Thanks for all these! I’ve saved this post for future use.

It’s very picky about what it will allow as prompts. It won’t let me use “iron lung” and it thinks “sarsaparilla” is a foreign language. Anything remotely R-rated like “severed toe” is usually blocked. Anything involving an animal gives you a Pixar-like furry friend, so I couldn’t get much out of “ferret in bathtub” that resembled anything from TBL.

I tried making the drink in the OP photo a White Russian, but it kept giving me a white bowling ball instead. It will sorta generate the drink on its own though.

It did not understand what I meant about a coffee can on the cliffside. It kept giving me canned coffee drinks instead of ground coffee. When you can get canned ground coffee out of it, it insists on putting loose grounds around the outside of the can.

I may keep trying, but it does burn battery life pretty quickly.

Stilted laughter That’s marvelous!

Which was a direct result of him losing a fiddle contest with the Devil! Rome would have been fine if not for his string-based hubris.

Very cool. I will likely check this out this weekend on my Steam Deck. Thanks!

Any chance that you have tried to run this through Proton on Linux?

I’ve sworn off Seagate for any spinning rust. I’ve had far too many drives fail within a few months - including the warranty replacement drives - for me to ever trust any data to them again.

All I can say is that you’ll have to check local laws, etc. around circumvention but most digital goods have DRM of some sort these days it seems.

Nah, just adding color to the discussion. I run a 7-bay NAS that I built myself (3D printed case). I’m definitely not too concerned about respecting DRM/DMCA, but I don’t like having my legal rights stripped from me by some back door shenanigans.

Unless the source contains some sort of DRM and you’re a citizen of the USA. In that case, your rights were stolen from you by the DMCA.

Open Media Vault is another good choice that has a web management interface

That wouldn’t be the same conditions. You didn’t have foreknowledge about things the first time through.

If I could have foreknowledge, that would change things.

A very important question. I’m definitely not interested in redoing this life under the same conditions.

I don’t get it either, but we’re still on the same page with finding it hilarious when kids get hit, right?

He is fully functional

It has a terrible title, but it is an excellent and well-researched book. It’s applicable to far more than just back pain.

Back In Control by Dr David Hanscom. https://a.co/d/85gjHQ5

I also have back injuries. I blew out a disc in my lumbar spine and I have an artificial disc in my neck. Not as bad as your injuries (from what I’ve seen you write), but still painful. My neck hurt really bad even years after surgery and physical therapy. I think it was mostly emotional trauma and food intolerances reactivating old painful neural pathways. The book helped me deal with all that.

Most definitely. I have autoimmune problems and a genetic heart condition. I went from working a decent job and having some financial security to being unemployed for 2.5+ years and taking money from my family so I could keep living - certainly not living well.

It got to a point where my chronic pain and other problems weighed on me so badly that I would immediately curse my existence the very moment I awoke in the morning. I hated that I didn’t die in my sleep.

Of course doctors weren’t helpful - under their care and instruction I actually got worse. The cost of this care also largely wiped out the savings I had. The rest of my savings were used to just stay alive because in no way was I fit for employment.

It is a years-long battle to get any kind of public assistance (yay USA!) because my problems are not typically classified as a disability even though they totally are.

A few specific things kept me alive and fighting:

• My dog was basically my child, and as long as she was with me, I would stay alive and take care of her. I had a very deep bond with her. She was family. I’m not exaggerating when I say I wouldn’t be here today to type this message to you if not for her loving presence. I had her for 11 years. She died on New Years Day this year. Had I still been suffering the way I used to, I probably would’ve killed myself on the 2nd. Being without her this month has been awful, and I owe her my life.
• I finally found a decent endocrinologist who helped me stabilize my hormonal problems. The others I went to actually made things worse and seemed not to have any understanding of why.
• I discovered that responsibly taking kratom leaf powder drastically cut down on my chronic pain and helped in a lot of other ways. I have been taking it a couple times a day for over 3 years now (with some breaks here and there ). I’m no longer dependent on it just to function, but it’s still tremendously helpful.
• I read a book by a back surgeon who also went through something similar with chronic pain and being unable to do anything about it. Changing the way I was reacting to my circumstances based on his advice was very, very impactful. I still had pain, but it wasn’t crushing my spirit anymore.
• I discovered that a huge portion of my pain, tension and anxiety stemmed from eating gluten and corn. I don’t present classic food intolerance symptoms, so it took a lot of trial and error to figure this out.

After around a year of struggling through bad jobs (the only ones that I could get due to a long unemployment period), I’m now working a decent office job again and my pain has improved enough that I can at least work full time again without wanting to die.

It wasn’t an easy road, and I’m not sure I would have the fortitude to go through it again - definitely not without my dog to keep me motivated. Life isn’t grand, but I sorta get by. This is still way better than I was a few years ago, which I didn’t think was possible.

Outrun 2006: Coast to Coast is a perennial favorite of mine. Plays fantastic on the Deck!

Removed by mod

He got run out of the fediverse because he was abusing mod powers to promote his website. Complained about the open mod log on his way out the door.