jwiggler

Edit: Read this first. The solution was to not try to do everything online and go to a local music/record/vintage audio equipment shop and chat with the folks there. They were super nice, showed me the gear they recommended, and now I've got a nice sounding vintage setup that may not be audiophile worthy but is super awesome to me.

Hi there all, beginner audiophile here. Trying to build out my first turntable setup.

I decided on a Fluance RT82 and Douk X1 for a preamp. Now, when selecting speakers, I decided I'd just buy a second pair of the studio monitors I was using on my computer, Kali LP-6.

Now I'm a bit confused on the connections. The RT82 comes with an RCA cable and ground cable I'll connect to the Douk preamp, so that is covered. But the preamp has 4 speaker outputs that are binding posts. There is only a single RCA input on each monitor, so I'm not sure how to connect the preamp to the monitors.

I did see someone online say "why would you connect a preamp to LP-6? They already have amplifiers in them" But I also saw another person who had a TT setup with the LP-6es, which included a pre amp.

Any advice would be appreciated!! Or reading materials. The douk manual isn't much help.

FULL TEXT:

In an unprecedented move, the National Institutes of Health is abruptly terminating millions of dollars in research awards to scientists in Massachusetts and around the country, citing the Trump administration’s new restrictions on funding anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, transgender issues, or research that could potentially benefit universities in China.

The sweeping actions would appear to violate court rulings from federal judges in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., that block the Trump administration from freezing or ending billions of dollars in government spending, said David Super, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown Law, who reviewed some of the termination letters at the Globe’s request.

In a related case brought by an association of higher education officials that specifically challenged Trump’s various DEI executive orders, a federal judge in Maryland twice over the past month blocked the administration from terminating funding, saying in his most recent decision the restrictions “punish, or threaten to punish, individuals and institutions based on the content of their speech, and in doing so they specifically target viewpoints the government seems to disfavor.”

Super added that the termination letters are also “unlawful” because the NIH is imposing conditions on funding that did not exist at the time the grants were awarded.

The NIH did not respond to a request for comment.

Scientists say the letters began arriving last Friday and earlier this week, notifying them their funding was being canceled because it involved subjects that are “unscientific,” do “nothing to enhance the health of many Americans,” or do “not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

Exactly how many NIH grants have been terminated is unclear.

With an annual budget of more than $45 billion, the NIH is the largest single public funder of biomedical research in the world, and Massachusetts is the nation’s top recipient on a per capita basis. Massachusetts researchers in the past fiscal year received more than $3.3 billion from the NIH.

Among those whose research funding was terminated is Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her letter said she would not be receiving the last installment, roughly $650,000, of a five-year, $4 million award for honing time-efficient ways of asking patients about the discrimination they experience, including racism, sexism, sexual orientation, and age or weight discrimination.

“These are really important groups of people to study to understand how their life experiences are affecting their health,” Krieger said.

The letter she received said her work ran afoul of the administration’s anti-DEI rules, although Krieger said the research itself was not related to DEI.

“This is an assault not on just one little group of researchers. This is saying certain knowledge is not to be supported by the government,” Krieger said. “It’s the proverbial, ‘If there’s no data, there’s no problem.’ It means one can’t document the harms.”

The letters sent to scientists said they had 30 days to appeal to the agency for reconsideration, which Krieger said she intends to do.

Krieger’s research enrolled roughly 700 patients at three Boston community health centers including Fenway Health.

Dr. Kenneth Mayer, who heads the study arm at Fenway Health and is a professor at Harvard Medical School, said the cancellation of the grant would not immediately harm patients participating in the study. But, “it could have an impact on patient health in the future,” he said. “The whole point is to learn about biases. Some people avoid health care because they think they are going to be judged.”

He said it’s possible the four years’ worth of data already collected may be used, such as to develop training programs for doctors or educational materials for patients. “This is just such an important kind of work,” he said.

An NIH official told the Globe that administrators who oversee grants were given barely an hour’s notice of the terminations late last Friday before the notifications were sent out.

The official, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly, said they were aware of 24 such notices from four NIH institutes and centers, but said there are likely to be hundreds more.

This official shared a spreadsheet that showed 76 notices of funding opportunities over the past two years that the agency “unpublished,” meaning they were effectively scrubbed from public databases, potentially eliminating the funding for them.

Brittany Charlton, associate professor and founding director of the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has not had any research funding terminated but has heard directly from several scientists who did lose their funding. She said many will appeal.

Charlton said researchers are also working to partner with civil rights organizations as they challenge the legality of these executive orders.

“This goes beyond research on LGBTQ health and includes studies seeking to understand and address health issues affecting a wide range of other vulnerable communities,” Charlton said in a statement. “Scientific inquiry is under siege and the public’s health hangs in the balance as crucial studies vanish.”

