Cracks_InTheWalls
@Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Are you using Lemmy / others to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl? 2 days ago:
The benefits of a healthy online space for discussion premised on shared interest and (ideally) quality are immense, no doubt. Good participation can bring people more of those benefits, and it would be foolish to dismiss them.
But at the same time, we folks in the West at least live increasingly atomized, lonely lives. While it’s certainly better than nothing, particularly if you experience barriers to IRL socialization (disabilities, mental health conditions, etc.), having your sense of community derived completely from the internet has drawbacks.
The medium is particularly vulnerable to manipulation, whether through artificial means or simply groupthink as a product of the specific actors involved (intentionally or not). It can create spaces with weird feedback loops that inform crazy outcomes (think of the incel movement, extremist movements of many colours, etc.). And it removes a bunch context from the interactions which, on one hand, is liberating (only your words matter, regardless of social position, physical appearance, place of origin, medical conditions, etc.), but on the other is limited (nuances of speech, facial expressions, physical proximity, physical context re: where the interaction takes place - this all adds to the meaning of a given interaction).
As with most things, balance is key. Participate online, sure - you can have great discussions, build friendships, etc. - but recognize meatspace community has value, and should be tended to equally. We should be talking to the people physically around us more, and I truly feel one factor of the shit we wade through these days is that many don’t.
- Comment on Are you ready skids? 1 week ago:
Go to bed early on April 19th. Wake up at 4:20 AM. Have a lil’ wake and bake. Get kitted up and go for a nice wander, listening to some sweet tunes, maybe hit a trail for a bit, etc. Meander your way to the brunch place, preferably an all-you-can-eat affair, around opening time. Have one more bowl/joint. If AYCE, make the owner regret their business model. Spend the rest of the day in a food coma watching stupid movies.
This is the way.
- Comment on They Live 2069 2 weeks ago:
“I’m here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. And I’m not sure they even still make bubblegum these days.”
- Comment on Hot enough for ya? 3 weeks ago:
Remember, if you’re hot, they’re hot. Let them cool off in your portable in-flesh pool.
- Comment on Oh to go back... 3 weeks ago:
Obviously still not realistic, but I feel like the super-imposed text thing some TV shows/movies have done more recently works, so long as you create a sense of tension/time crunch.
Toss in some red text and error messages once and a while in front of a dude sweating with dramatic music in the background, and it gets the point across.
- Comment on Oh to go back... 3 weeks ago:
I mean, call it whatever, it really doesn’t matter that much, but why not pop punk? Seems to be the more common label, and easily extended to non-US bands like Sum41, Gob, etc.
- Comment on Why is U2 considered "grunge?" 3 weeks ago:
I’m sorry, what??? I’m just as perplexed as you are, where are you seeing this and can you drop a link?
- Comment on Do you ever feel like your inside thoughts are leaking out? 3 weeks ago:
There’s been more than a few times my kid has called me out by saying “Use your inside thoughts”.
- Comment on What's an absolutely medium quality game? Not great, incredible or terrible or any single ended extreme. Dead medium quality 4 weeks ago:
If you’re an adult Pokemon fan, these days fan-mades or rom hacks are the way to go. Nintendo/The Pokemon Company/Game Freak are pretty damn risk averse with this property, so the really cool stuff comes from fans (at least until they get the cease and desist).
- Comment on If I could make hairstyles come back into fashion I would pick this. The 80s were magical with their hairspray creations. 4 weeks ago:
Frank Sherwood Roland and Mario Molina have entered the chat.
- Comment on Would alcohol be as popular if it weren't a beverage? 5 weeks ago:
Imagine if instead of going to the bar for a beer you went to the restaurant to eat some THC infused food
Brother I’ve been imagining this since legalization here. More than a few restaurateurs were as well, only to be dissappointed by the current legislation.
My kingdom for a legal, indoor cannabis consumption space that doesn’t have to get around things by being a funded experiment or ‘grey area, members only “private club”’. And tinctures, infused drinks and edibles are the clear best choices of RoA in those spaces given anti-smoking laws.
- Comment on Once you are over 30 we no longer want to go out - we want to be left alone, with a beer/wine, a blanket, tv, and tacos… 5 weeks ago:
I don’t have enough space, good enough acoustics, enough money, distance from my neighbours or appropriate zoning to let bands play in my house on a regular basis. So alas, I must leave my house once and a while.
- Comment on why does alcohol stop my back pain but medicine doesn't? 1 month ago:
🎶Gotta catch 'em all, 2C-B!🎶
- Comment on I want a chav boyfriend. Where can I find adult chavs? (If you don't know what that is, they're called bogans in Australia and rednecks in the US) 1 month ago:
Based on your definition of chav (I too thought tracksuits, trainers, and UK urban slang), think about the kind of hobbies folks like this do. Dunno if it’s an exact equivalent, but if someone was looking for a redneck here in Canada, they’d be going to car and truck shows/events, hunting events, small town bars, fishing derbies, small circuit pro-wrestling events, that kind of thing.
