I keep telling myself I’m gonna rice out my setup. That plasma is just a placeholder. But as months have become years I have started to question the value in it.

I use it mainly to find inspiration for home renovations. I have big plans lol

Really you can use Pinterest to find inspiration with any project that involves some creativity.

I still remember my first chipmunk encounter. I heard the little guys before I saw them and wondered “who the f is out here playing laser tag in the woods? ”

That doesn’t really make it less agitating though. There is a group of birds called jays (like blue jay) and the word jay is scientifically meaningless. It is still infuriating to me that these birds aren’t even vaguely related to each other in many cases. Just name them something else. Make it make sense. Koalas are not bears; just call them koalas. Guinea pigs are not from Guinea and they aren’t pigs. Horned toads are lizards. There are many examples of this. The names of animals don’t have to describe what they are, but they should not be accepted when describing the animal as something it is not. Animals should not have names that conflict with their taxonomy.

I mean better at being cars not better for the environment. I want a greener car but I don’t want to have to own a worse car to accomplish that.

Didn’t the 2nd gen Prius have a solar roof? It could only power the ac and accessories iirc.

Yes and no. Clades still have issues with things like hag fish.

Who decides when a species becomes naturalized / stops being invasive? As an example, the European Starling has been living in North America since 1890 and are still considered invasive. They have natural predators. The ecosystem is adapting around them. Just let them have citizenship already!

Another thing: Taxonomy. Just all taxonomy. If a shark and a trout are both fish then we must also be fish because both of those animals are closer relatives to us than they are to each other. Obviously the way we define a fish has to change. Why has nobody done this? There are a TON of things like this in taxonomy and that all make me absurdly angry.

I have never felt so seen on the internet!

I love cars and the environment. I really want EVs to be cool / better but we just aren’t there yet.

Shenandoah National Part during a wind storm in March. It’s not always windy there but holy shit that was some wind.

Thank you for sharing! This is extremely helpful!

What we find gross is mostly arbitrary and emotional. It’s loosely based on the perception of filth but most people who find something gross will continue to find that thing gross even if they know it’s clean. If someone feels like snakes are gross, they watch you take a snake and scrub it clean with soap and water (don’t actually do this obviously) and you try to hand them the scrubbed snake, most people would continue to call it gross. Furthermore, if you ask most people why they find something gross, they won’t be able to give you a real answer. (Food seems to be an exception but we mean something entirely different and much more specific when calling food gross unless we are saying that the food is somehow foul or unclean)

In most cases, when someone calls something gross, they are doing so as a reaction to a feeling it gives them. Whatever they say after that tends to be some form of post-hoc justification to legitimize that feeling.

This behavior is as annoying as it is unhelpful. I agree that nobody should let the story fade from public interest but spamming random threads doesn’t accomplish that. It’s just obstructive and if anything it’s doing more harm than good. There is a thing called alarm fatigue. If you keep “shouting from your rooftop” you are just going to push your neighbors into shutting their windows.

Also maybe consider talking to a therapist about it? It’s none of my business but this level of investment seems unhealthy.

Nah, you are speaking sense. I think Lemmy was really pitched as a Reddit alternative (or at least that was my experience)and it makes sense that the first flood of people who got excited about that are people who miss how Reddit used to feel.

IMHO Lemmy feels similar to how Reddit felt 10-15 years ago. The community seems closer to my age. The population is smaller. The content is less formulaic.

The biases shown here feel like a distillation of the broader internet (similar to what Reddit used to be). We like animals and nature, we hate intrusive powerful forces like large corporations or invasive governments. We share a shit-post-y sense of humor. We tend to lean left politically. We love to feel like we know more than we actually do.

On any given subject, if you ask “What would the internet think about this?” you will probably find that same opinion reflected strongly here.

One class for one hour is not much time at all. To get the most out of it, I would actually try to keep the scope as narrow as possible. I would really dig into these two things:

Password management (make good passwords, use a pw-manager to avoid reusing a pw, change passwords regularly)

Spotting social engineering (I would spend at least 2/3 of the class on this topic) this is by far the most common vector through which people get hurt by poor tech literacy. If you want to do the most good for the most people I would recommend focusing on drilling this skill.

I spent 7 years on my 4 year degree for vaguely similar reasons. I didn’t take breaks. I pushed through and cracked and failed and started over in a new major and a new school. That was nearly a decade ago and I’m not really happy with where it lead me. I wish I had taken the time off. If I could go back now with my current knowledge of how my brain works differently, I would be so much more successful. I’m also just rambling at this point.

I guess what I’m trying to say is be kind to yourself over the choices to have made. Not only can you rarely ever take them back, the grass is rarely ever actually greener on the other side.

It’s been a long time since I have actually been able to do this but let me lay out a vibe for you:

I work 2nd shift which ends at 10:30 pm and I used to live in a really rough neighborhood. The kind of place where people mind their own business as a matter of safety. The kind of place where landlords don’t do inspections so everyone has a grill on their patio even though it’s against the lease.

So I would go out every single night at 11:30-midnight, light up the charcoal grill, poor myself a cocktail and spend the next hour or two cooking for myself in the quiet empty dark.

So to actually answer the question:

• the food would change often but always grilled meats and vegetables. A hamburger and an ear of corn, skewered and marinated meats and vegetables with baked beans, everything you would think to pair with a steak, I even grilled cuts of fish on a salt brick a few times.

• the drink would be something seasonal. In the fall I would mix burnt sugar whiskey with hot apple cider. That was my favorite.

• what I listened to was always some audio horror fiction. I love music but there was just something about the fire, the moon, and the colony of feral cats that chilled with me for table scraps, that demanded I listen to ghost stories.

If they are good at things and make me feel like I’m good at stuff then why bother counting. A high body count could mean they cheat or move on easily. … or not… so I really don’t put any weight behind it.

I get why it can be intimidating or insecurity provoking to be with an experienced partner but all that really matters is how you connect with them. If they don’t give you a reason to make their body count matter, then I wouldn’t call it a red flag.

I can seriously relate to that feeling of hopeless unfulfilment. I struggle with slipping into and out of that place myself. What I find helps the most are little things. Small acts of self care that, over time, help me reach out again and grasp the belief that I can change things. Whatever you do and wherever you go, it has to start with the belief that things can get better, even if you don’t see how.

Just focus on little things. Improve your life in small controllable ways. Don’t worry about big problems or permanent solutions. Living well is all about momentum. You start building steam one coal at a time.