Sean Arayasirikul, a medical sociologist and an associate professor in-residence in the department of Health, Society, and Behavior at University of California Irvine, received a termination letter last Friday that stopped funding halfway through a five-year study involving roughly 900 participants.

Arayasirikul’s research studies how racism and discrimination affect people of color who are gay or transgender and need help with HIV prevention, substance use disorder, or mental health.

“That is one of the biggest priorities for HIV prevention today and not having these data and not having this knowledge hearkens back to a time when denialism around HIV was prevalent,” Arayasirikul said.

“I am starting to think now that I may lose my job and not exist in this field anymore and that’s one thing,” said Arayasirikul. “But to erase an entire generation of scholars who come from these communities, doing this work, the impact of that is immense.”

FULL TEXT:

In an unprecedented move, the National Institutes of Health is abruptly terminating millions of dollars in research awards to scientists in Massachusetts and around the country, citing the Trump administration’s new restrictions on funding anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, transgender issues, or research that could potentially benefit universities in China.

The sweeping actions would appear to violate court rulings from federal judges in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., that block the Trump administration from freezing or ending billions of dollars in government spending, said David Super, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown Law, who reviewed some of the termination letters at the Globe’s request.

In a related case brought by an association of higher education officials that specifically challenged Trump’s various DEI executive orders, a federal judge in Maryland twice over the past month blocked the administration from terminating funding, saying in his most recent decision the restrictions “punish, or threaten to punish, individuals and institutions based on the content of their speech, and in doing so they specifically target viewpoints the government seems to disfavor.”

Super added that the termination letters are also “unlawful” because the NIH is imposing conditions on funding that did not exist at the time the grants were awarded.

The NIH did not respond to a request for comment.

Scientists say the letters began arriving last Friday and earlier this week, notifying them their funding was being canceled because it involved subjects that are “unscientific,” do “nothing to enhance the health of many Americans,” or do “not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

Exactly how many NIH grants have been terminated is unclear.

With an annual budget of more than $45 billion, the NIH is the largest single public funder of biomedical research in the world, and Massachusetts is the nation’s top recipient on a per capita basis. Massachusetts researchers in the past fiscal year received more than $3.3 billion from the NIH.

Among those whose research funding was terminated is Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her letter said she would not be receiving the last installment, roughly $650,000, of a five-year, $4 million award for honing time-efficient ways of asking patients about the discrimination they experience, including racism, sexism, sexual orientation, and age or weight discrimination.

“These are really important groups of people to study to understand how their life experiences are affecting their health,” Krieger said.

The letter she received said her work ran afoul of the administration’s anti-DEI rules, although Krieger said the research itself was not related to DEI.

“This is an assault not on just one little group of researchers. This is saying certain knowledge is not to be supported by the government,” Krieger said. “It’s the proverbial, ‘If there’s no data, there’s no problem.’ It means one can’t document the harms.”

The letters sent to scientists said they had 30 days to appeal to the agency for reconsideration, which Krieger said she intends to do.

Krieger’s research enrolled roughly 700 patients at three Boston community health centers including Fenway Health.

Dr. Kenneth Mayer, who heads the study arm at Fenway Health and is a professor at Harvard Medical School, said the cancellation of the grant would not immediately harm patients participating in the study. But, “it could have an impact on patient health in the future,” he said. “The whole point is to learn about biases. Some people avoid health care because they think they are going to be judged.”

He said it’s possible the four years’ worth of data already collected may be used, such as to develop training programs for doctors or educational materials for patients. “This is just such an important kind of work,” he said.

An NIH official told the Globe that administrators who oversee grants were given barely an hour’s notice of the terminations late last Friday before the notifications were sent out.

The official, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly, said they were aware of 24 such notices from four NIH institutes and centers, but said there are likely to be hundreds more.

This official shared a spreadsheet that showed 76 notices of funding opportunities over the past two years that the agency “unpublished,” meaning they were effectively scrubbed from public databases, potentially eliminating the funding for them.

Brittany Charlton, associate professor and founding director of the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has not had any research funding terminated but has heard directly from several scientists who did lose their funding. She said many will appeal.

Charlton said researchers are also working to partner with civil rights organizations as they challenge the legality of these executive orders.

“This goes beyond research on LGBTQ health and includes studies seeking to understand and address health issues affecting a wide range of other vulnerable communities,” Charlton said in a statement. “Scientific inquiry is under siege and the public’s health hangs in the balance as crucial studies vanish.”

Sean Arayasirikul, a medical sociologist and an associate professor in-residence in the department of Health, Society, and Behavior at University of California Irvine, received a termination letter last Friday that stopped funding halfway through a five-year study involving roughly 900 participants.

Arayasirikul’s research studies how racism and discrimination affect people of color who are gay or transgender and need help with HIV prevention, substance use disorder, or mental health.

“That is one of the biggest priorities for HIV prevention today and not having these data and not having this knowledge hearkens back to a time when denialism around HIV was prevalent,” Arayasirikul said.

