A couple of them.

• I review flashlights and occasionally other everyday carry gear at https://zakreviews.com/
• I share photographs and very rarely words at https://zaktakespictures.com/

Both have RSS feeds and associated Mastodon accounts. It’s also possible to follow the latter directly with ActivityPub software that allows following users (not Lemmy). I might put up a third and talk about programming and tech.

I see where you’re coming from now. In most English-speaking cultures, it is not conventional to use hand gestures as a substitute for spoken words in a conversation. Breaking social conventions for no apparent reason is at least potentially rude.

You’re translating those conventions directly to chat. Chat is not spoken word, and it is conventional to use emojis, at least the really unambiguous ones, instead of typed words in chat some of the time. People do not usually do this with any rude or insulting intent.

It depends on what it’s in response to.

Dinner at 6 at Greasy Spoon?
👍 

Entirely reasonable.

Should we do the project in COBOL?
👍 

Entirely unreasonable, but not rude.

My cat just died.
👍 

Rude.

Kind of defeats the purpose

That’s why the why matters. Some people might just not trust Windows to keep private data secure, but be comfortable running certain software on it in a VM, possibly a VM that isn’t usually allowed network access.

If you’re sufficiently motivated to get off Windows to invest time learning different workflows, there certainly are options. It sounds like you’ve tried some for image processing and found gaps. People might be able to help fill them if you go into detail about your current workflow, but there is no 1:1 replacement for Photoshop on any platform. If you’re a heavy Photoshop user, there may be no path to happiness for you.

There’s surely a 1:1 replacement for Visual Studio outside of Windows-specific development (which wouldn’t make much sense to attempt on Linux anyway).

I really want this to work out.

Why?

I don’t ask that to talk you out of it. I like desktop Linux. I’m typing this on desktop Linux. I’ve been using desktop Linux for most of my adult life. I ask because your reasons will inform the advice people can give you.

I do a lot of .NET programming and photo editing [with Windows-specific proprietary software]

There isn’t necessarily a good solution to this. Those are large, complicated programs with very deep workflows that are almost certainly going to be dissimilar in any substitute software, which is itself going to be large and complicated with its own ways of doing things. Using those specific programs may be more important to you than what OS you run them on.

It looks like Photoshop is probably usable with Wine, while Visual Studio isn’t. Using Wine means putting up with occasional instability and reduced performance. If you spend a lot of time in Photoshop, this may not be for you.

Another option is to run Windows in a VM for those apps. This will likely work smoothly with regard to the apps themselves, and generally performs near native, but does mean a less polished interaction with the rest of your desktop.

If you’re patient and want to gain a deeper understanding, try Arch itself rather than an Arch-based distribution that’s easy to install.

You’ll spend a long time on the initial installation and setup and you’ll read a lot of documentation in the process. When you have a usable system, you’ll understand what’s installed, how it’s configured, and why. Expect to spend a couple days just to get it usable though - this approach isn’t for everyone.

The Arch docs are top tier, but they’re not necessarily step by step guides because there’s more than one way you might choose to set things up. The docs tell you how the pieces can fit together, but it’s ultimately up to you to to do the assembly.

It’s OK not to know what you want. It’s especially OK when you’re 18 and in high school. It’s OK to choose an option now and change your mind later (though if you choose no, she probably won’t be available to you later if you change your mind).

It’s even OK to tell her that you don’t want to talk about your relationship, but she’s probably going to take that as you not wanting to be in a relationship with her. If you don’t want her to take it that way, then you need to talk with her about your relationship even if the thing you have to say is you’re unsure. Of course there’s a good chance she’ll respond unfavorably to your uncertainty; most people don’t like being a second choice or a backup plan.

I’m seeing a little of what I’d describe as toxic monogamy in this question. That’s not to imply a monogamous relationship isn’t right for you; it’s what most people want, so just statistically, it’s probably what you and your girlfriend want.

What I mean by toxic is that the belief that it’s unacceptable to be friends with an ex or that you can’t be in a relationship if your feelings for a former partner aren’t completely gone can poison relationships. People are usually more complicated than that, and while both of those things sometimes lead to problems, they don’t have to. Talking to your partner about their feelings surrounding the issue and agreeing on boundaries that are acceptable to both of you will prevent a lot of problems. That brings us to…

she asked me about our relationship and I told her to stop talking about it

I don’t usually like to speak in absolutes when it comes to human interactions because different people are different. I’ll make an exception here though. This was the wrong answer if you want to have a relationship with her.

It’s still the wrong answer, and that’s where you left things. If you don’t want it to end there, your best chance is to tell her you know that was a mistake, apologize, and offer to talk about your relationship as much as she wants to.

I do what I want.

Tipping in restaurants is normal in Germany; here’s the German Wikipedia article on the subject. Staff asking for a tip doesn’t seem normal though, and I’d find that rude.

Tipping at restaurants is already normal in Germany, France, and Italy if there is not a service charge on the check.

In the USA: 20%. In Europe: 10%. If service is exceptional or bad, I adjust up or down.

His board repair videos were outstanding. I don’t especially enjoy his rants. He’s usually right, but I don’t really care to listen to how mad he is about it. I can get mad on my own.

I’m not going to tell you what to do. I am going to point out the red flags you cited and ask what you would say to a friend who was considering dating someone who behaves like this.

he kept talking about… that i should’ve ditched my bf for him

In other words, he did not respect your relationship when you were in one.

badmouthed not only his gf of a few years

He handles struggles in a relationship by badmouthing his partner to others,

he left her bc she showed signs of schizophrenia

and uses an armchair diagnosis as an excuse to get out of a relationship instead of just saying it’s not working for him anymore like an adult.

he kept guilttripping me when i said i didn’t want to be his gf

He doesn’t care about your preferences, and tries to manipulate you when they don’t match his.

The basic way an airplane works actually is simple and intuitive: it meets the air at an angle and deflects it downward. The equal and opposite reaction to accelerating that mass of air is an upward force on the wing.

There is, of course a whole lot of finesse on top of that with differences in wing design having huge impacts on the performance and handling of aircraft due to various aerodynamic phenomena which are anything but simple or intuitive. A thin, flat wing will fly though, and balsa wood toy airplanes usually use exactly that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_(force)#Simplified_physical_explanations_of_lift_on_an_airfoil

If I remember right, he would have been eligible for a life sentence for the original charges.

I knew someone who raped both his daughters.

He was prosecuted and took a plea deal, probably offered to spare them a trial. I think he did about ten years in prison, which I would argue is less punishment than he deserved.

Message history is a valid point. Signal just announced they’re fixing it.

Safety number change notifications are probably necessary to maintain Signal’s high level of security. The above device linking improvements should make them less frequent, though I’ll concede some might consider that a worse UX than an insecure chat with no such notifications.

I keep seeing this claim, but I may be too much of a computer nerd to notice when using them both. What does Telegram do better and how?

This is exactly the sort of deal making through bullying Trump is known for. He’s crazy, not stupid.

I’m sad PGP didn’t become a popular way to log into websites. A challenge-response protocol could have even been built into web browsers. Big tech is reinventing that idea as Passkey, but with a very big tech flavor.