This is fascinating stuff. Is there anywhere where more of this kind of thing is written down?

Okay, this pretty much helps, but now I don’t know what a VMA or an SNL is.

I’m going to go with “Viking Marauder Awards”, a yearly event where people re-enact the sacking of the Lindesfarne Monastery etc, via the medium of song and dance (and pyrotechnics).

and “Sitting Near Larry”, a weekly TV programme where a bloke called Larry sits down somewhere, and then semi-famous people come and sit near him and perform things. Larry has never heard of any of them, so gives them well-meaning but slightly patronising advice. Larry is just off-screen in the image shown above.

Sorry, I might have misremembered the exact process (this was probably three or four years ago), though no need for the nasty aggressive attitude (though my apologies if I offended you somehow).

Maybe it was version upgrades (e.g 18.04 to 20.04) instead of updates, or clean installs/new installs/reinstalls? I expect it was some of one and some of another.

At the time I used to (casually) maintain a bunch of Ubuntu computers for a few community projects, small organisations and older people who live nearby. I don’t remember the specifics, I just remember the phone calls of “the printer isn’t working” “Linux has broken my USB pen” etc, and the fix being “remove the snap version and install the deb version”. It caused a lot of problems.

If you were running a previous version of Ubuntu, where you had deb packages which worked, over the course of a few updates, they replaced half of your programs with snaps (without telling you), which were unable to see additional hard drives, USB pens, printers, scanners or cameras, couldn’t use plug-ins, couldn’t use 3rd party templates or presets, and didn’t respect any system settings for fonts/text size, icon placement and so on.

Snaps were fine for “aisleriot solitaire” or “calculator” (assuming you didn’t mind a 5 minute loading time) or other things which didn’t need to interact with any file or system or device, but for actual programs for people trying to do work? Bag of shite.

Now, I imagine some years later they must have fixed some of this rubbish, and I read recently they might have finally done something about permissions, but no, they didn’t ask anyone before they swapped working programs for completely broken snaps. They forced it on their existing users, and some of us bear grudges.

From where I lived, just the lager and cider together was snakebite, and with blackcurrant it was a “snakebite and black” - but I think there was a lot of regional variety (in the UK, at least).

I have heard lager/cider/blackcurrant called a snakebite before though (I remember it causing a disagreement in the pub) - but I’ve also heard it called a “diesel” (which elsewhere was something mixed with guinness). I’m pretty sure you sometimes got different things in different pubs in the same town.

I suppose pre-internet, we were just relying on the drunk people ordering things to decide what they wanted to call stuff (“what was that purple mixed drink called that made me throw up on my own shoes?”).

Mix rice up with tomato sauce, melt a bit of mozzarella cheese in, some slices of pepperoni in it, sprinkle in some basil and oregano… check behind you that nobody can see you commit culinary crimes… delicious.

To (controversially) go one step further, all unsweetened carbohydrate bases are interchangeable.

You can put pasta topping on a pizza, you can put pizza topping on rice, you can put toastie fillings on a potato waffle and it always ends up nice.

Pubs in the UK used to (or still do?) have blackcurrant and lime cordial for this.

“Lager and Lime”, “Lager and Blackcurrant” and “Cider and Blackcurrant” were pretty common 20-30 years ago. A shot of cordial (concentrated juice), then filled up with lager beer.

There was also orange cordial behind the bar, but nobody ever drank “Lager and orange”. I believe it was some form of crime.

It’s a bit weird, isn’t it?

Technically, the navigational tool is “a compass” and the geometric draw-a-circle tool is “a pair of compasses” (I don’t know why) - but in general use, people just call both of them “a compass”.

We’ve had hundreds of years to rename one of them, but for some reason haven’t bothered.

“YOU. THE ONE WHO IS MOVING NOW.”

Are you The Gatekeeper from the tv/boardgame Atmosfear?

Me “Hi, is that, umm… Phones, number four, uhhhh?”

Phones4u “Haha, yes, but It’s pronounced ‘Phones For You’”

Me “Oh, it’s it a wrong number? I’ve got it written down here, it’s a number four, not a word ‘for’ f-o-r, and it’s not the word ‘you’, but just a letter U on its own, which is pronounced ‘uh’”

Phones4u “yes, that’s how we write it”

Me “Why? Why didn’t you do it properly? It’s just like that argument with the 90s boyband Fiveive all over again.”

