My car has been in and out of the shop since May. Mostly for stupid reasons. From a mechanic too "busy" to get around to it, from a completely incompetent series of shops that told me my car had one problem when it wasn't and I was right about it.

The car is a 99 Opel Astra SW. Diesel engine. Of a series fitted with a very finecky fuel pump. The GM engine is very efficient but also very delicate; the injection system resembles a petrol one and requires precise timing. After breaking the third accessories belt in less than six months, the car started knocking, badly, and the iginition failed.

When I bought it, it came out of timing, and it struggled with starting, having the fuel injection out of synch with the pump, due to a faulty engine cranckshaft sensor. It was fixed and the engine purred.

I told this to the shop when the accessories belt broke again but they ignored me and pointed the problem to the fuel pump. They did fix a broken rocker in the injection system but the engine still knocked and loudly. I asked if they had checked the engine timing and was insisted I had to replace the fuel pump, which is a 1500€ expense.

I called to a couple of diesel labs and they were in agreement: this particular pump is finecky but it has a virtue, as it does not have partial issues. If the electronics fail, the pump is done. If the mechanics fail, it shows. If the car was starting after insisting and running, the issue was somewhere else.

I found another mechanic. A crazy one. Of the good kind. Run the entire story through him. And he agrees something is off.

The issues list start to pile after a careful check. A faulty head gasket, leaking, barely, but nonetheless. A wobbling engine pully, the one that actuates the accessories belt, which is the cause for the constantly failing belts. Leaking injector rings. Small things but that do pile up and tell a story of poor service. And then is the fuel pump. Two bare wires that connect the pump control unit to the regulator. Two wires that are shorting each other. Two wires that when put apart allow the engine to start on the first try.

I trust my car to this guy. I order parts, as per his request, and he puts his hands to the work. And the bad news keep pilling.

The knocking was the fuel valves hitting the piston heads. The engine was not properly timed and was in fact two teeth ahead. The timing that was assured by three different mechanics when the rocker was replaced was moot. These engines are very demanding when it comes to be timed and require a special tool, an imobilizer, fitted through the vacuum pump housing, to keep everything in place. The timing had been attemped my marking relative positions on the outside of the engine. Not good.

The engine head was so beat up it risked cracking. Surfacing it was pointless. My mechanic found another, aluminium welded a small defect on it that was bothering him, had it rectified and fitted it. Mechanically, the engine was sound again.

But what about that cursed fuel pump?

Well, it so happens those damned wires were the downfall of the pump. Circuits don't enjoy being shorted. The mechanic took it out to check those wires and the board they connected to was in bad shape. It was technically a miracle how it still fired. But it was its dying breath and ended there. Mechanically, it was faultless. Very little wear, negligible. But the board was fried. We tried to get a used control unit but it proved to not be in good condition as well; on idle, the third cylinder would not get any fuel.

The pump was sent to a lab for diagnosis. Which promptly dismissed it as faulty and needing of replacement. I had to personally call the lab to find out if the problem was mechanical or circuit bound and after a short exchange they reluctantly told me the issue was the circuit board. 1500€, 12 month warranty, if installed at their shop.

No.

I called a few other places and the least I could get was around 1000€. Then I took the plunge and went online. And struck strong. I found the unit, abroad, for a third of the price. 36 months warranty. And a deposit return with the handover of the old fuel pump. And the shop that sold me the used control unit is open to receive it back for testing and if it proves faulty, they are willing to return that value as well.

The carrier order is already open, so it is just the waiting game now.

This just shows how precious investing a bit of our own personal time can be. I had to personally interfere in this whole process to things through and save some money, that I otherwise would hurt for.

After this, it is off to work in my side job to recoup the investment.

All the worlds I'm creating in Luanti, regardless having the MoreOres or not mod added are only generating coal veins.

I'm running Luanti straight from the Debian repositories.

As per the photo. Durable. Reuseable.

My intention is to buy the cheapest smartphone I can reasonably get as I need to use a phone for professional reasons; the company uses Whatsapp and other applications I do not want to have occupying space in a smartphone I use for my personal life.

I've been loading my phones with FOSS applications from F-Droid for years now but I am aware the loop is tightening and continuing to do so is becoming more and more difficult.

Ideally, I would like to keep this phone as much as possible exempt from connecting with Google. This means I don't intend to load an account on the phone and instead load F-Droid and Aurora to get the software I want to use.

It took me a few thought cycles to put down that question.

In my understanding, we, as a civilization, are on a high wire number over a pit of knifes. The AI craze is full throtle as we speak, with conflicting indicators that it may/will cause the worst economical crash ever - becoming third in less than twenty years, where each was always reported as an unprecedented and irrepeatable event - while at the same time infiltrating companies in ways we are still to discover how ruinous may prove and spreading over the internet like a grotesque parasite, rendering services unsuable and leaking sensible data.

