I want a NixOS install that has an encrypted disk, but also want to be able to reboot it and bring it up remotely, is there a way to do that that isn't a lot of non-standard hoops?

I assume no, but,

extra bonus points if it's nixos idiomatic but even the nix examples seem like it's sorta just bolted on

some cool stuff in the comments i wanna save for later, for when i stop rotating my steam deck in my head and commit to something

The Lazy & Cheap Girl's Guide to Plants!

My place is jam packed with plants, and I have a great veggie garden and I know people think that's expensive or takes a lot of work? And honestly, nope to either. You don't even have to know that much about plants, I don't even know what most of mine are called except the edible ones.

So I thought I'd make a tutorial on how to have a green thumb without really trying!

Indoor houseplants

• You really don't need to baby them, they do just fine outdoors. Just try and mimic nature.
• Over watering kills plants, under watering leaves them a little crispy around the edges at worst - but they'll survive. So I don't water on a schedule, I just leave my plants alone til they look a little fucked up then I give them a heavy watering till the dirt in the pot is drenched. (Healthy vs thirsty leaf below)

• I mostly use terra cotta clay pots with drainage holes on the bottom. They're cheap at the hardware store or on craigslist / Facebook buy nothing group / yard sales, and they're breathable so they make it pretty much impossible to overwater and kill the plants. Totally idiotproof. You can put cute crystal or glass dishes from the thrift store underneath to prevent spills when you water
• But you can also get creative with your plant pots. Any random shit at the thrift store or around your house that lets excess water drain out? Plant pot. You can even get a glass cutting drill bit and drill holes in old cups or glassware. Plants in glass looks pretty sick, since their roots show.

• I don't use "starter" pots, I think small plants are too easy to kill by transplanting, so I just plant them wherever I want to grow them, even if the pot is big.
• You can get an idea how much water a plant needs by how thicc it is. If it's thicker, like an aloe, it'll be able to hold water. If the leaves are thin, it'll need water more. Some are a surprise though, like spider plants have underground tubers that hold water.

How to save a dying houseplant!

1. Water it. Give it a day.
2. If it still looks bad, check for bugs. I treat bugs by first removing the plant from the pot, giving it a rinse in the sink (get a drain strainer), putting it in a new pot with new dirt, and then giving it a spray on the leaves with a bottle of water with a drop of neem oil mixed in. Then I leave the plant in quarantine away from other plants till I'm sure it's better. But if it wasn't bugs?
3. Check for fungus. If it's got any, wash your hands and get some scissors, then cut off the parts with fungus, being careful to not touch and spread it. Then unpot the plant, give it a bath with a few drops of dish soap in there, and then rinse it clean. Repot it in a clean pot with new soil. But if it wasn't fungus?
4. if it's in direct sunlight i move it to a spot with indirect sunlight. And vice versa. (A grow light works too - and the white lights look nice and sunny indoors) Give it a day or two.

1. If it still looks bad, I take it out of the pot and look at the roots. If they're crispy like thin uncooked spaghetti, the plant went too long without water and you should remember to water that one more. (i keep all the thirsty girls on one table so I don't forget). If the roots are mushy like overcooked spaghetti, you've overwatered it. A healthy root should feel like al dente spaghetti, solid but flexible and not crispy. It shouldn't come apart in your hands. Also if there's mold or bugs in your dirt, that's the problem, get new dirt
2. If none of that was the problem, move it to the bathroom for humidity. Unless it's in the bathroom, then move it out.
3. If it's been cold, and the plant gets mushy and shapeless in the leaves or stem, it basically got horrible plant frostbite and the cell walls are burst open. Whatever's mushy can't be saved, hose it off. If it all comes apart? R.I.P :(
4. If literally none of that worked, I just give it away lol

