What do you just not give a single fuck about that so many people try to make you give a shit about?

Oh. My. God. Can fucking apps learn that when I say "block" and "less like this" I fucking mean it? Don't show me fucking anything about baseball, soccer, tennis, basketball, and especially not American football. I AM NOT YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE.

Also, I have to block a large fraction of my social feeds at certain times of the year because all they talk about are sports.

I'll never understand letting the outcome of a game make or break my mood in the following days.

I spent >10 years of my youth playing a sport competitively. I don't think I ever watched a professional game to completion. Unlike pretty much all my teammates, I just could not have cared less.

Play the sport myself? Fun, sure! Watch someone else play? Uh, why?

I think it's great that people enjoy watching sports. I dunno why but it just bored the hell out of me.

I don't mind playing sports even if I suck at them, but watching them? Uggghhh.

I too do not understand social media. The best I get is it’s about people shouting into a void and hoping someone else heard you to interact with it, by repeating it, liking it, or shouting back at you.

Hashtags are the only way to organize these posts and you need to add them or no one else will hear your shouts into the void.

Interestingly, I think people like you and me use Lemmy because one of the same underlying reasons as social media people:

Either:

1. Endless amounts of stuff that speaks to your interest. (With us it's stuff like technology. On Social media, people are "interested" in what others are up to.

2. Getting likes/dislikes. Even though likes aren't important on Lemmy, I notice in my usage that I do subconsciously get the same dopamine hits jf a post gets liked a lot, just like Social Media does. It's less aggressive on Lemmy because you don't get alerts for it, but it does factor in on engagement.

3. Engaging in conversations/discussions with other people.

4. Sharing things you find interesting yourself

The content might be different, but the underlying principles are really close. Social Media is actually really close to how forums work at it's core.

But I know this is an unpopular opinion. And no, I wouldn't call Lemmy Social Media per se. But the line is more blurry than I'd like to admit if I look at my time spent with Lemmy.

Like the saying goes:

Everything I know about the Kardashians I learned against my will.

Hopefully Green Bell G-1008 nail clippers. They're significantly better than any clippers I've used before. They'd make the mowing process much better.

Add getting married to that for me. I enjoy not being legally bound to another human

Ugh, yep, I'm far from alone in saying I'd really rather not have any

Whenever I hear the word 'economy' I replace it with 'rich people's yacht money.' I feel that clarifies a lot of my opinions on the matter.

That's quite frankly how it's designed. Capitalism favors no one but those that have built it and continue building on it.

So, two points.

First, I'd encourage anyone to save. And as a place to keep savings, the market has done pretty well as to long-term returns. Having money in a portfolio isn't incompatible with working for a living.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/10/31/what-would-happen-if-you-invested-100-a-week-in-th/

Let's take a hypothetical investor named Annie as an example. At 25 years old, Annie has just landed her dream job as a chef, with a starting salary of $30,000 per year. She knows she may never make considerably more than that, but she doesn't care -- she loves her job! She also loves the idea of eventually retiring, though, and because the restaurant she works at doesn't offer pension or retirement benefits, she knows she's going to have to make that happen on her own. Living modestly, she's able to set aside an extra $100 per week, putting that money into an S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.70%) index fund that conservatively returns an average of 9% per year.

How much will Annie have at the end of just 30 years? Incredibly, somewhere around $790,000.

Surprised? This is even more surprising: If Annie can keep finding that extra $100 per week for another 10 years, she'll be sitting on roughly $2 million at the end of that 40-year stretch.

If she retires at 65, and you figure 2% inflation and use their 9% pre-inflation return, those savings generate a post-inflation maybe $140,000/year for her to live on without cutting into the portfolio in real terms.

But, okay, second, set investment aside. Let's just say "does the economy matter"?

Like, if there's a recession, GDP contracts. I'm pretty sure that a lot of people look at that and say "Well, that's just some abstract number. It's got no effect on me."

Inflation, on the other hand, clearly causes prices to rise.

I was looking at a poll from a bit back talking about how most people -- especially in Germany and the US, two of the three countries polled -- deeply dislike inflation. They would much rather have a recession than see high inflation.

In general, economists are going to go the other route. They'll say that recessions are really bad.

So, during Biden's (and Trump's, during COVID) time in office, a number of policies were made (not necessarily by them) that tended to avoid recession, but encourage inflation.

Polling shows that people were unhappy with Biden on the economy, because high (well, as the US goes) inflation showed up during his time in office.

Biden kept quoting figures that are generally considered to be very positive. Low unemployment, for example. But...there was that inflation.

