Wolf_359

Depends. He seems pretty out of it right now and I don't know how much he would really accomplish. He's also pretty old and unhealthy.

But if he comes back angry and the people around him are effective, then yeah we would start looking for other places to live. I'm not trying to live in a Russian-style handmaid's tale.

I don't think it's dramatic to suggest Trump may actually put an end to our democracy though. Another Lemmy commenter summed it up best. They pointed out that we on the left may have disagreed with McCain or Bush, but we never once feared that they would seize power or leave NATO. We trusted them to at least keep the ship afloat and respect the basic tenants of our free and democratic nation.

With Trump, we don't have that. All bets are off because he's an unhinged narcissist. He would leave NATO and risk the Pax Americana that has stabilized the world for almost 100 years now. And he would do it for money, for negative attention, or just because someone told him he couldn't. America has some pretty major faults but China and Russia are not ready to take the reigns. Say what you will about the West but we at least endeavor to protect human rights. I think anyone who isn't trying to build on the current Western peace is incredibly dangerous in a very scary way.

As a recovering heroin addict, I wholeheartedly believe his story. His later stories contained some region-specific drug slang and his post-recovery updates were the perfect amount of mundane and specific for me to recognize exactly the same feelings in myself.

Side note: if you're watching a movie or TV show, one thing that non-junkie writers never get right is withdrawal. They often show characters skipping withdrawal entirely, or show them mildly sick but still moving through the story without any real issues. Worst case, they'll show a character being sick and then totally fine after a short time. Huge pet peeve of mine. Really undersells the catch-22 you find yourself in when using heroin.

What withdrawal is actually like is pure, unadulterated misery and suffering for two weeks at minimum, followed by months or even a year of exhaustion, depression, suicidal thoughts, restlessness, and feeling like everything is weird and new. It feels like you're a reptile that just shed its skin and everything is raw including your emotions and thoughts. Those first two weeks are just nonstop puking, shaking, sweating, an uncontrollable urge to kick and jerk your body, total insomnia, scary and suicidal thoughts, full body aches and pains, and enough self-loathing to last a thousand years.

I made it three months cold turkey once before relapsing. Fucking never again. I honestly don't know how people quit dope before modern medications like Buprenorphine and Methadone.

Feeling like you want to break the cycle of addiction but knowing you can't get through the withdrawal is an incredibly scary and traumatic experience.

My prediction: Reddit is moving toward a YouTube-esque format.

They are going to monetize by allowing creators to make money from their content. This is why they're getting rid of awards. Of course, they'll take a cut which is probably why they're going toward this model.

They have also been moving toward more detailed, identifiable profiles as well.

They're trying to make the new social media.

I said this in another thread - I bet they're going the YouTube route and are going to start allowing content creators to make money.

Might sound good on the surface but it's absolutely going to shred what Reddit used to be. Goodbye discussion forum and hello new social media.

As a devout lefty who thinks America and capitalism need a lot more checks and balances, I have to somewhat disagree with you.

When we talk peace, we are talking relative terms. And I suppose I should also add prosperity into the mix.

I think the West has enabled a period of relative peace and prosperity never before seen. And I think it's getting, overall, better every day. Technology and capitalism, for all their evils, have lifted billions out of poverty and saved billions of lives.

My most common sin is inadvertently bringing up painful or offensive topics.

Someone's dad died last week? You can bet I'll forget and start talking about Dads on accident. In fact, it happens so often that I almost think my subconscious does remember and that's how it ends up on my mind.

Floaters in the vitreous of the eyeball (aka clumps of your vitreous that got stuck together as your vitreous gel started to liquify, which happens naturally with age for everyone).

They're normal if they appear gradually as you age. Most common in people with myopia. Can be caused by a variety of things including hits to the eyes or head, possibly by steroid eye drops, anything that increases the pressure in your eye, or just plain old aging.

They never go away but if you're lucky they might "settle" or get stuck to the side. Never happens for a lot of people though, and they can be quite distressing for many people - especially for people who have many large and moving floaters.