Etc etc

Is it a weird guilt thing?

I hated that song when the programme was new, but now I feel guilty about it, because someone was trying their best, and they wrote, re-wrote, edited and worked on that song and for every instrument and vocal, someone practised and practised and performed, and even if it wasn’t quite to my taste, it doesn’t mean it was bad, and I picture them still crying themselves to sleep at night, twenty years later, going “everyone hates the song I did for Star Trek Enterprise and now I hate myself”, so I make sure to watch the full intro so I don’t hurt their feelings.

That’s what everyone else does too, right?

Here they still exist - they just make you pay if you want a new one. I (and seemingly most people) use them all the time still, but I guess more people reuse them more times now. I’m quite happy to pay 30p for one when the old ones get used up. I think they’re a bit sturdier than they used to be too - so less likely for the handles to snap when you’ve still got a mile to walk home.

I guess it mostly cut down on unwanted ones getting littered etc. Now they’re valuable, all the more reason to hoard them in a cupboard in the kitchen.

Where you are it sounds like they stopped existing - what do you put your food shopping in? Do you still have a thousand left that you previously hoarded?

I think technically it’s both, but it’s mainly focused on the former - the shop and supermarket ones. You now pay 20 or 30p for them - previously when they were free, they would sometimes force a bag on you, even if you didn’t want one (I guess to walk around advertising their shop).

Throwing pretend milkshakes at a pretend Nigel Farridge is disrespectful.

We should be burning effigies of him on bonfires.

“Hmm…”, said the sword, quizzically. “The scriptures on those are a little vague in the translation the Blacksmith had”.

The sword paused for a moment to think, its metal shifting subtly in a manner which could vaguely be described as coy.

“Maybe…”, stuttered the sword, “you could show me what that means”.

“Hahaha!”, said the sword. “I will twist your mind until you’re wearing mixed fabrics, having pre-marital sex, and using the Lord’s name in vain!”, it cackled.

“I’ll even make you skip church on the sabbath!”.

I miss lovely, earthy, warm, friendly chocolatey Brownbuntu.

I always felt purplebuntu was a bit vile.

In combination with the exercise it sounds like you’re doing anyway, have you tried a bit of Yoga and a bit of listening to meditative sounds before/during bed/sleep/end of day? You may have tried similar things already, but if not, maybe worth a go? It’s not going to pass/waste time as such, but might put you into a better position to stop your mind racing with negativity, especially in that crucial pre-sleep phase.

Particularly looking at “Yoga for Anxiety” or “Yoga for Mental Health” type things, moreso than general strength and fitness Yoga. You’ll find a bunch online. You might find something like this Yoga Healthcare Alliance 10 Week Course works for you (it’s promoted by the UK’s NHS for some conditions). It’s focusing on basic de-stressing, de-tensing muscles, breathing focus, and may help you feel calm and relaxed - which may give you a good nights sleep - which could potentially do wonders for beginning to recover.

I’d also suggest combining it with some “sleep headphones” - a fabric headband with some really flat headphone speakers inside it - then listen to a combination of “meditation for anxiety” or “8 hours deep sleep ambient soundscape” type things whilst you lie there.

Ideally you’d do the Yoga sat on your bed, then drop straight into something like “a nice man tells you you’re great and everything will be fine” followed by some sort of “inner peace meditation that lasts 8 hours or longer”. Obviously, you’ll find your own preferred voices/sounds. I’ve also used white noise style “starship engine sound” or “on a night train” audio.

If you watch them on your phone with “Newpipe”, you can save them as videos or just as audio files - which you can then set up as playlists in VLC. No point in downloading the same thing every night.

This whole set of things might not work for you at all, but if you’re up for hours anyway, what do you have to lose?

Personally, I found this process helped me massively on my way out of a similar patch (combined with exercising more, quitting caffeine for a while, CBT therapy - it was a multiple angle approach).

Regardless, I wish you luck and pass you my best wishes in your recovery.

I might be wrong, but wasn’t Movit just for timeline preview, and hadn’t worked properly for quite a few versions and now you just use the NVENC/VAAPI etc export profiles to export with GPU?