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I’ve actually taken note of my navigational skills over the last couple years… I grew up in one state, and then a few years after graduating college, moved to a different state. When I was growing up, phone navigation didn’t really exist as it does now, cars didn’t have built-in navigation, and standalone navigation devices were slow and not all that great (at least the ones I could afford).

I find that when I return home, even 10 years later, I am able to navigate all the places I used to go unaided with ease, back-roads, niche routes, able to travel for hours without getting “lost”.

When I moved, though, I had very recently gotten my first smartphone, and google maps was very convenient to “learn” the new area. I ended up just continuing to use navigation since it was convenient. I’ve found that beyond the major main routes, I don’t have the same kind of “built-in” navigational skill that I do for my original home-turf. I never really learned the area.

I am moving towards a smart-phone-less life, and I’ve been able to let go of a lot, but GPS navigation remains a sticking point. I need to start training myself to navigate unaided in my current area.

Many many years ago in the paleolithic era when 2.4GHz was king, a neighbor had an unsecured wifi network… I connected my old laptop, piped the connection out the ethernet port and into the WAN port on my router, and set up my own “secured” network lol. I’m fairly certain anyone with a straight-up unsecured wifi network doesn’t have the skills or knowledge to detect someone leaching their bandwidth. I did that for like 3 years without a single hiccup until I moved and finally had to start paying.

My Dell Latitude 7280 has a similar rubbery coating both inside and out, and the keyboard is really nice, similar to Thinkpad keyboards I remember from the past. It’s also got a magnesium chassis, and seems to be quite durable.

I read a bit more of your comments before posting and it seems like you’re looking for a new, more powerful laptop… At least that exact Latitude model is a few years old, and low-power (and small, only 12" screen), but I’ll leave it here as an interesting note. I use it as a field-capture device for my astrophotography camera that can be powered by a big USB C power bank. Works great for that use, and is small thin and light.

I didn’t know what these were until a couple days ago, I saw them posted elsewhere and did a little digging. There must have been some release on Sunday because I went to the mall to meet up with some people before heading elsewhere, and there was an absolutely apocalyptic line with hundreds and hundreds of feet of little rope barriers, armed security guards, people brought chairs to sit in line since god knows when… all in front of a tiny little shop that sells things that all just look like funko-pops to me but are apparently unique and desirable for whatever reason… There were even more people all over the mall with bags from that shop carrying the weird little fuzzy things around.

I think it was just an odd way of making him seem more human and normal. Also the fact that he doesn’t mention anything about it also happening in his previous lives leaves an interesting open question that could either lend credence or hinder his whole backstory… At least that’s how I interpreted it.

All in all, though… one of the less awkward and more impactful sex scenes in a science-y book, which is much better than the usual ones I remember because they’re terrible and awkward and don’t fit in with the surrounding plot lol

It’s ironic that I have an anecdote that I recently read that feels very fitting here.

Permutation City by Greg Egan. Post-human digital consciousness via uploaded brain-scan becomes possible, and there are interesting questions about how the “sense of self” is derived, and how much someone can change themselves before they are no longer the same person. There are many different characters that deal with a newfound immortality in different ways, and either embrace, or shun, the ability to change themselves at a whim to fit their needs or wants. It’s a very prominent part of the overall plot and is prevalent right up until the last sentence.

Also, separate from that, I have the exact opposite feeling as OP. When I’m reading a book, I feel like my world is expanded in new directions. I tend to see certain things from slightly different perspectives in the context of what I’m reading. I’ve been reading Greg Egan’s entire body of work (after reading Diaspora and absolutely fucking loving it), and some insight and thoughts I had about the book Quarantine actually pushed me to make positive changes in my life that have been really hugely impactful, and I don’t think I would have had the courage or drive to make them had I not been thinking about my life in such an abstract manner.

While I haven’t seen him the most times, I am unequivocally a massive Dev-head. I’ve seen Devin Townsend 3 times (4 if you count the virtual concert during lockdown in 2020), but one of them was to travel from the USA to the Netherlands this March to see the one-time live performance of The Moth (I was right in the second row, I get a lot of peripheral screen-time in the live-stream). It was such an amazing experience, I’m going to count that as 10 or 20 normal concerts. I probably also haven’t cried that many happy tears in at least a decade or two. It was also my first time ever leaving the USA, and I really REALLY didn’t want to go home. I’d have happily lived the rest of my life on the Dutch train network.

You’re not going to get an argument out of me lol. I had a Reddit account for over a decade. I was addicted to the karma system of Reddit, it was seriously negatively impacting my life. I finally deleted my account and moved here recently, it’s been one of the better changes I’ve made in my life. You can completely hide post scores here, and the communities are smaller and less active which drives a more genuine engagement vs the hot-take one-liners, memes, and low-effort post replies.

