This was the way it was for me when I was younger. We didn’t have to do anything. Just have someone around. We’d read comics, play games, do whatever. Just be around each other, doing anything or nothing. Sure, there’d be times we were very active together or go do something. But, it was very cool and fun to just have someone around and hang out for the company…

That’s what I had going. I was fine with supporting the creators that I subscribed to. I have a whitelist on my ad blockers for sites that I support and have decent ads (if it looks like “Ow! My Balls” from Idiocracy, I block them). But, YouTube added WAY too many ads, unskippable ads, ads everywhere. It’s too much, and the creators get less and less. I block everything I can on YouTube now. Some are still getting through, but most of the time I’m good. Still some great creators, and I’m going to start downloading the ones I really want to keep for reference.

We have a Mexican store here (one of several), but people come from ~90 miles to come to THIS one. None of the others in town, just this one. There’s a ton of others between here and there but this one is special. It’s not fake documents because I know other places that have those.

Not sure what they’re doing but they’re always busy and a ton of out of town/out of state people come and go.

So, the ones Trump said would vote for him? He loves the uneducated and gullible!

Like gender affirming healthcare, women’s healthcare, etc… yea, government having a say is horrible unless they do what you want, then it’s ok.

Conservatives can’t even support their own ideals. What are they arguing about when they support the same shit they say they don’t…

For some reason both sides have adopted a “with us or against us”

I hate this. I hate that if you are not 100% aligned to a certain groups policies, you’re pretty much the devil in disguise. A leftist Democrat that supports the 2A? You’re a “hard core racist bigot conservative that needs to home someone you love die in a shooting to see how you like it!”. Those people are insane. It’s not how the majority thinks, but those that do are very outspoken and loud so they have way more visibility.

There are a lot of people (on both sides) that can see how extreme parts of their “side” are and are very self aware of those things. They’ll call out their own side for going too far, being too weird, and saying unfactual things. Those are the people that you can have real conversations with. You won’t agree, you won’t change opinions, but the conversation is generally very informative and you’re not getting pissed off at each other (or you do, but you still show each other a mutual respect).

I cannot stand those with the “with us or against us” mentality. They really need to GTFO. And they absolutely cannot say they are patriots and support America first and everything that goes along with that. Because our country was founded on different principals, people with different viewpoints, and we created ways to allow those various viewpoints to exist together. We WANT to have different viewpoints instead of just allowing one to flourish and grow to an extreme and heavy handed policy. If you support the “Us” part of that, we are ALL with us, even if our views are opposing and we refuse to even meet in the middle.

That was the difference when I was a kid. When my sister had Barbie and I played with them, they weren’t pretty women climbing the corporate ladder. They were fodder for my Transformers and other toys. :) The nuclear bombs did come eventually…

No respect for anyone but themselves was the telling part, though. Let’s help others, homeless, less fortunate, immigrants, poor. Let’s help others with healthcare, education, housing, food. “No! I’m not paying taxes so someone else can get something for FREE!”.

Ok, now I know who they are talking about.

I use all the tools I can. Reddit has a great community in a lot of subreddits that are extremely helpful. So are many standalone forums for the topics I enjoy. Lemmy is just another option for great content. I prefer Lemmy to Reddit as a platform, but the content - I really don’t care where it’s hosted as long as it’s free (free as in freedom of information, not just cost).

Reddit’s gone to shit, but I’ll still hit those SysAdmin and other subs for information. Too valuable not to.

They forgot two words on the “Nobody wants to work anymore” and it should be “Nobody wants to work for me anymore”. It’s 100% on them. People want to work. People want to make a living, want to do something productive, want to be proud of what they do. They just want to be treated like they matter.

I remember jumping from Firefox to Chrome because Firefox became so shitty for a while. It’s sad because at the time I had Firefox so tuned, bookmarks perfect, theme perfect, but it was slow and ate up all resources. Chrome was “fast as fuck, boy!”, but it took a while to get used to it and get it how it was perfect. I’m still trying to get Firefox to where it’s perfect again, but it’s slow going. I’m still about 75% Chrome and 25% Firefox.

Kind of. But, without the “cool” factor. You were a geek, a nerd. Computers were for nerds for a while, the internet was like a computer library which were also only for nerds. Towards the late 90’s, it started to become cool and then suddenly everyone and their grandpa had a computer and the internet.

It was a bit more difficult back then, too. I was dialing into Seattle (long distance) for my closest POP for the internet. Had to use trumpet for Windows because it didn’t have a native dialer, and Mosaic for a browser. Before that, it was all BBS’s. Always fun finding new sites (and we also had a “internet phonebook” that was a physical book with a list of most websites).

Yea, and they really implemented that poorly, too. Reddit video has to be the worst video playback (when it does play back) on the internet since 1996…

Yup. He made the mods and users the bad guys and he is just trying to be the good guy. He’s a dick, probably a narcissist, too. He’s the victim, blah blah blah.

Those little Snoos. That company is like a family. A bunch of rockstars. How could those evil mods and users do this to them?!

Nice seeing so many of those that I visit often are dark. Before the blackout, there was talk of if they should go permanently. But, those discussions will happen after things go back. With Spez being a dipshit about it still, I’m thinking several of them will leave Reddit forever. I’m good with it.

My job bought me a decent (not great, not horrible) chair from Amazon. It was leagues ahead of what I previously had. I took my old one home. It sucks… Then COVID hit. I took my Amazon chair home. So much better. It’s still home. :) I’ve had multiple back surgeries, and having that lumbar support and better posture really makes a huge difference. And the chair wasn’t that expensive, either. It’s a low end chair for those standards, but the price isn’t that much more than the really cheap crappy ones. It’s worth it to invest just a few more dollars into a higher quality chair. I’m sure it’s worth it to spend a bit more than that for a much, much better chair.

Sometimes, investing just a little more into something can make a huge difference. Going frugal can mean spending a little more now but saving a lot more (in repurchasing, pain, Dr. bills, out of work for pain, whatever) in the long run. I look at trends and historical data for frugality.

Several of he hobby ones. Ben Eater (6502 based computers, 8 bit computer), local ones, history/science based ones, infosec/sysadmin/etc. ones. There are some Lemmy based ones, but it’ll take a while to build up. I’m hoping that I can contribute to them and see them grow a bit. But, others are just where I could comment and enjoy as I lack the real knowledge to contribute very much (the history/science ones that required more in-depth knowledge and not just a “Wikipedia degree of arts of internet research for obscure questions”.