General Discussion

I'm not sure if I can post here. Lemmy seems kind of complicated. For instance, I tried to post something and it said I can't because I'm on a local instance. So how do I find out what instance a community is on and how do I make it so I can post?

An example: I went to https://join-lemmy.org/instances and searched for nostupidqestions and nothing was found.

Calling all hackers, activists, and the free people of the world, to build a digital infrastructure that supports and defends those who stand for justice.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/16201582

Hello, I hope this is the right community to ask this. I have a flight in December from Valencia (Spain) to Tokyo with Air France. I have a layover in Paris CDG.

The flight from Valencia to Paris arrives at CDG at 08:20 in terminal 2G. And the flight from Paris to Tokyo departs at 9:30 in terminal 2E.

I have been researching and I believe that this is not enough time to make the connection. I contacted Air France and initially they told me that it was not enough time, and they offered me some more expensive alternative flights, which I am not satisfied with, as I would arrive a day later. When I told them that their website states that they are responsible for making the connection possible, they started to say that the connection is indeed possible. I also tried to cancel the flight from Valencia to Paris and take another airline that arrives earlier, but they say that cannot be done without paying, as it is part of the same itinerary.

I don’t have much experience flying, and I would like to know your opinion.

Thank you very much!

I hope this is a good place for this. A few weeks ago I started a simple experiment: Block every community in the All feed that is about the US election in some way.

I thought this up after a thread about the Biden debate, as someone kindly (not really kindly) informed me that I should curate my own experience here. I thought about it and realized just how much election/politics stuff there is on the front page. It was quite hard blocking communities I like, especially 196 on blahaj.

Now the quality of my feed did go up in some ways but it's very slow. I also realized that I am feeling a lot less rage/anger than before when scrolling lemmy. I didn't even realize how much the constant political stuff from another continent affected me...

What is your opinion on this? Is Lemmy really filled with too much US political rage bait? Should I continue with my zero tolerance policy?

It would also interest me to hear an American perspective. Is there more or less politics here, on other platforms or real life. How does rage/hate affect you when scrolling through Lemmy and does it take a toll?

Getting cloudflare loop if i try to access lemmy.world cold, i.e., auto login. Is it just me?

For context, my job involves the use of voice dictation software constantly for 8 hours a day. So I am constantly talking to the computer and thus my threshold to talking to others is significantly reduced.

I also generally enjoy talking as it is in my nature. So I need to combat that.

There is also the caveat that...for politeness and problem solving sake, I still need to be able to respond to questions from others (which is often).

With this in mind, how can I work towards never speaking to anyone unprompted? Does anyone have any specific techniques I can use? I think what I'm really missing is a method. It's like trying to pain the Mona Lisa without knowing any painting techniques. Thanks.

A moral argument for why all firms should be employee-owned - "Inalienable Right: Part 1 The Basic Argument"

https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/

@general

Example 1: I play table tennis, though due to being young adolescent and only having played it for the last ~3 years, I've never played in a competition for the local club. I live in Europe, by the way. One of the coaches sometimes talks about how my racket's lack of really sticky rubber surface forces me into a different play style. He does this rarely, and isn't all negative about it ("No wonder you did better against L. J., you both have this play style where you seldom enact torque on the ball which forces even me to think more about what to do next because I basically always do that, and expect others to do too", roughly translated), and the last time he actually told me how I might like getting a new racket with different physical properties was like 1.5 years ago. He gave me a catalogue from a regional store, which I probably threw out some time between then and now probably because of how much I Hate buying things in general. I can see how when I progress in being able to control the ball, I can probably give up some control to gain speed, but I wanted to share how dogmatic I appear to be about this.

Example 2: I play osu!, a PC rhythm game where you click circles to the beat, though only since like February. I have a general negative reaction to the fact that most really good players, and also, as it appears due to lack of information, at least some normally skilled players, buy a drawing tablet to use as the aiming input device. Because these tablets have drivers that map one position on the tablet to one position on the screen consistently, unlike mice and the position on the table or trackpads, this is purported to eliminate drift, which is said to become a problem in longer levels. I have added a second keyboard to my setup because using the laptop keyboard didn't feel ergonomic enough. Even though we had this keyboard lying around and my parents weren't using it, this feels kind of hypocritical.

One reason to hate things that could be bought is that buying it will lead to an increased production of stuff, which is superficially bad for the environment, and that it will lead to the introduction of stuff into the "cluttered" home. (by the way, is "I have too much stuff (sunk space) therefore I should want to buy less without any other rational basis" fallacious?)

