Unite against big toothpaste! I agree with those.

Re-spec. Leveling up instead of getting old.

As ridiculous as this movie was, I always thought that the trailer for Star Wars Episode I : The Phantom Menace shouldn't have shown Darth Maul's double bladed lightsaber.

She had a good opportunity to abolish monarchy there...

I really... Really like Smirnoff Ice. I'm 44.

"You look like you drop regular loot when eliminated".

Whenever someone has a very traditional, conservative discourse online, I like to ask if their vision is based on movement. 🦖

Late stage capitalism

I'm a 45 years old male. The only alcohol I've been drinking since last summer is Smirnoff Ice.

People at the supermarket must think in buying this for a 16 years old.

Weirdly sexual

Restarted my show / podcast yesterday, 1 year after losing my co-host (and best friend) to cancer. Moving forward, without forgetting him.

Some would see this as a big step. It's one of the hundreds of things that I've been doing to move forward...

I think third world country.

I agree with OP. Also, the subscription serfdom we live in, and the disappearance of the right to repair.

I'm still playing Starfield. I'm 120% the targeted audience. It helped me go through depression.

I'm a 45 years old dude, and I started creating a comic with my character in Starfield, by taking screenshots and adding speech bubbles with Figma. I didn't know I had it in me.

As far as I'm concerned, Starfield is self-care.

I'm here to have a experience similar to reddit, without the negative load on my mental health.

I once took a cooking class and the teacher was always "it's not necessary to invest in expensive oils, the cheapest oil will always do for cooking".

It took place on a weekday morning, in the late 2000s, I dropped my ex at her workplace, and then I start driving towards my own workplace. I need to take a tunnel downtown, there's a traffic light just before the tunnel. The light is red, I wait. The light turns green, I go ahead, along with another car next to me.

Right behind me, in my mirror, I see police cars blocking the street at the traffic light. I'm the last car that went through the traffic light. No other cars can make it behind me.

I'm kinda freaking out. Why are the police cars blocking the way to the tunnel?

I then realize there are only two cars in the tunnel, mine, and the car just before me. No other car. At 9am. On a weekday. What the hell is going on?

I keep on driving, everything seems normal, apart from the complete lack of cars.

Eventually, I see the end of the tunnel, with police cars on either side of the road. And police officers making OBVIOUS signs with their arms : "Get the fuck out of there, quick, faster!".

Me and the other car make it out of the tunnel, then In my mirror, again, I see 4 police cars blocking the way out of the tunnel.

I turned on the radio. Nothing about this event. I searched the news websites for the whole day, I didn't find anything. I asked around, at work, in social media, nobody knew about this. I didn't think of calling the police station. I never learned what the hell happened in this tunnel.

My bet is it was either a bomb threat, or they had to catch a known criminal in this tunnel, or maybe a collapse danger of some kind. But the fact that it didn't make local news is mind boggling to me. I sometimes wonder if I dreamed this.

In November, I was sick for a month. I was coughing like crazy after contracting a respiratory virus.

Early December, I'm getting better. I was doing my things, like, changing my son's bedsheets, when I had a small cough. And I heard "clok" sound in my body, followed by a very intense pain in my ribcage.

I had cracked a rib. Not caused by how intense the cough was, but by repetition of the coughing for more than a month.

Losing my best friend / business partner. He died in March. A lot of things stopped making sense after that.

"OK bye" when finishing a phone conversations in tv series and movies.

It took place on a weekday morning, in the late 2000s, I dropped my ex at her workplace, and then I start driving towards my own workplace. I need to take a tunnel downtown, there's a traffic light just before the tunnel. The light is red, I wait. The light turns green, I go ahead, along with another car next to me.

Right behind me, in my mirror, I see police cars blocking the street at the traffic light. I'm the last car that went through the traffic light. No other cars can make it behind me.

I'm kinda freaking out. Why are the police cars blocking the way to the tunnel?

I then realize there are only two cars in the tunnel, mine, and the car just before me. No other car. At 9am. On a weekday. What the hell is going on?

I keep on driving, everything seems normal, apart from the complete lack of cars.

Eventually, I see the end of the tunnel, with police cars on either side of the road. And police officers making OBVIOUS signs with their arms : "Get the fuck out of there, quick, faster!".

Me and the other car make it out of the tunnel, then In my mirror, again, I see 4 police cars blocking the way out of the tunnel.

I turned on the radio. Nothing about this event. I searched the news websites for the whole day, I didn't find anything. I asked around, at work, in social media, nobody knew about this. I didn't think of calling the police station. I never learned what the hell happened in this tunnel.