How to do this for cheap or free

• Get dirt from outside. If you're in a city don't take it from the parks. But on an unrelated note, how do you feel about "investors" who buy up housing to leave it vacant?
• Anyway, you can de-bug that dirt by cooking it in the oven (maybe go on craigslist or Facebook marketplace for a cheap or free toaster oven to do this in - it will make your oven smell weird) or pouring boiling hot water over it till it's damp, then spreading it out in the sun to dry.
• Like I said before, anything can be a plant pot. Empty tin cans with holes poked in the bottom work - just don't grow edible plants in there because the metal leaches into the dirt. Terra Cotta plant pots are the cheapest food safe ones I know of - Home Depot has some from $1 to $4
• Buying fruit and veggie seeds is so worth it, you can get a bag of 30 types of veggie seeds for $10 to $15 online and that grows hella food. Or you could get a single veggie bag for a dollar or two. Or try sticking seeds from your groceries in the dirt and seeing what grows! Just look up how much space they need if you're growing them inside.
• You can propogate plants by taking a cutting. if it's a succulent or cactus, putting it on dirt that you water weekly, or if it's any other plant, putting the stem in water with the bottom few leaves cut off. I love trading cuttings and just taking a cutting of any plant I want growing in the wild. Be patient with them and change the water every week or two, and wait till they grow new roots to put them in dirt

• You can take cuttings off your own plants to create ~exponential plant growth~ spider plants are the best for this because they "spider" off mini plants. All these and more came from one mother plant:

• You can grow a lot from grocery scraps. If something has seeds or a pit, plant it. Otherwise, google how to propogate it from scraps. Once you get in the habit of doing that with all your fresh produce, you'll not have to buy nearly as many groceries.

(I think I'm gonna make a separate post for outdoor / veggie gardening bc this is long af and that's a whole post in itself!)

it is a series of guided practical musical lessons that works on my phone and allows for fiddling and free exploration of the concept at any point, even without an explicit objective on the page. it just told me about chords and i am playing this composition like go, thinking about why some moves sound bad and realizing it is because they choke each other off. i am having a full on Learning Experience from a piece of software and it feels great

Getting Feedback is Hard and it's not because your Friends Hate You

I was talking to a friend the other night about sharing creative works. Art, coding, writing, or whatever and how often stuff just gets nothing back in return outside of maybe a few emojis and a "Good Work", and how demotivating that can feel. I mentioned that, at this point, it doesn't bother me to much and after telling her why it doesn't bother me I was like... hey idk maybe I should write this down. I know a lot of people who struggle with this and maybe this can help. SO, why do your friends/discord servermates/whatever seem to not care about your creative work? And why is that not actually the case?

Context

Anyone with a ton of OCs and lore, and personal art/writing knows the pain of getting like, a response and a half for something, while a piece of fan art gets seen and shared and commented on a thousand times. While a big portion of this context is "Me likey Tifa", a smaller but just important part is that, even if they don't particularly like a character or setting or whatever, if you show them some kind of work from something established, they have far more points of knowledge to judge it and react to it by. Meanwhile with more personal, you need to build that relationship with the people you know. I eventually start recognizing the different OCs of my friends. I begin to know what coding projects they're doing, so when they do something new, I know why they're excited. There is no promise anything you do will click with anyone, but when you present work without context, it's clicked with nobody yet. The only frame of reference, if you're sharing with friends, is you.

"Good job!" and "I'm proud of you!" Might feel like banal, generic niceties, but you are the context they can react to. Also...

Giving Meaningful Feedback is Really Hard

Most creatives I know value a good comment so much more than any amount of likes or emoji reacts. Someone giving a good positive reaction, or providing real, useful, considerate advice? Or even being considerate and complimentary in a way that shows that they're paying attention? "Oh my god, your backgrounds have gotten so much better!"

That shit is Gold

But giving good feedback, especially with a lack of context is HARD. What is the artist or writer trying to do? How finished is this game I'm trying out? How do they feel about this? If I criticize this, will they find it useful, or will I ruin their day? If I say "Wow nice!" is that going to feel fake? Is that worse than saying nothing?. Do I even know enough TO say anything, even in the best situation? There is a reason it's some peoples jobs to just give feedback or edit. It's hard, it's often laborious, and...

