25 august 2021
Doing pretty well today- had a dental cleaning and that was deeply uncomfortable as usual, but it went alright and hey, no new cavities! Hooray for teeth health!
Spent a bit of time tweaking our tilde website; the theme is totally different now and the feels page actually looks okay now. It's much cleaner and better-spaced, that's for sure. Had to toss Gruvbox dark on the site because we adore the color scheme and it looks good on a more minimal site. We're trying to keep the tilde site on the simple side when it comes to styling because minimal sites are just nice. There's no clutter or fuss, just information laid out cleanly. The modern web is so busy that it's refreshing to see something simple and straightforward. We could go even simpler tbh, but we do like a little styling and I think it makes it easier to read.
Spent a while yesterday trying to get Prison Architect working. The issue turned out to be that it was trying to use ALSA and not detecting the device because Pulse was using it. We added two lines to the startup script and that fixed it. For the record, these were the lines we added:
export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa export AUDIODEV=pulse
Problem solved and it runs great now, no issues.
I look through feels and I'm struck by something. People are unhappy. It's really common on the town to have mental health issues by the looks of it, and a lot of folks seem to get bogged down by life. We're no exception, but it just stood out to me. We're all living our lives and struggling, and we all want to feel seen or heard and understood. I think a lot of people feel alone when they're not.
Still been thinking on religion and spirituality. I'm falling towards my previous answer again: take what works and seems correct, don't take the harmful parts or those that don't feel right. Trust your gut and don't feel tied down by strict rules. At the end of the day, it's your interpretation of any teachings and scriptures, and your beliefs are up to you. If there is a god or gods out there, and they are truly good and just, then they will understand that you are doing your best and mean well. And if a god sees your efforts and decides that they're worthless and that eternal punishment is the right thing to do, then such a god is not truly good and just, and is not deserving of worship. I believe that a truly benevolent god is forgiving and understanding of mistakes and attempts to do good, and that doing one's best to be a kind and loving person is enough. I think that being punished for not finding the "correct" god is cruel and unjust because even if someone's religion turns out to be untrue (and there's no way to know that as of now), they were still doing their best to do what seemed right. Same goes for punishing someone for being atheist. Or for rewarding a religious person who used their beliefs to hurt others- that seems wrong as well. I think that as long as one is trying to do good and be kind to those around them, then that should be what counts if god is truly benevolent and loving. And if that's not what counts? As horrible as an eternity being punished sounds, I'm okay with suffering if I know that I did my best in life to be loving and kind towards others. It would suck, but if a god wanted to toss me in hell because I didn't choose them out of a bajillion options despite otherwise doing my best, that's remarkably petty of them.