u/irreducible1

I was fixing my toilet today, and it got me thinking about how different my experience was from what my dad's would have been.

I went on YouTube and ChatGPT, figured out what was wrong, drove to a big-box hardware store, found the replacement part myself, and checked out at the self-service register. Problem solved. I didn't need to talk to another human being at any point.

My dad didn't have that option. If something broke, he'd go to the local hardware store and explain the problem to the people working there. Sometimes the owner was the person behind the counter. They'd talk through what was happening, suggest a part, maybe explain how to install it. He did this over and over throughout his life, and eventually he built relationships with those people.

That's what struck me. Technology has made us dramatically more capable and independent. I can solve problems my dad might have needed someone else's expertise to solve. I have access to practically unlimited information, and I don't have to wait for a store to open or depend on someone else's availability.

But that independence has come at the cost of social isolation. Some of the inconvenience we eliminated was actually doing something important for us. We used to have all these little reasons to interact with other people. You had to ask someone for directions. You talked to the person behind the counter. You knew your neighbors because you actually encountered them. You saw coworkers because you had to physically go to work. You developed relationships partly because everyday life repeatedly put you in the same places with the same people.

We've optimized almost all of that away. We can shop without talking to anyone. Work without seeing anyone. Get information without asking anyone. Have food delivered. Fix things with YouTube. Talk to AI. Entertainment comes directly to our homes. And yet we're increasingly feeling loneliness and social isolation. I know I do.

I'm not arguing that the past was better. Technology has given us incredible freedom. But it's come at a price: human connection.

I got notified it's available in my area and I locked in a lifetime price beforehand so I'd be getting the incentive.

So I just watched the whole thing for the first time (late to the party) and I can't get the finale out of my head.

In Buddhism the bodhisattva is someone who reaches enlightenment but instead of just staying in that state, goes back into the world to share what they found. They don't check out, they re-engage. That's Don at the end.

Leonard's monologue at the retreat is the breakthrough. Don finally hears someone else describe exactly how he's felt his entire life, invisible, unloved, disconnected and realizes he's not uniquely broken. He's just being human. Something cracks open in him in that moment.

But he doesn't stay on the cliff. He goes back to work and writes the Coke ad. And not just any ad, but an ad about universal human connection and belonging. The exact thing he spent seven seasons unable to feel himself.

Just like the bodhisattva doesn't escape the world. He re-enages with and serves it. I doubt that's what Weiner was thinking specifically but it's what I got from that episode.

Or, it could just be that Leonard's refrigerator analogy was the best pitch Don ever heard and it inspired him to go back into advertising.

Anyhow, I slept on this show for years and it's now one of my top 3 favorites.

I'm trying to get my 13 year old a gaming pc and I've spent a lot of time researching the specs but am struggling getting decent information about the WiFi situation. Unfortunately, Ethernet will not be available. I found everything I was looking for in this pre-owned machine but it only gets WiFi 5. Would that present any issues with the gaming experience itself?

Specs:

RTX 4060 8GB

Ryzen 5 5600X

32GB DDR4 RAM

1TB NVMe SSD

ASUS Prime B550M-A motherboard

Windows 11

Right now he plays games like Fortnite, Warzone, Valorant, GTA, Minecraft, Apex, etc. at high settings.

PC has been taken care of and is in great condition. Just don't want to have the wifi be a bottleneck.

I've been lifting in gyms my entire adult life and this place takes gym etiquette and lights it on fire.

The machine-hogging is on another level. People parking it for 10+ minutes, knocking out a few half-assed reps every couple minutes, then their face in their phone the rest of the time. It's more like a recliner with a cable attachment rather than an exercise machine.

And the half of the benches are just storage units now. Apparently the lockers, whose entire purpose is holding your stuff, aren't good enough, so your water bottle and keys need to live on a bench someone's back sweat just soaked into. Newsflash: the floor is probably cleaner. But I guess bending down might cause you to overtrain.

This place is pathetic.

It makes total sense to me that all the individual forms are not inherently real and are something that the whole universe is doing, like a wave is something the whole ocean is doing, to use a Watts metaphor. But it's so interesting how, at the same time, we sure get hung up on these forms, including our own. We miss our pets when they die, we fall in love, we get taken in by all the characters putting on the show.

My 2022 Honda CRV has an oil life clock which gives you a % of life left in the oil. My mechanic said I should ignore it and just change the oil at regular intervals of 5k miles. He also said my oil looked really dark when he changed it and even the brand new oil looked unusually dark. But there's no other issues with the car and it runs perfectly.

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Curious what the community here thinks about this.

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Ignore Honda's oil life meter?

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Is dark color in freshly changed oil concerning?

I purchased a product through Amazon for approximately $400 that was missing multiple parts needed for assembly. Following guidance from an Amazon customer service representative, I contacted the seller through Amazon's messaging system to resolve the issue.

The seller promptly shipped replacement parts.

After the product was assembled, I discovered another significant issue with it that made one of its features unusable. I provided the seller with a video demonstrating the problem.

The seller responded by offering to send me yet again, a replacement part. But I declined this offer because replacing the part would have required disassembling the product that I had already spent considerable time assembling.

The seller replied that they understood and voluntarily offered a full refund for the product due to the numerous issues I had experienced, which I didn't request. However I thanked them and told them I appreciate the gesture.

I then received an email from Amazon stating that they cancelled the refund because I reported that I didn't receive the item but the carrier confirmed delivery of the shipment. I never reported the item not delivered. Only that the package was missing parts. The email also noted the last few returns that they've processed for me and said that they're warning me I may be in violation of their terms.

These were all approved returns. I don't get the issue. Is Amazon not wanting people to take advantage of free returns that sellers offer? That's one of the only reasons why I would even shop at Amazon to begin with. I referenced Amazon's terms about refunds and didn't see anything about a limit on requesting refunds. And why are they claiming I reported a an item not delivered when they could easily see that never happened and by referencing my call history with customer service and the messaging history between me and the seller?

Hi, I’m trying to connect TorBox to StremThru and my API key is being rejected as invalid. I copied the API key directly from my TorBox account (external apps section), no spaces or formatting.

Other add-ons accept the key, but StremThru keeps rejecting it. Anyone got a solution?