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[methylatedspirit]

I have a general rule for this: don't drink anything near computers. And if you do, make sure that your path from your mouth to your cup never goes near the computer. If your cup, in that path from its place to your mouth, hovers anywhere above that PC, go around the PC. Think of it as an invisible wall that projects infinitely upwards. Make sure your mouth is far away from the computer, too, so that anything that spills does not end up on the computer. Those are my 2 cents on that matter.

Or maybe you already follow these things, and you still almost broke your laptop. Shit happens. Sometimes life gives you shit, and the only way to move on is to... move on.

[Yoink]

I had a drunk anxiety attack last night trying to relax for a trip.   

Duuuuuude, you don't try and relax for a trip. That doesn't end well. Just save the trip for a time when you do feel relaxed!   
Seriously, just stick the stuff in your freezer and wait 'til it is the right time. Nobody's gonna peer pressure you into that kinda thing! At least, I should hope not.   

[Bumber]

Duuuuuude, you don't try and relax for a trip. That doesn't end well. Just save the trip for a time when you do feel relaxed!   
Seriously, just stick the stuff in your freezer and wait 'til it is the right time. Nobody's gonna peer pressure you into that kinda thing! At least, I should hope not.   

Context of the post before it was edited implied something that couldn't be put off.

[hector13]

Yoink is not referring to that kind of trip.

[Bumber]

Whoops, didn't catch that.

[Frumple]

Looking up some things to see how viable digitizing some of my library's old cassette tape stuff noticed a pretty nasty catch-22. As near as I can tell checking stuff out, about the only legal exception to the copyright (and that allowed specifically to stuff like libraries) in question is if a digital copy's made in the last twenty years or so of the copyright holder's death + 70. I.e. without express permission from the copyright holder, that's pretty much your sole and single method of legal digital preservation, stateside.

Problem, though, is that cassette tapes in particular apparently only have shelf life (if you're lucky) of about three decades. (70-20=50)>30. Welp.

We're not really super attached to the remnants of our old cassette holdings, but... still. It's kinda' depressing the only real way those things are going to get preserved (outside maybe a copy or two in the library of congress or whatever) seems to be criminally.

Looking at it there might be a loophole where you can preserve prior to the 20-before but not circulate, but even then means you're talking about holding on to a digital copy/archive for decades while doing basically nothing but sitting on it, which is... unfortunate, on any number of levels.

[methylatedspirit]

My mom seems to be in denial of the fact that I simply cannot smile (or make any other facial expression) on purpose. She thinks it can be learned, which I don't think is possible without specialized equipment at my age. Like, there's no usable wiring between my brain and my face muscles. Zero. You may as well put electrodes in my face and try zapping it in a certain way so that I can smile. As a corollary to that, I can't feel what face I'm making, nor can I decode what emotion is being conveyed in someone's face (alright, I can, but it's so slow that it's useless for anything but the simplest of cases). As far as smiling goes, I have better luck trying to reverse-engineer a game with just a hex editor and nothing else.

I don't care myself if I'm making a face at all, I'm just pissed that my mom seems to care so deeply about something I'm unable to do. And she asks me to smile sometimes, which I've already established to her that I simply cannot do that.

Later on, people are gonna ask me why I can't smile, and they're gonna be shocked when I say that I simply can't, like if I told a kid that Santa Claus isn't real. It's like it's a fundamental belief that I just broke. Why do people care so much? Damn.

[Egan_BW]

If people cared less about things we'd all be better off.

[ChairmanPoo]

My mom seems to be in denial of the fact that I simply cannot smile (or make any other facial expression) on purpose. She thinks it can be learned, which I don't think is possible without specialized equipment at my age. Like, there's no usable wiring between my brain and my face muscles. Zero. You may as well put electrodes in my face and try zapping it in a certain way so that I can smile. As a corollary to that, I can't feel what face I'm making, nor can I decode what emotion is being conveyed in someone's face (alright, I can, but it's so slow that it's useless for anything but the simplest of cases). As far as smiling goes, I have better luck trying to reverse-engineer a game with just a hex editor and nothing else.

I don't care myself if I'm making a face at all, I'm just pissed that my mom seems to care so deeply about something I'm unable to do. And she asks me to smile sometimes, which I've already established to her that I simply cannot do that.

Later on, people are gonna ask me why I can't smile, and they're gonna be shocked when I say that I simply can't, like if I told a kid that Santa Claus isn't real. It's like it's a fundamental belief that I just broke. Why do people care so much? Damn.

Unless you have palsy that's clearly untrue 🤔. So either you're dramatizing or she's rightly worried about you having a stroke

[methylatedspirit]

Look, I can smile if I'm truly happy. Feeling emotions can make me change facial expressions, but only if it's a particularly strong emotion. That being said, I can't smile voluntarily. There's no more association between the face and the conscious brain because it's atrophied from years of disuse. The thing that my brain thinks is smiling actually corresponds to pulling my lips inwards, which is clearly not a smile. That's all that's left of my ability to voluntarily smile. I can't feel what my face looks like, either, so even if I were capable of smiling, I don't know what face I'm actually making. I can't read data off my face, nor can I actually write to it.

I don't know. There's no drivers that let my brain interface with my face at will. That pathway is gone. The only things that are left is that thing where I pull my lips inwards, and me smiling when happy. Even if I tried, I couldn't force myself to smile, because the neural link that should be there is absent. I'm starting from scratch, and that means I'll have to blindly poke around to find what does what.

I don't know how else to say it. If only I could send you my entire brain and nervous system and have it mapped out on a neuron-by-neuron level, then maybe you'd understand the level of 'no connection' between my face and my brain that exists there.

[Il Palazzo]

I think you should listen to the good doctor when he says it don't work like that.

[Maximum Spin]

There's research suggesting it probably does work like that in autism. The "higher-level face management" part of the brain is screwed up, making it impossible to decode or encode facial expressions without laborious point-by-point analysis. If you sat him in front of a mirror and, instead of telling him to "smile", pointed out the specific muscular movements that need to be made and allowed time for trial and error, though, he could do it (unless he has some kind of palsy).

BTW: Even baseline humans who aren't autistic can do that to learn expressions you don't know how to make naturally. You know how some people can't raise just one eyebrow, for example, or do various other things? That's how you gain the ability. (I know this for a fact, because I have done it.)

[Il Palazzo]

'That' was referring specifically to being incapable of smiling due to motor neurons atrophying from disuse.
I can well sympathise with his troubles, btw, as I was just like that throughout my early adulthood - down to inventing plausibly-sounding 'explanations'. Couldn't smile for shit, couldn't read social cues, would at best produce a horrible grin when prompted, was frustrated by other people telling me to cheer up as if it were the simplest thing to do.
But no shit, if somebody grows up socially withdrawn, maybe on the spectrum, they don't learn social interactions like, and when, others do. But also but, it's not some kind of permanent disability, let alone self-imposed. Just something one needs to put some conscious effort into learning, eventually. Call it masking if one's on the spectrum. Learning a foreign language if they're not. Like with any new skill, it's supposed to be hard.

[scriver]

If people cared less about things we'd all be better off.

I'd say that if people cared less about things we'd all be far worse off

[TD1]

I'd say it depends on the 'things.'