My go-to is to ask what they like to do in their spare time.
A lot of the time you’ll get answers about how they have none or how it’s filled with chores, but you can always redirect and say, if you suddenly had a bunch of free time just for yourself, and you couldn’t use it to work, what would you fill it with?
In my mind the latter gets you down to what brings them joy, and in some cases how they want to see themselves, which can tell you a lot about a person.
If you live near water, kayaking can be an incredibly immersive pursuit in nature that doesn’t really tax the body (unless you want it to)
Trail running is another one of my favourite things to do, but while much safer than MTB still can have some risks… minimal though, comparatively speaking
Because I’m tired of wearing them by the end of the day, and most of what’s on our household tv I’m not really watching anyway.
Also if I’m messing around on my phone, glasses need to be off b/c distance, and I’m not about to put them on/off every time I switch focus when I’m just trying to relax.
I will wear them if I’m watching something intentionally, though. Like a nature documentary or something with visuals worth appreciating.
I used to think of “blocking” as an extreme measure, but for us individuals, it’s really not. You get to decide what your feed looks like. Especially here.
BAMO -> block and move on
What flipped the mental switch for me was facebook, of all places.
I hate it and was off it for years, then we moved to a small town with no subreddit, only a damn fb group. Man I went on a blocking spree with all the proudly terrible people, and now I have both an actually useful local town group AND a separate handy list of people I don’t need to bother meeting.
omg I didn’t even know this was a thing… but knowing doves, it’s immediately self-explanatory
their “nests” are just so bad
I love them so much with their 3 scattered sticks on pavement
lemmy.ca has blocked it too.
good eggs, those admins.
Ragebait. It’s boring and pointless, and it brings out the worst in everyone. I never understood the appeal of being a “troll” though, so idk.
Something else I don’t miss, and maybe this is a little more personal, but often when I would try to participate in a conversation, my comment would get auto-removed for some rule/etiquette based reason I could never really wrap my head around. Like, derailing? I thought I knew what that meant, but had comments removed when I was like, “yeah that answer really resonates with me too! My 123 is xyz.”
Lemmy so far has been much more welcoming to the neurodiverse and I appreciate the organic, freeflowing nature of conversation here.
Obviously, if someone’s being provocatively hateful / an obvious troll, then nuke 'em.
But if people are just trying to join in on the conversation, don’t be a pedantic dick about exactly what kind of conversation is allowed. It had gotten to the point where I was afraid to comment at all for fear I’d be doing it wrong.
Yeah for me, the only draw back to reddit is in its history. There is a wealth of knowledge in those archives, and when I’m looking for balanced and useful answers from actual people (without affiliate links or bot-generated seo bs, or being “marked as duplicate” of another post with 13yr out of date answers lol) it was the best source for the longest time.
Used to be, anyway.
We’ll get there, we just haven’t had the time yet.
When I do open an r/ link that answers my question now, I’m doing it with their tracking, “features” & ads fully locked & blocked, then dipping right back out again. They really ruined a good thing.
So many…
The Hidden Athlete (long form interviews with endurance athletes)
No such thing as a fish (fun conversational about random weird factoids)
Sawbones
The One You Feed
The Debaters (stupid Canadian comedy debates)
The Art of Manliness (dumb name, decent content)
Discovery by the BBC
Ologies with Alie Ward
The Emma Guns Show (idgaf about beauty stuff, but love her quality of life & mental health topics)
Trail Runner Nation
Maintenance Phase
You’re Dead to Me (bbc history in a light funny way)
That’s an overly simplistic take.
Over the years, ads have become louder, bigger, more intrusive, more voluminous, and alarmingly much more “personal”
I value my peace and my privacy.
I support creators with donations, subscriptions and purchases. If it’s an exclusively ad-supported service that does so respectfully and reasonably, I might whitelist it.
Everything else gets blocked. I use AdGuard and their extensions, and a VPN set to a Swiss geo helps with the rest.
Also mostly happy with my iPhone 12 mini
My only real gripe with it is that I want a better camera.