My bet is it was either a bomb threat, or they had to catch a known criminal in this tunnel, or maybe a collapse danger of some kind. But the fact that it didn't make local news is mind boggling to me. I sometimes wonder if I dreamed this.

Reminds me of this one :

"Honey, close the window, it's raining outside."

...

"Love, I did close the window, but it's still raining outside."

Still a good moment to initiate that discussion.

Hugging yes, but with a very limited range of friends, and I don't have much.

I'm okay with a guy initiating a hug, but sometimes it takes me by surprise. But it's a good surprise.

I feel it's acceptable, just doesn't happen often.

Less content than I used to follow on reddit, but much less toxic. So, partially.

When I parted ways with reddit, when the API scandal happened, it was very timely. A lot of content from reddit was toxic for me. All the negative news, about environment, about how people are treated at their job, about how shitty companies are nowadays. Not to mention the rampant cynicism...

I left all that behind, and it really helped me get the high ground (hey Anakin) against my mental health problems. I was dangerously flirting with a burnout. This break was very beneficial.

When I saw that Sync for lemmy was available, I tried it. The facts that there are much less trolls here, much less cynicism (and also the fact that I'm now medicated) really help, and I feel now I can be among communities that aren't too toxic for me.

Thanks lemmy friends.

Nice try, corporate lawyer

For real? Taking care of my mental health. I was in a very bad spot of my life earlier this year. I lost my best friend who also happened to be my business partner, he died in March.

It was a shock, we both founded a small NPO together, he was behind all the strategy, I was more into communication. We thought he would recover from his cancer, but he caught covid while his immune system was at its weakest. He lost that battle.

I immediately tried to find my next professional step, insisting that I had to find a way to promote social economy locally, as that's what we wanted to do together.

All this pressure on myself by myself, plus the state of the world, neverending flow of bad news, me losing faith in mostly everything and becoming extra cynical, I ended up flirting with a major burnout.

Fortunately, I asked for help when it was still time to act, and the reddit api scandal happened at about the same time. Leaving reddit was one of the first step towards recovery. All the subreddits were basically optimized for doomscrolling, which was super toxic for the state of mind I was in.

I just started to use lemmy last week since I found that Sync for Lemmy was available. And I only subscribed to things that aren't too toxic. I'm now on medication to avoid depression. It's been 3 weeks and it's already much better.

I don't think I'll be browsing Lemmy as much as I was browsing reddit.

Losing my best friend to cancer. Still recovering a year later.

2023 has been a calamity for me. I lost my best friend and business partner to cancer in March. Then, the mourning. The burnout. The psychologist. The antidepressants.

I then had a diverticulitis, ended up at the hospital. I reacted badly to an antidepressant, ended up at the hospital. Had a problematic mole in my lower back, got it removed, sent it to biopsy... Didn't remove enough, remove the rest, and the wound isn't healing properly and got infected.

Just since Halloween, I started coughing with lots of secretion, until my asthma came back first time in 15 years, and I coughed so hard for a month and a half, I ended up cracking a rib.

Then I got an acute middle ear infection, that lasted 2 weeks, the pain was excruciating.

Now, I still can't hear from that ear it's clogged. I stopped coughing. My antidepressant is doing an ok job.

I just want a break from life. I had to take 2 weeks off work completely early in December for my physical and mental health. First time I have to do that in my life.

I remember the time when Subway used to serve their sandwiches with the strip of bread on top. Those were the good old days.

Everything sucked. 2023 was a calamity for me. I lost my best friend, I had a burnout, I got sick a lot, and it forced me to take 2 full weeks off to take care of myself in early December.

Those 2 weeks for myself are arguably the best thing I had this year however. I'll try to repeat this every year.

Oh sweet summer childs.

Sooo Duolingo is a tamagochi now

Nice try, CIA

Late stage capitalism is your answer, my friend.

To maximize shareholders' profits.

A local climatologist basically said "We'll remember 2023 as 'the year it all started'".

This trend is brought to you by His noodly appendage.

Gotta find someone with whom you can be alone with.

Meaning you can be alone with this person. And that you can be alone with yourself in their presence as well. Someone who can respect your alone time, basically.

Otherwise, when single, you gotta learn to take care of yourself as if yourself was someone else. That's how I coped when I was single. Treating myself all the time to little gifts, taking care of myself, even going out with myself by myself like a date night.

"6:30, dinner with myself. I can't cancel that again!" -The Grinch