Most mentally healthy people will neuro-adapt and they'll become less noticeable over time. It can take about six months before this happens though and it does suck at first. I got some new ones after LASIK and I was pretty upset. Now I only notice them on light backdrops like snow or my shower. But even then I just notice them briefly and my thoughts quickly move elsewhere. No stress.

For people who are absolutely driven insane by a large number of them, there is a risky surgery to remove them, but if it goes wrong you can be looking at blindness so you definitely need to weigh your options.

The non-surgical laser treatment for floaters doesn't work. It seems to maybe work for some people in the short term but most people report that it doesn't help in the long term. It can even create more floaters or break up your big ones into many smaller ones that move more. The laser is also dangerous for younger patients because the floaters are closer to your retina when you're younger. The laser can cause damage to the retina and it's hard to avoid doing that when the floaters are close to it.

There are currently a couple groups researching how to get rid of them non-invasively. Last bit of news I saw said a group had been using gold flakes and a new type of laser to successfully and safely break them down. Personally, I will get mine treated if there is a non-invasive way to do so, but I'm not too bothered by them so I can wait for that.

Worth noting that if you suddenly get a lot of floaters and are feeling pain in your eyes or seeing bright flashes that look like a camera flash, you need to go seek medical attention immediately as these are signs of a retinal tear. Retinal tears are treatable but only if you go take care of them immediately. The consequences are not taking care of them quickly can be severe.

For most people, these are harmless and just a part of getting older. You'll get used to them.

To be fair, YouTube has far more variety and far more content overall. Personally, I have seen pretty much anything worth watching on the major streaming services. My wife and I can just ignore any top 200 list of shows or movies because we have already seen it all and anything we haven't seen doesn't look interesting to us. We just have to wait for new shows to come out.

YouTube though. It's functionally unlimited considering the length of a human lifespan.

For some insight, a quick Google search says that Netflix has about 4 years of content if you sat down and watched everything they have to offer. Meanwhile, YouTube has about 18,000 years of content.

Every. Single. Post.

"You need a divorce. This is gaslighting and abuse. He/She does not respect you as a woman/man."

I remember this one post where a guy asked his girlfriend if she would bite the bullet and help the women in his very conservative family cook Thanksgiving dinner once per year. He was super apologetic but explained that the women in the family got super pissed and offended by women not cooking. He had already tried talking to them and they weren't having it. He was between a rock and a hard place. Clearly he didn't know what to do.

Reddit flipped their shit and said the guy had to choose between his girlfriend and his family. Obviously I am against traditional, conservative, gender-role bullshit. But I have dealt with plenty of shit to have a good relationship with my wife's imperfect family. And she has dealt with tons of shit to put up with my imperfect family. A good relationship is two people who do things for the other person. It's reciprocal and kind, even in unpleasant situations. This guy didn't choose his family and he won't change them. All they can do is choose to do it differently in their own house and raise their children differently.

I hate the relationship subreddits. Hot garbage.

Veritasium is like that for me. No clue why.

Of course the kids don't know how to read them. Kids rarely encounter analog clocks and when they do, they have several digital clocks within arms length. Most people wouldn't reach for a slide rule when they have a calculator.

And to be fair, analog clocks are objectively worse than digital clocks in every way aside from aesthetics.

Another prime specimen of the master race.

Cool truck too.

I would argue otherwise.

Wikipedia is incomprehensibly large. Perhaps the largest database of vetted human knowledge ever.

I know for a fact you can find inaccuracies and biased information if you look for it. But it's rare relative to the amount of information that exists there.

Joking aside, one of the worst things about America is the mixed usage of metric and imperial. It sucks having to convert everything all the time, particularly when you're working on something that uses both systems for one task and you have to make them play nice together.

The other worst thing about America is all the mass killings.

I imagine your priorities become different.

You start out young and idealistic. You find success and maintain that idealism for quite some time. Your morals are intact and you still feel connected to your users because you're one of them.

