Hmm… as a Buddhist, the goal is realization that every identity, including ‘human’, is not real. So, I think your first step is pretty spot on actually. Letting go of what is expected of me is certainly my biggest challenge. I am a caregiver by nature and place a lot of pressure on myself to take care of everyone and everything around me, often to my own detriment. Thank you for the reminder.

Hello, I would like to subscribe to your “dancing through the world with glee” newsletter. That is the ideal state, as far as I’m concerned, and most of my practice is focused on getting there.

I’ve sort of run the gamut, but I spent several years as a Hare Krishna that informed most of my current practice - I’m glad I did it and learned a whole lot but there is damage to undo.

Currently I practice my own homebrew blend of Discordianism and Buddhism. Since I came from a high-demand environment, I reject the idea of spiritual authority now - no teachers, no gurus, no organizations. My practice is not beholden to anyone. I also reject the idea of dogma, which is not out of bounds in Buddhism when you consider the hundreds of sutras that directly contradict each other. Buddhists know they cannot all be true, you take what works and leave the rest.

One thing that I heard at a dharma talk once was “write your own sutra.” Start with “This I have heard. One day, the Buddha was teaching…” this and that student was there, someone asks a question, the Buddha answers. The speaker encouraged everyone who had a question they were struggling with to write a sutra, ask the Buddha, and see how he answers. I liked this approach so I’ve written several sutras myself. I write, I meditate, and I do mantra chanting as my primary day to day practice.

I have been pagan in the past, before I came to dharmic practice, so I’m open to a lot of different ideas. I do sometimes do chaos magick in the form of sigils, and I do some deity work, mostly tantric. I read tarot, but only for myself. I’m very open, generally, to all forms of sincere practice, and when pressed on my beliefs, I paraphrase Robert Anton Wilson and say “I don’t believe anything but I can imagine quite a bit.”

Edit: It’s a little stream-of-consciousness and silly, but if you’d like an insight into my practice, https://ChaosBuddha.org.

Honest question; why would someone need a touchscreen, or a display at all beyond a battery indicator, on their earbuds case?

It started off pretty well but all day today I’ve been fighting with my health insurance (again) because they have decided they don’t want to cover an essential medication that my partner has been on for years (again). Things are moving forward, our primary doctor just gave us over a month’s worth of samples so we won’t run out while we fight, and they are compiling documentation to make a case. I’ve never had to fight to have meds covered like I have with our prescription provider this year, it’s the worst. I had to fight them earlier this year to get them to cover long-acting insulin. Insulin! Ridiculous.

Other than that, can’t complain.

I find the lack of Space Quest titles in this thread unsettling. For me, it’s Space Quest IV, but they are all absolute gems.

This is really weird. The AI stuff is weird, but also, this zoo is local to me, and it’s weird that somewhere just up the road a bit is making national news because of this. I’ve fed their giraffes many times; I haven’t been there since the spotless one was born, though.

I have a pretty straightforward solution. I keep a text file called ‘todo’ in my Syncthing sync folder, and I added ‘cat Sync/todo’ to my Fish greeting.

Good one! It was certainly an unexpected cover when it was released, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Johnny Cash version had overshadowed the original in terms of audience familiarity. I’m also fond of Nine Inch Nails’ cover of Queen’s “Get Down Make Love”, it was a rather niche track for both bands - so much so that despite being a Queen fan, I heard the NIN version first.

Sorry, I tend to gush a little bit about Genesis, they’re one of my favorite bands. Thanks for indulging me!

I didn’t know, so I went and looked. There is indeed an option to record calls.

a band called Genesis.

Man, this made me feel old, and also I had to laugh. Yeah, little band called Genesis. 😂

When I was young Genesis was everywhere. You couldn’t listen to the radio for more than 30 minutes without hearing a Genesis song. Since you seem to not know of them, allow me to introduce you: Phil Collins (vocals/drums), Mike Rutherford (bass/guitar), and Tony Banks (keyboards) is the lineup that most people know. They were the three left over after Steve Hackett and Peter Gabriel left the band in the 1970s. In the 70s, they were a prog-rock band, but in the 80s the three remaining members shifted from prog-rock to pop, and the rest is history.

I adore their old stuff, and there is so much to potentially introduce you to, but let’s go with this performance of Abacab from '87. The song was released in 1981, and is still in their ‘transition’ period from a prog band to a pop band. They were absolute powerhouses onstage. Phil Collins in particular is an incredible performer. This song sounds like the 1980s squeezed into pure music, but really, Genesis didn’t sound like 80s pop music. 80s pop music sounded like Genesis. Have a listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvOms5JXDXY

“Mad World” is the classic “what do you mean that’s a cover?” song… here are some great ones that I haven’t seen mentioned yet:

• Nine Inch Nails “Dead Souls” (from The Crow soundtrack) is a Joy Division cover.
• Guns ‘N Roses "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door" is a Bob Dylan cover.
• Whitney Houston “I Will Always Love You” is a Dolly Parton cover.
• Nirvana’s “The Man Who Sold the World” is a David Bowie cover.
• Fugees “Killing Me Softly with His Song” is a Roberta Flack cover, but Roberta Flack’s version is also a cover, it was initially recorded by Lorie Lieberman.

It’s an android, so yes. Spotify, Deezer, YT Music are all options.

Oof, yeah. The 3310s are basically bricks now with so many carriers discontinuing 3G service. Nokia makes a couple of 4G feature phones, the 225, the 6300, and the 2780 Flip. The 225 runs S30, the 6300 and 2780 run KaiOS so they have some app support like a web browser, but functionality is very limited. And you won’t get good photos out of any of them.

If you’re looking for privacy, look into the Fairphone. If you’re looking for a feature-rich phone that will force you to use it a lot less, look into Sunbeam. They run a stripped-down variant of Android with only the most basic functions.

I got a Unihertz Titan Pocket earlier this year, I highly recommend those too, though they run Android 11 so if you are serious about privacy you’ll probably want to do some degoogling. Its camera is… okay.

I have some stuff at work that requires 2fa too. I have an old iphone with no SIM in it in my office, I use it for authentication and that’s it :)

I used a dumbphone for quite a while last year and honestly loved it. I have a small collection of them at this point since they are relatively inexpensive.

Today I use a Unihertz Titan Pocket which is technically an android, but looks like a Blackberry. I’ve gotten a bunch of comments on it. It will certainly do more than I need, but I’ve disabled the play store and use it mostly like a dumb phone, with the exception of streaming music, which the dumbphones obviously wouldn’t do. I bought a dedicated mp3 player for that purpose, so that’s not the feature that brought me back.

I switched because while I could absolutely use the dumbphone to do everything I needed to do, group texts were ultimately the thing that brought me back to an android. Though it’s been a known issue for many years, group texting on Nokia’s feature phones is just bad… when it works at all. I still keep an eye on the dumbphone market and will absolutely switch back when group text messages are sorted out.

Same.

I have Comic Mono too, it’s great. I’m using Comic Code for ligature support.

can’t live without:

• uBlock (goes without saying)
• Startpage Privacy (I’ve also used Privacy Badger, giving this one a try and it seems to work well)
• Vimium (browse using vim shortcuts)
• New Window Without Toolbar (does what it says; opens the current page in a new window without any toolbar at all, nice minimal look)
• New Tab Override (so new tabs land on my personal landing page, not the Firefox home or blank)

That’s it really, my needs are simple.

Also, TIL about “I don’t care about cookies” so I’m tempted to install that, but I do sort of care about cookies… but I also clear them relatively frequently, so it’s probably fine.