When GDP drops -- and a sustained decline in GDP is what constitutes a recession -- it's indicating that there's less economic activity going on. What that tends to represent is a lot fewer people working -- a lot of layoffs. Companies going under. Maybe furloughs or reduced hours, in some cases. The impact there is that a lot of people have their income go away or be cut, a lot of things get upended.

With inflation, on the other hand, wages are sticky, tend to take a while to catch up, but do catch up. There aren't huge job losses. Things more-or-less keep moving along as they were.

I don't think that Trump or Biden would have acted wildly different on the matter. You could swap their periods in office, and both would have followed their recommendations, which would have been to favor policy that encouraged inflation and avoided recession, though then the inflation would have shown up when Trump was in office. They're not doing it because the economists advising them have some special love of having Americans pay higher prices, but rather because they'd consider that preferable to a recession and the problems that accompany that. Also, neither drives the Federal Reserve, which is what adopted an important chunk of that inflationary policy. In the absence of the pandemic, neither would have wanted inflation -- it's not that high inflation is desirable, just that it's preferable to the alternative of recession.

Sounds like you need to find a less popular beach

Actually swimming in the ocean is a pretty unique experience, but it does kind of require you to be a strong swimmer.

Are you Bill Hicks?

Me too. And I live in NZ where there's bloody beaches everywhere. Can't move for beaches

AI for me as well. I’ve played with it a little and it’s kinda fun. Every company is pushing AI now including in areas where it doesn’t make any sense or is many years away from being useful. I’m also seeing a lot of developers being assigned to use AI without any directions on what to use it for.

I’m far enough along in my career I don’t need to worry about being replaced by AI. If it’s ever good enough to take my job I’ll be happily retired writing software for fun and living my life without AI. I just don’t have any interest.

I think the silent majority feels like this.

"Eh, not my cup of tea, but you do you"

I think constantly bringing it up to people all the time is more of a disservice.

The trans community is tiny, I'm an almost 50 year old trans woman transitioned over 20 years ago. The reason we have the rights we do is because it's "brought up all the time". When I transitioned, it was rarely brought up, this was because most people were scared of the social and economic consequences of doing so. This is all changing because we talk about it rather than be quiet and let people keep us down. I'd imagine even you might have more negative views of trans people if the only exposure you had was from talk shows promoting us as freaks, this is how it was before.

Other than that, your attitude is fine, not everyone needs to be interested.

Same, I never saw a MCU movies for instance

The French word for "entertainment" is "divertissement" and you don't need to know French to get what it is: a diversion from things that matter.

I realized far too late that most mainstream media is about maximizing views and not telling those stories that worth telling as you said. They start with an interesting idea for a story and if it gets popular it just drags on to get the most amount of eyeballs for as long as possible only for it to end long after it should have with an unsatisfying ending.

And don’t get me started on injecting soap opera esque character drama just to keep the lowest common denominator inerested (looking at you For All Mankind)

Of course, but the people who are constantly talking about "Stocks" and "The Market" are usually constantly trading, wheeling, dealing, doing all sorts of shit and then trying to brag about how smart they are cause they're "hustling" while... barely keeping up with or not keeping up at all with those broad index funds you already mentioned.

I pump Large Growth and call it a day.

Yep, S&P 500 or Russel 2000 is all you really need.

Saving accounts are just a great resource for banks. Their returns are always less than inflation so you're basically always losing money with them.

I've had stocks in a couple forms over my lifetime and after a while, both times I have pulled all my money out.

The first time was shortly after the 2008 crash. All those reassuring words my investing manager person told me were simply sweet nothings. I decided that taking the hit of losing half my money was a life lesson and used the remaining half to go travel and live a life for myself. That investing manager later went on to have a covid party out of defiance for masking requirements, caught covid and died. Felt good knowing my stranger-danger alarms were working even if I didn't understand my decisions fully at the time.

The second time I simply put my money into a low risk, government stock option for a few years. After watching global leaders fumble the handling of a global pandemic, I lost faith my own government to have my best interest in mind. I pulled my money out again.

I personally feel super uncomfortable allowing other people to make money off my money that I am risking. Even if it is low risk. It make me feel exploited.

Ultimately, I decided I don't need my money to work for me because I don't even want to work. I hate the concept of money. To me, money just disconnects us from community and nature.

If you are curious to how I live, it's with very little. I spent a number of years of my life living out of a 34 liter sized backpack. Living minimally while making sure what I owned had meaning, purpose or intention transfered over to when I finally started settling into a certain location.

Seems like you're describing renting in an apartment complex or similar. Not exactly an apples to apples comparison to owning a single family home.

Not that you've raised bad points. Renting does have the benefits you've described, though lawn care in my experience is hit and miss. The issue is getting these benefits must cost something. So long as having them doesn't mean the rent is double the mortgage, then it's worthwhile.

