The Stand (by King), The Stormlight Archive (by Brandon Sanderson), and The Player Of Games by Ian M. Banks are excellent.

I also liked Yesteryear by Caro Burke, but it gave off similar vibes to the video game called “Omori” and the nonfiction book called Educated by Tara Westover. All three are not happy stories, lol.

I’m currently reading through the Stormlight Archive series and I’m currently waiting on copies of the third book to become available at the library. It can’t come soon enough!

Edit: I’ve also read through a number of books on diseases and Ebola just before the current outbreak happened. If you like virology and that sort of thing, lmk :)

I’m sure it will, haha

Thank you! I might try replacing the PSU when it’s in the budget. More likely, I will eventually do a whole system replacement when the CPU and GPU (and by extension, the mobo, PSU and ram)

That ought to clear up the problem ;)

Necro post, but I bought it in summer of 2021! It’s not terribly old.

Diatomaceous Earth (DE) ravages them too. Apply outside/don’t breathe it in. Once it’s in the soil, it will stay there for quite awhile and offers long lasting protection.

It cuts up the bugs!

If the index cost $1000 without a battery, storage, memory and a SoC in 2019, I can’t imagine the frame is going to be anything below $1,500 with 2026 pricing.

If you have 100k saved in liquid cash, you definitely need to be investing that in broad scale index funds. Keeping it liquid means inflation is going to be eating away at your money over time, which is really not good. The whole market is pretty out of balance due to AI, but it’s better to get in now rather than trying to wait and see. You have time to recover from market crashes, just don’t panic sell if the market crashes.

If financial stuff isn’t your thing, you can also save for retirement in prefabbed vehicles called Target-Date Funds. These are kinda annoying as they have a decent amount of fees, but you basically set a retirement goal date, and they will automatically rebalance more and more conservatively over time. However, you are at a bit of a disadvantage if you start at 43. I’d recommend saving aggressively if you can afford to.

Renting vs buying is always a thing, and it highly depends where you live. Having money for a down payment is good, but I’d consider what 100k invested right now would do for you until you are 80 vs what a house would do for you instead. 40 years of interest could be better than a significant debt load, even with several market crashes.

Fwiw, if you don’t have a spouse or kids, I don’t really see much value in a house. Rent a cheap one bed and laugh all the way to the bank when a water pipe breaks and you don’t have to cover 75k in water damage.

I got a Motorola Stylus 5g 2024 for $250. There’s probably newer now, but it’s a decent device with a headphone jack, large battery, SD card slot, and a stylus. It feels similarly decent to my Z fold 4, which was surprising. I thought it would be laggy.

Yeah, I dropped the OC, but it still randomly turns off in Elite Dangerous and in seldom cases, Helldivers 2. Power limiting the GPU to 80% fixes it, annoyingly.

And the CPU OC is actually with an undervolt, and it’s stable so long as the GPU is at 80% of its power envelope. I have no clue what the hell that’s about, haha. It feels like I’m taking crazy pills.

The PSU is a SeaSonic PRIME Platinum 1000 W 80+ Platinum, so I’m really at a loss aside from the 3080Ti pulling massive current for a brief spike.

That sounds great!

Two hard drives, a SATA SSD, an nvme SSD, a standard pump, and a ryzen 5800x OCed. That’s it!

In my case, I have 3x 120 on the 360mm radiator and 2x120 on top for the 240mm radiator, and one exhaust fan that is also 120.

That said, I think you could easily get away with three to five case fans depending on cooling, fan size, etc.

140mm fans can also move a lot of air, and I used those for years. 120s just fit my current and prior case a bit better.

Looks cool! I hope they release a slider, someday. I miss my 00s era slider.

Does Europe have fabs? Or are they purely reliant on Asia and the US fabs?

Another great fan are the Phanteks T30s (120mm), if you have room. They are thicker than normal fans, but are about as quiet as Be Quiet fans, while moving tons of air.

You just need to make sure that your case has clearance for them. They are absolutely cracked on thick radiators and exhaust fans. I use them on custom water-cooling builds, and the loudest sound is coil whine, not fans.

https://phanteks.com/product/t30-120/

I agree on the PSU. Nothing is worse than continually buying PSUs because voltage spikes cause the PC to draw too much power. My 3080ti makes my 1,000w seasonic occasionally turn off, which is incredibly annoying.

For me, it wasn’t that, but the ribbon cable inside. A 20 cent part broke, but Samsung won’t allow techs to fix that. Their “fix” is to replace the hinge, inner, and outer screens, a $600 part. Maddening, considering the cable can be fixed.

I wish I had this for pollen when I’m out biking in spring.

I always vote, local, state, and federal. I would never vote for candidates who specifically are out to destroy things, or do austerity measures. I also don’t vote by party, but by values.

Because few people vote in my area, my votes have enormous impacts on society at large, which feels uniquely powerful.

I love the woods a lot, so I voted for a candidate that wanted to preserve them. My singular vote alone counted as 2% of the entire state, and the pro-Muir candidate won. And that was me alone, I also talked to friends and family about voting, which they did.

It’s cool, but $2,000 is way too expensive, especially if it has issues and can’t last 5-6 years at least. My Samsung Z fold broke a few years in, and the cost to repair exceeded buying a replacement phone.