If the great AI companies tank (I can only hope) and the services they provide - whatever those may be - faill, how much is it going to affect companies? There is really no sense of consensus; some say it was the best thing ever, others are registering neglictable improvements, others failed miserably and had to return to the original state of affairs.

Then there is the constant attack from agents on the net, rendering websites, more or less important, more or less useable or stealing, destroying or corrupting valueable data.

I've reached a point where I am willing to forego internet and even computers. Even technology in a wide sense. At best, I may keep an air gapped machine, to use for writing and printing documents. But will others do it? And if so, will 8t happen in an organic fashion or will things devolve to a point where something cracks and things just get ugly? Because people are tired. Tired of datacenters popping up like poisonous mushrooms everywhere, destroying everything.

People are getting tired. Everywhere.

I enrolled in college last year after a two decade iatus. Same college, same degree. But somewhere down the line, something went somewhere and I feel at loss.

School was just school, for me. It wasn't especially hard, it wasn't especially easy. There were teacher, books, tasks to do and present and that was it. Simple. Linear. The first time I enrolled in college, the system was pretty much the same, regardless the scholl being entirely online.

When I enrolled last year, the model was radically turned upside down. I now had virtual classes (as in work groups inside a subject) and the system feels gamified. There are weekly goals, tasks, etc. But not individual tasks. Nor do I have a book or books I can read to follow the subject. Class material is micro-dosed, dispensed along the semester. I had around 80 pages of reading material throughout an entire semester. There were movies and YT videos along the way to supposedly complement the reading material. But it all felt banal. I failed the because I wasn't able to fit in the scheme.

Another year another semester and now the system is even more gamified. It feels like a real-time experiment on the students. I have to present myself, how I like to be addressed, what do I do for a living and save for the end of my introduction something surprising about myself. The motto is that by sharing and cooperating, we will be achieving better and more productive academia. What? I don't need to get to know anyone and viceversa; I'm a faceless number behind a keyboard, hundreds of kilometers away from anyone else from that course.

What purpose does this serve? I want a book to read, questions to answer, clear cut objectives. Not an online feel good experience. What has happened?

I've bought the ticket, I'm doing the trip to the end. I can adapt, eventually, but this makes no sense.

And for clarification: I do not risk going into debt by enrolling and not passing any classes, which is bound to happen this semester. I pay around 100€ tuition by subject I enroll and I've enrolled in two this semester, which I pay in monthly installments.

Can somebody point to some resource where I can do a test to gauge my aptitude towards possible career choices? It's a bit moot but I feel at a total loss.

As per the title, I am having a conflict on my computer, running Debian, with two sound controllers being found.

One is a Raven/Raven2/FengHuang controller and the other is the Ryzen sound controller.

The Raven is not even returning any sound, I've tested it, but it is to this controller the system defaults to. I've even manually selected the sound controller I want to use and the moment I close the GUI it defaults to the Raven and loses sound output.

I have managed to find a few posts on the internet from 2020 reporting it was a known issue and it was due to be solved but I wasn't able to find any solution to address the problem.

As anyone had this problem and found a solution for it?

Edit

I feel the need to add this here, as it makes no sense whatsoever to me.

I have a cheap, basic, USB camera connected to the pc. The moment I added the PulseAudio soubd control, it immediatly showed the camera as being a sound input hardware. It does not have a built in microphone, to my knowledge.

Also connected to the computer, on the front port, is a combined head/microphone single jack headset, of the kind where the microphone is built into the wire. It is not recognized as a sound input device if the camera is disconnected, although it still allows output.

Added to this, under Audacity, unless I set Pulse aa the default input and output device, no sound is played or recorded.

I have a story underwork for which I got myself stuck into a corner in a scene. It is not something I want to delete because it has meaning to the overall development of the story and for the characters.

I am going to be purposefully vague on some background details but I will be available to clarify any questions on the scene itself and leading up to and from it.

Fair warning: I touch on sensible subjects in this work, like sex work, violence, abandonment and social isolation.

The scene boils down to the following:

A couple is having a moment for themselves. A phone buzzes in the room until it goes to voicemail. A few moments later it starts buzzing again. The guy breaks a kiss and notes someone is calling her. She apologizes because she had meant to turn off her phone but forgot. They resume their moment but after a few minutes the phone buzzes again. They ignore it but the phone calls become insistent. The guy, again, breaks the moment and asks if she had something set up previously and if he should go, to which she reiterates it was on her for forgetting to turn off the phone and that he should stay. She turns the phone off, throws it onto the couch and leads him to the bedroom by the hand.