I can sideload or mod enough with scripts to suit my purposes, so no issue as far as flexibility goes. But I want better quality photos and videos without having to lug out the “real” gear on a trail run.
Chaps my ass that phones just keep getting bigger, and the mini’s been all but phased out. I’m a small person with proportionately small hands. Why stop making phones we can fully fit in the back pocket of women’s jeans, or use with (mostly) one hand?
The lemmit or whatever bot was the first “user” I blocked here.
It might not have been bad if they’d stuck to news articles, but so much content is more personal in nature and it feels gross to see it botted.
I’m not going to give advice or empathize with a bot who basically just stole someone’s question or story. OP isn’t even here, they aren’t going to see our comments. Just feels like talking about someone behind their back.
One of the things I love about lemmy is how much of the content and conversation is actually authentic.
Those bot posts are spam and need to go away.
Someone did make goblincore, but it’s still pretty empty and I’m not creative enough to meaningfully contribute.
I loved looking through all the happily amateur mossy green nature pics, tiny ecoscapes & terrariums, all the mushrooms, frogs, and foresty crafts & creations from people much more talented than myself.
The issue isn’t that the rooms don’t exist in this house, but more that the smaller niche ones are still just a couple shy people early to the party, waiting for the extroverts to show up lol
/running /bikewrench & /cycling /askscience & /science /autisticwithadhd /onguardforthee /ontario /kingstonontario /ontariogardeners /canadianinvestor /cozyplaces /ifyoulikeblank /notthebeaverton /oddlysatisfying /plantclinic /renovations
Also Select a Set was a very cool little music themed sub that I enjoyed participating in.
…
/scrungycats!
Someone did make goblincore, but it’s still mostly empty and I’m not talented enough to contribute lol
I loved looking through all the mossy green nature pics, tiny ecoscapes, mushrooms, frogs, and forest-witch style craftsmanship from people much more creative than myself
Yeah I think a lot of people equate education with overall intelligence, and that’s just not how it works.
I’ve personally known an anti-vaxxer with a PhD, MDs who wrote at a middling grade 8 level, and a literal rocket scientist who never could figure out his email lol
Highly educated people can be brilliant in their specific fields of study, while being absolute morons in other areas. They just had all the right opportunities, money, and the time/skills/ability to study, memorize, and pass tests.
I actually know at least a couple high school grads whom I’d consider more broadly intelligent than some of the MD & PhD holders I’ve worked with over the years.
I’ve been hearing good things about peertube and pixelfed, but have yet to really dive into either. Both are free and decentralized like lemmy though :)
https://joinpeertube.org (positioned to replace youtube)
https://pixelfed.org (more like instagram?)
I can’t believe I’m only now looking into the decentralized side of the social internet - I’m usually an early adopter lol. Been a boiling frog in corporate for too long.
Largely, actually, disillusionment.
In another life, I worked as a clinical research assistant in forensic psychology. Our focus was sex offenders.
I had the silly idea that, through research, I could be a part of building a better world. We could prevent a lot of suffering, discover effective and ethical treatments, and develop and disseminate actionable methods for implementing them.
L.O.L.
I could have told stories of how some of the patients scared me. I was cornered by a giant of a man and threatened on my first week. I was followed around the hospital, and even home once. How awkward it was to explain to innocent controls how we’d be hooking their junk up to measure tumescence while showing them some disturbing images. I was yelled at and called a few names over that.
But honestly the biggest impact was losing the hope I’d had for making a meaningful difference.
It’s just a bunch of big egos vying for more money and status, their biggest concern being how near the front they can get their name on publications.
I became a solopreneur graphic designer and full stack web developer.
Dead inside from so many angles 😂💀
I considered it, but I liked the idea that I could actually pick something short and (semi)sweet instead.
Plus, new start and all that.
The regex redirect feature is another massive pro. I hope they bring it into Orion as well.
I already use Stop the Madness for this, and probably will continue to as it’s a more global solution, but having it built right into the search engine at least shows they’re taking real steps to hand control back to the user.