fiat_lux

fiat_lux, 13 hours ago

Covid amplified mine hard-core and was the reason i sought diagnosis. I've heard others have experienced similar but I have no idea if this is a widespread thing, and it will be years before research attempts to check. It makes sense though, given the serotonin changes and the way neurotransmitters interact and regulate one another

fiat_lux, 1 day ago

I fucking love this so much. Great work.

fiat_lux, 3 days ago

I was excited to see squirrels, lightning bugs and a racoon in the US.

When people come to Australia they obviously want to see kangaroos, koalas and platypus and quokka. Koalas are very rare to see in the wild, and a visit to a zoo will score you a sleeping ball on a branch. Kangaroos are frequently roadkill if you go outside the city. Quokka require a long trip to a really remote location. You'll also almost never see a platypus, even the ones at the zoo you might catch a water ripple at best.

But if you're headed to Sydney city, guaranteed you'll spot the almighty and much maligned "bin chicken", our Australian white ibis. Often not quite white from the bins. At night they serenade you with their collective honking from their tree, which can be easily spotted by the masses of white poop underneath. And you'll see fruit bats in the evening. Hopefully not the daytime corpses hanging from electrical cables while they slowly rot, but that's not altogether unlikely either, unfortunately.

fiat_lux, 3 days ago

If you want to see a croc, just go walking near the shallow water of the top half of the country's coast. You won't see the croc for long, and it will be the last thing you ever see, but it will be up close and very personal.

Seriously though, you don't go to see salt water crocodiles in the wild or even go near any body of water on the northern coast. If you can see one with the naked eye in the wild, you're already too close. They're extremely fast, extremely aggressive, and the males get up to 6m / 20ft long and 1000kg / 2200lb. They are very much a zoo only thing.

fiat_lux, 3 days ago

The bin chickens are my kin, I'm in the small minority here who appreciate them.

And yeah, the flying foxes are a surprise for most foreigners. They're also pretty big and often fly low at dusk, so they can be slightly startling too, even though they're just adorable fuzzy harmless nectar drinkers. It's a pity they screech too, it might be easier to reassure non-locals that they're not dangerous.

People are also often surprised to see all the other Sydney city wildlife and how much of it there is, especially rainbow lorrikeets. Everyone loves the lorrikeets, but people from the northern hemisphere are especially awestruck when they see them. It's understandably almost a little surreal to have such brightly colored parrots hanging out in the middle of a city, if you're someone who comes from a city that is just pigeons and sparrows.

fiat_lux, 3 days ago

Seeing a chipmunk was the same for me. And goddamn are they cute, I had no idea they were so small and precious. Alvin and the chipmunks are monstrosities by comparison.

fiat_lux, 2 days ago

Oh no, i got to see them. This was a decade ago, and I was told even then that there used to be many more. I was happy to see any at all though, I had only ever seen them in movies and they almost seemed mythical. They are pretty magical, it's very sad to hear they're almost gone.

fiat_lux, 2 days ago

Which kind? We've got bunches. The sulphur crested are the most famous, and they are great but can be vandals

fiat_lux, 3 days ago

I am so fucking jealous right now. I have always wanted to see an aurora

fiat_lux, 4 days ago

Yep, got a Samsung evo 870 in there, still going strong for like a decade. The HGST spinner I have is also pretty longlived. Weren't they bought out by WD though? I feel like I remember hearing that the quality has declined severely.

Having said that, I do also have a WD .... black? In there that has also lasted. I will check out gold though, and the mx500

backblaze drive failure report

Excellent, this is what I was hoping to find again but i couldn't remember the name. I also assumed it would be paywalled after all these years... if I could even get google to deliver the link.

Thanks a heap, you've been extremely helpful!

fiat_lux, 4 days ago

That's probably it, thanks. Good to know it's just a firmware issue too

fiat_lux, 4 days ago

I've always considered doing a raid array but the cheapness of remote servers these days makes it feel like overkill combined with being expensive and centralized. I just have an external enclosure and a mess of duplicate files across smaller outdated drives at the moment. It's not ideal, but that's ADHD for you.

fiat_lux, 6 days ago

There's a person who has been living a mostly normal life with 90% of his brain missing. Perhaps we could just re-examine society's ableism and how we design our systems of government to allow single points of failure instead? RFK Jr. has terrible opinions, but also had them before having a literal brain worm.