There was a time where the internet was a place for fun. Purely fun! No profit-based platforms, no mass abuse of users, no privacy violating practices, no forced ID verification, and no political correctness censorship enmass.
This age was known as The Golden Age of the Internet. It was something I saw gradually disappear like a frog being slowly boiled in water.
I’d like the hope we can one day come back to this era. The Golden Age was an escape from reality, while this corporate ran bullshit has been nothing but profit focused greed with a constant reminder of reality.
I cannot express in words how amazing the Golden Age was. We never knew we were in it until it was one day gone. Decentralization and freedom from centralized entities may allow the Internet the perhaps return to the Golden Age. An age where the Internet purely exists for everyone to have fun in and be able to express themselves freely without censorship.
That's sort of what I feel like this is - or at least that's what I've felt from browsing Lemmy. No ads and no ragebait/doomscrolling. There's nothing requiring that I stay engaged - in a way it's almost respectful of my interests and time.
Yeah, I loved the golden age. Back when everyone had a Geocities homepage and just linked to each other's sites. Back when getting a link to your homepage into the Yahoo index meant something.
If I were given the opportunity, I wouldnt swtich back to the state of " the good old internet" .
It was full of popups and viruses. DL speed was 3kbps on good days. Hence without any form of streaming. Depending on operator, you had to pay for the landine communication between your PC and the provider. If a family member picked up the phone from another room while you were using the modem, you got dcded. Of course, one coulnt be joined by phone when he was using internet.
I used to have insomnia that came from anxiety about my future (I’m guessing.) When I started doing carpentry and started truly exhausting my body I gained the ability to sleep ANYWHERE ANY TIME FOR HOWEVER LONG I WANTED.
It’s seriously amazing. I’m 33 now and don’t have to work quite as hard, plus am used to the long shifts that are hard on your body. I can still sleep pretty much whenever, wherever.
I flew to England once (it was like a 14 hour flight) and seriously slept the entire time. I didn’t even have a window seat.
I did residential construction for a couple years, then 4 in the military, so no stranger to physical exhaustion… Insomnia hit even in those times.
The only way to predictably get a decent chunk of sleep is to kind of bank hours in the days leading up to it. Like if get 0 to maybe 3 hours per night through the work week, I’ll sleep like a baby come Saturday.
Never been on meds for it. Was afraid to report it when I was active duty (fucking stupid) and now my rating isn’t high enough to cover prescriptions and I don’t have regular health insurance so… can’t afford them. :-/
I’ve used ambien and that L one. Benefit/negatives = not worth it. My husband and friends switched to trazodone (safer and cheaper) and really like it. I’ve learned to put myself to sleep quickly by focusing hard on relaxing each body part for 3 breaths, starting with feet, ankles, lower legs, … When i wake up in the middle of the night it’s harder, but i can usually do it if i concentrate. Oh, when I’m really struggling, adding cannabis helps.
I'm ready to form a supervillain league with the sole motivation of performing unethical research experiments on your kind. This power must be brought to the masses!
Note that a fallacy is a reasoning flaw; sometimes the goal might be to trick you, indeed. But sometimes it’s just a brainfart… or you might be dealing with something worse, like sheer irrationality. That said:
look for the conclusion. What is the point that the writer is delivering? (Note: you might find multiple conclusions. That’s OK.)
look at what’s being used to support that conclusion. What is the core argument?
look for the arguments used to feed premises into the core argument. Which are they?
Then try to formalise the arguments that you found into “premise 1, premise 2, conclusion” in your head or in a text editor. Are the premises solid? Do you actually agree with them? And do they actually lead into the conclusion? If something smells fishy, you probably got a fallacy.
Get used to at least a few “big” types of fallacies. There are lists across the internet, do read a few of them; you don’t need to memorise names, just to understand what is wrong with that fallacious reasoning. This pic has a few of them, I think that it’s good reference material, specially at the start:
In special I’ve noticed that a few types of fallacy are really common on the internet:
genetic fallacy - claiming that an argument is true or false because of its origin. Includes ad hominem, appeal to nature, appeal to authority, ad populum, etc.
red herring - bringing irrelevant shit up as if it supported the conclusion, when it doesn’t matter. In special, I see appeal to emotion (claiming that something is false/true because it makes you feel really bad/good) all the time.
oversimplification - disregarding key details that either stain the premises or show that they don’t necessarily lead to conclusion. False dichotomy (“if X is true, Y is false” in situations where both can be true or false) is a specially common type of oversimplification.
strawman - distortion of an opposing argument into a way that is easier to beat. Again, notice that “intention” doesn’t matter; only that the opposing argument isn’t being addressed.
moving goalposts - when you counter an argument, the person plops another in its place, without acknowledging that it’s a new argument. Often relies heavily on ad hoc (making stuff up on the spot to shield an argument)
four terms - exploiting multiple meanings associated with the same word to create an argument like “A is B¹, B² is C, thus A is C”.
There are also some “markers” that smell fallacy for me from a distance. You should not trust them (as they might be present where there’s no fallacy, or they might be absent even when the associated fallacy pops up); however, if you find those you should look for the associated fallacy:
“As a” at the start of a text - genetic fallacy, specially appeal to authority
"Trust me" - red herring, specially appeal to emotion (once you contradict the argument there’s a good chance that the other will create drama because you didn’t blindly trust them, so the whole thing boils down to “accept this as true otherwise you’ll hear my meltdown”).
