NEVER click decline all. There are loopholes built in that still grant access to “legitimate interest” cookies, which are recognized differently from “consent cookies.” If you click reject all, it still allows collection of certain personal info through cookies labeled legitimate interest. Which is entirely up to advertisers to categorize.
As annoying as it is, always open up options and manually uncheck cookies.
Satisfaction is just a level of contentment for me. I’m in a good place, nothing’s wrong, I have all my needs met. I’m satisfied.
Whereas happiness is a higher emotional plane. I actually feel good, not just content. My emotions are elevated and it would take something drastic to negatively alter my mood.
Happiness is an elevated positive state of emotion, whereas satisfaction is more of a neutral positive.
There are already a lot of good answers/opinions/experiences/etc. here and I don’t want to rehash all of that, but I will mention this:
If you’ve heard the expression, “blood is thicker than water,” you should know that the original unedited expression was actually, “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” Basically meaning that the friendships (covenants) you make in life are stronger bonds than the family you just happened to be born into.
You can’t choose your biological family, but you can choose your friends and (non-bio) family. Don’t let people drag you down just because they’re related to you. Cut the dead weight out of your life, regardless of relation, and live your best life. If your dad doesn’t care about you, then why should you exhaust any energy caring about him? He hasn’t earned your attention, nor the attention of his grandkids.
My wife came from a poor trailer trash family and felt obligated, as the only person who made something of herself, to attempt to support her grandparents (who raised her), mother, and 3 siblings. But it only led to greed, gluttony, and dishonesty. Eventually, she had to cut ties with most of them because they started to feel entitled in sharing her “wealth.”
We had to draw the line when one of her pregnant sisters was about to have her baby taken away by the state. (I believe it was her 4th one the state had taken from her at this point; she had been deemed an unfit parent, but kept pumping out kids regardless.) My wife’s family tried to guilt us into adopting the kid, just to keep him in the family. She finally put her foot down. Taking in illegitimate children from her family was just trapping her with the burden of her siblings (who were already trying to pawn off their kids to their grandmother). My wife cut ties and now only speaks to her siblings (and mother) if they call. But she makes zero effort to stay in touch otherwise, and she won’t give them anything except functional Christmas gifts - the one time of year she indirectly contacts them.
My wife had deep-seated anxiety for years, worrying about supporting her deadbeat family. Now she’s low-contact and made a rule not to support them financially. She’s living stress-free now and is in a much better place for it. Their lives are their own and she refuses to feel responsible for the horrible choices they’ve made.
I have a buddy who would rage quit when he dies in games, then rant about how there’s no advantage for skilled players and, “this game is all luck!”
He was exceptionally good at strategy games. Back in the days of Warcraft II, he would spend days writing down exact second-by-second instructions for building the perfect base to dominate the map. (“Dedicate 4 seconds to starting this building, the next 9 seconds are needed to harvest this resource, then 13 seconds to start recruiting 4 infantry,” etc.).
By the time I had made maybe 3 buildings and a few peons harvesting resources, he was already invading my base with a massive army. He probably could’ve gone pro, if esports leagues were a thing in our youth.
But he was a terrible loser. If his strategy didn’t go to plan, he would throw a fit about the game cheating and being all about luck instead of skill.
My wife suffers from this. It’s called clinical anxiety and depression, with a heavy dose of ADHD. She needs medication to keep it in check, and some days, even that’s not enough. Trying to get her out of the house every few days is like pulling teeth.
On top of that, my wife is an introvert by nature, but you’d never know in a social setting, as she will talk everyone’s ear off all night long. I found out that’s her nervous tick; when she feels the social anxiety kicking in, she just lets the ADHD take charge and will run her mouth non-stop. When she gets home from any social event, even just a quiet evening hanging out with a close friend, she’ll collapse from exhaustion and sleep for half a day afterward.
I love tinkering with computers. Building, fixing, upgrading… software, hardware, networking, it’s all fun. I enjoy the troubleshooting process and the satisfaction that comes from solving a problem. I spent 20 years as an IT guy in the US Air Force and I enjoyed every minute of fixing computers while serving.
Now I’m recently retired and I could easily make 2-3x as much money working IT in the civilian sector, but… I just really enjoy doing it for fun. I don’t want to go back into a corporate environment and be told how and when and what to fix or upgrade.
My wife and I are planning to build our “forever home” (the last home we ever plan to live in) and we’re in the design phase right now. I can’t wait to wire the place for modern computer systems. I’d like to build my own server suite in a cold basement room and then network the whole house so I can automate tasks anywhere in the house. Open all my curtains from an app on my phone, answer the door, play music in any room (or all rooms) through an intercom system, stream movies/TV shows/video games to any TV in the house, etc. I’m definitely building a giant theater room in my basement, at least big enough to hold a dozen people, maybe more.
