Libb

Disclaimer: I lost my virginity many decades ago, I may not be qualified to answer the question.
That being said, I’ve two remarks:

1. Why wouldn’t people be virgin, no matter their age? Sex may not be something all people wish to practice.
2. As an older dude myself (I’m well into my 50s) that has been with his spouse for almost 30 years and counting), considering today’s dating scene I can say I’m very surprised a lot more young people are not choosing to stay virgin. Just so they can stay away from the shit show the dating scene seems to have morphed into. Both women and men, I mean. Expectations and demands seem so… absurd I can’t even fathom how they manage to actually meet anyone, a real person?

Sorry for the rant. Maybe it’s just me getting too old and I’m missing a lot of the great things going on in dating today (it’s not like I’m an expert in dating, I just listen to younger people around us and online talk about it) but, to me at least, what I’m hearing seem so… destructive, and so sad. It’s crazy people are still willing to bear with it. It’s also the exact opposite of what meeting a partner is supposed to be.

Most often we will eat either:

• One or two slice of fresh (whole or even black) bread. Not the industrial type of bread, real handmade bread (we get it from the artisan bakery down our street). Toasted or not, with a tad of jam, and a cup of tea. Some fruit, depending the season. It takes mere instants to prepare.
• An egg. Boiled, omelette, scrambled, whatever. With my omelette, I like to add some fresh tomato, mushrooms and a tad of parsley. No bacon or things like that. This too takes mere instants to cook. Followed by a tea or a coffee.
• A croissant (it helps to live in France, as we get ours handmade from the same small bakery at the corner of our street we get our baguettes and bread from ;)) and a coffee.

For lunch and/or diner both my spouse and I like to prepare a few meals in advance (mostly vegetables even though we’re not vegan, we just want to eat less meat), using fresh non-industrially processed condiments. To save time, we will make 2 or even 3 meals worth in advance and store it in the fridge.

Thx, I’ll check that tool. Not an expert, so you know ;)

I own an Android phone, for a single app I need to have access to. It’s a Redmi something. I could not find a way to just uninstall their own ‘Gallery’ app nor the Google Photos app so I removed their access to any file. I hope this is enough but I don’t know that.

I thought Android was all about choice (against iOS, which is my default phone) but this was not very convincing. I may have missed a way to easily uninstall any app, though? I would like to replace them with f-droid alternative apps so there won’t be any risk they access the little data I’ve stored on that phone.

I would never have imagined I would witness this becoming our reality but it looks more and more like it.

ok, now I get it.

My suggestion is still valid, though. I mean it’s easy to create a free blog on something like wordpress.com and will only take a few minutes to do. After that, you can easily link to it from anywhere.

I’m not a user of wordpress myself but they offer a free plan and there is very little to do to be able to start using it.

Not sure to understand the question but I would say if you don’t want to create new post around here, posting it on your personal blog may be a good start.

Yes.

Not vegetables related.

Any advice would be a lifesaver 🙏—

Stop wasting your time would be my first advice.

If you really feel like you’ve wasted your time for the first 3 years, change. Change now. Not tomorrow, not next year, not after you manage to find the real ‘good place that will help you learn something’. Do it now, where you are. Start learning, ask questions, discuss with teachers (and fellow students, too), invest yourself.

It’s never too late, no matter how late. But there is no shortcut to doing the work.

Basically like a one-stop place to learn + build + get guidance. Does that even exist or am I just daydreaming here?

Like already mentioned, that’s the place you’re in right now. But, allow me to insist on that, it requires you to put in the work. Like with learning anything new.

The other suggestion I wanted to make was already given to you: since you seem to be into coding, start actually coding stuff. A diploma is not worth much compared to experience you acquire by making stuff and writing you own code for real.

There are plenty open source projects looking for someone to help push them forward if you have no idea on what to work. But if that’s the case I would also suggest you question your motivation to study that.

Was it always like that? I mean, I don’t need that much sleep and never needed much. I go to bed between 22 and midnight and will wake up at 4AM every single day, no alarm needed. I will wake up even when I go to sleep much, much later. I’ve been doing that most of my adult life.

One thing that helps me a lot as I study a lot at night, is to study under a yellowish Led lamp (and not in bed, but sitting or standing at a desk).

I also exercise a lot. I walk, every single day. I will walk as often and for as long as I can, and will use any excuse to do so. It helps me feel much better and a lot less stressed out when I go to bed. Maybe that is something you could try? If not by walking, by doing gymnastic, or something?

The first two questions should be:

1. Do you have any health issue and if so is it treated?
2. What do you do in the evening before going to sleep?

Hard to give any suggestion without knowing that.