Feedback is a Finite Resource

Lets say it happens. Maybe you post you game. Someone, say, me, gives you a whole bunch of good feedback. You post more. I give a little less. You most even more. Most people aren't saying anything anymore. Occasionally you get a few things... do they care less? Hell, you'd think, which more context, it'd be EASIER right?

... But quality feedback is a finite resource. When something is fresh and new, it's easy to pick the low hanging fruit of good advice, give a lot of motivation, give direction. But once the easy stuff has been said, and more fic revisions happen, or you recolor part of the picture, or whatever... it becomes even harder. And so while the person giving feedback or support is trying just as hard -- maybe even harder, the comments in the end feel worse. Are you worse? Are you slipping? Is this the wrong direction? Some lukewarm response after a good response can be so deflating, but it's often unavoidable. There is only so much good feedback someone can reasonably give. I find myself running around google and wikipedia sometimes just to give someone a meaningful comment, but the reality is... I can only do that so much. Virtually everyone has a limit.

Maybe they don't Care? How do you Cope with that?

I think this is important to address too. Maybe your work, even with context, even when well done... doesn't resonate with your peers. Are you just a bad piece of shit?

So I made I Wanna Be the Guy and I just wanna say that almost none of my friends played the game. I'm like... the most popular person in the GG discord I run and I'll post some of my special interest shit, or really high effort 3d art stuff and... no one really cares? Just some emoji and a jokey comment?

I think there is a part of all of our egos that has to accept that you can be deeply friends with someone and not care about everything about them. That your interests aren't your friends interests and that's not only fine, it's pretty cool that we're all so different. So the question then is...

Why are you Making Art?

If you're making art for success and praise and you're drawing cuddly OC stuff or making a heartbreaker TTRPG book, or WHATEVER fucking stop. They're called heartbreakers for a reason. Go listen to some of the great comic artists, or game designers talk about why they made games. They are making art to serve their audience. They're not getting hung up on their childhood creative ideas, they are designing ideas specifically to find success and if that feels awful and heartbreaking to you but you still want that sort of success, you gotta recalibrate.

You can't be jealous of the super popular fan artist when you don' want to draw fan art. You're not doing the same thing. Are you making art for YOU? Or for other people? Neither of these are wrong, but if you're trying to make stuff For you.......... FOR other people, well, you're setting yourself up to be miserable.

You can find success with personal stuff. People do. Arguably I did. But it's luck and timing. I didn't make IWBTG to be successful, I did it because the idea appealed to me. I found people who liked it and the praise certainly encouraged me to finish it, but my goal wasn't to become a popular game designer, it was to make and finish a game. A lot of the Brave Earth lore stuff I post doesn't get a lot of traction, but that's okay. I love when other people appreciate it and I can get people into it, but ultimately, it is for me. I'll make shit with my OCs and teenage ideas because it's for me.

Sure, sometimes things can be in between. I've changed stuff in games I thought was fine for the players. But if I finally release Brave Earth Prologue and it doesn't do nearly as well as I hope, I kinda gotta hold that because, even with those concessions, I made a game for me. If I was making a game to be successful and make money I'd... idk, make a fucking gacha or something. You have to ask yourself. Why ARE you making art, and is your expectations aligned with what you're actually doing?

You don't make a heartbreakter TTRPG to become popular, you do it because it exists inside you like a curse, and you won't be free until you get it out. You want others to love your OCs like you do, but they won't. Even if you get people to love them a lot, your love will always be different. They're for you.

Actionable Advice

If you want comments and feedback, as for them clearly.

"Yo does my background look wack?" with not only get your more responses, you will make life easier for people trying to help by giving them the right context.

Also, find the people you can talk about stuff with. You're an artist? Find other artists you jive with and can talk to and share stuff together. Give and get advice. Find your friend willing to read your short stories. Find another friend with their own OCs and listen to them blab like you want to be listened to. Lacking these people in your life isn't a deficit in any of your friends, but it exposes a hole in your roster. Find your people. I can't get all my friends to play me in fighting games. I gotta find a community for that. Same goes for any kind of creative endeavor.