I’m excited for the possibilities that wiring my own house present. I also want to make it upgradeable over time, in case better standards for technology come out. Maybe run all cables through PVC pipes in the walls, so I can easily push new cables through without having to tear apart the walls.
Yeah, I’m really enjoying retirement as a former IT guy. I could make more money going back to work, but then I’ll have less time and freedom to engage in my hobbies. What’s the point in having more money if you don’t have the time to enjoy it? So I’m living off my govt pension now, which is more than adequate for me to live comfortably, and I’m just enjoying retired life.
Yeah you should let your stuff cool before washing it… but how many of us do that?
I used to love putting hot pans in the sink with cool water. Loved the sizzle and steam it created, and it was faster than waiting for it to cool down.
Then I would complain about all my pans being cheap and warped. I couldn’t cook evenly because there was one bulge that got direct contact with the oven and the rest of the pan rocked back and forth and either burned or undercooked all my food.
Until one day, my wife pointed out that putting a hot pan in cool/cold water causes them to warp. She got mad at me because some of the ruined pans were actually expensive quality brands. I’ve learned my lesson; no more hot pans in the sink for me. Let them cool a bit before you wash them.
I tend to upvote if someone brings something unique to the discussion. If you’re just giving a quick generic response to OP or parroting the same opinion a dozen other people in the thread have already posted, then I’m gonna read your comment and keep going. But if you provide thoughtful content that promotes discussion, provides a unique perspective, or at least had a lot of thought put into it, I’m likely to upvote it. Same goes for the post itself.
I generally avoid downvoting, even if I disagree with the comment. But if someone is factually wrong, misleading, posting in bad faith, or just being a troll, I’ll downvote their comments in a thread and upvote anyone who attempts to be reasonable with them. If two people are just bickering back and forth, they both get downvotes. And as always, any comments that distract from the discussion or are off-topic will get a downvote.
Before LOLcats was Demotivational posters, which were just the generic motivational posters, but with a humorous twist. Motivational posters had a black border with text on the bottom, which made it easy to swap out in MS Paint with funny text back in the early Internet days. It was the first caption memes, which became even more popular when people started doing it with cute cat pics too.
As far as socializing, Lemmy is pretty much the big one nowadays.
Well, a little Facebook too, to stay in touch with friends and family, but I use F. B. Purity to remove ads and other features I don’t use on Facebook (gaming, marketplace, reels/stories, etc.), plus an extension in Firefox to block Facebook/Instagram from snooping on my other browser tabs. Don’t want them building a profile on my browsing habits to customize ads for me, or to sell to third parties.
I also use Discord with my wife and a few close friends, so we can arrange an online video gaming night once or twice a week, and stay in touch the rest of the time.
Before Lemmy, I used Reddit a ton. Before that, I was a moderator for a forum called CommGuys.net (formerly 3C0X1.net), which was a forum for Air Force service members in the IT career field. The former site URL was our Air Force specialty code that designated the generic IT career field, but it changed in 2009, splitting into several different codes for different specialties, so they changed the site to CommGuys; short for Communications Guys, which is what they used to call IT professionals in the Air Force. Nowadays, they call them Cyber Guys, because we’re more cyber/web focused and less communications specific. But when social media sites were officially unblocked from Air Force computer networks in 2010, military people ran over to Reddit and Facebook and our forums practically died out, so the site owner finally shut it down.
Oh, and to officially date myself, my first social media platform was MySpace, which I didn’t even get involved in until after I left home and joined the military. Social media was not a thing in my childhood, and most of my childhood was without Internet. It didn’t become popular/commonplace until my preteen years, and content was sparse for many years after that. I did use AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), MSN Messenger, ICQ, and a couple others in my teen years, but that was basically direct messaging with friends through the Internet before everyone had cell phones.
Even as a teen/young adult, IRC was more of an “old nerdy IT guy” hangout spot, so I rarely got involved with it, despite joining the IT profession in the military. I expected it to die out as more advanced web functionality approached, but I guess some people really like the classics, and it’s surprisingly still a thing today.
Oh, and 4chan was a great site back in its early days, but then too many young kids started joining it and taking the “free speech” jokes seriously, so now it’s become a breeding ground for fascist misogynistic alt-right extremists. We used to joke around about that stuff, testing the mods to see what our censor limits were, since 4chan liked to advertise itself as the only place on the Internet where you could speak your mind without being silenced or banned. And, well… some people really pushed those boundaries to the extreme and eventually turned the site into a cesspool.