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17955 discoveries · Hand-picked discoveries from the open web, newest first.
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Re: Online Friends Are Real Friends
A few days ago I booked my flights to not only attend a professional event, but also visit and stay with one of my best friends next month. This will be the sixth time that at least one of us has traveled to hang out with the other. We met each other online six years ago via Reddit (and to some degree, Instagram back when I still had an account) simply through shared interests. Never in my life did I suspect I would befriend someone online to such a degree that they feel like a true brother to me. I liked Absurd Pirate's post because it made me reflect on my own online friendships, which are s
toska · EN
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Gotcha
Very recently marked 29 years since I was brought to the United States from my country of origin. Thankfully, my adoptive parents never attempted to celebrate my "gotcha day," a day and overall concept often dedicated to rescued pets and that many adoptees (rightfully) loathe, instead choosing to sweep the detachment of me from my own home, language, and culture under the rug. As an adult, I've felt the weight of this day increase with age even though my parents never brought it up. Nevertheless, they (and others) never failed to jump at other opportunities to make me feel like I am supposed t
toska · EN
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When does a good idea become a bad one?
Part of me hesitates to write and share these thoughts because they sound silly. Naïve, even. A mix of too much and too little confidence. And in the end, everything in my head was all abstract, so what's the point in overanalyzing things? Who cares, I'm writing about this anyway. For years ideas and fantasies marinated in my brain: I would move to Germany not long after finishing graduate school, starting anew. And until Merz took over, I dreamt of the fast-track route to citizenship, a mere three years if one had sufficient language skills and proven dedication to and integration into societ
toska · EN
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Lost in the forest
I recently visited Yosemite for the first time. One of my best friends lives in California, and while I am grateful to him for many reasons, him taking me to national parks is definitely one of them. There is a lot of beauty in this country that I have never witnessed, and only in the past few years have I been able to catch up a bit. For this I like to blame my parents for never taking me to a national park as a kid as well as my geographic and financial circumstances. Since meeting in person a few years ago, my friend and I have managed to visit three national parks together. Only a few days
toska · EN
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A nice rainbow
Last night I had to run some errands that I didn't feel like doing. Unexpectedly, I was rewarded with one of the prettiest rainbows I've ever seen. I hadn't felt so excited about something in a while. Little things like this are keeping me going.
toska · EN
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One year since my endometriosis excision
Today marks one year since I had extensive endometriosis lesions scraped out of me for several hours. Though not my first abdominal surgery, preceded only by my bilateral salpingectomy a few years prior, the excision took a lot out of me. And not just because my bladder decided to stop working a couple days after the procedure, which prompted a traumatizing ER visit where no one paid attention to my bladder about to explode until I became hysterical. Still, I don't regret having gone through with the surgery. I'm incredibly grateful to my surgeon, who told me that I likely would have needed a
toska · EN
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A spontaneous trip
One of the perks of being both perpetually unemployed and a credit card nerd is the ability to "afford" to go somewhere on a whim with the help of award travel and the generosity of your best friend who is willing to host you for free. And it turned out to be one of my best decisions... maybe ever? One of my closest friends, initially "just" a language partner, told me last month that he would be headed to the Bay Area for a few weeks on a business trip. His first time in the US. We had met in person only once before, about 1.5 years ago when I stopped for a few hours in the Netherlands, where
toska · EN
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Reflections on National Adoption Month
A few hours prior to attending an event several weeks ago, I met up with an online acquaintance and his wife who had come into town. We knew beforehand that a local animal shelter was invited to the event and would bring a couple of their dogs with the hope that they would be adopted by attendees. I can admit it was a sweet initiative. I didn't know this couple very well, but I met them in person once a few years ago. It was nice to kill some time by chatting with them about the evening ahead, except for one unpleasant interaction. As we discussed the dogs we would meet later, this couple's do
toska · EN
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Why I volunteer at Startup Weekend
How a phone call from a stranger turned into a startup community.
Thoughts — Thiago Diniz · EN
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Why this site
A short note on what this site is, why I made it, and what I plan to share here.
Thoughts — Thiago Diniz · EN
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Building a personal finance tracker with Claude
How I turned a folder of Markdown ledgers into a deterministic CLI that handles the math while Claude handles the fuzzy input.