Thx, I understand that and it goes along the context also mentioned in another comment.

Thx everyone for the clarification :)

I would certainly not want to defend AI and AI-usage but I don’t understand this remark. I mean I understand what it says, but I don’t understand why it’s mentioned at all:

The unauthorized AI enhancements represent a concerning trend where artificial intelligence increasingly mediates reality before it reaches viewers, potentially eroding authentic connections between creators and their audiences[^1].

There is no such thing as an ‘authentic connection’ or a non-mediated ‘reality before it reaches viewers’ if by ‘authentic’ the author means ‘direct’, unfiltered or unedited.

In a least two ways, a video is always edited, aka mediated:

• A video being scripted and or scenarized, even say just by the choice of lens and lighting used, or by the props visible in the frame. Not forgetting the sound (the way the voice is recorded/enhanced) and the music used to suggest/enhance some mood. And/or when the video is edited (selection of sequences to keep and other to discard). Which makes even the most basic videos, even a live stream, not an authentic (unmediated) connection.
• It’s also not unmediated by the very way video works, like photo: the ‘reality’ mentioned and that is being recorded is just that: a record of it. And not even of it, a record of the image of it which is a recording of the photons that were hitting said reality and that were bounced back (first mediation) onto the camera’s sensor (second mediation) that were then transformed by the camera into an electrical signal (third) that was stored as binary data (fourth) to be later on converted again into something the viewer (add as many as the ones already listed) at every single conversion there was an interpretation and a decisions were made (one of the reasons there can be so large image differences between various brands is that they don’t use the same sensors and don’t use the same algorithms to convert signal into data and vice versa). It’s not just with digital, any recording, even a film one, or an old handmade painting or a sketch, is a a lot of mediation between a reality (that can sometimes be long gone and forgotten) and its viewer (us).

So, to me the issue should not be that this mediation was made using an AI-powered tool by Youtube to change the video. It should focus on the fact that YouTube violated the creator’s copyright by deciding on their own to ‘improve’ said videos without the creator’s consent.

A bit like we should not accept when anyone, no matter their reasoning and intentions, wants to edit an existing creation because they think it should be changed (say they don’t like the dude’s face, or their nose or even they disagree with what they say and want to change it). Unless they get explicit authorization to edit it, they should not have any right to do so.

Sorry for the lengthy comment, I find it odd when I read that a video is about ‘authentic connection’ between a supposed reality and us. It’s not, with or without AI involved.

Is dilettante connoted as negatively as the OP depicts the person?

Asking this as a non-native English speaker and because in French dilettante means ‘someone doing an activity for the sheer pleasure/satisfaction they get out of doing it.’

Are you satisfied with your writing?

Nope, which is another motivation to try to do better. Beside the relentless desire to write, I mean.

How often do you write?

Daily.

What is it about?

Some attempts at fiction (short stories and plays, for the most part). A mix of philosophy/sociology/history. Journaling, too.

Do you dream of people finding out about it eventually?

Nope. I just don’t think it’s interesting enough (nor good enough). Also, since I don’t publish it anywhere and since it’s not even stored on a computer (I write longhand, using actual pen and paper, or I type on a good old typewriter), there is very little chance for it to be accidentally leaked online.

A failed democracy.

I could have been confusing seeing somebody on Linux using the Command Box thing as more intricate coding, but for somebody in my shoes, with limited tech knowledge, it all looks like coding and is a little intimidating.

It is, I will agree with you. But it’s not that complex . It’s just… different and require we learn to use it, like when one learns a new foreign language of some sort…

And, btw, I did learn to use it that command prompt… not because I was forced to but because I realized how effective it was. It’s incredibly useful even though I barely use it at all, compared to experts. I run some scripts to prepare content for my website… First, I was doing everything by hand, which was a real pain, but it’s so much simpler and faster to let a script do all the work. And, like I said in my previous comment, I’m anything but a coder ;)

‘bla-bla-bla’ (French).

More spelling are available: ‘blabla’, ‘bla-bla’, ‘bla-bla-bla’.

11 - I avoid it as much as I can ;)

More seriously, I will often be the one people around ask for help but it doesn’t change that I also learned to absolutely distrust tech.

All tech, be it corporate-owned as well as free/Libre… I’m using Linux and have no issue (I like it) but I’m also terrified by the many ‘social code of conducts’ that have been popping out in many communities. Not necessarily because I disagree with their core values, that would not even matter much, but because it’s stating a precedent to allow a group to remove any user they don’t like/disagree with the right to use a tech… and that power will be used even when not ‘the good guys’ will be in charge.

Hence me slowly falling back to analog as much as possible…

Edit: typos, clarifications