“I am starting to think now that I may lose my job and not exist in this field anymore and that’s one thing,” said Arayasirikul. “But to erase an entire generation of scholars who come from these communities, doing this work, the impact of that is immense.”

Honestly the original title is appropriately boring but the real headline should be

A new memo from the U.S. Department of Transportation indicates that it will direct more funding to states with higher birth and marriage rates

Here's the article

CONCORD, N.H. —

A New Hampshire executive councilor is raising concerns about new language tied to federal highway funding.

Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill said a new memo from the U.S. Department of Transportation indicates that it will direct more funding to states with higher birth and marriage rates.

"New Hampshire is one of the oldest states in the nation, and we have one of the lowest birth rates in the country," she said. "And so, I'm very concerned if all of a sudden, there's going to be new strings attached to federal funds."

State Department of Transportation officials said the prior administration also had its own initiatives, and New Hampshire still got its highway money.

We don't anticipate that this will cause any problems," said DOT deputy commissioner Andre Briere. "In the last Justice40 (Initiative), we're also a state that doesn't have a lot of communities that meet those criteria, but we were nonetheless granted discretionary grants."

Briere was referring to a program under President Joe Biden that prioritized programs related to climate change, clean energy, pollution reduction and other categories.

As the Trump administration's freeze on federal grants gets litigated in the courts, nonprofit organizations and other initiatives that receive federal funding are watching and waiting.

Executive Councilor John Stephen said he's all for cutting government spending, but he said that allocated funds New Hampshire organizations are counting on should be delivered.

"It's important that the nonprofits and the organizations that have been pretty much guaranteed current funding for their operations, that we continue, and we're fiscally responsible in everything we do at the state level," Stephen said. "What I'd like to see going forward, though, is that we're looking, working closely, collaboratively with the federal government to make sure that New Hampshire is not adversely impacted."

Gov. Kelly Ayotte said she hopes the Trump administration takes a closer look at where the resources being targeted by the freeze are actually going.

"Because they could be going to public safety issues," she said. "They could be going to drug prevention, interdiction – all those things are critical."

CONCORD, N.H. —

A New Hampshire executive councilor is raising concerns about new language tied to federal highway funding.

Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill said a new memo from the U.S. Department of Transportation indicates that it will direct more funding to states with higher birth and marriage rates.

"New Hampshire is one of the oldest states in the nation, and we have one of the lowest birth rates in the country," she said. "And so, I'm very concerned if all of a sudden, there's going to be new strings attached to federal funds."

State Department of Transportation officials said the prior administration also had its own initiatives, and New Hampshire still got its highway money.

We don't anticipate that this will cause any problems," said DOT deputy commissioner Andre Briere. "In the last Justice40 (Initiative), we're also a state that doesn't have a lot of communities that meet those criteria, but we were nonetheless granted discretionary grants."

Briere was referring to a program under President Joe Biden that prioritized programs related to climate change, clean energy, pollution reduction and other categories.

As the Trump administration's freeze on federal grants gets litigated in the courts, nonprofit organizations and other initiatives that receive federal funding are watching and waiting.

Executive Councilor John Stephen said he's all for cutting government spending, but he said that allocated funds New Hampshire organizations are counting on should be delivered.

"It's important that the nonprofits and the organizations that have been pretty much guaranteed current funding for their operations, that we continue, and we're fiscally responsible in everything we do at the state level," Stephen said. "What I'd like to see going forward, though, is that we're looking, working closely, collaboratively with the federal government to make sure that New Hampshire is not adversely impacted."

Gov. Kelly Ayotte said she hopes the Trump administration takes a closer look at where the resources being targeted by the freeze are actually going.

"Because they could be going to public safety issues," she said. "They could be going to drug prevention, interdiction – all those things are critical."

I've got 32GB RAM and an RTX 3080 I'm borrowing long term. Normally I just play Rocket League, some Deadlock, and good single player games (ie not formulaic yearly-released).

Any recommendations?

I recently got a Steamdeck and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations of games that take almost 0 brainpower to play so that I can focus on listening to audiobooks.

For me that means no dialogue and no text to read. Games that have worked for me so far are:

• Rocket League (difficult to play on Steamdeck)
• Vampire Survivors (once I learned what each item does)
• Peggle

Games that I've had trouble with include

• Sifu
• Brotato (gotta read to learn the items)
• Factorio
• Baba is You

Games I have yet to really try:

• Elite Dangerous
• Elden Ring
• Dorf Romantik (this is promising)
• Powerwash Simulator (also promising)
• RollerDrome
• Halo: MCC online (is Halo 3 online viable on steamdeck?)
• Risk of Rain 2
• Hades

Anyone have any suggestions? I'm running out of ideas and may end up just forgoing this hole idea in favor of keeping gaming and books separate