Reddit can burn to the ground and cease to exist for all I care. It’s become so big and full of hate and misinformation.

My legitimate advice is just… don’t go back and save yourself the headache.

The karma itself is the gamification that increases engagement.

The gated subs, karma limits, etc. are there to cut down on spam, low-effort content, brigading, etc. in large communities to keep the engaged users more engaged so hopefully they spend a few more dollars on silly updoot awards.

It’s all supply and demand, profit-driven decisions. If a feature like karma limits alienates a small number of users, it is still worth it if it retains and engages with more high-value users who invest money in the platform with their ad viewership and direct purchases.

Costco bought RAC in a stunning buyout in 2437 after Costco’s CEO Harambe Memelord Disney Jr. offered RAC’s CEO Squiggy John John John John Johnson a 2-for 1 deluxe latte coupon and an extra big-ass fry.

I would unironically love if there were enough people in my life that also wanted to live that way to make it viable… Also the lack of functioning payphones these days would be challenging.

The place (at least in the USA) where I’ve found the most functional-looking payphones was actually Hawaii… And even then, so many are decaying and non-functional. I’ve had a silly idea to go back and just roam around and photograph as many as I can.

Excellent examples of that all around me where they installed a bunch of flex posts around previously unprotected bike lanes.

It’s been about a year (I think. Time is hard), and there are significantly less flex posts, some stretches have none at all anymore, because people just run them over like they don’t exist. Even on a street where the bike lane was ALREADY separated from the lane of travel by a ~5 foot section of cross-hatched pavement, people still somehow find a way to run over and destroy the poles. It’s baffling.

My original choice was between the BRZ and an MX-5… I don’t have another car, so I needed just the tiny bit more practicality of the trunk and back-seat space. I HAVE in fact taken 4 people in it, though it’s only a last resort kind of thing… It was really tough, because I fucking love convertibles. If I had a more reasonable car, or even the space to park a more reasonable car when I was looking into it originally (I live in an apartment in a downtown metro with only 1 parking space), I’d have 100% gotten a convertible miat.

And I’m only 5’10", but I think I just have a long torso. My seat is all the way down, and there isn’t enough head clearance for me to wear a helmet, which just saves me from the temptation to beat on it at autocross or something, so honestly a positive.

You’re right, I stand corrected. I was looking at a post on Lemmy.World that was a changelog that mentioned adding keyword content filters.

Turns out that it was a changelog for a particular mobile Lemmy client (Summit).

My quick glance wasn’t quite deep enough, it seems.

Piefed has a content filter to remove it. Signing up for piefed.social, one of the first questions it asks is “How tired are you of the Trump/Musk spam?”. After a quick search, Lemmy does appear to have similar content filters available, but I don’t know exactly where to find them.

I get my news elsewhere and I’m part of local political action groups. One of the reasons I left Reddit a couple weeks back was to get away from the constant dooming. Even after meticulously curating my communities, it was hard to get away from. There’s a time and place for worrying about news and politics, but anywhere and everywhere 24/7 isn’t it.

I can see how it could be a problem if you WANT to see a little bit of it, though.

Not very. Still working on getting a VPN set up and learning the ropes of self-hosting in general. Most of the research I’ve been doing has mentioned that Piefed seems to take less resources than Lemmy for some reason. We’ll see how it goes once I actually figure all this out. I just learned that my choice of home internet might make it difficult since I apparently can’t get a static IP. (T mobile 5G)

I drive a BRZ, lowered an inch and a half, and I’m tall enough that the seat needs to be as low as it will go so I don’t bump my head on the roof. Stopped at lights, I can look over at regular non-lifted pickup trucks and think “Huh, that guy’s asscheeks are at the same level as my eyeballs”.

I’ve gotten over the feeling of being small while driving amongst traffic, but the stark differences while stopped close to other vehicles is hard to ignore.

I really wish I could buy the new Suzuki Jimny. I saw one in person for the first time on a trip a few months back, and it’s so perfect.

I’ll also comment to say that the “cancel” part of this is stupid and should be reconsidered. (There seems to be a pretty thorough consensus on that). Isn’t the whole point of this to have options, to spread the resources out to as many points as possible to prevent a single point of failure, corruption, or censorship?

I ended up at Piefed, because I’m interested in self-hosting, and I understand Python more than any of the other languages represented. That’s really the full depth of my choice, and I’m not sure there should be much more thought behind it other than “How does this particular software package perform and meet my needs?”

That’s what I suspected with the name, and I tried to do a little poking with some translators, but it wasn’t really working as I had no understanding of the correlation between the syllabic spelling vs the hiragana. Thanks for the little breakdown!