And lastly... have reasonable expectations of other people. Are you giving quality feedback and replies to all your friends creative works? Probably not. If you think about it, you will know how hard it is. It's hard for them too. Likely harder. Don't set yourself up for emotional failure by assuming you're a piece of shit because no one cares about the 10 page fic you dropped in a discord server. Most people aren't getting that attention either and the people who are probably are people with situations you can't neatly compare yourself too. "Oh no one cares about my OCs, but they care about the OCs of this popular comic artist with TONS of followers" like lol no don't do that to yourself... and if that is what you want, actually consider how to get there.

You can't be jealous about something someone has unless you are also jealous of what they had to do to get there.

I will also tag on one piece of advice:

Don't caveat what's "bad" about your work for people

Posting your stuff alongside a declaration of "I fucked up the perspective on this" or "I know the jokes suck but it's a first draft lol" are bad framing. Because people basically have two options if they're going to respond

1. Agree with your criticism and validate your worries as 'correct'

2. Disagree with the criticism, presumably facing an uphill battle of convincing you that your opinion is wrong

Or of course, the easiest option 3:
Say nothing at all.
None of these are good options for you.

If you have concerns about specific things, ask questions. If you ask "Does the perspective look off here?" people can either say yes or no, without it starting off negative. By leading with a statement about how you hate some part of what you're putting out, people feel like they need to start from there and work out from it. You've forced them to respond to what might be a very personal anxiety, rather than letting them look at the picture and talk about what parts they like, even if they might also give critique on the part you think needs work.

But also, they might just think it looks great, and you've just made it harder for them to say that because you've made that feel like an incorrect opinion to have. When you make something, you stare at it for so long, that errors feel glaring but a casual observer may gloss over that entirely, because the appealing aspects to your work are that much more captivating.

So stop telling people why your stuff is bad so you can leave room for them to tell you what they like.

This goes both for things you post publicly and for things you send to your "feedback buddies" (artist friends, critique partners, beta testers, etc).

Ask what you want to know about the piece! Let people know what kind of feedback will be most useful to you. Most people want to be helpful, they just don't know how.

"Does the perspective work here?" "I just want to know your impressions of this character" "let me know at what point you got too bored or frustrated and stopped playing" "can you mark where the prose got confusing for you?"

Giving someone a narrow thing to focus on removes one of the biggest barriers to give feedback. It also lets people know what kind of feedback is okay to give. If you say "tell me when you stopped reading", it signals it's okay to stop reading and it's okay to let you know. Telling someone "this is a first draft, ignore the prose and just focus on pacing" let's them know they shouldn't waste their time suggesting word changes.

It also makes the feedback more useful to you!

Anyway I feel like artists have this insecurity about asking for a response, like people have to spontaneously be moved to tell you something or it doesn't count.

As a copywriter let me tell you: you need a call to action. Tell people what an appropriate response to your art is and they'll be more likely to respond.

Giving people strong guidance as to what you're looking for feedback on is GREAT, I do it all the time with @sykes, but another under-appreciated feedback-related skill is figuring out what you need feedback on in the first place.

Very often it happens that you'll be working on something and it just doesn't feel right, in a way you find very hard to articulate. This can be pretty frustrating, not only because it damages your relationship with the work, but also because you know you can't just plop what you've got down in a feedback channel and expect someone else to be able to tell you what's wrong with it.

What you CAN do is bring what you've got to a feedback person you trust (I personally prefer seeking individual feedback over soliciting it from a group) and taking them through, like, the story of the work. Not necessarily an explicit narrative (though that can be part of it) but describing what made you want to make something like this, what emotions you want to evoke, whether you're being influenced by something specific, who you'rd trying to appeal to, what you'd like to do with it in the future, that kind of thing.

It's WAY easier to give good feedback if you know that a work is supposed to make a person feel wistful, or that it was inspired by Kung Fu Hustle, or that the person making it wants it to be part of a larger cohesive project! And even if you don't necessarily know all of these things about your work, talking about it with a feedback partner can also function as a brainstorming exercise! I can't tell you how many times I've come to @sykes with a vague problem and spotted the solution on my own three-quarters of the way through a long description of what I think the problem might be.