on the subject of talking with people whose views you find completely baffling.
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This is why people shouldn’t be contradicting “Truthers” and say that they are wrong and/or stupid. They have already created an identity where they (and a few others) know this sacred secret and that they are right and everyone else are sheeples. The fact that you and everyone else are pushing back and contradicting him confirms that he is right all along.
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not sure if this may be a good read in that aspect, but we are having some issues in the family since the pandemic and this thing here I found recently was one of the better essays I found on the topic of truthers (Schwurbler is the German)
this being Doctorow he comes to a conclusion not everyone will agree with. but I appreciate his analysis of the topic.
edit: re-reading this inbetween compiling my code. Not being British I immediately forgot after reading that this is more than the Oxford example from UK -.- didn’t want to step on anyone’s foot. Obviously your takes in the details may differ quite a lot from my rather less-informed-about-UK views. I hope Doctorow is truly well-informed as he seemed to me.
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The point he misses, I think, is that many of the protesters would be very much in favour of the restrictions on Those People that are the intended effect of the plans – they’ve already voted for the judicial murder of refugees and trans* people and they’ll do it again. They don’t see themselves as Those People, even though they’re getting screwed by Brexit-driven inflation the same as everyone else. (A Marxist analysis would say that this fragmentation is the point.)
(Bias: I find Doctorow very irksome and pleased with the sound of his own voice, if often right about things.)
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I think he’s well-aware of that, to be fair.
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My family member I mentioned above is a victim of disinformation more than they are not. There is a lifetime of experiences that should have taught them better about propaganda, and it is still very hard to not fall for the manipulation if it taps into these small moments of doubt and skepticism that may have a specific point. A point we may even have introduced ourselves 
Which is then used to pull them into broader issues that get conflated with this small point. Most people are not equipped to deal with the deluge of manipulation attempts we see today.
We have very little contact these days.
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