Asklemmy

Context:

I had a close friendship that lasted about 8 years (started in 2017). It was never romantic, but emotionally intense. For a long time we were in daily contact and shared a lot. He did an Erasmus thanks to my advice (in a period that was very difficult for him), we shared visits across Europe in our study and / or work periods abroad or in Naples (close to where we lived and he lives now) / Germany (where I moved for good in 2022).

Over time, it became clear that we had very different views of what friendship should look like, mostly because my life has changed, the time at my disposal changed too and he never accepted this transition.

My view

I see friendship as something that can remain real and meaningful even if:

you don’t talk every day

you don’t see each other often

initiative isn’t constant

For me, caring is shown more through:

listening

long-term consistency

If it happens to meet each other, great. If it doesn't, it's still ok and it doesn't mean I don't care.

I struggle to force emotional behaviors that don’t come naturally to me. When I do, it feels inauthentic.

His view

He believes that friendship only has value if:

you see each other often

there is frequent initiative

affection is clearly and consistently shown

His belief is basically:

“If you care about someone, you show it.

If it doesn’t come naturally, you make the effort anyway.

If you don’t show it, you don’t really care (or you have a serious emotional problem).”

For him, a “low-contact” friendship is empty and meaningless.

The core conflict

He started comparing his place in my life to that of other friends (for example childhood friends: if I came back to my hometown for Christmas holiday and did not make space to meet him, while I spent time with my childhood friends those days, he would consider it as rejection; if I didn't make proposals, which I very rarely do in general because my life has changed with work, girlfriend and life abroad, he would consider it as one-sided friendship). He would often travel to visit me in Germany when I was available. I must admit that I have been harsh sometimes (in communication), but his depression and the guilt he threw on me for the situation wore me out.

To him, these comparisons were objective proof that I valued him less and that he was being wronged.

From my perspective, these choices felt normal and not meant as a hierarchy or rejection.

Escalation

During this time, he fell into a severe depressive period.

My lack of initiative and limited availability (consider that I live in Germany now and he lives in Italy) were experienced by him as:

rejection

emotional cruelty

proof that the friendship was fake

He began to describe me as:

cold

inhuman

manipulative

I, on the other hand, felt:

constantly guilty

emotionally pressured to be someone I’m not

incapable of meeting his expectations no matter what I did

Break

Eventually, I pulled away.

In December 2024, there was the first bad signs. I came back home for the Christmas holidays (about 19-20 days) and I basically came back to spend time with my family and girlfriend. He was already feeling alone and depressed. I actually told him that I would let him know if I managed to spend a day in Naples, but eventually it didn't happen and he felt wounded and ignored, getting angry with me. I know that he felt bad and that he would have made time for me in reverse. But that's his way of living friendships. Should I feel bad because I didn't set a date in advance for him? The last time we had met each other before that was June 2024 in Germany where I live and he felt like it was an eternity already. Plus, he grew frustrated and resented that most of the energy and proposals came from him. But again, should I feel guilty if I now work differently than before and I am less proactive in friendships?

The final nails in the coffin were March and May 2025. In March, I felt overwhelmed by his constant accusations and his depression, with intrusive thoughts, and I told him I needed some space for myself. Of course it was interpreted as abandonment and when in April I told him that the daily-contact friendship we had wasn't sustainable for me anymore, and that all I could offer was the relaxed, occasional contact that I have with any other friend (even the ones he feels "inferior" to) the situation got worse for him. He started accusing me more heavily. In May, he had a trip to Germany already planned and I refused to meet him after his accusations. He exploded, insulted me and got to the point of self-harm. After that, I blocked him on social media.

I didn’t do it to punish him, but because I felt overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted.

The silence, however, became for him:

final confirmation that I never cared

an aggravating factor that deepened his anger and hatred

He also got to the point of self-harm.

The messages I received became extremely hostile.

Current situation

We’ve had no contact for months.

I’m more at peace, but I still carry guilt and doubt.

I don’t feel anger toward him.

He likely sees me as someone who destroyed the friendship and caused deep harm.

I wonder:

Was I actually always damaging to him?

Can two people genuinely care about each other and still be emotionally incompatible?

Is silence sometimes self-protection rather than cruelty?

Is it realistic that, with time, a calmer, low-contact friendship could ever exist?

I’m not trying to justify myself or paint him as a villain.

I’m genuinely trying to understand whether this was inevitable incompatibility, or if I failed in a more fundamental way.

Any perspective appreciated.

