This feels like a good place to bring up the old Demetri Martin joke about how “I’m sorry” and “I apologize” mean the same thing… except in certain cases.
It didn’t age well in some respects (misogyny, racism, borderline sexual assault), but it’s a great watch and the envisioning of a dystopian 2022 through the lens of 1973 is fascinating.
e: your comment inspired me to rewatch it and the 30 year old man living with his father is spot on.
Exactly. As a Boomer who grew up in a small town with telephone “party lines” I just can’t be arsed to care. Come look in my windows if you need a thrill.
May I suggest having a Christmas with your friends, whatever way you like it?
This year I spent Christmas with one friend, and we just did whatever made us happy. We watched a few movies, and smoked some weed. She decorated the tree, I cooked my favorite meal. No gifts or anything, no yelling, just a good time. Probably the best Christmas I had in years.
Spend your time with the people you love and cherish. Christmas doesn’t necessarily need to be about family or gifts.
Best "holiday"s are the ones just chilling with friends, even if it is remote. Play some video games, go out for a walk, or maybe cook something you haven’t made in a while.
I more or less stopped doing gifts for people. Might get the kiddos something kind of useful or educational. I would rather do an activity than spend money on useless crap.
my favorite new years eve was probably the one in 2020/2021 because all my friends were online to play video games, we even held a tournament in golf with your friends haha
A friend’s brother died. It was literally out of nowhere. And said friend is stick home with Covid - which isn’t what did him in, but still. Massive suckage.
Plus it didn’t even feel like Christmas this year. Visited family, but…I dunno. It just wasn’t, this year.
About a decade ago, my grandfather fell ill around Thanksgiving and they found he was full of cancer, had a few weeks left, and sent him home for hospice care.
I was unexpectedly laid off just before that, so, jobless, it became my job to pull the overnight shift there, tending to him, sleeping in 1.5h spells, and the next morning, being expected to stick around to keep company with relatives coming to visit my grandfather, playing host, etc. even though my dad and other family members were there.
I was basically living on coffee and grief.
That Christmas was an incredibly hollow ‘celebration’, and my grandfather passed in the early morning hours of new years eve.
What helped me was just forcing myself to go through the holiday motions in the following years. I’m not a super Christmas person anyway, but just going to the parties, smiling, listening to the music, etc. Fake it till you make it.
I still always think of my pap every Christmas/new years, and I’ll still have a few moments where it makes me super sad… but I managed to avoid having the whole season become “sit alone and mope in useless grief for a few weeks”, which is where my mind likely would have gone, had I not made the active conscious effort to avoid it.
Stuffed vine leaves. I made them once for a gathering I had and they took me about 3 hours in all. Everyone loved them but for the time they took me, and how much of a pain in the arse they were to make, it wasn’t worth it. The ready made ones in tins are just fine.
There’s a lot, most of which I make anyway for sake of cost/volume ratios, but in no particular order…
Tomato paste (love to use, can’t be arsed to make my own), sriracha (like it but don’t use enough for the amount I make), waffles (don’t crave them nearly as much as I used to), scotch eggs (love 'em, hate making 'em), pickled asparagus (which really sucks because they’re so good), lotus root chips (maybe if I had a fry daddy, air fried just doesn’t do it), chicarrones (lots off local places make 'em fresh and cheap), horchata (same), meat pies (there’s a local Brit shop that sells 'em), falafel (lots of local vendors), jalebi (way too much work)…
If you do use one what other blocking do you productively use to circumvent data collection, YouTube and reddit front ends and things alike?
I use an ad blocker, and in addition also use Pi-hole for network-wide domain based tracker blocking. I use tailscale to use this on my phone, but also have Tracker Control (the real version installed from F-Droid) to do something similar if for some reason I need to disable Tailscale (only one can be used at once, as they both use the VPN method).
I know some of family don’t because they mostly rely on mobile devices and devices like Chromecasts where installing ad blockers can be a challenge. They don’t use traditional computers.
They know apps like NewPipe exist but the effort to port things over or not get recommendations is too much for them.
I do use ad blockers and open source front ends/software/alternatives. Ex. AntennaPod instead of Spotify for podcasts and Linux instead of Windows because I didn’t like ads in the start menu (amongst numerous other things).
I’m so proud of my kids who will demand adblockers if something in their YouTube app or their browser is broken. Even though they like to see toy ads now and then. But when they get the amount a regular mortal receives it’s too much, even for them.
I get you. I like receiving honest real reviews for things rather than be advertised to. Let their quality speak for it. I also hate even minor spoilers for movies/TV shows/video game that you see in trailers.
Because I am not sure if I want a 3rd party “controlling” my trafic. It sucks that my behavior is shared around in ad networks but I am not sure if the ad blocking components are more trustworthy. There are certainly good solutions out there but I am sceptic of the explosion of new ad blocking tools. Having said that, I never did a deep research to check if my scepticism is justified…
asklemmy
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