washing your pillowcase/bedding often makes a big difference

Expanding on this… put a fresh, clean hand towel over your pillow every night for about a week or so. Never sleep on the same towel unless it’s been washed first. You’ll be surprised how quickly your face acne clears up. Especially if you regularly wash your face.

Turns out, spending hours smearing your face oils on your pillow every night, then sleeping on the same pillow for days/weeks at a time, causes your face to break out. Especially in your teen years, when your body is changing and your hormones are on overdrive.

I never had face acne as a teenager, but I also slept with a hand between my cheek and the pillow. I always had super soft pillows as a kid and I would sink deep into them. I felt like I was drowning in them when I slept on my side, so I kept a hand or two under my head so I could keep the pillowcase away from my mouth and breathe easier in my sleep. Turns out, that kept my face relatively clean.

Plus, taking a daily shower helped me stay mostly acne free throughout my teen years. I did get a little “backne,” but it was mostly in the spots I couldn’t reach well to wash in the shower. Buying a sponge on a stick helped clear that up.

S’all good. I spent 20 years in the US Air Force. I don’t know a damn thing about airplanes. There are plenty of civilians who have way more knowledge than I do on the subject.

I worked an IT job in the military. 90% of my job was spent sitting in dark, cold server rooms, about as far removed from the planes as one could get.

From my time overhearing people talk about planes at work, I think I’ve figured out most of the letter designators? F = fighter, B = bomber, C = cargo, A = attack (how that’s different from fighter, I dunno).

I rode in a C-130 on my way to a deployed base in Africa once. That’s the only military plane I ever got to fly in; the Air Force put me on commercial flights for everywhere else they sent me. Even on my deployment to Iraq; they wanted us to blend in with civilian planes so we were less likely to be shot down. We took a commercial plane directly to our base in the country.

I loved being in the Air Force (definitely best branch of the military, I dodged some serious bullets (sometimes literally) with that random selection of a branch), but I never had an interest in the planes and they were unimportant to my job. As long as our computer systems were online, the pilots could communicate. That’s about as involved as I ever got.

It was written by Andy Weir, the same guy who wrote The Martian, which went on to be a successful film starring Matt Damon.

Similar storyline; guy is stranded alone in space, has to science the shit out of everything in order to survive and make it home, despite odds of survival being practically nil.

Real science and math were implemented, not “Hollywood science” to drive a plot forward. Andy Weir did extensive research while writing his novels to make them as accurate as possible to real-world science, which is how he got noticed for his works and became a famous sci-fi author.

Minus the sandstorm on Mars. He admitted that weather patterns aren’t strong enough on Mars to actually generate a huge sandstorm on the planet, but that’s the only suspension of disbelief in the whole The Martian film.

But cloning human tissue for food? That’s real science, even if it’s a bit gross. But when survival is on the line, you do what you gotta do. Too bad he didn’t have any potatoes on hand…

That film was absolutely bonkers (in the best way), and I watched it in Norwegian with English subtitles. Even knowing what’s going on, it was still trippy.

I love how the film devolves into a musical at the end about the benefits (and necessity!) of abortion. Definitely would have enraged like half of America if it was shown here.

My wife and I just watched it. It surprised us how good it was. We’re both older millennials who grew up in the era of the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon, although I didn’t watch it much as a kid and my wife had never seen it. It was still accessible for both of us, not knowing most of the lore of the original.

We both cheered when the 4 Non Blondes’ song, What’s Up started playing (the meme song that the Internet just calls “HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA”). Hilarious that they found a way to slip it in that was plot relevant, not just “Hey, here’s your meme reference!”

The film was surprisingly smart and witty. Prince Adam (He-Man) himself had his smart moments, but was mostly a himbo, which my wife found hilarious. She said it’s the perfect film for her and her girlfriends to enjoy together over some wine. There were a lot of tropes with women in old sword & sorcery films, but gender-reversed. He-Man is eye candy, kind of dumb, when he “suits up,” it’s extremely revealing armor that doesn’t actually cover or protect his body, just shows lots of sexy skin, etc.

Also, I loved how they explained the cringey names of all He-Man’s friends from the old cartoon. They were apparently nicknames he gave them when he was like 10 years old, based on their abilities. Even they thought they were weird names to be called, but kinda leaned into them by the end. Even the name “He-Man” was kinda cringe, but explained that it was the manliest man name 10-yr old Adam could come up with.

We solidly enjoyed it. Easily a 9/10 in my book, and I used to review films for a while. This film actually made me consider starting up my old film review blog again.

I saw the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. It’s literally just large stacked stones. Nothing holding them together but gravity.

(Also, the pyramids are right next to the city of Giza. Every photo makes them look like some exotic ruins deep in the desert, but there’s literally modern civilization and plant life everywhere, if you turn the camera in pretty much any other direction.)

I toured some smaller pyramids further out in the desert. Some of them had literally started to collapse because they weren’t built with perfectly shaped stones, or the thousand of years of weathering had worn them away until they didn’t sit evenly anymore and slid off their base.

The Great Pyramid of Giza is only still standing because the stones are absolutely massive. They probably need another million years or so before they’re eroded enough to start collapsing.

Interestingly enough, the original Great Pyramid of Giza was covered with a solid, smooth, white limestone outer shell, with a gold cap at the top. You could technically slide all the way down its sides, no steps to climb up or anything.

But people have plundered and looted so much over the past thousands of years before we started preserving them, that all that’s left is the ragged, rough underside of the pyramid. The entire outer shell is long gone.

I retired young, at 38 years old. I’m not wealthy, just broken from 20 years of military service and receiving enough pay and benefits to cover my basic needs without having to work.

