cobysev

@[email protected]

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cobysev,

Same, large hands here. Smaller phones are uncomfortable.

On the flip side, my wife gets the smaller version of our phones because she has tiny hands. Her hands get cramps from holding up larger phones and she has mild tendonitis in her wrists from previous large/heavy phones.

She also has to shop for shoes in the kids’ aisles, so you know… she’s kind of a petite person all around.

cobysev,

My wife and I lived in Germany for 2 years. We went to Munich for a weekend and had an excellent historical walking tour across the city, provided for free by our hostel.

During that tour, we learned that pretty much every stereotype Americans have for Germans (lederhosen, yodeling, beer and brats, etc.) are actually Bavarian culture, not German. And Germans are actually quite offended at the confusion we have between their culture and Bavarian culture.

We also learned that Bavaria used to be quite wealthy and powerful, and intended to split off into their own independent nation at one time. But then Hitler set up shop there and made it his headquarters for the Third Reich. The city was absolutely decimated during WWII, and when the war was over, they not only had to rebuild from scratch, but also had to contribute to rebuilding the rest of Germany, as well as paying for war damages for Europe and all Allied nations, etc. Their wealth was pretty much depleted and their hope of being an independent nation was gone.

cobysev,

I had to look him up. I know the character (live-action pirate from SpongeBob SquarePants), but I didn’t know he had a name. I was barely an adult when that show started airing, so I haven’t seen much of it.

I also found out that the actor who voices SpongeBob plays Patchy. Had no clue it was the same guy. I’ve never heard of any hatred for Patchy, though. Is there any reason in particular people hate him? Or is it just “enough with the live-action; let’s get back to my cartoons!” mentality?

cobysev,

I had been using Relay for Reddit for years, and they didn’t shut down like other third party apps, so I made a Lemmy account as a backup plan and then continued using both Lemmy and Reddit for a while.

Then the creator of Relay announced that they couldn’t afford to continue service as it was and would be migrating toward a monthly subscription-based service to stay alive. That day, I moved to Lemmy and never went back. As much as I’d love to pay someone else just to stick it to Reddit’s CEO, I felt that getting financially invested in a failing website just wasn’t worth it in the long run. Besides, Sync for Lemmy had just been released and it was a familiar experience. I had used Sync for Reddit before I discovered Relay for Reddit.

Lemmy (and the fediverse as a whole) is much better than Reddit anyway. There are enough people here to have fresh content every day and I’m still discovering interesting niche subs (magazines? I’m still not sure what they call the categories here). There’s also not too many people here, so when I find an interesting topic to comment on (like this one), it’s not already 5,000+ comments deep. Nothing more demoralizing than commenting on a popular topic and getting absolutely no reaction from the community. No comments, no upvotes or downvotes. Makes me feel like I wasted my time trying to add my two cents to a conversation, and I tend to delete those comments later.

And if I run out of things to browse on Lemmy… oh well. It keeps me from being stuck on my phone all day. A smaller community means the feed isn’t endless, so it keeps me from doom-scrolling all day and night. I much prefer it here, and I’m officially done with Reddit.

cobysev,

I bought the pro version of Relay a few years ago. Didn’t even have to spend my own pocket money for it; I downloaded the Google Opinion Rewards app, filled out a few surveys, and Google gave me a few bucks to spend in the Play store, which I used to purchase Relay Pro.

Still, the creator of Relay claimed the whole app was moving to a subscription service, so I’ve now abandoned it. It’s not their fault. Reddit is making third party apps unsustainable without a constant income source. But I don’t want to get handed a bill one day while I’m browsing, so I’m here on Sync for Lemmy now.

What games had easy soft locks that prevented you from either progressing or getting a true ending?

The thought came to mind after reading a recent post about Baldurs Gate 3 here but it reminded me of the Japense only PSX game Mizzurna Falls where if you don’t perform a certain action early in the game you are prevented from getting a true ending. While this might not be a traditional soft lock because you can still progress...

cobysev,

Undertale is an indie game that promotes and encourages kindness toward others. You can play the game however you want, and there are a multitude of endings depending on how nice/mean you are in your playthrough.

But if you’re not 100% kind to everyone you meet; if you take even one unkind action toward someone, you’re locked out of the perfect good ending. And it remembers your playthrough, so you can’t ever earn it by replaying the game. I dunno if that’s been patched; I haven’t played it since about 2015, but that was the rule when I started it.