Eventually though, you have to make some tough decisions. You want to maintain your community and sometimes that means choosing financials first. You make unpopular decisions for good reasons and your users don't understand because they aren't privy to all of the details. You have MBAs walking you through these steps and they're probably more understanding than your users who don't have a lot of stake in these choices.

Then your platform grows and it's not just your computer nerd circles anymore. It's open to the general public and corporations as well now. You have to deal with a bunch of vile, shitty people and you still have to make unpopular decisions. Nobody is ever happy no matter what you do.

Personally, I can understand reaching a point where you say, "You know what? Fuck em. I'm a different person now after all of these years, and the people using my platform aren't even the same people I made it for in the first place, at least not mostly."

I assume at that point you're just trying to cash out. And you've listened to the MBAs for long enough that you're thinking like them now. It's even technically possible that Spez is still a good person and an idealist. He might still be making tough choices the rest of us don't understand. Reddit may very well be in a place where it needs to get way more profitable or die. The Internet is tricky. Nowhere else in the free market do you have people who expect to pay $0 for a popular product they use for many hours per day.

I'm not a Spez apologist. Just offering a possible scenario that would explain how we keep ending up here with so many different companies.

I don't agree personally, but I think I understand your thought process.

My issue with them changing this up so much is that we already have YouTube and TikTok. We have ways for creators to make money.

Involving money makes Reddit far less likely to be a discussion forum where people have higher-quality discussions based largely on intellectual curiosity. You didn't post to make a dollar, you posted because you wanted to and because you had a desire to share something you know.

There was always room for memes and jokes, of course. There was room for gaming and funny cat videos too. But those were extras for a community that was (long ago) built on being nerdy, tech savvy, interested in science, politically progressive, anti-religious, etc.

Reddit has been drifting away from that for a very long time unfortunately. But this will be the final nail in the coffin.

Mixed bag in my opinion.

The good: No traffic, get to know yourself better since you have a lot of time for reflection, discover way more media (podcasts, books, games, movies) because you're always doing the night owl thing, always have an excuse to get out of social events during the day time, easy to go to doctor appointments during the day before work, feels like you have a ton of free time, usually meet interesting people on the night shift (see bad part of this below), get to dress down, don't have to see a high level boss usually, things feel more profound late at night - you'll have a much deeper appreciation for all that media I described (try some music or an audiobook at night - better yet, try writing. I always feel things deeper at night), get to see the moon all the time which I absolutely love more than anything, etc.

The bad: sleep schedule will be like being a teenager again, there will be days where the sun is shining and you can hear lawnmowers which will make you sleep like garbage, you'll probably eat like shit, seeing friends and family is hard, friends and family will not understand that you need to sleep during the day - trust me, you'll meet the outcasts of society on night shift along with all those interesting people I mentioned and some of them will be weird or off-putting, you'll feel super lonely at times but it'll be kind of nice somehow (???), you'll have too much time alone with your thoughts, you'll be doing shit during the day but have work hanging over your head for hours whereas normal people work and have free time after work to look forward to, driving home tired in the early morning is like having a hangover somehow, etc.

Personally, I'm glad I'm not doing it these days. After COVID, stores aren't open 24/7 anymore. Night shopping on days off was the best and not being able to get stuff at night now sucks.

Careful with this. Downloading pirated content can definitely be illegal depending on where you live.

It's just not usually enforced as heavily as redistributing.

Prime example. Atomic bombs are dangerous and they seem like a bad thing. But then you realize that, counter to our intuition, nuclear weapons have created peace and security in the world.

No country with nukes has been invaded. No world wars have happened since the invention of nukes. Countries with nukes don't fight each other directly.

Ukraine had nukes, gave them up, promptly invaded by Russia.

Things that seem dangerous aren't always dangerous. Things that seem safe aren't always safe. More often though, technology has good sides and bad sides. AI does and will continue to have pros and cons.

