I wrote/played an instrumental for my mom and she didn’t like it, despite it being high quality and well practiced. Not in a mean way or anything, I just don’t think it’s a good gift in retrospect and it wasn’t her thing. And if you generate it with AI, it might seem effortless/cheap on top of that.

Everyone is different, but I think people like having something in their hands, like a work of art, or a written letter, while a song is more abstract than that.

I personally use Lemmy for 2 things really, tech/foss/privacy news & discussion, and as a social media replacement (memes). When I used to be on the crappy socials, I would only really use them for memes, and left when I started to care more about privacy rights. The very first community I followed was 196 when they migrated away from reddit, so it was essentially what I came here for initially, and then found that the whole platform was miles better for discussion as well.

I love doing this in my TRPGs. Nine out of ten times an event was memorable was because of a horrible failure rather than a successful win. My table eats it up. I wish more games did this too

I’ve read through quite a few cookbooks and these are my favorites per use-case:

General Purpose: The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America
Culinary Basics: Basics with Babish by Andrew Rea
Food Science & Ingredients: On Food & Cooking by Harold McGee
Equipment: Gear by Alton Brown
Baking: Professional Baking by Wayne Gilssen
Flavor Combinations: The Flavor Matrix by Nik Sharma
Grilling: Arnie Tex by Arnie Segovia
Chinese: The Breath of a Wok by Grace Young
Indian: The Best Ever Indian Cookbook by Mridula Baljekar and others
Thai: Sabai by Pailin Chongchitnant
Vintage: The Settlemennt Cook Book
YouTuber Cookbook: Binging with Babish by Andrew Rea
Celebrity Cookbook: From Crook to Cook by Snoop Dogg (it actually has really good recipes believe it or not)

I would unironically buy & use this 👀

A lot of people are surprised that pizza places don’t use gloves, but the health depatment only requires them with ready to eat (RTE) foods, (think salads, fresh fruit, etc) or with already cooked products. Pizzas are usually cooked around 800°F (425°C) so any bacterial contaminants on the food before cooking are obliterated in the oven

Yesterday’s Muse is one of my favorite bookstores! I wasn’t in Rochester for too long but I got to stop by there. So cozy and they have a lot of stuff to look at. I specifically remember finding a biography about Teddy Roosevelt there, which was published in 1904 when he was president.

Seal on FDroid has a download playlist option. It works on everything I’ve thrown at it

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A lot of them are actually just re-purposed leather or pleather from jackets I find at swap meets and thrift stores. I also occasionally get scrap leather from my dads friend who owns a ranch

Anki is what I use; it’s solid, simple, and tracker-free. It’s also on FDroid

I bind my own books using fiberboard and leather, and wood glue has always worked for me. My oldest book is around 9 years old and it is still going strong

Most of the arguments I have seen against it are ethos based, which imo is valid considering privacy involves a lot of trust in the company itself. Brave has had a bad track record with doing shady things (def the crypto part) but also things like blocking ads and replacing it with their own, and leaking TOR DNS records among other shady practices/mistakes. Plus on top of that it is based on chromium (maintained by Google) which for some might be a pro or a con.

More examples off the top of my head:
Express VPN : Mullvad VPN
Brave Browser : Librewolf
Firefox Mobile : Iceraven
IOS : GrapheneOS
“Hardened” Windows : Qubes OS
Steam : GOG
Telegram : Matrix
WhatsApp : SimpleX
RCS : XMPP
Bitcoin : Monero

Same here, been using Xbox series controllers on Linux for about 2 years, no problem. Never bothered to update the firmware.

Same, 80% of my gaming was on older releases. The only game I played released in 2025 was an indie TD game called Dungeon Warfare III, mostly because I played and loved I and II.

For real. The 3rd party purge in 23 is what got me to explore Lemmy, and I’m still here today. Reddit UI is unusable

007 games are great hidden gems. Everyone knows Goldeneye, but Nightfire, Everything or Nothing, and From Russia with Love are all amazing spy shooters. Hopefully this one gets the same magic

Vegetarian sushi comes to mind. Sometimes I even prefer it to sushi with fish when I’m in the mood; it’s crisp and refreshing when done right. If you use good quality nori and rice vinegar you’ll get that oceanic flavor you’re looking for without any fish.

100% agree. Politics is very much a label and judge arena. It’s sad that the American Right has claimed the libertarian label and the gadsden flag, seeing that their authoritarian ideology couldn’t be further away from the real meanings of either actual libertarian philosophy or the flag itself.

Real libertarianism in my opinion is closer to the writings of John Locke than it is to the current American Right. It’s sad that it’s been twisted to be seen in that way, and consequently hated that way too.