Do I want to be busy? Heck yeah! My days are so packed with stuff to do, I need to keep a schedule so I don’t miss out on things going on in my life. I’m booked solid for at least a few years out on projects, events, socializing, and general fun activities.

Do I want to go back to work though? Fuck no. I gave up my personal freedom and a handful of my basic human rights to work for the govt for 2 decades. It’s my time now.

I enjoy not having to wake up at god-awful hours of the morning. I enjoy not having to dress up and go to a job, where I’m stuck until a certain time of day regardless of my productivity level. I enjoy deciding each morning what my day is going to be like, or choosing not to face the day and just veg out in bed all day.

Most everyone wants to be busy. Most people want to live though, not work. I achieved that dream and get to live the rest of my life enjoying things. I just had to sacrifice my mind and body to “earn” it.

I think the reason there are so many bird designs is because the people on the bills don’t represent every country in the EU. Some nations feel left out. But (most) everyone enjoys birds!

I was exempt from jury duty while serving in the US military, but at one particular base I was stationed at, they put me on a list of potential jury members for any military trials held in the area.

My boss got selected to sit in on a trial, but I never got called. He was super excited about it. He said it was a fascinating case and he couldn’t wait to spill the details once the trial concluded.

To this day, I’ve never been called on. I kinda hope it happens one day. I’m retired now and have nothing better to do.

I was hoping someone would get the reference. 😉

Europe is currently redesigning the Euro currency. This is one of the proposed new designs. You can check out the 10 proposed designs that Europeans are voting on here. OP’s image is the back side of design C.

There’s also a survey at that link where you can give your opinion on all the designs. Anyone can fill it out; you don’t need to be a European.

You can check their comment history. They’ve confirmed in other threads when called out, and they also just replied to my comment above, confirming it. Granted, they gave a relatively sarcastic reply, but I don’t see any /s, so…

They’re making an effort to track down and counter every negative thread about Tesseract, then acting like a chud when people counter them, so whether they’re the actual dev or not is kinda irrelevant at this point. They’re 100% in support of Tesseract’s ban list and they’re working tirelessly against everyone trying to make that information publicly known.

FYI, you’re replying to the dev. This is one of their alt accounts. They’re attempting damage control on all these threads with it.

I actually have electric number pad locks on both doors. They’re separate locks; the back door has had one for years and I just installed a new door on the front a couple years ago.

So they technically have two separate keys, but we don’t really use the keys. I know the combo to both doors (since it’s my home), but my friends living on the first floor only know the combo to their front door.

I like it because they’re set to always be locked from the outside, so I never have to worry about whether I locked my door or not. If the door shuts, it’s locked. And I don’t need to carry a key around. Just enter the combo and it unlocks for 10 seconds.

Who has front and back doors that are keyed differently?

My house was designed to be a duplex (despite being a single house on a 6-acre country property), so the two floors have their own separate amenities. They only connect with a rickety staircase in the basement. Otherwise, they might as well be two separate apartments.

The house is embedded in a hill, so the first floor walks out at ground level in the front yard and the second floor exits at ground level in the back yard.

My parents used to rent out the first floor when I was a kid, so that door always had a separate lock. Now, I have a buddy and his mother living in the first floor while they’re trying to get back on their feet.

Their house got foreclosed on when they were 95% paid off on their mortgage, so they lost everything. And rentals are way too expensive in my area for them to afford. So they’re staying with me until they can save enough for a home of their own.

I like that they have their own key separate from my floor. I don’t have to worry about them snooping in my home when I’m not around, and vice versa. They get a sense of privacy, knowing that I’m not just gonna walk into their home.

Going from an all-powerful Maiar to a mortal wizard had a hand in that. You can’t stuff phenomenal cosmic powers into an itty-bitty living space. The Maiar tasked with watching over Middle Earth and its inhabitants lost their way when they became mortal because their new fragile bodies couldn’t contain all the knowledge and power of their original form. They basically became “senile” old men, compared to what they once were.

That’s why the two blue wizards wandered off to the east, never to be seen again; Radaghast the Brown ran off to live in the woods with the animals; and Saruman the White easily fell to corruption by Sauron. Only Gandalf the Grey managed to stay on track with their mission, and just barely.

Tell your relatives that this IS the phishing test email. If you click that link, you’re gonna get busted by your IT department.

Never click links (or for that matter, ads) in emails. Always verify the sender first. Not the display name, the actual email address that it was sent from.

If you must go to a link, best to find out what website they’re sending you to (hover over the link for the URL), then type in the main website manually from a web browser.

For example, if you get an email from US Bank (assuming you use them), type “usbank.com” (minus quotation marks) in your browser, then login to your personal bank account on their official website. Don’t trust a link to a bank’s website without typing it yourself. Don’t just copy/paste the full URL from your email either.

Some links, even to legitimate websites, can have tracking data in the URL that gives a lot of info about you, where in the world you’re browsing from, what web browser you’re using, what website, app, or program you clicked the link from, etc. Basically, remove the “&” and everything after it in URLs before loading them in your browser.

These are just a few basics to protect yourself from malicious links. Basically, don’t click any link you don’t recognize and verify with people who send you links. And even then, protect yourself from idiots who forward links without doing their own spot checks. Even your best friends can send you viruses and malware. Heck, that’s how a lot of it spreads across the Internet.

And especially don’t trust your own IT department when they ask you to click links in their emails.

Sincerely,

~A former IT guy

True, but I just refuse to connect my Smart TV to the Internet. It can’t talk to my PC, it just operates as a dumb display for the mini PC.

I plugged a mini PC into my TV, then control it from the couch with a wireless mouse and keyboard. Now I can stream all my favorite Internet shows from a desktop browser. No smart TV required!

Genuinely, thank you for the original. I see this edited into a meme so often, I couldn’t even remember what the original was.