Star Trek? (Specifically the original series movies)

Guardians, absolutely. First was brilliant, second starts to fall to Marvel tropes, and by the third I just couldn’t wait for it to be over.

Glass Onion was disappointing?

I thought 3 was a deal better than 2. 2 was generic Hollywood schlock that dragged in the middle; 3 at least attempted some interesting things, and even bordered on artsy at times.

1 was, of course, the best. Haven’t seen 4 and 5.

Why do they both look like they’re in middle school?

This is the second unhelpfully vague question you’ve posed today about writing.

So it would seem the first thing you need to do is to look up resources on effective communication and on accurately identifying problems/goals. Because I’m unclear as to whether the problem is that you don’t know what you’re looking for when asking these questions, or that you do know and for some reason assume that we can read your mind and know it too even without your properly describing it.

Are we talking fiction or non-fiction? Obligated writing (school, work) or voluntary writing (journaling, fun)? Getting over a hump (dealing with writer’s block) or getting started in the first place?

It’s really hard to give advice without knowing the context of the problem.

I’m just waiting for the day my cat realizes I can’t see in the dark like she can, and it’s maybe not the greatest idea to sprawl out on the hallway floor directly between the bedroom and bathroom at night…

This was my favorite strip on the comics page when I was a child. Significantly better kid-humor to Boomer-humor ratio than the legacy strips that often dominated newspapers. You could definitely tell the author was on the younger side (basically the only places to find video game related strips that side of the webcomic revolution). Still had the stereotypical golfer dad that was inexplicably universal in the late 20th century comic strip world, though (yet another reason why Calvin and Hobbes is the GOAT). Zits was another strip actually geared toward children/youth.

Since this is an “ask me anything”…

Have you ever broken a piece (or been accused of breaking a piece)? What typically happens next in those scenarios?

I’m curious what about this is “mildly” infuriating to OP?

There’s actually a Wikipedia page dedicated to the phrase!

Relevant section:

While the earliest documented use of the expression remains somewhat nebulous, it is generally regarded as having been coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Published in 1825, Coleridge’s first verse in the poem “Work Without Hope” refers to both bees and birds in reference to the coming fecundity of spring:

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!

One scholar notes an earlier reference to “birds and bees” on columns in St. Peter’s Basilica from a 1644 entry in the diary of English writer John Evelyn. By the late 19th century, the phrase was common enough to appear in such works as essays by John Burroughs and publications explaining reproduction to children.

The sources for the entry go into further detail: https://web.archive.org/web/20210510050626/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-sep-04-cl-15141-story.html and https://www.livescience.com/39316-birds-and-the-bees.html

Yes, but with many more sorting options. (What does “newbie-friendly” even mean?)

Instance selection at sign-up remains the primary barrier to entry.

I think there needs to be a quick question form upon sign-up, going over the biggest differences between instances. Such as: “do you want downvotes activated? Do you want to see NSFW? Do you want little, moderate, or heavy automated blocking of potentially objectionable material?” etc, then have the sign-up page provide you with up to three instance options based on your selected preferences.

Otherwise you’re either forcing users to do this research on their own (“ew, homework just to sign up for social media? no thanks”) or they’re going in blind and selecting at random, very likely ending up on an instance with qualities/features they don’t like.

A separate issue: during the big 2023 rexit (when I moved over), the primary instance that most new users joined, lemmy.world, was a buggy, buggy mess, practically unusable for the first few days. I don’t know if that was specifically because of the influx of new users or if it just worsened problems that had skated by when there were only a handful of users before, but I imagine the bugs turned away quite a few potential new Lemmings. Hopefully that won’t be an issue this time around, but I guess that depends on how big the exodus is and how much Lemmy infra has strengthened in the 2.5 years since.

I’ve also seen it recommended for breaking “death grip” habits.

*too

Reading the title, it’s obvious OP cucurbit off more than they could chew.

A roulette wheel of random instances is certainly a solution, but it’s not a great one, given that there are substantial differences between instances that could potentially impact a user’s fediverse experience, such as who they’re defederated from, whether they allow nsfw or downvotes, etc…

Not even interests per se, but rather qualities of the instances like:

• do you want nsfw blocked?
• do you want downvotes enabled?
• do you want more or less defederation from potentially objectionable instances?
• etc

Basically all the features that invalidate the “just pick an instance, bro, it doesn’t really matter” argument.

No, not unless the “choose an instance” problem at sign-up is resolved.