u/Any-Manner3292

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I read a comment about someone who appreciated the feel of wood, even though paint, and it got me thinking about organic textures. Personally, I feel that metal knurling is an aggressive, inorganic compromise to the type of organic problem that you start to realize is there when the lettering on your plastic pencil shaft starts wearing away (happened on my Alvin Draft-Matic and Faber-Castell TK Fine Vario, for instance). It got me thinking; while wooden mech pencils exist, how do they hold up? Do they shine and wear or chip away? And imagine a durable, pencil sleeve that was organic, like a kind of soft moss or something. What are the most unique surfaces, preferably organic, perhaps made with some natural washable fibers or fabrics, that you have ever come across? I imagine none is so durable given the ephemeral nature of organics, so maybe we'll have to go back to metal knurling that leaves a callous and sort of fights with the desire of your skin for a steady grip.

My first ever pencil: Graphgear 500. 0.3. Bought in college, as a humanities person, to take notes in books, and occasionally for some math (think, drawing Euclid proofs). At the time, it was a $7 splurge and a total luxury because it was the nicest pencil in the school bookstore. Naturally, I used it so much that it inevitably dropped, and though I fixed the bend once, when I dropped it a second or third time the lead became permanently jammed. Same thing happened with the black 0.5.

Fast forward five years and here's some high/lowlights: a plastic Staedtler in a class brown, gifted by a PhD student at the summer language program: stolen (saw it on my stoner "friend"'s desk). My first Rotring 600: stolen from my first office as a research teaching assistant. I wonder whether pencil security can be considered a durability category.

But even before that, there's the story of my first and only Rapid Pro. Man I used the heck out of that. I bought it with the Amazon gift card I got on my birthday, and justified it with the sale that brought it down to within reach. I actually wished that it was all black which would have been really cool and I tried to cover the red ring near the grip somehow to hide the flashy red. The pencil must have taken it personally because one day it literally snapped in two at the (what I found out was too fragile) plastic ring which held the whole body together. So much for the Rapid Pro.

In college a professor I had, Mr. Perry, used a classic Alvin Draft-Matic in 0.3, the old version by the older yellow color I guess. He had it by his side constantly and that was what he used to write comments on our lab papers that were so razor thin you really had to squint. I decided to buy that one in 0.9, and though the logo and name rubbed off with use, that pen is still chugging years later. Major durability win for the books.

For my next birthday, I precisely instructed folks that I wanted the 0.3 Alvin Draft-Matic, just like Mr. Perry. And that one cracked in my bag. But I loved the knurled grip so darn much that I taped that thing together with scotch and it still works with only part of the grip covered in tape. Superglue didn't work. Now the knurled grip is somewhat dirty as if there's minor rust in the grooves; or maybe that's sticky gunk from the tape. I don't know, but I do I know I'm not abandoning that 0.3 until it finally disintegrates at the half life of the plastic. Still, I'll keep the knurled grip piece as a soothing, tactile meditation amulet.

Today I have more pencils. I'm not quite a collector status but I have recently become invested in the long term durability of pencils and have been looking for an endgame pencil. I am convinced it may not exist. I have a Faber Castell, an old one I pawned off Willhaben in Germany for 3 euros, the green one with a metal grip that has two modes you can twist into: 1) firm lead and 2) a lead saving mode that springs back when you push hard. Frustratingly to my aesthetic sensibilities, the lettering is in the process of wearing off. Finger oils are mightier than the pen, it seems. But it held up and still feels indestructible, the pen itself, at least as indestructible as a pencil can be, lettering aside. It seems over a decade old, as I got it used. Many modern pens are much younger than that.