Thoughts — Thiago Diniz · EN
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Static Typing
Static typing zealotry is such a spiritually castrated activity: there’s this mentality that “real programmers” would never even fathom using dynamically typed languages. I also find the idea of “but correctness of the program is in the types” a pretty deficient premise –tests are what gives you confidence that your program is correct, not types. The compiler can help, but it’s not a silver bullet. One time I renamed a field in a model and everywhere else that used it, but I forgot to change a call in a view. Since I was working with a dynamically type
the null-log · EN
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Pragmata - an In-Depth Critique and Review
…Pragmata is very good. *REVIEW OVER* Okay, seriously now: Pragmata is the very only game other than Nier Automata that I could declare an instant classic. It’s pretty much the new Resident Evil 4: a game that’s so polished, smart and well-rounded that it holds infinite replay value. People will be replaying it decades from now. But the first time I saw Pragmata I was not impressed with it at all. It seeming to be simply an over-the-shoulder shooter with the Bioshock hacking minigame bolted on top, Capcom having also recently burned a lot of goodwill with their practices and
the null-log · EN
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Twin Peaks - An In-Depth Critique and Review
Frank Lloyd Wright once said that “Television is chewing gum for the eyes”. Well, “that gum you like is coming back in style”… Well lodged within the Hollywood Cabal, Lynch is one of the most well-respected “Auteurs” I know. Everything he worked on, down to the most ridiculous advertisements for Japanese television, has his signature style of strobe lights, and oneiric bizarre nonsense. It is very easy to pitfall myself into simply gushing over David Lynch and his work in this review, given how sublime, eccentric, unconventional and trailblazing it is
the null-log · EN
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Just recovered from a Kubernetes outage in my homelab.
Just recovered from a Kubernetes outage in my homelab. Since a few days ago, I’d been experiencing reduced performance across all the machines in the cluster. Even though they all seemed normal, I noticed the master tended to report high CPU usage and low available RAM. This would cause HTTP calls from the client machines to fail, so their status or deployments could not be updated. The main giveaway being that the nodes would very frequently flap between NotReady and Ready Historically, I’ve been running k3s on Raspberry Pis. It works and it’s stable, and it’s a great
the null-log · EN
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The bastards hung me in the spring of ‘25…
The bastards hung me in the spring of ‘25…
the null-log · EN
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A Few Words About The Sopranos (Mini Review)
A Few Words About The Sopranos (Mini Review) One of my gripes with Millennial-made media is that it’s nothing but membaberries . The vast majority of it is simply “hey guys, do you remember Ninja Turtles ? Do you remember Star Wars ? Hey, remember this from Alien ?”; I believe Millennial media to be lacking a voice , that is. Pre-9/11 turn-of-the-Millennium pieces such as The Matrix , Falling Down , American Beauty , Office Space , Fight Club , and of course, The Sopranos all share a similarity; they all revolve around a central concept, an “ethos”, specifically o
the null-log · EN
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Good Enough #3-Frustrations Aplenty
🪵 From the Workshop — This past week has been a lot of learning from mistakes and what not to dos. Mostly, this has been on the tech side of things regarding the podcast hosting. Sometimes it’s better to leave well enough alone when things are working fine.
The Maker Dad · EN
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Riverside Put Me Through the Ringer. Here's Why I'm Sticking With Transistor.
For the past month I've been going through and putting the Riverside services through its paces. Mostly because I had used them in the past for other things, I wanted to see how their current lineup had grown to fit within my workflow. There were a few roadblocks
The Maker Dad · EN
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Getting Your Spouse and Your Side Business on the Same Page
Talking through the money conversations that come with starting a maker business, product ideas, local selling, and setting realistic goals.
The Maker Dad · EN
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My Business Startup Checklist (And Why I'm Already Reordering It)
If you've made a list, or you're thinking about making one, for getting your maker business off the ground, tonight's episode is for you. I went through my own personal checklist on stream, the one I'm actually using to get things started,
The Maker Dad · EN
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Corded vs. Cordless: I Did the Math, and It Broke My Brain a Little
Josh breaks down the real cost of going cordless, tool by tool, battery by battery, and explains why his shop still runs on cords.
The Maker Dad · EN