I would say that the first half of the first book was a bit too much LitRPG for my taste. Just felt like reading a videogame.

Just read the entire first book. It’s an easy read. If the first half is annoying, know that it gets better. I almost quit on it halfway through but stuck it out and quickly read all of the other books as well.

Tbh I can’t stand the audiobook. I know a lot of people love it, but can turn some people off entirely.

Heineken 0.0 is not something I’d seek out but it’s widespread enough to be at work events and stuff. It’s fine.

There are better options in grocery stores, so I’d never buy it myself. But I’ve tried a lot of NA beers and there are much worse options.

That’s just the thing with NA though. You have to know which are good, which are fine, and which are disgusting. Unfortunately there’s a wide range in quality - much wider than normal beer.

Yeah the Oktoberfest fest beer they have is terrible, for sure. The Dunkel is decent though.

And some of the other members stuff can be pretty hit or miss. But the standard stuff in stores is generally solid. The Mexican copper one is probably the best imo.

I don’t think so. Haven’t seen anything about that.

I like it a lot. Athletic is the best imo, but even the Heineken and Guinness options are pretty solid.

Germany has a much better NA beer scene than the US though.

I’ve always had this Windows issue you described with ThinkPads. Never had a problem with Dells though. Drives me absolutely crazy

I mean sure but it’s the same issue, smaller scale at that point. You slashed the distance, but also the demand.

The big problem is always going to be getting the land anyway

I’m all for high speed rail in the US, but comparing the land area of the two countries is not really that relevant.

China’s network is really focused on about a third of the land area. US could do the same, but the big population hubs are separated and on opposite sides of the country, so it’s less ideal - lot of track to connect the two. It’s like 2-3x the distance to connect LA/NYC vs Chongqing/Shanghai.

China also has 4x the population of the US. So the cost/benefit to build this out is simply much more favorable for china.

Most importantly, China’s autocratic government can clear the red tape to get big projects like this done. Just getting the land rights to build the right track could kill a transcontinental project in the US. But that decision is consolidated in the Chinese government. This cuts time and cost immensely.

Paid by whom? Lmao how completely bizarre.

That’s not true. It’s only a competition if we have a decent chance at winning.

We could switch to Big Gulp sizing?

Yeah I’ve done that in a few cases where python is the better tool for the job (pulling new data, cleaning up in a consistent way, and generating reports), but it’s not a great solution for certain workstreams. Especially if you are collaborating with other people who aren’t tech savvy

Probably. Even the Mac version of Office is slightly shittier.

And it works. I’d love to have a Mac at work, but I absolutely need the windows version of excel to do my job effectively

I’ve tried a bunch of spreadsheet programs. They are all painful to use compared to excel.

Sure, you can type up some basic calcs in LibreOffice or Numbers or whatever, but none of these could replicate the stuff I do daily for work in excel unfortunately.

That said, the lack of suitable alternatives did get me to learn Python for personal use. And that opened up a whole new world for things I do at work too. Things that would have been a headache in excel are a couple lines in Python. It’s great (obviously very different use cases from typical spreadsheets)

I’ve used GIMP in the past. I don’t understand it, but it’s free and can do stuff so I’m not going to complain.

But I’d also say that using/being good at GIMP is solidly not “normal” lol. And being on Lemmy is even less normal, so here we are.

Aeropress would probably be better than a French press in an office setting. More compact and significantly easier to clean

I just use instant at my office though. I rarely use it, but I prefer it to Keurig or the drip machine in our office.

But I mainly just drive in with a cup of coffee from home.

Eh I always end up with fines and they really bother me.

There are definitely quality levels of filter brewing too. From cheap drip machines that don’t get to the right temperature to really fancy drip machines can effectively simulate a pourover.

Just depends what you like really. Would say that a $20 French press setup will almost certainly produce better coffee than a $20 drip machine, but a better comp is a $20 pour over setup imo.

Idk how you are estimating the “coffee equivalent”, but I’ve found that the generic caffeine estimates for a cup of coffee are too low.

Would recommend looking up how much caffeine is in the amount of beans you use. Caffeine extraction is practically 100% in water.

I think typical estimate is 90-100 mg caffeine in a cup of coffee. With my coffee/water ratio, I think it was ~20% higher. And then the mug I use was much much bigger than a “cup”.

Same in the US. It’s called a homestead exemption