Dark Brandon isn't meant to be serious. It's meant to mock the Republicans who say, "Let's go Brandon" (meaning fuck you Biden) and it references the conspiracy theory that he's a devil-worshipping communist by referring to him as "dark."

Anytime you see Dark Brandon, it's the left mocking the extreme right for being idiots.

I actually think this a decent piece of left-leaning humor, if a bit dark.

It makes light of an awful thing that happened (the shooting) and then links it to another awful thing that's happening (abortion bans in America).

It kind of highlights the absurdity of it all.

It's like jokes about racism. Decent people know that the jokes are mocking racist people and showing the absurdity, while racists just laugh at the racism part because they don't get it.

I actually like where the Fediverse is now. And I think a long trajectory of slow growth will be very good for it.

Reddit is a great example of the "enshitification" process at work. A community grows way too big, way too fast. People don't adopt the norms, the norms change. That's why the front page of Reddit is full of "Am I ugly?" Posts when it used to be (more) high quality discussions with a bunch of nerds. Hacker news is a good example of a slow-growing community which has mostly maintained an environment of intellectual curiosity.

Excellent blog post about this here: https://www.marginalia.nu/log/82_killing_community/

The people of Ukraine didn't want to be Russian, they wanted to be more like the West. Their leader at the time wanted Ukraine to get in bed with Russia and the rest of the East. They ousted him. Putin seized on their moment of weakness and instability by invading.

Could the US have played a role? Yeah but every country with the ability to project any power almost certainly did as well. That's just geopolitics at work for better or worse.

Every single country on Earth exerts influence on the others to benefit themselves. Look at Ukraine cozying up with the West right now to get weapons and notice how the US, UK, and other Western nations are happily obliging. Ukraine wants to be Western and the West would love another long-term ally, especially one next to Russia. Anyone really think Eastern nations don't do the same thing? China is exerting a ton of influence in Africa right now, and it's not out of the goodness of their hearts - it's quite predatory actually so they're no different than the US in that regard.

If this were the norm, every country would be split into a million pieces over every petty squabble. Each update to the tax code would fracture another shrinking state.

Think too of the power you wield when your Trump card is, "Okay, we'll just leave and you can have a potentially hostile country on your border. By the way, we're taking all of our natural resources and exports with us."

The gridlock in politics is bad enough. How little would get done if every small town in Alabama could hold the country hostage by threatening to create their own country?

We fought a war over this already and the secessionists lost. The courts also ruled that they cannot just leave. There is no legal mechanism to do so. They can try to pass an amendment but that won't happen because the rest of the country wouldn't agree to it.

If they don't want to be Americans anymore they're free to try and immigrate somewhere. That'd be hilariously ironic.

Yeah, I too am worried about militant Biden supporters overthrowing our democracy and taking away even the most basic human rights.

/s

The west isn't the good guy but you're nuts if you think China isn't sucking Africa dry.

I just watched a documentary recently (I will genuinely try to find it again and link here if I can) where Native African workers were being put out of business by China in their own country. China is mining for rare Earth metals using Chinese workers and trapping a lot of these countries in debts they won't be able to pay back. Once I saw it coming from the mouths of Native Africans, I knew it wasn't propaganda from either side. Straight to the source - people who live there and see it every day. They start out very grateful for China's assistance and then later on realize the trap they are in.

Here is some other info: https://apnews.com/article/china-debt-banking-loans-financial-developing-countries-collapse-8df6f9fac3e1e758d0e6d8d5dfbd3ed6

I hope I can say this nicely and that you'll only take it how I mean it. But you haven't been out of the house in a decade and you can't stand a single person at your job - it sounds like you might have some issues with people in general and maybe some anxiety, anger, or something else. No judgement here and I don't know your situation.

I will say this: there are indeed really shitty, toxic, selfish, and narcissistic people out there. But most, probably the majority, are people just like you. They have their own anxieties, fears, doubts, idiosyncrasies, etc. They make mistakes and try their best to be happy and stay safe.

I guess I would say just cut them some slack. Be someone they can feel safe and happy around. Don't judge them too harshly. "Lest ye be judged yourself" and all that.

