Works perfectly

AliExpress is really good and reliable now. I get plenty of stuff off there. Linus Tech Tips even recommends it as one of the best places to pick up a bargain on a desktop CPU. They give you a refund if items are undelivered. I look for items with plenty of pictures and detailed descriptions and picture reviews, and I’ve never been disappointed.

The other thing is that lots of deals end up being discussed on HotUKDeals.com and forum users will report back (e.g. cuing a Crucial NVME drive for £30 and posting speed tests and that it’s the real thing).

These plans for tariffs are going to affect Americans badly though. eBay is recommended in that case.

Pocketability is the biggest bonus for me. This doesn’t replace my Steam Deck, it supplements my gaming by making games available in situations where I can’t carry around a giant Deck.

The other issue is that my 4 yr old son has really gotten into gaming (Mario Odyssey) and takes the Deck off me a lot of the time 😄

You’re right, ergonomics aren’t great, but I’m fine with that because it prioritises portability. Better ergonomics can be added with the grip attachment. Although I have giant hands and I’m OK playing extended periods without grips.

Yes, Switch Emulation. The emulation app is called Sudachi (works better than Yuzu).

It’s going to be served by a white faced clown holding a red balloon.

Your parenting mojo

But anything that helps you understand your brain and personal issues better will also help with parenting. So also try:

The Happiness Lab

Hidden Brain

School of Life (YouTube channel)

People online tend to recommend therapy to everyone,and I’m sure therapy is great if you can access it. But you can read, listen, watch, learn and improve through self reflection…and heal wounds you never knew about.

The thing I’m really missing is finding a good dad group or parent group to join. I would love some peer support.

I’m good with my parents. They have their normal human flaws, which I accept happily.

Are you a parent yourself? It’s really difficult. You can’t help but bring a lot of baggage. There’s a podcast I lesten to, to improve parenting that runs a workshop called “taming your triggers”. Having children exposes a lot of wounds and personal baggage. It’s really difficult to recognise and address those on yourself as a parent. Your description of expectations from a parent are so idealised, I would argue that there are very few individuals in the world who are actually successful in being that good and selfless.

This is interesting if you’ve got an hour to watch a philosophy video(link goes directly to 53min if you just want to watch a few minutes).

I’ve gotten this feeling back recently when I started playing Fragpunk. I would highly recommend it. The unranked PvP modes are chaotic, fast paced and have tons of action with crazy ability cards you can add. It’s been a great change from the sweaty FPS gaming that’s so universal now.

I’d like to thank Apex for banning Linux, otherwise I would have never bothered looking for Fragpunk.

I would also like to thank Marvel Rivals for being an unbalanced hell and forcing my hand to ditch it. It got tiresome having a team full of people who don’t bother staying together or coordinating, who run into the line of fire one by one. In Fragpunk unranked games I don’t have to care at all what the team is doing. Like old CoD lobbies or Team Fortress 2 lobbies, in Fragpunk you can just go out there and have fun and look at the scoreboard at the end to see what other people did.

I’m getting better at finding new ways to break my installation. Now I don’t mess with things and just use it as is. Might start messing with stuff on my laptop rather than PC so I can mess up there instead.

Well? Is it?

Podcasts are my thing. I’ve got you covered.

Depends on what you’re into:

More or Less: Behind the Stats - analysis of some statistic from the news

The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - what science says about how to be happy

The Audio Long Read - long form articles from the Guardian newspaper

You Are Not So Smart - cognitive science related. How we know things, our biases, how our thinking is flawed, etc.

Dan Snow’s History Hit - One of the few history podcasts I really like

Short History Of… - a short history of some specific thing

The Forum - expert panel discussion about some topic

Behind the Bastards - Very well known podcast focusing on some bastard personality

CrowdScience - in depth investigation of a listener science question

Radiolab - in depth investigation of a topic of their interest. Quite broad scope.

Unexpected Elements - a very varied mix of discussions around a science topic from the news

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Tim Harford is the podcast king for me. This show is a deep dive into something that went wrong in news or history, and an investigation of all the systemic failures around it. It tries to show how blame is hardly ever warranted on a single person and the systems are at fault.

The Martin Lewis Podcast - UK consumer advocate and saving guru

Show Me The Meaning! A Wisecrack podcast - a couple of philosophers talk about a movie

The Inquiry - a deep dive into a news story

Revisionist History - Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast about a range of different things

The Law Show - UK legal system issues

The Infinite Monkey Cage - comedy science panel show

The Supermassive Podcast - space related podcast

File on 4 investigates - detailed story from deep investigative journalism

Thinking Allowed - light philosophical ramblings

When It Hits the Fan - two public relations experts talk about PR issues from current events

Discovery - science related. Currently mostly doing shows about “a life scientific” I.e. talking to a scientist about their life

Overthink - philosophy made accessible

What It’s Like To Be… - a person from a particular occupation talks about their job

People Fixing the World - people from different parts of the world fixing some local problem in their community in a creative way

Hidden Brain - my absolute favourite. Cognitive science related. Explains how the brain works and how to use the understanding to male your own love better.

Within Reason Your Parenting Mojo - evidence based parenting. Can be a very dry long-winded research presentation, but this has improved my parenting (and life) immensely

sideways - different ideas and how to look at things differently

Darknet Diaries - stories from the dark underbelly of the internet

The Reith Lectures - once a year short lecture series, but well worth listening to the backlog

Evil Genius with Russell Kane - comedians discuss how some villains from history weren’t so bad and how some heroes from history were terrible people

Owls at Dawn - ramblings of a couple of philosophers

Sound of Gaming - excellent music show about music soundtracks from videogames

Playing god? - medical ethics discussion

30 Animals That Made Us Smarter - this series has ended but it is worth listening to the backlog

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - this series has ended but it is worth listening to the backlog

A History of the World in 100 Objects - this series has ended but it is worth listening to the backlog

I would also recommend the podcast series made to accompany the Chernobyl and Last of Us TV series.

S Town - a nice fiction mini series drama story.

Your caveman brain. People think they’re educated an enlightened and everything they do now is so well thought out. Nope, the caveman is in the driving seat for all of us. Even your most high level meetings and interviews are influenced by how hungry, horny, or hurt you are by a teasing comment yesterday. Everyone is looking to establish dominance at any cost, when you don’t really need to.

Wife approval factor

My wife won’t use it if she can’t see an app for it to click on to start using immediately. Going through browsers is not an option. Not having a dedicated app on the LG TV is not an option. Not being able to find something instantly means instant rejection. She refused Plex, but now sometimes uses it and has learnt to find subtitles, etc by herself.

I don’t touch my self hosted apps. If something doesn’t behave properly on the first attempt then it gets rejected from our household. It’s only for us enthusiast nerds to put up with kanky UI and setup issues for the sake of superior functionality. Normie’s won’t tolerate it.

I’ll be the first to hope for the demise of Windows…but I thought the “subscription model” rumours were all discredited. Obviously anything could happen in the future I guess.