Otherwise, renting is just another more expensive option for all the people that can't afford the upfront cost of getting into the housing market.

One would love renting because they've managed to find the sweet spot that is an area where things are relatively quiet and peaceful. Management actually cares. Tenants keep to themselves. Things are relatively retained in condition.

But if you're living in a complex opposite of that, yeah you'll hate everything about renting. Tenants who make you wonder how they scrounge enough money to pay monthly rents with how they behave. Management who you wonder how they keep their jobs with how they handle things and allow said problematic tenants to come rent from them. You'll be getting e-mails of management telling you "oh, package room has to be monitored now because package theft is now a problem" or "we'll be closing the pool down for the rest of the season because children and tenants can't behave"

And just a bunch of other issues.

Which country? In France and Germany tenants are expected to do all of that by themselves. On top of financing their landlord's cocaine, of course.

Edit: actually in Germany it's often the opposite, landlords will tell you about how difficult it is to own a place while sucking your blood off. Shitty country

I'm glad we live in an era now where people finally realized that they can just not have children and for it to become more optional.

Having a kid and a family is not what it always take to have a fulfilling and happy life. For people to think that's all it takes, would be devaluing all of their gains and the people that have helped them along the way aka friends.

The fact that "family values" are politicized and cast as the best, most important way to live is honestly fucked up when you think about it.

Why did we decide being het and having kids makes you a fucking hero?

No need indeed. I guess many people most of the time enjoy the anticipation more than the actual product they consume. Anticipation can be a fun "hobby" within a hobby for people.

Because being stuck in the past is generally not a good thing

I think people are too dumb to realize places in the rurals must have them. Like in Alaska, it isn't optional with those bears.

I've come across a black bear while hunting small game and was very close in dense brush. People that have never experienced that kind of interaction lack the relevant info to have a say. While at the same time, after moving to Los Angeles for a couple of decades, owning guns here is for people with mental issues. One law can not cover all situations; it is impossible to federate. It is used as a distraction topic to avoid legislating reasonably against the loopholes of the oligarchy. It is the same reason why the news cycle camps on an election long before it is a relevant issue; there is no pressure to create reasonable legislation that would stop the privateers.

Same with tv/movie streaming providers

Celebrities and sports.

I understand doing sports, but watching others is as exciting as watching paint dry to me. Not to mention combining both as in cheering for a team of people I don't know. I don't get it.

Scandalous! Where can I hear more about this ABC, DEF, JKL love triangle?

The rest of us feel that way about your Kardashians.

I can not

1. Adaptor is extra
2. My car only supports music via aux port
3. I already have wired headphones

Bluetooth beacons are a thing. You can effectively track someone through a store to the point where you can recreate their steps all the way down to the product level.

Also, wireless headphones are just another thing to keep charged and are uncomfortable to fall asleep when wearing while the dongle means I can either charge or listen.

I get that removing the port helps with waterproofing and one less hole to clean and yea, it is 100% a personal choice.

It's absolutely a personal preference. Some people don't care, others do. A 3.5mm headphone jack is a requirement for any phone that I buy along with a micro SD card slot. It's getting more and more difficult to find devices that meet those requirements but that's a choice that I make. Along with unlockable bootloader and the ability to be rooted, but that's a whole different issue.

3.5mm headphone jack just works with anything you plug into it and it has for decades. No pairing, no charging headphones or earbuds, no latency, better sound quality, no having to choose between charging the device and having audio output OR find the right OTG dongle.

A lot of people don't care about this at all and that's fine. But for those of us who do I really hope that these options don't disappear entirely just to sell more Bluetooth earbud garbage and cloud storage subscriptions.

I agree that the difference is small, but it feels like enshitification and an anti consumer choice to me and that frustrates. Typing this from my jackless phone 🤳. I have DAC dongles everywhere.

People who are on the move a lot. Yeah, USB batter packs are a thing but that's far more annoying than not. I also second the person mentioning already having wired ones.

It's not the jack itself, but rather what it represents. The ability to simply and easily do what you want with a device you paid potentially thousands of dollars for, and it was taken away for no better reason than to save a few cents, or mimic a more successful company that wanted to save a few cents. Similarly, easily swappable batteries. The battery is likely the first component in a device to die, and when it does fuck you, buy a whole new phone. I used to never put my phone on a charger; I had two batteries and I'd just switch them out every morning, easy and simple. That feature was taken away by greedy megacorps who refuse to make a product that I actually want to buy, instead I have to settle for a worse product that costs more than it needs to and does less than what its replacing.

I prefer wired headphones (perhaps after bad experiences with infrared headphones), and used to only want phones with headphone jacks...