Another reason to hate things that could be bought is that my mom hates buying things for approximately the above reason, unless one is sure the thing is actually beneficial, which is like actually pretty nebulous because even the people who have the Thing sometimes don't think it is better, and often apparently really don't want to admit it.

Another reason to hate things that could be bought is that my parents, and especially my dad feel like they're going to buy you things that you don't want if you don't check on them regularly. If we're feeling particularly rebellious, we could argue this isn't necessarily their fault, because buying things behind others backs and being ok with having things bought for you is normalized by Presents (for which I totally believe the argument that because no one knows what you want better than you, presents have less perceived value than things bought by oneself. I totally hate this about presents, and we are only slowly accomodating). Related: my family has at least 20 Tabletop games because we just couldn't stop ourselves buying one at like every Presents festivity.

This stuff also ties into how I hate advertising. Much like with Presents, advertizing is a thing which reduces the ratio of perceived value per unit of currency, not by accidentally diminishing the perceived value, but by trying to make you buy things that have so little perceived value that they need to persuade you to buy them, because you wouldn't buy them automatically. I think it's more economical to hate advertising. You might say that advertising is trying to sway you to a competitor in some cases, where this doesn't apply, though mental math suggests that companies that spend more on advertising can't use that money to make the prices lower, they have to use the money from the customers they are basically buying with the advertising. Unsure.

Another reason to hate buying things is that in the two contexts described above, I feel like it is spiritually cheating. Yes, everyone* does it, but If you say something is based on skill, and then you find out that for the same skill level you get to win more games if you buy the Thing, this feels like an awkward, though way less pronounced parallel to pay to win video games, which definitely belong in hell at least figuratively. The Patreon Equivalent Support Purchase Argument does not even hold for most Things that can be bought, and it's one of the few things that I think is actually in favour of ever buying any DLC or microtransactions.

Another reason to hate buying things is that I am too lazy or socially awkward (pick more than 0) to buy things, therefore "The Fox cannot reach the grapes and claims they are sour without evidence, or in this case, tries to surround himself with only evidence that they are sour". This sounds like something a psychologist would say. Related: I am also too lazy or socially awkward to resell things, though that sounds much easier, maybe I should try that.

If you are somehow allergic to rankings (Jreg says: "the left is antihierarchical, therefore I am the only person capable of making a gender tier list") you might say that you buy these Things to have more fun using them, because (learning to use|using) them is enjoyable in itself, and because you can buy yourself into social circles by (learning to use|using) them with others because everyone* has them.

Discuss any questionable upgrade gadgets you know so I don't feel alone. Tell me whether there are any forums in- or outside the fediverse that I should re- or crosspost this or parts of this to. (Politely) state which of my arguments against (and in favour of) buying things you disagree with to give me a peek outside of my brain shaped echo chamber.

Alternate title: I hate buying things. Definitely not a Manifesto

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/24986940

("the McDonald's girl" = girl 3. That phrase was the motorcycle boy's idea. This story is not related to McDonald's or motorcycles.)

Starting in January 2024, she occasionally caught my eye when I was in the one class we were both in. I mostly ignored her.

On February 29, when I was sitting down in class and the McDonald's girl was walking in front of me and I probably looked at her for a moment, she appeared to pause and make eye contact with me, and I was very shocked. Later in the same class period, when she was sitting in front of me, she appeared to turn back and look at me. I felt like I knew that she almost certainly had some sort of interest in me, maybe a crush idk. I gradually started to think about how good her personality was (this was likely affected by a lot of bias) and have a crush on her. The beginning of the crush was between March 2[^1] and March 5[^2].

This is around the time when finding my future wife before graduation if she could be found was slowly becoming almost like a goal, instead of just a hypothetical possibility in the distant future. (Both of these mindsets are worse than the exploration goal.)

On March 2, me and most other seniors went on a field trip to Disneyland. Experiencing scary rides for fun might have influenced my mindset.

On March 3 and 4, in a group chat (including the motorcycle boy, but not the McDonald's girl), I sent:

• "Last Thursday in religion class, [the McDonald's girl] looked at me in an interesting way"
• "It seems to reveal interesting feelings"
• "Probably attraction, but could also be a feeling of impending doom" (2nd part is joke)

I did not ask "Does [the McDonald's girl] have a boyfriend?" I did not reach that level of fearless communication yet. Eventually you will see that asking this would have made a difference.