This leads me to a question of sorts. Like many of you nuts, I have my eyes on the holy grail of "EDC" boys, the rotring 800+. I love the black and the style, and I would use the stylus part too (source: I use generic ballpoint pens that have capacitive stylus tips for screens). Recently, I had the chance to try the 800+ at a fancy shop. Tip wiggle wasn't a problem, but I noticed the pencil came with multiple replacement tips for the stylus part. Hm, that's odd, I thought, but I guess it tracks. I recalled my old Nintendo DS, whose screen was worn in after one too many aggressive rounds of "True Swing Golf DS" and Phantom Hourglass. Some online research later, and I decided the plastic mechanism was too fragile to be a true "buy it for life." I do hope to be proven wrong, but between the people whose 800s were broken by dropping while extended and the ones whose internal mechanism organically cracked, I couldn't determine whether the plastic could last.

I'm holding off on the 800+ still. My fingers are fine for screens and as much as I would like to have one, the anxiety of it breaking is too strong. I wish it were all metal. I wish I knew how to find someone with a Swiss Lathe who could machine a custom metal tube for a rotring 800 durability mod. But if I could do that, then maybe there's better things I could be doing than pining after a mechanical pencil. Or, just maybe, someone will convince me in the comments that unless you're a total clutz, that thing really can last. So, chooms, what'll it be?

I prefer Safari except for logging into Chrome and haven't had issues. Does anyone use other Chromium browsers like Edge, or specifically Vivaldi?

Before you laugh, there's features I like in them (Azure Read Aloud voices in Edge and "Hide All UI" on Vivaldi).

I run Safari on Apple Silicon, but when I was on Windows a long time ago I used Vivaldi because it was the only one that could do the visual customization I want. Like seriously. It's insane that Chrome and Edge don't let you hide all the junk at the top. Honestly, I did use Edge for a while ONLY because of its magnificent Azure "Read Aloud" voices. I navigate text enough that for a while it's worth it.

Now that I have good Apple voices again, I'm looking to Vivaldi. In Vivaldi, a lot of the widgets like some stuff in the panel and the in-built email seem like bloat that I wouldn't wanna use. I figure I can just turn a lot of that off, and I don't mind spending time on the setup to de-bloat and it would be nice to have genuine Chrome extensions back.

Now that I'm on Mac I like Safari because it's fast and lightweight. But I'm feeling the pull to Vivaldi.

I need some words of advice from real people, preferably those who actually made the switch from Safari (not bloated Chrome), and any real downsides or performance issues you had. I use my browser for high-stakes enterprise work. But as you can tell, I'm a tech noob as far as the software side of things.

I don't care about the generic big picture stuff. I want to hear your real stories and real, specific downsides or upsides. I don't have a problem staying with Safari if I'm not 100 percent sure about the switch.

In around 2015, I attended a high school talent show where one kid absolutely lit up the audience. He did a Shakespeare monologue, from what I gather it was Pyramus's death scene from the play within a play in a Midsummer NIght's Dream ("Thus, I die..."). He strutted back and forth on the stage, delivering lines in a rapid-fire, Tudor style pronunciation. From what I gather it was something like Original Pronunciation.

Here's the thing, since then, I have never been able to find a recording of that performance that is anything close that monologue. All the other Shakespeare monologues, particularly of that one, have been bland and in modern, "Received Pronunciation." I need help finding this performance, or if not, then something like it. There has to be someone else who has done the style, as I refuse to believe that only one person at that one talent show I attended is the only one who was able to capture the magic of Shakespeare so. I am not kidding when I say that I am severely let down by every performance of Shakespeare I have seen since. If that kid was "overdoing it," then I felt that every performance I have seen filmed or in person has been "undergoing it" and "under the top." Please help! Thanks!

Personal experience: I just installed the Crossover trial added CX Patch, and downloaded EA Sports PGA Golf (doesn't start) and Battlefront II. I moved the game files directly from the Steam folder in the regular Crossover bottle to the patched bottle and validated the files, and the game ran fine (but only after I set the width at 1920 and height 1080 in the start instructions).

Battlefront 2 is an EA game, but EA golf didn't work, which I've read about. Did anyone have. any luck starting it? It freezes when around 700 megabytes of the application are loaded into RAM. Wondering if there's a quick fix for this just like for Battlefront all I had to do was put the hight to 1080p. I know it's a long shot, but it would be great to play golf on the Mac!