But the latest one I got doesn't have one, so I had to buy an adapter. Honestly, it doesn't seem a big deal now I have it? I can keep the adapter in the same case I keep my earbuds in, and they're decently cheap.

Even if you don't use wired headphones, others shouldn't be forced to share your lifestyle if they have another preference. This is just selfish

Electric cars don't have more data collection than other modern cars. They all collect your data, regardless of the energy source.

This needs to be regulated.

Sums them up quite nicely. To include, a lot of them have a poor grasp in how the business is handled in the industry. They just think that whatever game that only like, 15 people remember will make "loads of money" if it only got a remaster. Like come on, we've seen mini-consoles released, we've seen what gets decided to be remade. It is all based on what the IP originally brought to the company in the first place.

Gamers have been awfully spoiled in the past 14 years that only gamers 20 or more years ago would have loved to dine into. So many sales. So many opportunities. So much choice.

But no, let's throw all of that away because of a minor inconvenience or pretending to care about some game that they wouldn't have liked anyways but pretend to now like because of some political issue.

I hope you understand that was just a word that politicians slapped onto the idea of empathy and kindness because it goes against an agenda, right?

You're doing exactly what people with agendas wanted, which is blanketing everything from just not being racist all the way through the micro-issues you will never be concerned with, under one, giant, dismissive label.

It's anti-intellectualism, they want you to stop thinking and be less concerned with things. Be a machine, drink your beer and consume your walmart. Don't care or be compassionate or ask for others to be treated with respect. That's all [insert bogeyman word that changes every decade].

Don't adopt other people's terms mindlessly, think for yourself.

See, I don't get this one. You were taught a language. Languages change over time. Some words are new, some fall out of favor. Why be stubborn about it?

I think that the idea that the EU might have had behind the cookie popup mandate wasn't to actually provide any useful information or options on a per-site basis, but to make users more aware of the amount of tracking occurring.

On an individual website standpoint, I agree with you -- the cookie popup law is obnoxious, and does a poor job of solving a technical problem that is better solved by just not retaining cookies. In fact, not retaining cookies -- a better approach, since I don't have to worry about whether the website is actually doing what it's saying -- exacerbates the cookie popups, because it ensures that a site cannot track you to remember whether it has already shown the cookie popup, so makes it do so all the time. Plus there were already long-existing technical options for a browser to automatically tell a website not to track the user, like P3P, that aren't disruptive from a UI standpoint. I'm just saying that I'm not sure that providing a user a way to avoid tracking on an individual website is actually the goal.

On a related note, though...generally-speaking, I don't care much about EU regulation insofar as it doesn't affect me. People in the EU can do what they want, and if they want to place restrictions that affect people in the EU, fine, whatever. I start to have a problem, though, when websites present cookie popups to me. I'm not in the EU. Now, in fairness, they do seem to have tamped down on that somewhat -- some European websites that used to show them to me seem to have stopped. But I still do get them from the occasional website.

tries a few

Like, thelocal.it is still doing it, for example. France24 doesn't appear to be, though, and I'm pretty sure they used to.

It was especially obnoxious for European websites that had some localization feature for everything but then had the cookie pop-up hardcoded to whatever was locally used of the eight million European languages out there. So the entire website would be presented in English to me except the one popup that you have to click through before seeing anything else, sometimes has extra buttons, and is in Dutch or something.

I do give a shit. I just don't think that stupid popup is worth it. I can't believe site creators decided that was the way to go instead of just not collecting bullshit analytics. Instead they hope through dark patterns users will just click the shiny button because they're annoyed. Actually... I guess it's working...

Do you shit with the door open in public toilets? You have nothing to hide after all and don't require privacy there.

You can get a plugin for Firefox that will do that for you.

I hear ya.

I use Superagent extension in Firefox. I have it set to automatically declines all cookies. Works great about 70% of the time, which saves you 70% of cookie popups.

Also works on mobile, where popups are even worse to navigate.

What about chocolate chip cookies?

If you mean on the Threadiverse in particular, one of the larger home instances, lemmy.blahaj.zone, is aimed at the trans crowd, was one of the older active instances that I recall.

EDIT: One of the first discussions I recall being in on the Threadiverse was when kbin.social -- which puts random comments in the sidebar to help people discover new communities -- sent both me and apparently some other guy, both using kbin.social, to a discussion in !technology@pawb.social. He had an upset comment about how everyone in the thread was furry.

EDIT2: And I don't see that community any more, so I wonder if they closed it down.

EDIT3: I remember when I was trying to find new communities a while back, was looking for interesting tech stuff. I see !unixsocks@lemmy.blahaj.zone, figure ah hah, Unix socket development forum. I like a good chat about network development! No, it's...unexpectedly trans Unix sysadmins posing with their Unix system in feminine stockings. Ah, well.