I’ve long since removed myself from the mainstream (I.e enshittified) social media, but my spouse loves to show me cute, silly or funny animal videos and I genuinely love the habit.

However, the pst year or two, I keep finding myself asking “who is this? why are the there?” since the actual silly or just cute video is only half of it, then the other half is just a bloke watching the same video I guess, but for whatever reason (I.e content theft and number go up game) included in the damn video that is the actual content.

I keep thinking it’s relevant somehow, like maybe their dog jumps out and does something funny in response to them watching a cute dog video, but no. The entire thing is just them silently watching and often not even nodding or gesturing like others here illustrate. More often than not, they simply sit there silently with a very neutral non-expressive face, then the video ends and there was exactly zero point to that (other than pumping out content for the algorithm with minimal effort I guess?). It’s a real fucking thing. It boggles the mind. Who wants that?

I asked my spouse why on earth would they ever choose to watch those when they can just skip and look for other cute stuff. It makes no sense to me. The algorithm should simply not suggest or serve those to anyone since in my mind, nobody would bother watching them. It genuinely fucks with my mind.

However, I’ve since learnt that the modern way of consuming even things like instagram is click on whatever on front page, then simply scrolling up/down or left/right for next videos without any chance to evaluate whether one wants to watch it or not. It simply toots new ones infinitely and I guess the users just… watch whatever comes?

It’s fucking ridiculous. The only reason those trend like they do, even for us millennials, the modern boomers, is because somehow somebody watched it once, or it was paid/promoted or something, then the algorithm just decides similar people will watch that snd suddenly perfectly normal and sensible people like my spouse end up watching some random fucking people sit still with nothing to offer, in an abrupt video, day in day out. It’s simply ridiculous.

But while I don’t get it and actively loathe the practice (I.e content theft and gaming the platforms in ways clearly not intended (or exactly as intended…)) I guess that’s just the way of the world now. I feel boomer enough even though I’ve barely passed 30 because I don’t get all the brainrot stuff and don’t get exposed to those since I no longer use social media I can’t curate myself like non-proprietary link aggregators, and I keep getting these surreal experiences that seem so completely nonsense to me.

Anyway, I just wanted to clarify that this kind of content is not niche, the instagrams and tiktoks of the world keep pushing exactly that kind of senseless shit to even regular millenials like my spouse and by their proxy, me. The feed is otherwise just cute animal videos basically. The half that isn’t, is cute animal videos with some visibly tired and uninterested streamer-looking bloke taking half the screen for no actual reason other than capitalism-driven modern social media practices.

My friends who have entirely different interests also get them. Like tech-savvy guys too, content is mostly technical or nerdy stuff, but a percentage of that just comes with some weird person staring in the screen on the bottom part of the video. It’s so stupid. Musicians whose feed is similarly specialized and in no way gen alpha tier brainrot or suspectible for nonsensical streamer content or whatever, have a part of the feed just be absolutely out-of-place rgb-light-headset gamer looking dudes just silently fucking watching and very occasionally perhaps even react with a singular nod before the video ends.

It is a real trend that seems to even inflict itself to the kind of people I would absolutely think would not ever watch any content like that, are not just your average people mindlessly scrolling, rather very sensible and extremely specialized in their interests kinds of people.

I am genuinely surprised that you do not seem to have seen this. Count yourself lucky. I count myself as one too, although I still occasionally have to be exposed to that shit when a cute otter video is pushed on my face and for a second, each time, I almost laugh at the fucking bloke just sitting there, each time a different dude. What nonsense.

That has to be one of the worst choices if you must go. I get that we don’t think straight in those moments of our life, but it’s such a horrible thing to force on someone and their conscience…

Not just trains, but all the instances where someone entirely unrelated will be dragged into something so heavy, like truck drivers, too. Hard to live with, can really ruin lives.

Another thing I don’t like is when others that aren’t trained for it like the paramedics or police, have to see the outcome and fallout, such as jumping off a building into a busy street, even at night when nobody’s there just now, but will be. Or hanging yourself from your balcony in an apartment complex.

It fucks up someone to see that, and I have to believe everyone could make the responsible choice of doing it in private or in a way that affects least amount of unrelated people possible. Like going with the helium/nitrogen bag, hanging within the bounds of one’s privacy, if shooting is the way to go, do it perhaps in the woods, somewhere peaceful and remote, and call the paramedics so they’ll be there before any innocent walkers-by, etc.

