I’ve had this since my teens. Some days, weeks, even months are harder than others, but no matter what I always feel like an attention-seeking fraud for not being “serious” about suicide, like others who actually try it

I cope through humour, mostly. I affectionately refer to the train station near me as my “get out of jail free card”, for when things get too much and I eventually succumb. It’ somehow helps to know I’m kidding, but also not kidding. Though I’ve thought and planned enough to know if I did ever really do it, that’s probably not what I’d do.

But yeah. I find all I can do is take each day as it comes.

The glyphs are a fun gimmick. I wouldn’t say you’re likely to use them all that much.

Maybe Google around a bit and see what you can find. There will definitely be other mid-range phones that lean more heavily into the camera, but at this price you’re always going to be making concessions somewhere.

If you’re buying the phone outright then that could work. Provided it’s supported for that long, and you can look after it well enough then I don’t see why not - you just have to be prepared to pay £800 all at once.

Part of my reasoning is the £400 cost keeps my monthly bill down, as I don’t buy the phone outright.

If nothing else, keeping one phone for 6 years would be better for the environment.

In my opinion it’s fine. I’m not super into photography or anything so take that with a big grain of salt. I don’t take too many pictures, but when I do they seem perfectly serviceable.

They’re never going to compare to a newer flagship, mind you.

Uhhhhh, rip and tear?

All of this is more than I’m prepared to pay for a phone these days. It’s absurd.

I switched to a Nothing Phone 1 last year (about £400?) and it’s been more than capable of handling my daily usage.

I’ll keep the thing for three years, then upgrade to another mid-range. I don’t need to pay more than twice the price for hugely diminishing returns.

Might be tricky because of there being less quality-of-life stuff, but you should absolutely pay Persona 4 Golden. Consider going back for P3 too.

I’m sure I used to use Audacity back in the day as a free, quick and dirty editor to splice up audio tracks. I’m talking at least 10 years ago.

Had no idea it was still even a thing.

New cars are ludicrously expensive, especially EVs.

The most I can afford to spend on a car is maybe £14K, and that’s under the proviso that about £4K of that is my own money and the rest is a loan to be paid off over about 6 or 7 years.

So yeah, I’m going secondhand ICE with about 50K miles on the clock and praying it doesn’t die before the loan is paid off (and preferably longer still so I can save a bit more towards the next one).

I’m all for EVs, but they’ve got to bring the price down, and they’ve got to get the batteries to last long enough for the secondhand market to be viable.

You fools! If you die in Australia, you die in real life!

I don’t play anymore, but did for about 10 years.

I started with 1-1 lesson, but I think I only kept that up for a year or so.

I think the biggest things you’ll benefit from through 1-1 lessons are:

1 - getting some solid musical theory behind you (a bit of a bore, but useful when you’re trying to self-teach later on, and ultimately foundational to pretty much everything else).

2 - Having someone there who can see, hear, and correct your actual playing technique. Poor technique absolutely ruins you as a musician when it comes to progression and trying to play anything a bit more advanced, because it becomes part of your muscle memory. That’s why it’s so important to slow things right down and play them correctly, with the right technique, and then gradually speed up, rather than jump into playing things at the correct speed, but doing it sloppily. Having an instructor who can observe and correct you in real time will do wonders.

Two days ago I noticed when watching through the app on my phone that I could no longer just skip ads, and the trick of reporting them to skip didn’t work anymore either. I effectively had to just sit and wait.

That same day I got NewPipe, imported my subscriptions, and honestly even if this is just a phased trial or something, I won’t be going back to the standard YT app.

Creators make pennies from ad revenue. If I want to support them, I’ll make a donation or subscribe to their Patreon or something.

I won’t just sit and suffer a slew of ads while my data is harvested under the false pretense that it’s all to support the creators.