Good luck though. I hope you find at least one good friend at work.

1. Listening to AM 740 out of Toronto. I'm in the US but it comes over here. My grandma listened to it and I find it calming when I'm stressed because my grandma was the only person who truly loved me unconditionally and without question.

2. Eat bits of granola cereal one at a time and chew them slowly. I don't even really like it. It's just such a simple food and I can kind of meditate on how simple it is.

3. This isn't odd but a hot bath. Truly a portal to another world for me.

4. Listen to Dreamscape on YouTube and imagine dystopian fantasy/sci-fi worlds I could live in. Maybe I'm stranded on an alien planet, maybe I'm in a dark forest and creatures are hunting me, or maybe I'm driving through a foggy, wooded hillside and I see something weird I need to investigate. Whatever the scenario, it gives me an escape from emotions I don't want to feel and allows me to create situations where I can feel whatever emotion I do need to feel.

The uptick in solar activity that has been weirdly increasing at roughly predictable rates every year since the rise of industrialization?

Nah, they'll keep getting exceptions for the 737 max until they have the worst plane crash in history. Then something might be done and bigger changes might be made.

Kangaroos (aka "Roos") were these awesome shoes with a little pocket in them.

I got a pair about 13 years ago, long after they'd stopped being popular, and used them to hide my drugs in high school and college. They were awesome until I started hiding really bad drugs in there. Then they were just enabling me.

He would just call them Democrats.

The parties did a flip flop. Democrats used to be the conservative party.

I would say, "succumbed to the conflagration" or "took part in the conflagration."

But really, a conflagration is usually a much bigger fire that destroys entire buildings or cities.

I think the better term would be self-immolation.

This and the fm transmitter.

Was really nice to be able to throw your phone on when you didn't have access to a device with Bluetooth. At an Airbnb, in an older car, on the beach with a portable radio, etc.

One big difference I think.

Nazi Germany lost in outright combat against an enemy they had always said they could beat. They were decimated and many of their sycophants were killed in battle.

Unless Trump and his followers start an actual armed rebellion and get put down, I don't see how they end up ashamed.

Beating Trump in court, while it needs to be done, allows all of his followers to keep saying, "See? We told you the deep state was out to get him."

I doubt it. Not a good look for them.

My guess would be that they took it more seriously since letting something happen to an elected official would be a PR nightmare for them. That, or they knew it could be a hoax but proceeded out of an abundance of caution.

To each their own. Just be sure it's making you happy.

I work to live, but I don't live to work.

Life is short and I thoroughly enjoy playing a video game without a care in the world. With a kid and a house, I have plenty on my plate. I don't go out of my way looking for extra work. If the opportunity arises for me to "waste time" I take it and enjoy it without guilt.

Last night I got to play Lethal Company with two of my friends. Most fun I've had in months. No regrets.

I don't have to trust it though? I just told you I revise and edit.

It doesn't do my job for me, I still have to understand how to do the work properly. But I can use it to save time and then revise, check for errors, etc.

You're basically arguing that spell check is useless because it's wrong sometimes. It's just a tool.

Perhaps you just don't have a use for it?

It doesn't do the thinking for me but man it's a time saver for busy work.

It turns a lot of my work into "editing" rather than writing and then editing.

It's very good for teachers to differentiate materials for students with a variety of reading levels.

I don't think so. Not to be cynical, but I think we overestimate the potential impact of those who die young. In fact, I think their impact is almost always made larger because they died young.

Like many other once-great artists, Tupac, were he alive today, would probably be retired after doing a few years in Vegas with dwindling audience numbers.

He probably would have gotten a reality show and maybe been on stage at the Superbowl for a nostalgic throwback act, but beyond that he would have probably faded into history.

I say the same about Nirvana, Amy Winehouse, definitely Nipsy Hustle, and the others who passed too soon.

Sorry, I know it's kind of grim and I'm definitely open to a good counter-argument here.