• Take time off from social media once in a while, or at least avoid doomscrolling all day. Bad stories generate FAR more engagement than good stories, and every form of media knows this. If 100,000 people in your area have an average-to-good day and 5 people have terrible days, all 5 stories presented to you will detail how things are in your area are terrible.

• Physical health affects mental health and vice versa. Eat healthy (or healthier). Stay hydrated. Get 7-9 hours of sleep regularly and use sleep hygeine. Get 90+ minutes of exercise (anything that raises your heartrate) a week which is like 15 minutes/day. Don’t worry about doing it all immediately - if you try to change everything at once you’re more likely to get overwhelmed and burn out. It’s way better to make slow, sustainable changes over months than it is to do a difficult crash course for a short time and get fed up with the process.

• Do thankfulness exercises. When I go to bed at night I think of 3 things I’m thankful for in the day. On average or bad days it may be that I wasn’t in constant/chronic pain, that I got to eat and drink, and that I’m in a safe place and a soft bed. Just remembering those basics (that many of us take for granted) helps keep me aware of good things in my life.

• Find ways to enjoy hobbies that require participation - arts, sports, board/video games, whatever. Just something other than passively taking in TV/online media. This will help you feel engaged and double points if it’s something that allows for improvement because you’ll feel rewarded as you get better.

I almost never buy multiplayer-focused games anymore. Of course not all gamers are shitty, but enough are to matter. Having left those games behind I can see how they were taking more joy from my life than they added. If friends want to do private co-op that’s cool, but it’s also rarer now that we’re all older.

As far as sales go, I love playing a year or two behind new releases. Patched games at a discount ftw and timing doesn’t matter in single-player games.

Worked through my obsessions a bit and let go of them. In the following weeks I asked three women out and got shot down each time instead of thinking about doing so for a month and being a creep.

Unironically, good on you. That’s character progress and it takes a lot of courage and self-confidence to accept rejection in a mature way and keep trying regardless. For what it’s worth I as an Internet stranger think we should help more people do the same sort of things.

Her name is [kept to myself because I’m a gentleman who doesn’t kiss and tell]. I hope I, in turn, am not someone’s most alarming thing but it’s possible :P

I’d say it’s sometimes ok, sometimes necessary for brevity, and sometimes accurate. Accurate = “All people need oxygen, water, and calories to survive.” Brevity = “Generally speaking, people enjoy good food and good company so those situations work well for forming relationships.”

Consequences of generalizations have a lot to do with how tolerable they are. If I say, “most people like pizza” there’s not much harm if several million people don’t. If I say, “all or most people of this gender/ethnicity/religion/whatever have X problem” that’s a lot more problematic because it can easily lead to a consequence of harmful prejudice. When it comes to matters of ethics, beliefs, accusations etc. it becomes very important to handle cases individually as much as humanly possible.

It isn’t too much to ask. According to Dr. K of HealthyGamerGG (Harvard Psychiatrist/Instructor), research shows that the release of non-consensual porn makes the unwilling subjects suicidal over half the time. Non-consensual porn = deepfakes, revenge porn, etc. It’s seriously harmful, and there are other effects like depression, shame, PTSD, anxiety, and so on. There is functionally unlimited porn out there that is made with consent, and if someone doesn’t want to be publicly sexually explicit then that’s their choice.

I’m not against AI porn in general (I consider it the modern version of dirty drawings/cartoons), but when it comes to specific likenesses as with deepfakes then there’s clear proof of harm and that’s enough for me to oppose it. I don’t believe there’s some inherent right to see specific people naked against their will.

Waking up when the weather changes:

That’s the face I made about a week into trading Reddit participation in for Lemmy participation or just break-from-social-media time. Conversations feel more genuine, there’s less overbearing moderation (at least in my experience), and if there’s nothing new on Lemmy I’ve probably spent enough time reading forums anyways. I’m only keeping my 13-year-old Reddit account to keep track of old favorited posts and specialist forums like specific video game tips.

In the spirit of the thread, here’s a meme I’ve stolen from someone else’s recent post (want to give credit where due) in case you get criticized for your plundering ways:

How about we just avoid the long arguments and jump to the end:

• Pro-Biden: Biden is only a war criminal. Trump will actually ruin the USA while being no better (or even worse) internationally. It’s a loss for no gain. If Trump wins I’m going to blame anyone who voted 3rd party or didn’t vote. We need people to vote Biden regardless of their ethical/financial concerns about the billions being sent abroad and how they are being used. It’s that important to stop Trump and MAGA.
• Anti-Biden and also Anti-Trump: Democrats never meaningfully change to court any voters left of center. Every 4 years they bank on their Republican opponent being so awful that it scares people into voting Dem because “it’s the most important election ever”. Biden has crossed the line by participating in Israeli crimes in spite of most Americans wanting otherwise. If he loses you should blame his policy and Democrat apathy to our concerns instead of us - we’re sick of having to support the lesser evil. Threatening to vote 3rd party or withholding our vote is the only way left to meaningfully demand change and proper representation of deeply important concerns.
• Pro-Trump: Popcorn time while we watch libs argue and vote for our (literally painted) golden leader to “restore” an impossibly perfect past that never existed. Even if he acts like a dictator for a while sometimes that’s what is needed.

There. After so many of these threads I can near guarantee 90%+ will fall roughly into those categories.

I’m going to show my age with this list, and metal is such a large genre I don’t always know what counts. Hopefully there’s new ones for some folks that you’ll enjoy as much as I do.

• Bleed - Meshuggah
• Serums of Liao - High on Fire
• A Colossal Wreck - Every Time I Die I really love this one because I feel like you get 3 songs in 1. Might count as punk instead, I dunno.
• Hypermania - Polaris
• Earth Scar - Decapitated
• Loyal To None - Kublai Khan TX
• Rebuttal - Johnny Booth
• Dark Horse - Converge
• Blood and Thunder - Mastodon
• New Low - Thrown

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Closets have no need to worry about being phased out so long as there are Republican politicians who secretly love LGBTQ+ sex. “It’s happened so many times that it’s almost become predictable at this point. The louder someone is about the righteous conservative Christian lifestyle they’re leading, the more likely they are to be stepping out on their wives or having secret gay affairs because if there is one thing you can count on in life, it’s for Republicans not to practice what they preach.”

I’m 43 and rarely have aches (certainly nothing that would qualify as chronic), but I also regularly walk to and from the gym to weightlift. There’s a saying “Movement is Medicine” and so far it seems to be proving true for me. Maybe if you don’t use it you lose it.

Thanks for the suggestion, done.

Nooo!!! My goddamn internet points!!

Looking at the thread I saved it from like 6 years ago, Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya. I don’t know anything about season/episode though.

Honestly, just because I’m new here and most of the image is swearing so I wanted to be careful. I know I probably could have left it, but I decided it wasn’t that big a deal to check the box to be sure.