And there was no indication starting out that you had this choice. Most people default to fighting bad guys in games. There wasn’t even a hint that you could play the game as a passive, kind person and never harm anyone, despite their aggressive and harmful actions toward you.

So most gamers got locked out of that perfect good ending. Which I guess is kind of the message of the game. Every small act, whether good or bad, can affect people around you permanently. But it’s still annoying as a completionist, knowing that I could never perfectly complete a game because of a rule I wasn’t informed of when I started.

cobysev,

I used to look forward to the weekends because it was free time for me to focus on my own priorities in life. I was in the US Air Force for 20 years, and work always took precedence over personal life. It was literally one of our 3 core values: 1.) Integrity First; 2.) Service Before Self; 3.) Excellence in All We Do.

But I retired last summer (at the young age of 38) and now I’m getting a decent enough pension and disability benefits that I don’t need to work anymore. I can be officially retired if I want.

Now, I hate the weekends because they’re so busy. Every time I go out to run errands or do something fun, everywhere I go is packed with people enjoying their weekends. If I want a nice, quiet day to myself, I go out on weekdays now, while everyone else is at work. I can focus on whatever my goals are for the day and I’m not stuck dealing with crowds. Also, businesses are more likely to be open on weekdays, so I have better luck accomplishing any projects I’m working on during the weekdays. It seems, every time I need to call a business for something, it’s on a Saturday or Sunday and they’re closed.

It’s funny how being retired makes weekends the worst time of the week to be productive.

People who don't have any social media *besides Lemmy of course* how do you keep up with the news of your favorite music artists going on tour? (Edited)

I was thinking of creating an anonymous ticketmaster account using public wifi since they block VPNs and just have them email me updates, but they required a phone number for the sign up so I scrapped that idea....

cobysev,

My wife tracks them for me. I’m not a fan of live concerts. But my wife enjoys them, so she actively searches for concerts in our area and notifies me when a band we both like is passing through.

cobysev,

I saw this shirt for sale at a Spirit Halloween last week. It’s one of their regulars that are stocked every fall.

How to be less racist/bigotred?

So I am a part of the LGBTQ community and work in a big city in middle europe. A lot of my coworkers are religios and have a foreign background. They are mostly very nationalist and homo-/transphobic. I hate them for their blind hate and bigotry, which wont change. I have realised, that I have become a bit bigotred towards...

cobysev,

I spent 20 years traveling the world with the US Air Force, and I met many different people from many different cultures. And I would be lying if I said that I didn’t have conflicting world views with some of the folks I’ve met over the years.

There were times, early in my career, when I felt other cultures were just wrong and needed to change everything about themselves and the way they operate in order to get themselves out of the poverty and violence and hatred that they lived in. It turns out, my way of thinking was wrong.

The thing that helped me the most was actually taking an “Introduction to Culture” course through the Community College of the Air Force. It introduced me to the mindset behind other cultures and why some people I ran into just seemed to be unapologetically biased and/or racist/bigoted toward “outsiders.”

Learning how other cultures think and associate with others of their own culture helped me to get a mental foothold on differing opinions. I was able to discuss logic and reason from a common ground, not just a Western mentality viewpoint. I learned how to “speak their language,” so to speak. And even though I couldn’t change everyone’s world views, I was at least able to relate and discuss topics on equal footing.

And at the end of the day, you have to realize that everyone is their own unique individual. Sure, a particular culture and/or religion may go against everything you hold dear in your life, but individuals’ opinions may not be as resolute as the overarching culture may appear. Some people are open to new ideas and creative ways of thinking. You need to be aware of your personal biases (we ALL have them) and work to help others overcome their own biases at the same time, while not being accusatory or judgemental.

You can’t just tell people to educate themselves, but you can educate yourself, then share your knowledge and experience with others and try to come to an understanding. There are entire cultures out there who can’t see themselves as individuals with unique hopes and dreams. They only function as individual “worker ants,” supporting the ideals of their overarching culture and families. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it makes it hard to convince them of the importance of individual people, especially members of a group that’s contradictory to the teachings of their own culture. They have an especially hard time separating individuals from the group’s belief structure.

Teaching tolerance to groups who thrive on intolerance is very difficult, but it starts by relating to and positively influencing individuals. It won’t happen overnight, but good impressions can leave a lasting effect. And you need to be able to swallow your pride and don’t let your biases get the better of you. Be caring and respectful and let their own biases crumble under their own scrutiny. There’s no simple or direct way to do this, but if you spend enough time around others, you might find small ways to relate to them, then work on expanding your common ground.