“I don’t understand” followed by a counter-argument - strawman. Specially common in Reddit.
“Actually” - red herring through trivia that is completely irrelevant in the context.
Another thing that I like is considering not what I can do to “change my life in a year” but “what can I do tomorrow to improve my life even a little bit right now?”
Instead of getting caught up on larger things that might take years to achieve, if I consider something I can change right now that will make tomorrow a better day, those changes will add up much more quickly and noticeably.
Even if I can’t think of something, that’s fine. I can accept that, and just move on to the next day. The important thing is to ask myself this every day, so that I can give myself the option of making that change and having that reflection.
Sort of hard to say. I grew up an illegal immigrant in a big city. When I was 6 or so my parents would bring me with them when they went out to clean offices at night.
I pulled a fire alarm at like 1am without knowing what it was and my parents hid me in the trunk of the car. Told me to be quiet. They didn’t speak English and were afraid the cops could take me away.
I got hit with the belt a few times. When I was around 12 I tried to fight my dad during a belting and got my ass beat.
Also when I was around 12 I was in a car accident on the highway in an SUV that flipped 4 times. Everyone went to the hospital except for me, I was perfectly fine.
I was in Vegas with my brother for his 21st once and he had spent all his money. We were in the airport on the way back and there are slot machines there. He asked me to borrow some money to play some slots- he said if he’d win he would share with me.
On the last $2 bet he hit a jackpot and we each got $600
One time I was playing pool at the bar in my early 20s and hopped a ball to make the game winning shot on the 8 ball - won $50. It was beautiful. I rode that high for a week.
Speaking of high, I also overdosed on heroin (fentanyl, really) and was revived with Narcan in an ambulance once. That was a very confusing experience. Coming to slowly with many lights and people in uniforms around you.
I’ve been robbed before, with 2 guys grabbing me by each arm while a 3rd goes through my pockets. While they talked shit I just stayed quiet.
I’ve gotten in bar fights and have been kicked out of bars. I stood up for a friend at a house party at around 18 and got my ass beat because of it. He was too scared to do anything. Around that same time period I had a short couple months long fling with a woman in her 40s. I felt like a badass at 18 but nowadays I look back and it was weird.
I’ve done intramuscular ketamine injections with exactly the right dosage to be under anesthetic - aka khole. I’ve done a lot of drugs - nothing in my life has ever come close. I’ve also done two cycles of steroids. I’ve never had so much sex as during those cycles. During this time period I caught chlamydia & gono.
Also I made like $5,000 on Dogecoin and like $3,000 on Bepro. (Easily lost more than that overall with coins)
Those are some arguably crazy things that have happened to me. I’m not sure if my life is tame compared to the average. I guess it all depends on perspective. I know people who have seen much more craziness out of life.
What you do is take a screenshot of the desktop, rotate it 180° in MSPaint, set it as the background, hide and move the taskbar, hide desktop icons, and set the screen rotation to landscape flipped in the display settings. You’ll get a desktop that appears normal but can’t be interacted with, and a cursor that moves upside down and backwards. Rotate your victim’s mouse the wrong way around if they’re gullible and they’ll think the mouse messed everything up,
Mastodon was very depressing for me, this follower centric self presentation stuff is super not my style, it don’t want it to be about me, I most likely suck but I say smart things some times, so I want it to be about the stuff I say.
Plus I don’t mind being downvoted into oblivion. I actually think that this can be a good thing. It means that there was something at least controversial about what I posted so I might be wrong or have to argue better.
Lastly, mastodon is too much safe space and filter bubble. I want to read things from people that I disagree with and I want to argue with them in good faith. When I tried this on mastodon, I got misquoted, blocked, harassed… You name it.
Travelling from Austria to Croatia - got to the airport at 8pm for our 11 o’clock flight. Initially wasn’t concerned when our flight wasn’t showing on the boards. Became increasingly worried as time went on.
Spoke to the desk and were told the only flight to Croatia was 11AM that day… (Not 11pm)
Spent the night sleeping in the airport while waiting to check in to a airport hotel the next day as the next available flight to Croatia was 2 days after our original flight.
Used my bag as a pillow and accidentally broke some souvenirs we had bought. Cost us an extra $500 each in total for new flights and accomm as we had no travel insurance.
Sorry to hear you missed your flight - hope your experience isn’t too rough!
Sheesh, one thing after another! I’m sorry you had to go through that. Your poor souvenirs too.
Mine in comparison isn’t so bad. I overslept (I’m a dumbass, I missed like 5 alarms) but fortunately the airline called and said they’d rebook my flight. So after a very panicked morning rush to the airport, I’m back home now killing time while I wait for my evening flight.
Trying to understand why will cause you even more pain. My advice: treat it as a funeral/loss of a loved one. The time has simply come. Do your mourning and move on. Dwelling on it will only cause my pain and reopen old wounds.
This question does get asked a lot, as someone else pointed out. But even if you go back to when it was asked a couple of years ago the consensus has always been lemmings.
You’ve got to go through a round of redundancies/layoffs to learn this. No amount of telling some freebie-munching programmer will teach them. Source: I was a freebie-munching programmer.
And the acceptance beyond that is “… and that’s ok, it’s not the company’s job to love you, but don’t for a second be fooled into loyalty”.
United Fruit Company because they manipulated several countries in Central America and helped the CIA overthrowing the democratically elected government in Guatemala
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