Indeed, I've used that feature a lot. It's so extremely simple to use, unlike figuring out how to do that in Gimp or whatever.

I still use xv daily. I paid the sharewire price back in the day (I think it was $25), and the license, if I recall correctly, was a photo of John with a thumbs-up. I've added a few patches here and there to deal with slightly more modern jpeg features and the like, and for the most part it handles everything I want to do, and the rest I do with imagemagick. For just looking at images I use xv all the time. Fast, and with some editing options as others have mentioned.

As the sister comment said: "Not if they work outside of tech…" And not even then, in many cases. I know exactly what I do, but having to explain that to anyone, including people in tech, is difficult.

And, you know, it's not interesting to talk about. Talking about that is fine at the job, that's what we do. I have no interest in talking about that when I'm not working. Instead I want to talk about other things. Hobbies, activities, music, books, whatever. Enquring about someone's job will not lead to that at all.

Well said. I'm nearing retirement age and planning what I'll do, and yes, setting up my hobby room with computers and whatnot. And, as you, I've also been many other things, including some on your list, and more.

The focus on "what you do" is very US-centric (or possibly North American). When you meet someone then one of the very first things asked is "what do you do" or something to that extent. What your job is. But it's not like that at all elsewhere in the world. It varies a lot. I myself never ask that question, unless it's for a very specific reason. And _never_ as part of an introduction.

I've known people for decades without knowing what their job is, or I only have a vague idea about their job. It's not important for people here. The person itself is important. There are other things than the job which define the person. I know this sounds very strange for Americans, but, in fact, the strangeness is the other way around.

I'm not sure that I can say "I am not my job" [mostly because I actually very much enjoy what I do there], but I can definitely say "you are not your job". Because I don't even know your job, nor do I much care.

One of the things people in the US like to do is to take some thing that's being negatively talked about and spin that into a thing that only people in the US do, whereas this aspect exists in many cultures, such as in India (speaking from experience) or China (from my understanding of their culture, and some Youtubers producing content around the social dynamics of this).

Not surprised because most people in the world only have time to work/commute/sleep. Stuff like hobbies, sabbaticals, vacations, etc are quite rare. I've only seen the contrary when I met Europeans.

Domestic tourism is massive even in countries with terrible work culture like China, so your claim is not particularly strong. Either way, hobbies and holidays are certainly not unique to NA and Europe.

1. There are far worse places to work than China :)

2. I was comparing everyone against EU. NA included.

I don't think your initial claim is well supported considering the size of domestic travel and entertainment sectors in most of the world (although I'll admit that the way people allocate non-work activities in many places may not lead to a relaxed life in the way, say, a Swiss person on a sabbatical has). Points 1 and 2 in this recent comment are different ones again, though and not ones I disagree with.

Not so sure about hobbies being a European thing. Take Japan, for example. Japan has a work culture/pressure which is considered pretty extreme (Korea is maybe worse, from what I read). I know people with work hours from early morning to 11pm, and a neighbor who drives out at 5:30am and is back way after dark): There are many more people with active hobbies than in my native Europe. With work taking so much time, people seem to learn to manage their time much better than many (much more than I can, definitely) and they squeeze in various hobbies in a very efficient way. That's one of the reasons I like living there, there's much more to do together with other people.

Nah,

All around the world, even people in the lower income brakets take vacation. Sometimes they travel if they can, sometimes they don't.

Working until you wear off is mostly a US thing.

I have noticed the same thing, but I still think it's an interesting question. It would be strange for me to have a close friend and never have any kind of curiosity about how they spend nearly half of their waking hours. We don't live in severance-world: understanding someone's vocation feels like part of understanding them as a person.

I guess if you live in a community where most people do sort of menial interchangeable jobs then it's probably different, maybe everyone has a job as an unfortunate necessity but would rather think and talk about it as little as possible.

> But it's not like that at all elsewhere in the world. It varies a lot. I myself never ask that question, unless it's for a very specific reason. And _never_ as part of an introduction.

