PrimalAnimist

Well I think I pay something like $95 for YouTube TV +Max. Netflix is like 12? I’m on a sweet Spotify+Hulu for 9.99 promo for years, but I think it’s going up to $10.99. Disney is like $9. It may seem like a lot, but that’s all I spend on entertainment. I don’t eat outside the home regularly. I don’t go see movies at theaters. I don’t buy things like DVDs and stuff.

And to be fair, it’s for the household. We’re poly so there’s a variety of interests. And if you divide that by 5 adults, it’s cheap.

I cancelled cable a few years ago and now use YouTube TV. I love it because I can record everything, never run out of DVR space. I can run 5 tvs with different shows on each. I can watch TV anywhere on my phone and laptop. I can stop on one device and pick back up on another. Well over 100 channels now (but I only really watch a handful). Every channel also has an on-demand section. Like TCM has what’s live but also a huge library to stream from.

I have Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Peacock, Max…but if I had to just use one service, it would be YouTube TV. It follows me, and is not tied to my house. If I go visit another state, it will even switch to the local news wherever I am. It has, by far, the most content in one spot for one price.

Not everyone watches US politics, or Fox News. I live in the US and don’t know her. I am sure there are famous faces you don’t know because it’s not your field of interest. Can you identify famous contemporary painters by face? Physicists? Composers? Game designers? Belittling someone’s education because they don’t know something you do is pathetic and says a lot more about you than it does the person you were mocking.

I had a discussion about weird vs. norm with a friend the other day. We decided neither type of person is good or bad inherently because they are weird or normal. Different things comfort them. A weird person feels safe surrounded by people that “get them” who are weird like they are. Their personal identity is often centered on the fact that they are not “normal”. They take pride in it.

But the predictability of a more structured “normal” life is just as comforting to those who are “normal”. There are no rights or wrongs here, only the need for each type to recognize and respect the other. I don’t really like derogatory terms like “normie”, which I have more than one friend who uses (I don’t say anything to them about it, I can personally not like it without making demands on my friends to feel the same as I do). It’s like when I was in school, there were mostly right handed people, but every now and then there was a “leftie” or “southpaw”. They were different. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone bullied over being left-handed, but we all knew who they were. Humans and many animals focus on differences. It’s probably a residual primal thing. Wolves will kill deformed or sickly pups, for example.

Normal is boring to some, and weird is chaotic to some. Both are acceptable stances and shouldn’t be seen as adversarial by either group.

I identify as Salsageex

Collections add a little something real to an interest. You are into baseball? Collect baseball cards and baseball memorabilia. Some find a tactile connection improves their enjoyment. For some people, it may be old video games, for others it may be coins, stamps, achievements in video games. Yes they are digital, but you can see them in your achievement/trophy list. I think some people are drawn to collections more than others because they favor a certain learning style over another. I’m not educated in behavior in any way so I am qualified to share my opinion on the Internet. There’s nothing abnormal about that. The collecting part. Not the part where I have no real knowledge on a topic but I feel my opinion is worthy of being heard. That’s actually normal, too, probably. But it shouldn’t be.

The only thing they could bring back that would make me consider making an account is TheButton. By the way I was a 42s Blue Hitchhiker.

https://regenerationinternational.org/2019/07/23/plant-sentience-and-the-impossible-burger/

It may just be the weed, but for a moment I thought I was reading something off a Night City public BBS.

You can’t tell anyone this, but I have a friend who is deep inside the insurance industry. Some of the big guys have invested heavy into LEDs. So to maximize the LED investments, they give manufacturers safety discounts for every LED they can attach to their shit. Big guys make some extra zeros for their accounts, and sharpie and 3M get some splash, too.

For me, sugars and processed foods (grains especially) were an addiction. I see a lot of advice about allowing yourself a “cheat” day now and then but I would advise against it. It’s like telling a drug addict it’s ok to shoot up now and then, or it’s ok for the alcoholic to have a drink on special occasions. Processed foods are harmful to us over time. So while it won’t kill you when you are 20 or even 30, it will catch up with you.

Push through those cravings. They will go away.

I love seeing pictures of the world from other people’s perspective. Urban shots. Nature shots. Any old boring shots like just a side road you walk down, or a tree you like to sit under. I like being able to see the quiet places in the world as well as the loud ones.

If that describes a lot of anyone’s posts, add me there and I will follow you back https://pixelfed.social/i/web/profile/577121287304400256

I hear a problem and I want to offer solutions. But I gotta fight that instinct.

I’m curious how much of that is instinct vs. cultural programming. I used to be the same way. My partner would tell me about something that has aggravated her during her day and my first instinct was to think of ways to fix whatever it was and not just listen and be supportive. But that’s the exact opposite as the conversations I might have with my buddy would go. When he tells me about a problem, I just listen and if he pauses for a verbal response, I ask him how he handled it, not give him advice on how I would handle it.