It’s bad that anyone has to be involved, but at least the professionals have the training to deal with that somehow, even if it will ultimately fuck them up too at least somehow. At least it’s a conscious choice for them to put themselves in the position that they might have to see shit like that. Same for police.

I would strongly encourage messless ways to go, too, because I think the psychological impact of a peacful-seeming exit without blood or injuries has to be the least damaging. It’s never going to be clean and harmless to others, but an exit bag would do a lot of good for everyone eventually involved in the situation.

But I also get that a lot of people in that position may harbor some general hatred and bitterness towards others, which is horrible and I have to think entirely avoidable if the society did its job, so they might even choose to go as publicly and messily as possible just to make a point or something.

But the others have to live with that shit. They keep going. You don’t. The least we can do is try to minimize the trauma and impact we necessarily inflict on others when we do go. We get the peace. We get away. Those others, not so much.

I don’t know how this would be taught other than boldly and empathetically talking about it in school, to make the point repeatedly, like we do with sex education for example. And health education too. We really should talk about these things, so when the time comes one has to leave, the spine reaction would be to do it as kindly as possible, to be considerate in the choice of manner.

And here I am thinking everyone can do this, it’s so weird that a thing like this just never came up with anyone

This is so interesting, since I simply can not tell a difference between the aspartame/acesulfane and actual sugar in fizzy drinks. I guess I have it easy because of that, but I have a somewhat keen sense of taste otherwise, I cook a lot and can detect what the taste is missing or has too much of pretty consistently, and know the “opposite” tastes/ingredients to apply. And wines and such, it’s sort of a synesthesia thing too, since I kind of feel them as something close to colors. But sweet things I have trouble with. I thought, not sure why, this was a human thing, but it’s interesting to hear someone can detect the sweet things granularly! Cool!

Voyager too

Yeah well, this is of course just a singular anecdote, but my experience with any touch-based de on Linux hasn’t been great.

No Linux phone I have ever seen has had a particularly competitive pricing. Or specs.

But perhaps there has been some major advancements I’m not aware of in the past week.

In any case, your latter point is true.

At this point I would not be surprised if steam built on top of the deck idea and the support it already provides for fairly responsive and configurable inputs, touch screen included, to launch a steam phone or something.

I mean deck isn’t all that far from having such a device. For the actual phone network stack they would likely just partner up with someone already in the space.

They’ve already had to tackle powering a lightweight portable device with a touch screen and adapting the UX for a small screen and non-kbd input. They’ve already established they can source parts and mass produce a competively priced device.

But realistically I can’t see it being that much better than the recent Linux phone offerings.

I’m the same. Love good food and little treats. The taste and the texture and the sensations overall. Yes please.

The aftermath, however, if I ever accidentally overdo it, is just a generally bad, nauseous feeling where it feels kind of “tight” inside, it’s harder to move, you feel bloated and tired, and only thing you can do to mend it is give it time and lay still. It’s bad. Can’t even imagine liking it to be honest. But I get that some (most?) may not feel so confined and anxious when just laying still. I have adhd which probably explains why I absolutely hate having to do that.

If everyone dared to challenge the shitty practices and expectations of their superiors (while actively following through with the reasonable ones), then they’d (the superiors) have no other choice but to accept that the can’t just order whatever, contexts matter and life fluctuates, same as the world, locally and at large.

Unions are the tool towards this. It’s the convenient hammer a worker can wield to dare build a more sensible environment for work.

Anyone going against these superiors alone can rightly expect to get sacked or something to that effect. It’s not okay and shouldn’t be like that, but that’s the unfortunate reality.

Do the same together, and unless they are confident in their capability of replacing everyone efficiently and quickly, somehow eating the time and cost of re-establishing the workflow and the silent knowledge previously shared between the senior workers and the new, etc, they have to bend and listen to reason. And I am pretty confident in saying that there isn’t a workplace that can ever be confident in all that, unless they only ever had a maximum of two workers and a very generic, easily learnt job.

Lesson here is the old and tired union, nobody likes to hear it for whatever reason, but there exists an effective way to fight precisely this. Adapt and wield it. Make things more safe and sane for everyone.

