This is what came to mind for me too.

It is so much fun to play co-op with my kid. Then I can act old and describe all the gaming industry references that only I get.

I’ve also been to Sweden two whole times, so I get to act all sophisticated and worldly while describing the real world Goatenburg.

I have watched the simulated running of various dinosaur species in documentaries such as Jurassic Park.

I have also watched my chickens excitedly run around my back yard.

There is nothing you can say that will convince me birds are not literally dinosaurs.

Yeah. It would be sweet to live in a world that doesn’t keep proving the cynics and doomsayers correct.

AuDHD here. Before my 40s I was never a coffee drinker and I couldn’t get medicated when I tried.

Now, on days when I am good about taking both my doses of Adderall and making myself both cups of coffee (morning & lunch time for both) I feel amazingly normal and can just choose to be productive at work and crazy shit like that.

THC is amazing in its own way. It CAN help me happily do certain things I normally don’t want to do, but over time it seems like a net loss for executive function, energy levels, and generally taking care of the shit I care about. So right now I’m on a break, but have not necessarily sworn it off.

That’s kind of an accurate way to describe a lot of society these days though, from doomscrolling to phone addiction to social media disinformation to surveillance and tracking and advertising.

Well, no. If you look closely enough, no lines exist.

One of the beautiful things about being able to run Linux at work and use Teams in a browser is that my status is decoupled from what I’m doing on my machine. Obviously if I’m in a meeting or chatting with somebody through Teams my status will reflect that.

I bet my most productive days have me away/idle for hours on end, lol.

I’m right there with you, but the OP mentions social media, and that’s all that shit is.

Our society has allowed the way many people keep in touch with one another to be via psychologically manipulative, attention harvesting, advertising machines.

From inside, “Made in the USA” feels like it’s going to be us chained to paying 2x the cost for wildly inferior products. See for example, cars.

I did already get myself some Surface Shield which is exactly that kind of lanolin based protectant, after also reading about some of the more hardcore stuff like POR-15 that I’d worry could trap water or hide damage.

I’ve used it a bit on my car near where I have some wheels removed to work on the brakes, and tried it on some garden tools.

Impressions are very good and I totally plan to cover the underside of my car with this stuff when finishing up work on it. Just not the exhaust I imagine.

DONE, lol.

I kinda want to get something with a manual transmission again, so it will very likely be a japanese brand.

Somebody found the secret door to the power house of the cell!

I’m in the US where this is coming soon enough. My car is a 2012 which seems like kind of a sweet spot, but it’s not going to last forever especially with our winters and road salt and pot holes.

I didn’t plan to buy a new car any time soon but have been thinking about my eventual next choice. All this BS has me wondering whether it’s better to get something soon without the next level of surveillance, or wait a few years and see how bad it is in practice and how it can be disabled.

That 2012 I mentioned is fun to drive, has low mileage for its age, and is fuel efficient, plus I have renewed my love of working on my own vehicles after not doing so for a decade or two. I’m currently doing work on the brakes. Maybe I’ll just have to try to make it live forever, and not give any more money to the whole damn industry as long as possible. That’s the most economically and environmentally friendly option, after all.

It also makes references to “the before time, in the long long ago” ala South Park / Star Trek a whole lot more relatable.

Going back a little further than “the inauguration,” it just so happened that my kid was born in 2017 very close to the first inauguration that slowly built up the BS until Covid.

2016 and earlier feels like it could legitimately have been a previous life that I can still remember – and my wife and I are living in the same house and drive the same two cars as the few years before that!

It is one of the worst parts of US culture and one of the greatest accomplishments of capitalists’ propaganda that we generally see the rich as noble and admirable while the poor are evil and disgusting.

Not to be all US-centric about it, but that’s where I live and I think this place’s reputation speaks for itself.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s and I remember hearing a lot of references to “The Bicentennial.”

Oh for sure. One nice part about my current job is feeling like being part of a functioning team.

Constant isolation isn’t necessary or good. But for certain personal projects that I am designing and building from scratch, solo can be so nice.

It sounds like a lot of good thought and design went into it.

The biggest problem was/is always going to be consumers wary of trusting a tech company not to mess it up because of greed.

I keep thinking we need an overhaul where volunteering to be a public servant at a high enough level also means volunteering to surrender all your assets and be barred from owning anything significant for life. You get a stipend that you can spend on food, hobbies, travel, and entertainment, but that’s it. You get housing and transportation paid for (or maybe you can own your residence and car) but no businesses, no stocks, etc. I guess you get a pension or salary for life or something.

People have demonstrated that they generally cannot be trusted to balance governmental power with conflicts of interest. Sure some people can, but ordinary voters picking from candidates filtered for “actively seeks power” have a crappy track record. Here’s hoping politicians like Mamdani can teach the voters a re things and start to turn that around.