I(M26) currently had been prescribed a new eye glasses to replace my current one with the following:

Right Eye:

• Sphere=+3.5
• Cylinder=-2.25

Left Eye:

• Sphere=+4.25
• Cylinder=-3.25

My life feels like hell, no glasses seem to give me a perfect vision and the whole thing is making me lose my mind. As it seems hopeless.

Is there is a solution or will my vision keep getting worse till I go blind?

My father considers buying an Android TV box. Initially, I thought that's a bad choice as a mini pc has much greater capabilities and control.

However, he does have a point that Android TV boxes are cheaper (~60) and work with tv cable which most mini PCs don't have a connector for.

What are your thoughts on this?

How can i cover up the archway while in-session? What temperature should i set the oven to?

I work as a courier in 2 shifts: morning and afternoon.

If I have an afternoon shift I can do some jogging, stretching and my yoga routine before working, something that I notice makes me feel better. If I have a morning shift, I usually eat at the job, meaning afterwards I won't feel motivated to do any of my routines (full up), but on these days I feel strange, like something's missing.

I'm not the kind of person that eats small portions, I eat till full up.

I don't know what a solution looks like

Title... Honestly, I'm just tired of funding monsters, just because we've gotten used to using their platforms.

Besides Crypto, which is what I imagine a lot of people would say (and Props, if Monero), CCs, and Cash (the tried and true) are there any other avenues?

Whenever I glance at darknet forums, people there always use Telegram for instant messaging. This seems like a strange choice for their use case, considering that Telegram is neither secure nor private[1], being centralized with Russia-controlled servers[2], phone number registration, no encryption for personal chats by default in mobile client and no encryption at all in desktop client[3], etc.

So why do they use Telegram instead of actually secure and private alternatives, like Delta Chat, XMPP+OMEMO, etc.?

I'll go first: The Vengeful One - Disturbed

I think it would be good for the community and people in the US to have ways to make sure they’re not creating relationships with ICE agents. If the community doesn’t want it all good. and obviously not meant to profile people.

1. Obviously we know some names of agents who have murdered people: Jonathan Ross, Brian Palacios, Jesus Ochoa, Raymundo Gutierrez
2. I presume they’d be pretty conservative and machismo. Maybe have some blue lives stickers on their truck.
3. Maybe tattoos, specifically Punisher. Could be police also.

What else could you use to sniff out if somebody is ICE if they’re hiding it from you?

No, I'm really interested.

TLDR (I’m very long-winded): this YT video took measurements of three different audio cables, including a 200€ one, and found differences where there should be none. My physics knowledge (and general consensus among the scientific community) says the measurements of the different cables should be identical or near-identical — or I am, at least, under that impression. My own measurements, because the channel does provide the files, confirm that the expensive 200€ cable does measure differently from the others. But surely something else must be causing this? Please help me find out what that is, Lemmy!

Edit: see this and this other excellent comment.

Below, I go into a little more detail and context, and I go through what I have tried, etc.; I tried splitting everything up into chunks to make it easier to read, but I was never good at being succinct. Sorry about that 😬 :P

Context: What Am I Talking About?

Firstly, I should clarify that this isn’t relevant to most people, only really physics and audio-technology nerds. But I’m desperate. This question has been tormenting me for days...

I should provide some context. For some reason, YouTube gave me a rather odd video suggestion. I am very interested in audio technology, mixing, and mastering, but I’m not a snake-oil audiophile type. I guess you could call me a lover-of-audio, e.g., audiophile, but I don’t attach myself to that community. So you can imagine my confusion when this video was suggested to me on YouTube.

For anyone unwilling to click on an ambiguous YT link like that, here is a brief description: audiophile guy (who believes that cables affect sound) compares three cables, two of which are "cheap" (e.g., approx. 50€) and one of which is expensive (like 200€ — for a cable). His conclusion is ultimately (yes, I watched that far) that they don’t really affect sound, because they’re just interconnects (so RCA cables), and not speaker or power cables. But he actually records each cable and provides those music files — which means I can compare them as well...

By "records each cable," I mean that he used each cable to connect a CD-player to a pre-amp (for some reason) and then an analogue-to-digital convert (ADC) into his computer, where he can record the output; this way he gets just the supposed difference the cables make. I realize that the CD-player might have some inconsistencies, since CDs are a moving medium, but jitter compensation and stuff like that is very advanced these days, so this is getting pretty close to an accurate measurement of the cables, I think (correct me if I’m wrong!).

In the video, this guys claims that the measurements show a difference between the cables. This debate around cables is something I thought was quite contested, so I naturally decided to download the tracks (which he provides in the description) and compare them myself. Here’s what happened.