That is what it is also, but doing it adjacent to your original comment, in public, makes it a gesture of goodwill in addition to that. I didn’t have to type it out and post it, but I felt I wanted to explain myself, and chose to do that as a comment and spend some of my time and energy, as a gesture, despite me not having to do that.

But you are also correct in your other point there.

However I didn’t intend to mean your post was propaganda if that was a sarcastic slight against me in that sense, just that I didn’t agree with the argument it tied to at the end, nor all of the examples chosen. But I felt there was an agreeable insight there about people avoiding the balance of responsibility vs. freedom at the start of the post, so I wanted to try and show that there was a valid point there, and explain why I downvoted despite my agreement there, with a genuinely well intended gesture.

Edit: I will admit, I was a little bit annoyed by the ending of your post, so in the moment my original comment did end up being more rude than it had to, for which I am genuinely sorry.

You are connecting things that aren’t connected, consolidating very different examples into one and same, but that’s neither helpful or productive. Oversimplifying to the point of confusing the very premise is making your point seem like nonsense, even if you have a trace of a valid point in there.

Responsibility does not work like you present it. Nor does freedom. There are different types of responsibility, and different types of freedoms, with a scale for each, not a binary option.

Some of those responsibilities do go hand in hand with your proposed contrasting freedom, but not all. And all of that to a very much varying degree.

So when you ultimately connect it all to socialism, it just comes off as lazy critique against socialism, instead of a point about responsibilities vs. freedoms. Which just makes the entire thing moot, and finally explains the dissonance with the examples given.

Not a great contribution in my opinion. Just explaining my downvote as a general gesture of goodwill.

Probably worth mentioning, that the benefits of this can be reaped in part just by being and walking in nature every day. Especially on the mental health side, in some places of the world, I think it’s a general concept called “forest bathing” or similar.

I’ve never done a hike longer than 100km, which means I’ve never been on the trail for more than a few days at a time.

However, I’ve noticed the same effects ever since I started doing that more frequently. I’m much less prone to falling properly sick than any of my friends or family, whenever my partner falls ill, I typically go through a mild similar thing in a few days time, but often survive without even fever, when they can be bedridden for weeks, even. I might get some signs of a flu or whatever, but so much milder. It’s not unusual that I just entirely skip being sick at all, even mild symptoms, even if my entire household is struggling in bed with fever. And I tend to be the caretaker then, so ample opportunity for the bugs to pass on to me, constantly.

And every time I realize I’m falling unusually sick, I realize that it’s been some months since my last hike.

And if I just keep doing a hike or two biannually and otherwise visit the forests or the lakes or whatever at least once a week, even if just briefly due to stress and work and all, I am so much less prone to proper sickness, but having any sickness at all in general too!

So this is mostly for those who read the OP I’m responding to and thinking, it’d be nice to afford 6 months of a vacation — you need not! It works, even if this is just an anecdote, with fewer efforts and much more casual execution too! And it has been studied a lot, although take it with a grain of salt because I haven’t stored any of the studies/papers of the abstracts I’ve read just passing by thanks to my adhd curiousness.

I think the consensus is, nevertheless, that there are provable, observable benefits of being in nature, even if just a bit at a time, even if not all that frequently. But I’m not a researcher or work in these kinds of fields, so just be wary that I might be overselling or even misrepresenting it. But I feel fairly confident in saying so.

May I just ask, out of pure curiosity, who is this person to you? I mean to understand why you care enough to conduct any kind of tests or whatever.

If they’re bad company, simply avoid and disengage. Why waste energy and time in fragile attempts at proving something that isn’t exactly provable with ordinary means? Like why even think about all this in the first place?

If it’s personal in that you feel slighted by them, I’d still recommend not engaging in weird tests or similar behavior. You’ll ultimately learn nothing useful and will have spent your time and energy for basically nothing. I get that you might be very driven by whatever the reason is, but maybe if you take a step back, breathe a moment, you might be able to re-evaluate whether this is actually important and worth your effort.

You only have the time you have, and the energy you have. It’s very limited. I just wanted to step in and suggest you might spend it doing something pleasing and positive instead. You’ll be better off, I ensure you.

Never heard of such a thing. I’d try different brands, does not sound normal that the paper would shed.

But I think just about every bathroom would get regular dust buildup pretty quickly especially if it’s a flat (not a house) where one of the only outward air vents would usually be there.