I considered going to the table with the McDonald's girl during lunch and asking to sit there. On March 6, while feeling uncertain that I would be able to do it and that we would have the same lunch period, I saw her but gave up and did not ask to sit there. On March 12 (the next day that we had the same lunch period), I cared more about having undelayed success in doing it, and while being completely calm, I did it, and I was welcomed to sit there. Praying for strength in a bathroom stall at the beginning of lunch might have had an effect. I did this 3 times in total. Also, the motorcycle boy (one of the people I previously sat with) told me in a text "they both asked me what I did to make you sit over there. They thought I pushed you away! 🤬"

On March 17, at night, I believed that I would probably ask about her looking at me and confess to her at lunch the next day. The next day, the feeling of certainty faded away, and I did not do it. But in the evening, I sent her the creative writing club project that I was working on, with "I'm trying to impress you" as the message. It took several minutes to have the courage to click the send button.

On March 19, when all students were walking from the church to the school, the motorcyle boy appeared and told me something like "Dullbananaaaaaaaaaas. So the McDonald's girl was telling me... in case you forgot... she wanted me to remind you... in case you forgot... that the McDonald's girl has a boyfriend. I know it hurts!" This meant I was finished with the McDonald's girl. I felt calm at first. Then I started having negative thoughts in less than an hour. The decision of whether or not to sit at her table the next day seemed more scary than it should have seemed. There was a little bit of perceived risk in both choices. Also, I vaguely remember fearing that I would be humiliated a little bit. I thought "maybe I was too ambitious" (this thought is a big no no), but then I had these positive thoughts:

• My mental model, with lasting regret and lack of freedom being a worse danger, is still correct.
• There is light at the end of the tunnel. This suffering is part of the path to an extremely beautiful situation that I'm looking for.
• This is better than the previous situations with other girls. This time I went so far and finished the situation in less than a month. I hit a new PR. (Very important)

I was slowly becoming nauseated. I constantly thought about the situation. That night, I felt so much shame, and multiple times in the same night I had sleep paralysis while seeing static everywhere. In the beginning, the positive thoughts didn't stop the discomfort, but they did prevent me from being owned by the discomfort or doubting myself.

That evening, in the shower, I realized that what I was experiencing was the growth of only one person, and that I could try to have a ripple effect. Later, this led to sharing of wisdom and encouragement, and eventually Project Pansystellar. This stuff might be described in another post.

The next day, at lunch, I did not have the strength to sit at the table with the McDonald's girl or at the table where I sat previously, so I sat far away by myself near a tree and facing a field of grass. In retrospect, this was the right choice. It was therapeutic. I had a huge need for rest.

I developed a mindset of fully allowing and embracing this level of discomfort in me, just like falling when learning how to walk, or like recovering after intense workout. On the next day (March 21), I changed my senior quote submission from "I accept control over Lemmy's code to sabotage Reddit, not Lemmy" to "Try, mess up, have nauseating embarrasment. Better than no ambition."

Before March 24, I had these thoughts:

• All I did wrong (not morally wrong) was I didn't ask if the girl had a boyfriend (as mentioned earlier), and I didn't recognize the lack of sufficient connection after 2 or 3 times of sitting at her table at lunch. The idea that I messed up more severely was an illusion.
• Reducing one's level of ambition is a poor substitute for tweaking the goal that is thought of. In other words, only change how the ambition is applied. (This turned out to be a important concept, and it's very fundamental to my design approach for the Pansystellar Architecture.) (In this situation, I decided to make my goal include finding a girl that I develop a deep enough connection with easily enough in the beginning. This did not fix everything, as you will see in a future post.)
• Physical attraction, either to or from me, should be mostly ignored. (This one is not very useful, and it's probably false. The underlying problems can be solved differently, partly using things from my other posts.)

Around a month later, I realized that my discomfort and doubt after finding out that the McDonald's girl had a boyfriend was probably mostly an attack from Satan, and that a person like me having the persistence needed for the path to marriage and parenthood is probably scary to Satan because it's a path to things that strongly oppose Satan's vision for society, including these things which all cause increased similarity to Jesus:

• Obsession with the happiness of someone other than myself
• Positively influencing the world through how I raise my children

Eventually I knew that the motorcycle boy was surprised that I didn't know that the McDonald's girl had a boyfriend.

I quickly began to see this as just a high school memory.