Can you share some area(s) it's not like that, and what kinds of introductions/opening conversations you do have? I'd like to replicate that into my own social life (in North America) if only to bend the arc ever so slightly.

It's very rare to be asked that question ("what do you do") as part of an introduction in basically all of Europe, or at least it's so rare that I can't recall being asked that. Maybe it has happened, but it's not that common. "Where are you from?" is an obvious one on the other hand, if I'm in a different country. I'm sometimes asked that question in Japan, but never as part of an introduction. That's something which people may ask about at a later stage. If that's related to me being a foreigner or not I'm not sure - I haven't noticed that question in between native Japanese people, but then again my Japanese is not very good.

But I'm not actually that good at getting small talk going (not do I particularly enjoy small talk), so I'm not the best person to ask about introductions. So it basically boils down to exchanging names, and, for me, sometimes about nationality, and then about whatever happens at the place we're meeting up (say, an event of some kind). And from then on we kind of figure out the other person's interests. Starting to talk about the job would be.. very dry. Negative. As if there's nothing to talk about, at all.

This is highly regional within the US. You’ll see a lot more of it amongst NYC professionals than anywhere in the Midwest.

Yeah and I think it reflects the sorts of jobs people have. A lot of my buddies have these jobs they themselves think are pretty stupid but hey, they were hiring. They aren't going to identify as some salesperson of payroll software though. Probably literally no one in that industry does. It isn't rocket surgery. It just pays the bills.

One of my (two) suitcases was lost once when I flew to Japan. But I didn't have to find out by waiting forever at the conveyor belt until I realized that.

Instead, when I left the airplane a person was there waiting for me, just outside the door, and explained to me that unfortunately one of my suitcases was missing. It was now in Shanghai instead of Japan. The person then walked with me to the immigration area, and then met up with me in the baggage hall afterwards, and took me to the right place to fill out the missing luggage papers, and explaining that if I could give the address of my place to stay in Kanji it would be easier. And the suitcase did arrive at my door the next day.

And, of course, in the baggage area itself.. a person from the airline was standing in front of where the bags come out and preventing them from banging into the side when they came down the slide.

Needless to say, but I've been travelling all over the world for decades and something like the above I've never seen anywhere else. Missed luggage uncountable number of times, many destroyed and damaged suitcases of course.. but that's elsewhere.

I'm pretty sure the last time I flew spirit I saw a handler protecting the suitcases. Either that or another airline, but even then Southwest or United, nothing fancy.

Yep. The dialect I grew up with, and which I could actually read in older written works, which meant it was pretty stable in the past, is now completely gone from my town. Everything which made it special has disappeared. And nationally? Some pronunciations inherited all the way from PIE are now disappearing in certain areas. Oh well. Languages change. I just wish they didn't change is such a, to me, boring direction..

Interesting. Down through 1300 was pretty straight forward. 1200 slowed me down a lot. 1100 I could only get a couple of sentences from, at first straight read-through, but it looks like I should be able to read it by going carefully through it.

Background: Fully understands Scandinavian languages (native), can read a bit of German and Dutch, proficient in English, and can read a fair bit of Icelandic. All of this seems to help.

Those elephants are supposedly "Loxodonta africana pharaohensis", an exinct and not yet verified subspecies of the African bush elephant which is smaller than the savanna types. The pharaohensis was supposedly even smaller, and smaller than an Indian elephant, but with ears like an African elephant.

Zerotier works fine for me, but with a huge exception which I just can't figure out. On my Linux laptop which also runs OpenVPN and with some specific routing set up, Zerotier will, after a minute or so, completely take over the routing and default everything through Zerotier, and nothing I do with the routing tables will change this. I have to stop ZT at this point and then it reverts to normal. Every other computer in my ZT network behaves fine.

This is so problematic that I'm considering looking into Tailscale, I understand they work very differently but it looks like my use case could be covered by both.