They don’t even know cron exists and you’re going to throw them to the wolves by suggesting Systemd? That’s like calling in a drone strike to swat a mosquito.

In thousands of songs, I’ve never noticed Picard doing anything to the length of the files. I tend to manually review every album by running it through Picard and letting it handle the renaming and tagging. That structure used to be Artist/Year Album/Song. I’ve been less strict about naming the songs themselves. It’s always at least track - Title, but sometimes Artist - Album - Disc # - is prepended. Eventually I ran into a situation where I had multiple versions of a release/album with different enough content to warrant keeping both, so now I throw a release ID number (if is exists) after the album name, and inside brackets, for the directory name.

It’s a very flat structure by design, so I’m never quibbling about where I sourced something or what particular genre it is when I’m looking for it. That dramatically reduces the likelihood of duplicates too. Real metadata is better left to tags, since that’s mostly what any player will see anyway.

If I’m having trouble getting Picard to recognize something it always because: musicbrainz.org is missing the release, doesn’t have acoustic ID, or Picard preferred the album track when I’m trying to rename and tag a single or EP. Adding the release info and acoustic ID to musicbrainz is easy and I can usually use the info before the release is even reviewed, but often in trying to add the release I’ll find the correct one and now I can help fill out the data about it.

I treat musicbrainz.org as MY metadata database. If a release is missing or has problems, I do the work to make it better. It’s good digital citizenship and learning about their rules for releases helps me manage my server better.

Dishwashers use less water than you will doing the same task. They may not be perfect for every dish, but washing by hand when there is a functional dishwasher is justing pissing away time, effort, and a lot of water.

Correct. My mistake.

You say something like this despite the mounting evidence that these state sponsored murder programs have not found competent people willing to be a party to murder.

I don’t know if Clifford D. Simak is lesser known, but his work is pretty foundational for a lot of more modern sci-fi. Before there was “I, Robot”, there was “City”. Before there were Ewoks, there was “Little Fuzzy”. Before there were living ships like in Farscape, Lexx, or Xenogenesis, there was “The Visitors”.

I should have remembered that was H. Beam Piper. Also great.

Meditation (for a lot of people) is an exercise in learning that even doing nothing is active. Doing nothing is still doing. Rest is an important part of being productive. Rest is not a waste of time, so you don’t need to feel guilty over it. These are all lessons that the brain can understand on its face immediately, but the body requires reinforcement and practice.

And if stillness is a problem you struggle with, walking meditation or meditation through movement can be a more approachable way to get started. There are lots of ways to meditate, find the ones that work for you. Meditation isn’t a cure all, but it does have wide ranging impacts and it doesn’t hurt to try it.

“Secret Links”, Like that one scene in that Sandra Bullock hacker movie, The Net.

https://triviahappy.com/articles/welcome-to-the-net-every-webpage-from-the-1995-movie-the-net

Wildest dystopian cyberpunk movie ever made. In an underground dinosaur society once ruled by a benevolent fungal king and taken over by corrupt corporation developing trans-dino de-volution technology to control the masses, two sanitation engineers from Brooklyn become heros. To do so they must hack the mycelial network to find the lost king, survive an electric vehicle demolition derby style car chase, and save the princess.

The absolute best are rainy days without lightning in a place with some nature and privacy. I feel like dancing naked in the rain and being able to come back in to a dry house, a towel to dry yourself, a good book, and a hot tea, is a very rare experience these days. Thunderstorms are great too when you have safe shelter. But dancing naked in a thunderstorm feels a bit like tempting fate too much, which is thrilling too in a way but also I’ve got creatures inside depending on me staying safe.

A relevant xkcd bot is really the only AI I want in my life.

I replied to a couple comments that they seemed to imply had been removed. We’ll see what happens. These were also comments in which they claimed reading was unhealthy, so I don’t expect much coherent discussion.

Is this the comment you claim got removed in the post edit?

Is this the comment you claim got removed? Maybe read up on the issues piefed seems to have.

We’re stealing memes from Disney nostalgia cash-in sequels now?

“See you later.”

“Not if I see you first!”

That’s why I don’t delete contacts. I have a special voicemail black hole for the people I’m making a point to forget.

Common names of animals often describe phenotype not genotype. If it looks like a ducks, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s common name is duck. There are lots of animals with common names grouping them by physical characteristics and ecological niche rather than genetic relationship, especially animals named longed before we had any real scientific study of their genetics.

This is America. Cars, tactical gear, and military vehicles are cheaper than an employee with benefits like healthcare, workers comp insurance, etc. way way way cheaper.

Did you have to send an actual physical photo through the post?

I ask because that was a unique time of tech transformation. I might have had a digital camera then, but being able to email a photo wasn’t yet common enough to be assumed to be possible or convenient for everyone. Just the fact that it was an 800 number and not an email for customer service says a lot. I’m reminded of watching the first Scream movie recently, where cell phones existed, but were rare enough that having one fall out of character’s pocket made them immediately suspicious. A detail that would be totally inconsequential today.

I too liked it better than I thought I would. It felt like a classic Ray Bradbury story.