Just mentioning that because a lot of people don’t seem to clean their bathroom floors — or other surfaces for that matter, that aren’t the actual toilet seat or the faucet — all that regularly. We’ve just recently had this talk with a friend of mine who’s a bachelor and was complaining about how his bathroom is somehow built wrong or faulty because it gets so dusty so quickly, and used ours as an example of how easy we have it because his would need constant cleaning to look similarly decent.

Had to tell them that unfortunately we are cleaning it, out of this very same necessity, very frequently and that’s the only reason it looks like it does as opposed to theirs…

Just a thought: Maybe others just clean it more often and that’s why there isn’t dust visible. You’d be a visitor on other peoples’ homes, so they very likely do some extra scrubbing right before you visit. Maybe you just don’t happen to see the place as it is in an average day, if not actively and frequently kept clean, and that’s why you think others don’t have the same buildup. You witness your bathroom every single day after all, others only occasionally.

Well, it’s been a few years now, but there used to be a fairly active hookup scene in this town, though that wasn’t my scene. It’s all things local at least here. Often people would just message you for various reasons, whatever you post, and sometimes it’d just lead to things once you chat a bit. I don’t think you could post memes or whatever back then, you could only take pictures with camera, couldn’t attach arbitrary images (e.g memes).

They are doing an awful job of it, if that is the case. Most of my last few relationships, serious and casual alike, were from tinder, and those few that weren’t, were surprisingly enough, from jodel. But tinder has been the cultural standard here for a longish while now, and most everyone I know, friends and acquaintances, have met their partners from there. And after passing 30, not many are single anymore, and only very few in casual/serial relationships. So most are in stable committed relationships, of which most were from tinder.

Personally I never spent any money there and I don’t know any that have (though they could just be omitting it or it never just came up, I digress), yet I don’t really know many single people anymore either thanks to it.

So if their intention is keeping people searching, they really make it way too convenient and nice an experience to meet people and fall in love.

Could this maybe be a thing that EU somehow makes better here, versus e.g the US that I can sadly imagine would actually give all the tools for the companies to actively make it an eternal search… it feels to me it’s too good an experience for most I know for our experience to be the outlier. Why would people use it anyway, if it didn’t work?

A very fundamental part of that is the amount of moving parts. Every person in the chain that is required for the thing to happen, has to either support the thing or otherwise follow through.

This very concept is what has saved us from nuclear apocalypse so far. Very literally so.

A few years of finasteride (+ minoxidil) here; It likely affects people differently, but for me this combo has very effectively ceased my baldening, or at the very least make it very much slower, but I’ve not got any new growth or return of significant amount of growth on areas that already got very thin.

I’d be realistic about the potential results, maybe a bit skeptical even, just not to get too excited and then disappointed.

Worth mentioning, too, is that as I understand, this is a lifetime deal. Once you drop them, the process is very likely to continue. Not sure about other corners of the world, but it’s not exactly cheap either.

It is slow to finally start kicking in properly, and it’s not exactly interesting. As I’ve come to understand, while this combo is actually somewhat proven to actually be provable/consistent clinically, and can result in new growth or regrowth, most don’t get that. I didn’t, anyway, and that’s just my general practitioners words, not a specialists, so take it for what it is, with a grain of salt.

Edit: I also use ketokonazode shampoo or whatever it’s called infrequently. Not sure if that’s an active part of my own success with stopping the shed and retaining what’s left, so maybe it’s worth mentioning. That and minoxidil I can get without prescription at least around here. Finasterid requires a prescription though.

I have a hard time seeing this pov, as someone who likes their fizzy drinks (nay, requires them), but I also chug water frequently for a total of at least 2 litres each day.

It’s not like you need to only choose the one or the other. Some fizzy treats are dehydrating, even, so you kind of need to drink water on top of them.

You can have both! I love my cold water, it’s so refreshing and feels so good to down a 0.5l pint at one go! But I also love my fizzies, I need the stimulation of the fizziness on my tongue and back of mouth, it brings me such joy!

All to say, I find it weird there are so many comments about them being seemingly mutually exclusive.

I have personally never experienced this. The pizza around here is perfectly well balanced with pineapple too. No sogginess, and the pineapple is amazingly juicy still, not dry or hard.

You might have encountered someone using the usually tossed inner parts of a pineapple, that are more fibrous? I bake a lot of homemade pizzas and even I have never managed to dry out the pineapple in the short time the pizza visits the oven