Got a glass of water FOR THE GLORY OF THE EMPIRE

1. Lower traffic. Sort of a given, but reddit has more users. I like elements of this, Lemmy being small makes the vibe more conversational, people also seem more helpful in technical communities on Lemmy than Reddit. But while there’s a quality over quantity, there’s a severe lacking in quantity. Lemmy communities are taking awhile to flesh out and communities I would expect to be somewhat active can go months without a post.

2. Userbase cultural differences. Reddit is a bit of a catch-all now. Some of the old redditor stereotypes are actually breaking down a little, people aren’t really pseudo-intellectual turbo nerds ready to ackshully your post anymore, they’re just kind of angry and stupid like the rest of the internet. Lemmy users in my experience are either very friendly, pseudo-intellectual turbo nerds, or you quickly find out the real reason they were banned from reddit and came here (racism, from what I can tell). It’s sort of a cross-section of people who would be dissatisfied with reddit in its current state, but hasn’t developed a voice of its own yet.

3. Moderation seems pretty active so far. I’ve seen a couple of people get banned from communities but it does seem like they were knowingly breaking rules and generally being jerks. I do wonder how well the lower traffic communities are moderated though. I’ve not seen a lot of mod drama or anything here but perhaps I’ve just missed it when it happens.

4. Toxic wastelands. From what I can see there are big swaths of Lemmy your average user finds to not be worth going to, instances seem to block them by default. It may sound funny, but I actually consider this to be a healthy thing. The fouler the fertilizer the sweeter the flower, I think having concentrated places for weirdos to congregate keeps them from spilling into the rest of the site, and the existence of these places means there’s a substrate of users who will likely stick around, making it so the traffic never dips Lemmy into true obscurity. The trick is keeping them from festering into something truly awful, which I couldn’t begin to guess how to prevent.

Yeah I found deep solace in technology in a time where it was pervasive, but not all-consuming. I had a computer in my room which was like the peak of being “online” at the time.

I couldn’t imagine trying to navigate childhood and being perpetually plugged in like this. I spent more time on the internet than anyone else I knew when I was a kid and it wasn’t always good for me. Your average kid these days is wayyy more online than I ever was.

Kinda the same as getting to the top of a really big waterside.

You’ve officially made your choice. It was something you wanted to do and it’s honestly going to be fun and there’s really nothing to regret. But you have made your choice.

I used to do exhibition drill team in high school. I can still flip rifle-sized objects around with a fair amount of finesse. Sometimes if I’m holding something the right size and shape I’ll feel the urge and confirm I never really lost it.

But of course demonstrating this never comes up and isn’t particularly impressive to look at.

It will as it grows, but trying to make it happen tends to have pretty embarrassing results.

I see it a lot in organizing, like taking even a second to breathe is going to accidentally infect you with an airborne centrist virus.

And then the going gets rough and all the “We can rest after the revolution” types are burnt out so they start publicly infighting at the first disagreement because they’re tired and hopeless and miserable.

Nah I have too many games to play in my library already. I’ve never been a huge GTA person but maybe I’ll get it on sale if I ever find the space on my hard drive for it.

Zelda is more appealing but I haven’t played a Zelda game since Link To The Past so I could probably get by with some of the older ones. Still every so often I think about going on a Zelda kick.

Once I get Talarico’s face tattooed on my chest and fly a “Talafreako” flag on the back of my truck every day and wear a “Time To Start Flipping Tables” hat to every Thanksgiving with my family for the next ten years then maybe we can have a cautionary conversation about idolizing politicians.

I don’t have an end goal.

At my current stage of life I’m trying to have a closer relationship with my nieces and nephews who are entering early adulthood.

My early 20s were probably the hardest period of time in my life, and older adults were particularly critical of me when I looked for guidance. So now I’m trying to be a better listener when they’re struggling.

You should be open to the possibility that your habits are normal.