Already in the bedroom, they hear a loud knock on the front door. It's already late in the evening, well beyond the time to be doing visits. They first ignore it but as the knocking becomes louder and more insistent, the moment breaks. She tells him to stay where he is and goes to the front door.

He finds it strange she is taking so long and decides to go check. The room is far enough from the door that no dialogue can be understood but as he is walking through the house he picks up the tension in the exchange. The voices grow louder, he hears her shouting to the other part to get out and the door slams against a wall as he is walking in.

Another guy has forced his way into the house, is shouting at the girl while pointing at a shirt that was left forgotten on the back of the couch. The two men recognize each other immediatly and the intruder redirects his aggression towards the other man. The girl tries to calm things down but as the intrudes makes the gesture to push her to the side, the other man moves forward and throws him out the door with a brutal front kick and steps out in the same motion.

The wannabe intruder throws insults against the couple, first at the girl then the guy, and it evolves into a brawl, where he finds himself, unexpectedly, with the lower hand. The girl watches in shock as the two men fight. The commotion attracts attention for the surrounding houses, with people coming to the window to watch as the fight comes to an end, with the wannabe intruder on the ground, overpowered and badly beaten by his opponent.

Police sirens are heard in the distance and the two men stare at each other, knowing none of them can be caught there. The intruder staggers to his feet and makes his best to walk away, while the other man steps back inside, to have his clothes thrown at him and the door shown, as what happened is probably going to attract attention to the girl, something she has made her best efforts, for years, to avoid.

Distraut, he walks out and away.

There is a lot of dialogue in all of this, which is the part I'm finding myself stuck.

I want to convey in the dialogue between the couple that he is aware he may be in the way of something without making him sound possessive or pushy. At this point in the story, he already knows about that part of her life and how discreet and almost secretive she tries to make it. It is a fact and although he has been in her life for some time now, he considers himself a very lucky guest, nothing more.

The dialogue between the intruder and the girl is easy to write; it's down right abusive and linear. What is not as easy to write is the dialogue between the two men. I don't want to make him a white knight fighting for his damsel in distress. It's about setting present and previous matters between the two, with the abuse towards the girl acting as a rationale for the violence to break out.

For the third part, it about the girl throwing him out. The fight triggered in her memories from her past, events from which she has been running away, and something that man is unaware of. She is nearly in a panic as she shouts at him, throwing him out of her house, because she now feels she let her guard down and allowed someone to get too close and she is going to get hurt again. On his side, he does not understand and just offers a couple of tentative apologies before obeying her and leaving.

I'm usually very good at writting dialogue but this involves a depth of meaning I find myself constantly fudging.

Any advice is welcome.

I have been planting and harvesting sun root for a few years but I've never been able to harvest the actual seeds of the plants, regardless of having the flowers atracting insects.

Has anyone been able to harvest the seeds? If so, how and when? My intention is to try to grow from seed and see if some variation occurs.

My sun roots develop the usual yellow brownish tubers but occasionally I find some which are reddish or even deep purple; the pulp remains white or lightly yellow but the flavour profile changes drastically, with the purple ones having a very pronounced hazel nut hint.

In a time where everything is served to be consumed in one sitting, I think we need to get back that feeling of antecipation we had before the notion of an entire season of a series was made available in the same day.

And what I find even more fascinating is that the same people that recoil at the idea of a movie lasting more than ninety minutes are those that glady sit for twelve or eighteen hours, if not more, to watch an entire season in one go.

It was sublime yet frustrating to have to wait an entire week to get to the next episode but it built something to create expectations on. To talk about with others. To engage on.

Today there is the electronic lullaby of endless content on demand, easy to forget, that leaves nothing behind it. It's sad.

We deserve better.

With rising oil prices, if countries decided to curtail their consumption - akin to a directed economy - to reduce purchases to a minimum and even refusing to buy above a certain value, what could that cause?

The first reaction I'd expect would be production cuts to hold the prices but, technically, those are already happening. Demand is just not following.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/51946282

I am aware there must be exceptions but they must be incredibly few and far between as I can't name one nor anyone I know.

Even Stardew Valley reaches a point where you need to occupy space with all sort of machines and contraptions in order to win the game, so I can't name it as a candidate.

The easiest argument for this is that such a game would be boring. But unless one gets created, we'll never know.

I have a board game where you have to plant a forest and create the conditions to rebuild the ecosystem, while preventing forest fires. It is complex and requires strategy.

I could see something along the lines like this in a computer game, with added challenges.

In my hobby of writting, I make an effort to insert ideas like this. I'm so tired of enshrined violence and destruction of all kinds.

It's easy to view destruction. Disaster movies make excellent pop corn eating time. But when the monsters get killed or go away, the action ends and heroes won someone has to pick up the pieces. And that is a lot more complex afair.