Going to a legit optometrist that either cuts their own lenses or tells you where to get good ones rather than trying to find the cheapest option online is probably the biggest thing. They tend to recommend or automatically go for the other top tips, like avoiding any coating that will ripple/peel/fade over time, using high-index materials for high prescriptions (expensive, but drastically reduced the necessary thickness and curvature + distortion of the crystal), and spacing the lens centers to your personal measurements.

Shit in, shit out. But at least I know when to blame the producers this way!

Same exact situation here (incredibly luckily), so I guess I mean “support” not in the sense that my wife isn’t excited for me when I find something worth getting, but more that I wish her excitement came from a similar place as mine, a selfish excitement to use whatever is on the way herself, rather than a much sweeter excitement about me being excited lol. And excellent meme, wil certainlyl be sending it along.

I disagree personally. I don’t think they need to be side by side to appreciate the difference, so long as you’ve ever experienced both. I miss the things that I know I’d get with better speakers when I listen on a different setup, and I still enjoy the experience, but it doesn’t move me as deeply when I feel something missing. And I don’t think it’s (all/entirely) placebo. A subwoofer that reaches 10hz lower, moves more air, and fires faster gives you a lot more to hear/feel/appreciate, and to me really changes my physical and emotional reaction to music.

Yeah that’s my biggest bummer, too, both in wanting to share the experience and wanting support in dropping some cash on a pair of headphones or something lol.

Yeah this is pretty similar to my experience. My wife supports upgrades because she knows they make a difference to me and she can actually recognize it often, but it’s clear she’d be pretty indifferent if she was making audio decisions just for her.

That said, we’ve spent about 2 years with a nice Yamaha power amp, Elac floorstanders, and SVS sub, full setup around $5k, and she really appreciates it for our focused listening now. Passive listening might as well be out of phone speakers for her, but when we put a record on over Sunday coffee, she always remarks how grateful she is that we invested in the setup.

Agreed that audio improvements are higher priority than video ones imo, but real life visual improvements (e.g., better glasses/prescription, high quality binoculars if you have a use for them) seem at least as significant as audio quality differences.

Pretty much everything about Apple Music is worse than Spotify except for their catalog and their lossless audio, but it was still 100% worth the switch for me. Compression sucks.

This mirrors my experiences exactly. It’s just hard for me to understand sometimes that people aren’t experiencing a difference that is objectively present and significant. But I guess I may miss plenty of details in other things that are significant to others. My mind goes to frame rate for certain games, where resolution feels super noticeable to me, but the difference between 40 and 60fps just doesn’t seem as massive as I see other describing it.

It’s a good point about genres and production making a difference as far as whether or not it’s worth it, and that it’s the most popular genres for which fidelity is least important

Chimichurri! Parsley, garlic, Fresno peppers, oregano, salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar. Just chop finely and mix. Good on everything from meat to seafood, potatoes, brussel sprouts, and dry toast. Can’t go wrong with it.

Others have defined what GTM does pretty well without a basic definition of it’s most common purpose. Google Analytics (GA4) has a number of conversions it can track automatically on your website, like if someone spends more than 5 minutes on your site after finding it in search results. GTM allows for customization of certain conversion triggers so you can track more specific actions and those that don’t have automatic tracking parameters in GA4. Using GTM just allows for more robust and customizable tracking basically, at least in its most common usage.

I’m sure it was better than Darwin

What about my understanding of evolution is incorrect, and how do you see natural selection working in present humans? Very possible that Dunning-Kruger is at play, but we may have to agree to disagree as to where…

My point is not that previous people haven’t done significant things, it’s that they did those things independently of who one of their many ancestors happened to be. Much like an actual ripple, the larger the pond, the less likely any disturbance is to reach the shore, and the more likely it is to be quickly lost to the natural turbulence of any body of water.

If your evidence against that is the existence of significant inventions, there are very few, if any, that wouldn’t have been invented by someone else within years. No major invention or discovery, from the light bulb to relativity, has been made while others weren’t working on the same problem and making similar, if slightly slower, progress.

That’s why they say necessity is the mother of invention, not a person or an institution or anything that could be credited to a single creator.

And if you think humans are still evolving according to selection pressure the way that other species have/do, you just don’t understand how evolution actually works. The moment we gained self awareness and created social structures, we drifted so far from biological evolution that it’s an entirely moot point in terms of future generations. The least adaptive of us now, on average, still lives through the entirety of our birthing/fertile years, while significant portions of a population dying during or prior to fertility is the only way that natural selection works. That or the existence of bachelor herds that lead to a very slim minority being the only ones to breed. Neither of those are the case with humans.

Ultimately, having kids to ensure your own legacy is possibly the most selfish reason you could create someone and thrust them into 80 years of what should be their own life.

I think that’s pure conjecture about how having kids affects the world. And the nature, worthiness, or value of those 12 people has nothing to do with whether or not you happen to personally be their ancestor. There’s nothing different or more special about one person’s progeny than another, so who cares if it’s your kids or 8 billion other people. The idea that that is important in the future is all about making yourself important in the present.

Why does it matter if they’re your descendants or others’? My 16 great great grandparents are as much strangers to me as any other 16 people walking around 100 years ago. And everyone here now is in the same place, whoever they came from. Not like I’ll be alive to (or would do so in any case) take pride in saying 'ooh those 12 people have something to do with me if you go back far enough"

Why is it essential for our genes to live on?

Aeropress is great and relatively easy, but you need to be able to adjust the grind size in order to dial in your cup at all, so I’d absolutely recommend getting a good hand grinder (1zpresso all the way) and grinding your own beans still.

I will also say that pour over setups and techniques can get crazy specific, but they absolutely don’t have to be. With the right cone and a quality grind, you can pretty much just dump water on top of and then give the cone a little swirl to flatten the bed. In my opinion, it’s actually the simplest way to get a clean/non-silty cup. I would get a Kalita Wave, which is more forgiving than the popular V60, and the whole process is just pouring heated water over coffee grounds til the cone is 1/2 to 2/3 full, and then repeating as it drains until you hit the desired amount of water. 3 and a half minutes and you’ve got a better cup than you’ll ever get out of a French press, faster and easier than an aeropress.

A second benefit of starting with a cone is that you’ll never have to, but any time you do feel like getting into deeper experimentation, you won’t have to buy anything new to do so. As someone who owns a nice-ish espresso machine, drip machine, aeropress, French press, immersion brewer, multiple V60s, and a Kalita Wave, I use the Wave nearly every day because it is the simplest to do while half asleep and it produces the best cup in my opinion.

I’d consider upping the dose and grinding a little coarser til you hit the same time, and also pre-infusing at a lower pressure until the first drops form on the bottom of the portafilter. You could also try that independently if you’re not doing it already. Good luck!

Also, does it eventually fill the screen and form a single stream? If it does this for like 5-15 seconds and then steadies, that could be totally normal and I wouldn’t worry about it if it tastes good.