I don’t know specifics. I don’t really want to know specifics. But as long as you’re not doing it in inappropriate settings, harming yourself, or harming your sex life with a partner/making it so you prefer masturbation to sex then you should be open to the possibility that you’re a young man, and young men masturbate a lot.

Similarly you need to be open to the possibility that your ideas about masturbation are being influenced by people with ulterior motives. There are ties between far-right movements, manosphere content, and masturbation abstinence. Before you come to the conclusion that you are actually experiencing a problem, I think it’s really important that you have considered these angles and how those are influencing your goals.

If all that has been considered and you’re about to start masturbating on the train or something:

Start with small benchmarks, and be clinical about it. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t make it, just adjust the goal. Start with a day if you have to, “On Tuesday I won’t masturbate” - done. If you fail try again in a couple of days (while being kind to yourself about it, or at least neutral). As you do that you can expand that time to more of what you’re hoping for as a healthy baseline (again, keep in mind that masturbation abstinence communities are not a good source for this). Slowly expand from one day of abstinence a month to once a week, etc. Don’t tie it to gimmicks like NNN or go straight for a week or something, that’s never a sustainable way to keep something under control. It just makes you crave it and can lead to binges when the time is up.

The goal is to prove to yourself you can control it. If you are actually addicted then this is closer to an addiction like food than something like heroin. It needs a healthy, reasonably sized spot in your life. Not for you to try and quit entirely.

I was supposed to wash windows on a skyscraper but there was something wrong with the lift thing so I couldn’t do it until it was fixed, and I was really pissed because it meant I was going to be really behind schedule.

For reference, I have never cleaned windows for a living.

Not to be a doomer, but I think enshittification is basically a social form of entropy. It’s inevitable.

One avenue is preventing Lemmy from being commercialized. So far so good, the decentralized structure makes that difficult. But then what keeps it afloat? Does it have to run on the passion of its users? What happens when one of the users does something really bad and there’s calls from powerful people to block Lemmy? Or require an ID to view it. Can a non commercialized Lemmy stand up to that sort of pressure?

Or maybe something less official. Coordinated bad actors show up and errode the site from within, overwhelming the mods who aren’t used to cleaning up so much garbage. Can it muster a unified response as a decentralized platform? If one instance gets ruined can you just create a new instance and move on to the next? Or does that kill the traffic a little each time you split off until nobody’s there anymore?

Or maybe it happens on its own. Mods become too lax in some places, too strict in others. The site decays into a weird space for toxic, chronically online users and nobody really wants to hang out there any more. It becomes a place you go if you want your intelligence insulted for asking a Linux question.

I think eventually something will get it. I’m hoping some of the measures against things like commercialization, trolls, poor moderation or a general degradation of the user experience will be enough to give it a good long life at least.

Went with The Void. It was pretty fun! Good Halloween movie

I recently moved from a house to an apartment and I don’t expect trick-or-treaters this year, which is a bit of a bummer. I liked giving out candy.

I’ll probably watch a horror movie though. Haven’t decided which one, either rewatching The Thing or maybe something new.

I don’t remember any such reverence for Obama either.

Which to be fair so is reddit. Redditors have always been mercurial but it does feel like in recent years they’ve been much more combative.

I imagine it varies. I don’t ask about AI usage in interviews but if I did I would prefer a balanced answer.

Skepticism tells me you’re not going to try to vibe code something important or try to install unapproved models. Not being completely anti-AI in the interview tells me you’re not going to insult a manager when they’re being stupid.

I’d need to completely own it. I don’t want my extended memory storage to now also include product placement in my childhood memories or the cops can make my bionic legs stop working or whatever.

However, in the hypothetical situation where I completely own my augmentations, 100% I’m getting enhancements. In fact I would question the efficiency of giving me implants, it might just be easier to copy my brain into a completely robotic body.

In 2016 I used self checkout if I wanted to get through quickly.

In 2026 I look for a cashier.