So is that a primal bias or a cultural one? Does it come from some sort of deep genetic behavioral coding that we much protect our female mate? I’m certainly not able to answer that with any authority, but my gut says it’s learned behavior. I’ve since let go of that desire to fix. And for me, it’s much more satisfying to always listen as support and learning without seeing it as a task. That’s the default. I don’t even think about a solution unless I’m specifically asked.

I think listening behaviors are quite culturally based as well. For example:

Here in the Appalachian mountains, suppose two guys are talking to each other, perhaps both leaning on a fence. The guy who is listening doesn’t watch the speaker the entire time. They don’t make occasional noises either.

My buddy asks if I want to hear a story about some trouble he had recently with a neighbor. I nod and look at him “Yea”. He then proceeds to look forward, out across the field and I do the same. Buddy says something that I support, like what he did that started the trouble. I nod, quietly, or even make that “this is ok” face. If I make that face, it’s like saying “That makes sense to me, nothing unreasonable about that”. Unless he says something that you know he expects support for, then you just motionlessly stare into the foreground.

If he tells me something the neighbor did that angered him, I will look at him and make the astonished face, he will look at me and nod, then he verbally confirms it as we go back to staring at the field. He will go on about it some, and I will quietly lower my head a little and shake it back forth to show my disbelief in how crappy his neighbor is.

Then whatever conclusion he comes up with, I’ll either say, “hell yeah, that’s what I’d do” or “whoa I dunno about all that now” or something similar. The cues for listening and the correct responses to them will vary probably within subcultures.

I do not believe upvotes and down votes are enough information to reveal the identity of anyone. If this was truly such a risk, where has the concern for this been on Facebook, where you can see who leaves reactions by name. Or Discord where every account that clicks a reaction is available?

Here that info is not available to the public at large. On Facebook it’s available to anyone who sees a post. Why haven’t security voices been pressuring Facebook to not track social reactions if it’s so dangerous?

This is a feature of social media for the most part. What I write as posts and comments is available to everyone as is vastly more useful info for someone to collect.

I don’t understand the concern over it really. I mean you are on social media. My comments are much more telling than my up and down votes lol. I think this general sense of “I want to be social but I don’t want anyone knowing it’s me” is an interesting trend though.

No, I keep some things private. But some things, like reactions and upvotes, are just as public to me as the posts I make is my point. It just isn’t a concern for me personally.

The things I upvote and downvote are in line with my personal values and I am not ashamed of that. I have no issues with anyone knowing my reaction to a post. On Discord anyone can see who leaves reactions on a message. Same with Facebook. It will show you who added what reaction.

I agree with that logic. But for me personally, I don’t feel “locked” into google. There are no contracts, no penalties for moving to some other service if I need. I never use customer support from any of these services because I find it’s easier to just look for the answers myself. I have no loyalty to any company, I simply use what best serves me at the time. All corps are interested in profit over people, so there’s really no company I have found to be fully ethical and transparent while offering a competing service that is as reliable.

I have the free 15 GB of cloud storage with them, but I don’t use it. I keep my data on my own cloud storage box. Yes, I have a gmail account, but I also have a proton.me account that I use more than gmail. Also, pretty much every big service out there is powered by Google and/or Amazon (see Twitter lol), so looking at the big picture, right now, we are dependent on Google in ways we are not even aware.

This is also why I am excited to see the shift to open source and self-hosting. I think a time is coming, too, where big companies are going to have to pay us for access to our data. I’ve made almost $200 just casually answering questions for the Google Rewards app. Sometimes it’s a dime, sometimes fifty cents, occasionally a question nets more. Those credits can be used to pay for any google services or purchases. I usually buy movies I can’t find on streaming services with my Google Rewards credits (my pirate days are long gone, it’s just not as convenient for me anymore and if I can’t watch it through a service or buy it, I just don’t need to watch it lol).

I really want to self-host a lemmy server sometime in the next year, I have a Core i5 desktop that’s not dead, just sits in a closet. My wish is to have all my personal social media self-hosted and I can choose who I want to federate with and who I don’t. But I’m not a pioneer. I’m waiting til this all settles a little to see if it’s worth the work.

Check out Google Fi. It uses the T-Mobile network here (US), and I get unlimited data, no rate limits. I have three phone numbers on my account and it costs me $85 a month total. Also the phones from the Fi store are super cheap if you stay on Google Fi. My pixel 7 got $300 off at purchase and $100 for my old phone. They are unlocked, too. Something I hate when buying from other providers. One of my phones had a Verizon sim and a Google Fi e-sim, so I can switch services with easy. Here in the mountains, service can be spotty in places with TMobile. Wifi calling is also available though, so that helps, too. I abandoned US Cellular entirely.