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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • To each their own. Just be sure it’s making you happy.

    I work to live, but I don’t live to work.

    Life is short and I thoroughly enjoy playing a video game without a care in the world. With a kid and a house, I have plenty on my plate. I don’t go out of my way looking for extra work. If the opportunity arises for me to “waste time” I take it and enjoy it without guilt.

    Last night I got to play Lethal Company with two of my friends. Most fun I’ve had in months. No regrets.


  • I’m not saying it never happens, but it’s not a super common occurrence.

    And even if it is, locking down the entire internet and monitoring people in an Orwellian fashion isn’t the government’s job.

    What happened back in the day when kids walked in on their parents doing the deed? What did the parents do when their child snuck a passage of Shakespeare and read all the filthy jokes he wrote?

    Oh, they spoke to the kids and guided them through a normal part of life?

    I have a son. I would like for him to not see graphic images on the Internet. But when he does, I will explain to him that human beings have sex (which is why he exists). I will tell him that sometimes people like to watch videos about it because it feels good to them. I will explain to him that it’s fake, just like the action movies and violence he sees on TV. I will tell him it’s nothing like that in reality and I will explain to him that he’s not ready to see that material yet.

    Fascists always gain control by offering “safety.” Ironically, they’re more dangerous than the thing they claim to protect you from.

    Yeah, making a government list of porn watchers with their watch history available is 100% going to be abused. It will not turn out well.






  • I think what a lot of people are missing in this thread is that not everyone has access to convenient physical stores and many people do have good reasons to want faster shipping.

    For example, young families who don’t live near a Walmart. When you realize you need a few things for the kid, it can be pretty tough to pack them up and drive however far to the store that may or may not have what you need. If they do have it, you aren’t going to get reviews or many options.

    My recent prime purchases have included bottle brushes, a crib mattress protector, a replacement remote for our sound bar (dog ate it), and a cheap car camera to check the baby since he started daycare last week and I’m completely paranoid about my ADHD brain leaving him in a hot car and killing him.

    Did any of these need to be prime purchases? I guess not but you can see how I would want them sooner rather than later.

    Walmart near me didn’t have any good car cameras in my price range.

    The sound bar remote was online only and was required for us to watch TV since our TV speaker doesn’t work.

    The bottle brushes were just convenient.

    The mattress protector could have waited but would have been a gamble on ruining our very expensive crib mattress. This could have been a a Walmart purchase for sure though.

    I’m not saying these were life or death purchases. They weren’t and people got by just fine before Amazon. But does the convenience and reliability outweigh the monthly prime cost? For us, yes. And I admit we have become pretty dependent on it.



  • Floaters in the vitreous of the eyeball (aka clumps of your vitreous that got stuck together as your vitreous gel started to liquify, which happens naturally with age for everyone).

    They’re normal if they appear gradually as you age. Most common in people with myopia. Can be caused by a variety of things including hits to the eyes or head, possibly by steroid eye drops, anything that increases the pressure in your eye, or just plain old aging.

    They never go away but if you’re lucky they might “settle” or get stuck to the side. Never happens for a lot of people though, and they can be quite distressing for many people - especially for people who have many large and moving floaters.

    Most mentally healthy people will neuro-adapt and they’ll become less noticeable over time. It can take about six months before this happens though and it does suck at first. I got some new ones after LASIK and I was pretty upset. Now I only notice them on light backdrops like snow or my shower. But even then I just notice them briefly and my thoughts quickly move elsewhere. No stress.

    For people who are absolutely driven insane by a large number of them, there is a risky surgery to remove them, but if it goes wrong you can be looking at blindness so you definitely need to weigh your options.

    The non-surgical laser treatment for floaters doesn’t work. It seems to maybe work for some people in the short term but most people report that it doesn’t help in the long term. It can even create more floaters or break up your big ones into many smaller ones that move more. The laser is also dangerous for younger patients because the floaters are closer to your retina when you’re younger. The laser can cause damage to the retina and it’s hard to avoid doing that when the floaters are close to it.

    There are currently a couple groups researching how to get rid of them non-invasively. Last bit of news I saw said a group had been using gold flakes and a new type of laser to successfully and safely break them down. Personally, I will get mine treated if there is a non-invasive way to do so, but I’m not too bothered by them so I can wait for that.

    Worth noting that if you suddenly get a lot of floaters and are feeling pain in your eyes or seeing bright flashes that look like a camera flash, you need to go seek medical attention immediately as these are signs of a retinal tear. Retinal tears are treatable but only if you go take care of them immediately. The consequences are not taking care of them quickly can be severe.

    For most people, these are harmless and just a part of getting older. You’ll get used to them.



  • I imagine your priorities become different.

    You start out young and idealistic. You find success and maintain that idealism for quite some time. Your morals are intact and you still feel connected to your users because you’re one of them.

    Eventually though, you have to make some tough decisions. You want to maintain your community and sometimes that means choosing financials first. You make unpopular decisions for good reasons and your users don’t understand because they aren’t privy to all of the details. You have MBAs walking you through these steps and they’re probably more understanding than your users who don’t have a lot of stake in these choices.

    Then your platform grows and it’s not just your computer nerd circles anymore. It’s open to the general public and corporations as well now. You have to deal with a bunch of vile, shitty people and you still have to make unpopular decisions. Nobody is ever happy no matter what you do.

    Personally, I can understand reaching a point where you say, “You know what? Fuck em. I’m a different person now after all of these years, and the people using my platform aren’t even the same people I made it for in the first place, at least not mostly.”

    I assume at that point you’re just trying to cash out. And you’ve listened to the MBAs for long enough that you’re thinking like them now. It’s even technically possible that Spez is still a good person and an idealist. He might still be making tough choices the rest of us don’t understand. Reddit may very well be in a place where it needs to get way more profitable or die. The Internet is tricky. Nowhere else in the free market do you have people who expect to pay $0 for a popular product they use for many hours per day.

    I’m not a Spez apologist. Just offering a possible scenario that would explain how we keep ending up here with so many different companies.