My Own Testing: They Don’t Null

So I downloaded his recordings, phase-aligned (which they weren’t already) everything and normalized to peak (which, again, was necessary, and creates the lowest delta compared to LUFS, etc.), and then null-tested. That means I inverted the phase of one, played two of the files at the same time, and thus got the delta between them.

The Mogami and Belden cables (the cheap ones) are nearly identical; there is a slight difference in the null-test, but it is statistically small enough, that I attribute it to measurement inconsistency (e.g., CD-player, DAC, or ADC performance, but also maybe natural conditions, etc.). I especially suspect — given that most differences occur at higher frequencies but aren’t really audible when listening — a jitter related issue, causing the timing to be just a little off, thus creating a delta in the higher frequencies. This could be due to the CD-player, but I have no idea.

...the Neotech (the expensive one), however, is significantly different.

---

Firstly, he provides the file for the Neotech cable with a significant phase delay compared to the others, of about 50 ms, and it is also about 0.02 db louder than the others. That is rather suspicious on his part. This alone makes it sound better, but when I correct this volume and phase difference — it still sounds better, and the null-test confirms that it is still quite different (we're talking differences up to -40 db here, which should definitely be audible).

It turns out, the volume difference actually changes throughout the song; meaning that in some places the difference is 0.01 db, and in others 0.03 db. But I can correct for that! I don’t know why it happens (someone smarter than me, please explain), but I can correct for it... And yet, the null test still shows a clear difference (especially when the singer makes s-sounds, i.e., sibilance).

Please Help Me

What is going on? My physics knowledge tells me this should be impossible. ~~I can only imagine that for some reason the Neotech is more conductive, or something like that, and therefore recreates the harsh and very fast dynamics of sibilance more accurately.~~ (edit: crossed out because this is a little too ridiculous) But the difference in conductivity should not be enough to cause that... I really am confused. Someone with more expertise please explain this!

For context, I cannot blind test ABX the Neotech. I cannot hear any difference whatsoever. This is very subtle stuff here. But I can see a difference, the null test shows differences as high as -45 db when the singer does those s-sounds and everything has been normalized. So clearly something is happening (and again, this is phase aligned and normalized and everything). So what could it possibly be?

---

Edit: here, for clarity, screenshots of the null test at different moments in the tracks from the youtube vid (here nulling between the magomi and neotech).

Normal part of song, no sibilance or cymbals, but otherwise singing, piano, bass guitar, drums, etc.:

When the singer creates sibilance with an s-sound:

The null test was performed in the Reaper DAW with Voxengo SPAM and Reaper’s built-in phase align, normalization, and phase inversion.

---

Lemmy, please show me what I have missed! Show me the obvious error I or the video creator made. Sorry to make such a long post on c/asklemmy, but I don’t know where else to ask.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43079987

Me: Cars

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/60208615

I thought that þ was soft and ð was hard. So why are people using the þ for ð when typing?

One of mines:

All the kids had a name, all except

If you still desired others it wasn't #truelove IMHO but I understand this has become controversial in some circles.

I have Schizophrenia and would like to know if sound I hear is real or just normal background sound using a app. Thanks

Middle click failure plagues nearly every mouse I've owned, OEM, Logitech, wired, or wireless. I take full advantage of the middle click shortcuts like opening links in new tabs, but I don't think I'm putting it through undue stress either. As far as I can tell, I'm clicking it with the same force as I would the other mouse buttons and much less frequently than the left click.

Failure usually starts with occasional missed middle clicks, which after some point, rapidly progresses until it's failing to register more often than not. At that point, everything else will still work perfectly. No improvement even if I take it apart to clean out what little dirt had accumulated.

One of my mice has managed to avoid this fate far longer than the others but I've just recently stopped using it due to the rubberized exterior turning all gooey and sticky. The only middle mouse buttons that seem immune to all of this are the ones on ThinkPads. Anyone else notice this or could recommend a good mouse that can stand up to a bit of middle-clicking?

I’ve recently started a subreddit (yes I know reddit sucks I am aware) and an associated Discord to experiment with a simple idea, can social media be used to coordinate productive labor outside of market relations, where people work together to produce useful things directly for use, rather than for profit, wages, or exchange.

The experiment is just getting started, but I’m interested in seeing how far this type of coordination could go. We already use social media for organizing activity without the market, from birthday parties to protests, why not production? But anyway back to my question.

Recent events with Discord, where personal data is required in ways that make hosting experimental communities risky, have highlighted the need for a more secure, less corporate platforms for this type of social experimentation.

I’m curious if anyone here has experience with alternative platforms that could host this kind of collaborative, post-capitalist project safely? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I am looking to buy a new phone and this time around, I want to get a refurbished to save money. I wanted to know what's the best site/place to buy refurbished that you recommend?