There are so many cool apps where you can leverage the camera to assess things in the real world. My wife and I occasionally use the plant identifier app, and there are tons of apps for scanning objects in 3d. Trying to redirect some of that screen time to genuinely interesting and educational apps helps. Also, my wife and I have been playing Pokémon Go for years. It’s too hot right now, but it got us out walking consistently when it was cooler out.

My screen time is much reduced, but I still try to find other ways to use it that don’t involve social media. Social media is the common thread when it comes to unhealthy screen behaviors these days and shaking that FOMO can be a challenge. Part of that challenge for me involved setting up my own Lemmy instance. I spend time reading through interesting articles, looking at art, animals, weird facts, book recommendations, comics, etc. It’s much easier to disconnect from than social media can be.

Windows has basically become malware. It does a fuck ton of tracking, and all of its features are about appeasing shareholders over users.

If we want to get technical: I loathe it because even in the year 2024, it’s the only operating system I’ve witnessed that will absolutely grind to a halt when a third party application stops responding or crashes. There is no valid fucking reason why the parent system should be halted by an application that crashes.

Also, ads in the start panel. Absolutely not, Microsoft. No way in hell am I allowing that to live on a computer I own. Yes, I’m aware third party apps will address that but it shouldn’t be a thing to begin with.

Oh yeah, and it decided to automatically update itself to the latest version on my ASUS ROG laptop while the thing was closed and not in use. So upon booting it up and seeing ads in the UI, I wiped the system clean and installed Nobara. Bye bye. 👋

The ones marching were primarily liberals and leftists. The conservatives and centrists were the ones this bingo card should be talking about.

It’s kind of unavoidable honestly, and no one should be shocked. Tons of people are finally learning that democracy in the US died years ago. I usually just scroll past or engage in a limited manner. I already have other communities to discuss that stuff and Lemmy is mostly an escape.

It’s the standard for a lot of sites now. Not saying it’s acceptable; it’s just what I’ve observed.

Yeah, I never consider it a waste if you got some personal enrichment from it as an outlet. My goal was to never spend any actual money on the online portion and eventually people just got way too overpowered. It was a glaring example of pay-to-play and how it can ruin a game. It shut out any chance of growth and fun.

My favorite feature of GTA Online was when I’d get destroyed by someone with every weapon, only to respawn walking distance from them over and over and over. They’d kill me repeatedly before I even had a chance to do anything. The only way I could escape was to hope I found a car quick, or hope they got bored of spawn killing me.

This game is a fucking joke. Rockstar has been a shell of its former self for years.

These are pretty standard UI patterns.

Makes me think of the scene in Letterkenny where all of the Christian church dudes are on Grindr.

I’m gonna check your video out. I attempted the furnace golem once, but it was mostly to observe its moves. That thing destroyed me lmao.

The DLC is batshit difficult, but all that does is make me try harder, learn movesets, and watch videos from pros. That’s part of the fun and achievement for me personally… but I also grew up in the 80s and 90s era of gaming where we had ZERO handholding.

I’d sacrifice all VR tech if it meant not giving the military yet another way to kill kids in foreign countries.

Or Stremio.

Recommended reading about Stonetoss.

It’s not giving up; it’s acknowledging the reality of the Groundhog Day movie we’re stuck in, and doing what you will with that information. This endless circle of the working class bickering over “the lesser of two evils” every 4 years needs to end.

It’s not giving up though; it’s acknowledging a reality and making a decision with that information. The alternative is that we get stuck in this nauseating infinite loop of voting for “the lesser of two evils,” while the working class bicker. Both sides aren’t the same, but they lead to the same outcome—as we’ve seen over and over. This is the trap they have put us in and these are the intended results.

Fascism is already winning. It’s going to win regardless of whether we vote for Trump or Biden. That’s just the reality of it. Vote for whoever the fuck you want. That’s your freedom. Just know that in America, the ruling class will never part with even a shred of their power.

I thought I was reading my own report cards for a second lmao. I got help in the 90s but it didn’t do much for me. None of the meds they tried helped at all. I basically just had to try and learn habits for keeping notes/journals (off and on for years, even today in my early 40s) and other things to try and keep me engaged.

We wet-vacuumed the carpets and everything. We were pissed. Never had any issues with the landlord and were always good tenants. They just decided they liked money over everything else.

Had an old landlord keep my deposit when I moved out just because they could. We left the apartment absolutely spotless and never damaged anything. In fact, we added value by fixing a couple small things. Didn’t matter.

Fuck landlords.