Humans compartmentalize because we don’t have the cognitive ability to understand everything in the universe. It simplifies our world so we can better understand it. But racism and bigotry is a nasty side effect; we assign biased opinions on entire cultures so we don’t have to re-learn about every single member of a culture. But it’s important to fight against that urge to stereotype and teach others how to avoid it too. People deserve a chance to prove themselves, and you need to be able to give them that chance, even if it takes them a few tries. Some people just need a guiding hand and some extra opportunities to figure out how to be better. Most people need it, to some degree. All you can do is try not to give in to your own biases and help gently lead others to identifying their own biases.

cobysev,

Well that was quick… He’s already passed away. They gave him a week to live and he didn’t even last the night.

cobysev,

And here’s the original but it’s weird.

Oh… He’s one of those people. Looking through his other comics, he’s super pro-Trump, ultra-conservative. It’s a shame because his art style is nice, but it’s all political garbage posts.

cobysev,

I’m from the northern US, but lived in various states in the south for a little over 5 years. I have never heard anyone say “flicked off” before. It’s always been “flipped off.” I would’ve assumed you misspoke if you said “flicked.”

has your YouTube consumption decreased after implementing the "no history, no recommendations" feature?

I noticed my consumption has decased quite a bit. I would visit regularly to watch content from few channels. I would probably still visit every so often to watch the new videos. But the experience has become more deliberate and conscious. I go to YouTube because I want to go and watch something specific. Mindlessly browsing and...

cobysev,

This is my standard. Subscriptions or bust.

There was a time, maybe 5+ years ago, when I’d occasionally go to YouTube’s homepage, right-click every video in the feed, and select “don’t recommend channel.” After doing that off and on for a year or so, I suddenly found myself with an empty homepage. Absolutely no videos would load, just a blank white screen with a YouTube search bar at the top. It was glorious.

That is, until Google updated YouTube and it removed all my preferences. Now I have unlimited video recommendations on my homepage and I can’t seem to make them all go away anymore.

cobysev,

I spent the last 20 years in the US military, most of it being referred to as “Sergeant [cobysev].” The past year since I’ve been retired, I’ve been trying to get used to being called “Mr. [cobysev].” It’s really weird, especially since I joined the military at 18, so no one called me Mr. previously.

cobysev,

and I was not born in America

Neither was Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s from Austria originally; hence the thick accent.

cobysev,

My main gripe with Google Lens is that it replaced Google Image Search on their browser. Used to be able to drag/drop an image into Google and it’d do an instant search for all similar/identical images. Now it opens Google Lens and it just gives me a bunch of “related links” instead of a proper image search.

To get the old functionality back, I need to use a “Google image search” add-on in my Firefox browser. It opens the old Google image search page.

I mostly use it to find higher resolution versions of old, grainy images, but Google Lens took that functionality away from me.

cobysev,

I go to images.google.com for text searching images, but if you drag an image into the search bar there, it opens Google Lens now. That’s my complaint. I want it to search for other versions of the image like it used to, not open Lens.

cobysev,

www.dmachoice.org/register.php

In the US, you can register here to “reduce promotional mail offers from companies or organizations you don’t have a business relationship with.” It costs $4 ($5 if you opt to mail in a form instead of filling out the online form), but it registers you for 10 years.

I did this about 7 years ago and I haven’t seen any junk mail since. I added my wife’s name under the “add another version of your name” section (you can have 5 alternate names listed) and junk mail to her stopped too.

cobysev,

Let’s start with what a federated system means.

I’m gonna take a step back and introduce a more commonly heard/understood term. According to Merriam-Webster, a FEDERATION is:

  1. an encompassing political or societal entity formed by uniting smaller or more localized entities: such as

a. a federal government

b. a union of organizations

Definition 1b. best sums up a federated system in the sense of OP’s question. It’s a collection of smaller independent organizations united for a particular cause. In the case of Lemmy and other federated sites, sharing digital information. No single federated site controls all of the “fediverse,” yet they can all technically communicate with each other as if they’re one entity.

Defederated, on the other hand, is just the opposite. A single centralized organization with complete control over the content they provide. Reddit, being one corporation that has complete control over all content on their own servers, is a defederated site.

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