someone the other day posted a link to CT Fletcher talking about willpower and in that video he says something that resonates with me here (and I’m paraphrasing): when you do your best, it’s never a failure, it’s a victory. because you did your best. that you didn’t achieve some (possibly unattainable) goal is irrelevant, because the success is determined by the efforts you made. (and there are MANY ways to interpret those wise words and make them applicable to yourself).

as a single father, i’m constantly struggling with similar thoughts you describe. I often feel like i’m struggling to just survive. but when I see that my kid is happy, and that he’s following my advice (like: ‘never be afraid to speak your mind’ and ‘cleaning your room makes your life better’, etc) and I realize that yeah I’m absolutely doing the best for him that I can, then the whole rest of this shit sandwich doesn’t suck so bad.

there are many measures of wealth, and only ONE of them is by how many dollars are in your pocket. collect those smiles and those ‘i love you, dad’ and they’ll keep you going when money won’t.

pretty sure the venn diagram of f-droid users and adblocking users is such a huge overlap that this may not pay off too well.

As someone currently using a swamp cooler in a desert climate with daily temps around 40C, that statement is absolutely misleading!

A more accurate statement could be that they cycle 125-550L of water a day, but aside from what’s evaporated, it’s basically a closed-loop system, with very little water waste or loss.

evaporative coolers are very common in desert climates in the US. they work really great up to about 60% humidity and cost less than 10% to operate compared to ‘regular’ AC. they use little power (can easily be solar powered), and do not pollute.

i have both an evaporative cooler and an AC unit and have rarely felt the need to use the AC - the evap works exceedingly well for keeping the temps tolerable.

the only real downside is that it’s not just push a button and all your problems are solved. you need airflow. usually these things are mounted where the output vents into a central hallway or room, and you direct the flow of cool air by opening windows or doors - the path between the cooler vent and the open “exhaust” to the outside is what stays the coolest. Opening the whole house requires turning the evap cooler’s fan to a higher speed, but that’s so wasteful and we’re not ever using the whole house at once. i also turn it off when there’s a thunderstorm (because obviously the humidity spike makes this useless). It also doesn’t get used in the winter - it gets a canvas cover and some padding to seal off the air gaps so the house doesn’t get too cold and drafty.

it’s clear there’s a lot of people here who haven’t ever used or even seen this type of cooler, but i assure you this is common, and probably the most cost-effective summer cooling.