Key ideas:

• Don't treat uncertain information as very likely to be true (in this case, the girl having interest in me that I should act on).
• Someone being interested in you is not necessarily a special and important situation. (Seeing your ability to do something that makes someone feel good is different)
• Other people can overestimate your knowledge about someone.
• An uncomfortable situation is not a forbidden situation.
• Taking a break can be a good choice.
• Think of the past and the future so you can recognize self-improvement and not falsely see your current situation as being disconnected from goodness. To be clear, you shouldn't try too hard to make your specific actions connect with a future goal.
• Emotions don't accurately reveal something about you. Judge your actions and decisions using reason. Be skeptical of negative emotions.
• Modify the mental system that ambition is applied to, instead of reducing the level of ambition. Resting is an exception to this.
• Allow the present to be like a childhood memory.

[^1]: On this day, I said a joke hoping it would impress girl 2 (in the same restaurant near Disneyland in which I wrote this comment).

[^2]: On this day, in the shower, I thought about telling the McDonald's girl that I have a crush on her.

Edit: to clarify, my discomfort was about the situation I perceived myself to be facing, not about the fact that the girl had a boyfriend

Edit 2: this might have been the beginning of me sometimes having less social anxiety than average

Edit 3: see also https://lemmy.ca/post/24986940

I've turned search engine suggestions off because they often get me side-tracked, or even get me to completely forget what I actually wanted. If it is something I have visited once already, simply getting that from my history skips the search engine, making the process slightly faster. I realize that my attention problem might not actually be solved by this,

I honestly think mobile ads in free games and other apps are some of the lowest quality piles of garbage I've ever had the misfortune to see, and they are constant. How did we get to this point? Where they are so horribly unbearable and yet so commonplace?

Edit: People are really making me out to be an evil psychopath with no empathy. I get that you can only tell so much from one post, but it's incredibly far from the truth. I have people that love and adore in my life and would do anything for. It just takes me a long ass time to get to that point...and as an introvert, my social battery with new people wears down quickly. Online dating is just difficult. I am not rude to others. Conversations just quickly peter out and neither I or my match end up continuing for much longer. The "ghosting" I speak of is often mutual. These aren't people I've interacted with for months that I suddenly stop talking to. It's chatting for a day or several and then we peter out.

If you think from this small post that I am such a psychopath as to discard a literal child, I don't know what to tell you. It's just leaping to such wild conclusions that I don't even know how to respond. I don't even necessarily want kids...I just want to be able to have the option to.

I'm sorry if this is too odd or specific of a question, but I have a bit of a dilemma.

I live alone. I have some work friends work friends, but they basically stay just friends at work. So I get lonely sometimes. And sometimes I just want to have someone around to do stuff with me. And sometimes I wonder what it might be like to raise a family.

So I occasionally try dating apps. But when I finally get someone to respond to me, my reaction is first a little bit of excitement, but then I get annoyed at having to chat with someone I just met all the time. So I unfortunately act like a dickhole by then ghosting them soon after. Even if I manage enough stamina to chat back and forth for a week or so, it always just ends up tiring and a bother to me.

The thing is, I don't really have much capacity to feel attracted to people. I'm probably somewhere on both the asexual and aromantic spectrums. So you'd think, why date? Just make a friendship then. But there are some things you can't do with a friend...like raise a family and such.

Plus, I don't even think I could manage a friendship with how difficult it is for me to like someone. I don't like anyone I just met. It takes a long time for me to enjoy and appreciate people, and many never actually make it to the point of someone I really like. There have been a couple of times where I have tried hanging out with people as friends and it's just...kind of dissatisfying to me?? Yet I really like hanging out with certain members of my family. I don't get it.

Plus like...what are you even supposed to do on a date or on an outing with friends? What are you supposed to say when you're chatting with a partner? How long and often are you supposed to chat with each other? I feel like I need some sort of a step by step guidebook because I don't even know what the hell people are supposed to do with each other.

Sorry if this is too specific. I'm just wondering if anyone else out there is as confused with human interaction as I am.

Not for nothing, but Lemmy is a MUCH more enjoyable place when there's actually something to talk about.

I get a lot of spam. In the subject it might say something about Home Warranty. The sender will say Home Warranty (the actual sender will be [email protected]).

But whenever I use my email's search engine, to delete all emails that say "Home Warranty", it can't find them.

Do people usually just ignore these types of emails?

TL;DR: In four weeks, I’ve cut my average screen time from 8 hours and 55 minutes to 1 hour and 28 minutes on average.

I know no one cares about this, but I still wanted to share it here just in case someone is facing the same problem and looking for motivation.

I recently finished my semester and got a summer break. My girlfriend and I planned our first big trip abroad, something we’d been looking forward to for more than a year. But after getting free from studies and exams, I got addicted to my phone, spending hours scrolling social media. My addiction started to ruin our plans and our excitement for the trip.

More than a month ago, my girlfriend spent a weekend finding resources to help me. She found an article with practical methods for different levels of phone addiction. Inspired by her effort, I decided to give it a shot.

Week 1 saw my screen time drop to 7 hours and 35 minutes on average, which made me very happy because I never thought anything would help me with my phone addiction. Even though I started with no hope, seeing this result gave me hope.

Week 2 brought it down further to 5 hours and 12 minutes on average. The key was a fun challenge my girlfriend and I did together to stay off our phones. Having her as my support system made everything so much easier.

In Week 3, I tried a $23 timed locker my girlfriend got from Amazon. It worked wonders, cutting my late-night screen time and improving my sleep. I ended the week with an average of 4 hours and 3 minutes on average. Despite a slight setback over the weekend due to feeling down, I’m happy with my progress, even though it was very little.

In the last week of this challenge, I kept up the same habits but added a new twist suggested by my girlfriend. We signed up for swimming classes and started going daily because we always wanted to learn swimming. It’s been fun, and I’m loving every second of it. I also started locking my phone for an hour in the morning using the timed locker. This helped me bring down my screen time to 1 hour and 28 minutes. While my initial goal was 1 hour or less, I’m proud of myself with my progress.

Honestly, I couldn't have achieved this without my girlfriend’s support. I’m incredibly grateful to have her in my life. Dating her was the best decision I've ever made. I want to write a big thank-you paragraph here, but I don't want to bore anyone.

Here is my screen time screenshot before I started: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JQVQaI1q7xgLUpojzx6osRci8zwwGWoJ/view?usp=sharing

Here is my screen time screenshot from the previous week: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TjBWCJyLDX29fdgdaq-UJ21X3osVcBhx/view?usp=sharing

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/24360964

I started having a crush on her in the 2021-2022 school year. In August 2023, she sat next to me in math class. I began to be interested in the whole person, not just her body. Then my belief that I don't want relationships, marriage, and parenthood slowly went away, for reasons that might be out of scope for this project.

I kept on wanting to say "Hi, [girl 1]" next time she approaches the desk at the beginning of class, but I never did that. Each time she came, I gave up. I vaguely remember having a fear of how people would think of the motive or something like that. I prioritized comfort and others' perception of me too much. This will likely be represented as a heavy filter that I got rid of and is intentionally excluded in the Pansystellar Architecture.

Edit: There's stuff I forgot to mention.

• I felt a lot of regret and frustration after each time I chose to be silent. I felt so distant from happiness. This should be treated the same as any other danger. And it should be the one that's fled from. I have another experience that I would pick over this one despite the other experience being more nauseating and unfamiliar. I will describe that experience later.
• Weeks later, we unexpectedly had to change seats, and the girl was now at a different table. I felt so much regret, and I saw the problem of being slow. The way I see opportunities began to change.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/24342829

This is in a very early stage of development and is not designed for people who are in a relationship. I probably need to add more items. This might become a diagram.

• Prohibition of absolutely any commitment (the word "commitment" is not specific enough; maybe "exclusive attention" covers most or all cases)
• Tolerance for anything having a big influence on who I date or marry
• Fear of fear itself (applied broadly)
• Prohibition of text communication with someone who's not responding, even if I don't know the reason or whether or not there's a technical problem (this prohibition is made possible by the prohibition of commitment, the tolerance for anything having influence, and the fear of fear itself)
• Clinging instead of giving up when about to do a planned courageous task (such as saying hi to crush)
• Focus on finding natural complimentarity
• A lightweight filter that greatly reduces risk of creepiness without any measurable sacrifice (it should exclude things like "I think about you every night" and "you're cute"; but not things like "I like your hair")
• No separation between platonic and romantic (todo: make this more specific)
• Interact with girls I feel like interacting with, even if I can't put my finger on anything other than appearance that attracts me or I don't predict that the interaction will give me something other than short term enjoyment

Food bank only had raisins. My food stamps were cut by two thirds. Inflation is way up. Specific shortages. I asked some people around me and they're also struggling. No emergency announcements. Feels like a cover up. I heard US shale oil is peaking. All this and I live in the central valley of California, ag central. I should have food easily, instead it's a struggle.

FWIW, the community was [email protected].

I assume I was banned because I said I understood Biden opposing surgery on minors, specifically trans surgery. Although I disagreed with it.