- Comment on What are some good examples of "Where the fuck do you go" kind of games? 2 months ago:
I really to try it again with a guide, I want to see the wild shit after that first damn level.
- Comment on Generational differences 2 months ago:
Pro soda/beer can pipe tip for those reading a local backup of Lemmy during the apocalypse: if your knife is stuck in a dead raider and you need a toke, you can snap part of the can’s pull tab off to make a puncture tool.
Don’t forget to get that knife back though, fr. Actually maybe go do that first, but still do this rather than use a bloody knife. Hygiene, man.
- Comment on You never forget your first 2 months ago:
For me, it was always consoles I never actually got. Dreamcast for a while (VMUs were so fucking cool), then the GP32.
- Comment on What's the point in getting married? 2 months ago:
Two reasons: Practical considerations (shared assets, certain legal protections, I’ve seen people get married for an easier go re: immigration in some cases, etc. Basically check your local laws); and ritualistic.
I find people often discount the importance of certain ritual practices in Western secular society, and for a lot of people ritual in general is a whole lot of fluff and nonsense. But having a ceremony to recognize a formal joining of two people, and by extension their families (to varying degrees), with the at least ostensible intent that you will live and die in partnership with that person, is a powerful thing. It’s a common ritual among multiple societies, with lots of variation and differences in exactly what it signifies, but the ubiquity speaks to that power IMO.
Don’t get me wrong - I think divorce is a good thing for when the partnership truly does not and cannot work, and people can live happily in lifelong unions without marriage - but for some folks, taking that vow in the eyes of your friends and family (and whatever deity concept you may have, if that’s your kink) is a very important and serious thing. Something changes, to some degree, when you take that oath.
It doesn’t have to be expensive - that it often is, IMO, is a function of capitalism infecting a beautiful thing more than anything else. You can have a wedding in someone’s backyard officiated by someone who paid $25 online for a certificate, with a small number of close friends and a potluck BBQ afterwards, and it would be just as valid and meaningful as someone who spent 100k. It’s the intent, ritual, and meaning participating parties place on it that’s important.
- Comment on Steam Deck / Gaming News #11 2 months ago:
Not much of a gamer these days, but I love this format and what you are doing here. Keep it up!
- Comment on Thank you Gary ❤️ 3 months ago:
Well, the aroma is most pleasing. Who wouldn’t be curious to taste it?
- Comment on You'll know Lemmy has really caught on when searching for "Lemmy" returns more results for the forum than for the Motorhead guy. 3 months ago:
Sometimes, I think about the fact that if I post something really useful here, our traffic’s still so comparatively small that it probably won’t come up in a search engine query.
But that’s the way I like it, baby - I don’t want to live forever.
- Comment on Most people in the workforce today have never had to answer the question "Smoking or nonsmoking?" 3 months ago:
So I’ve since quit, and I understand why even what I’m about to describe doesn’t exist anymore where I am, but right at the tail end of smoking indoors there were businesses/buildings doing totally walled off, wellish ventilated smoking areas. Those seemed ok to me, and when I (stupidly) took up smoking I was sad those were gone.
The only, and last, one I saw when I was a smoker was in an airport, which was an unexpected godsend because my fuck does it suck to be a smoker waiting for a flight.
(Yes, it’s a gross and deadly habit that’s also unhealthy and gross for the people around you and the employees who had to work in/clean such spaces, and it makes sense to have no smoking indoors).
- Comment on Something Bizarre Is Happening to People Who Use ChatGPT a Lot 3 months ago:
There’s a few people I know who use it for boilerplate templates for certain documents, who then of course go through it with a fine toothed comb to add relevant context and fix obvious nonsense.
I can only imagine there are others who aren’t as stringent with the output.
Heck, my primary use for a bit was custom text adventure games, but ChatGPT’s has a few weaknesses in that department (very, very conflict adverse for beating up bad guys, etc.). There’s probably ways to prompt engineer around these limitations, but a) there’s other, better suited AI tools for this use case, b) text adventure was a prolific genre for a bit, and a huge chunk made by actual humans can be found here - ifdb.org, c) real, actual humans still make them (if a little artsier and moody than I’d like most of the time), so eventually I stopped.
- Comment on GeoCities in 1995: Building a Home Page on the Internet 4 months ago:
Give this a shot maybe? I know there’s some other archive collections as well you could try digging into.
- Comment on Do most people still use computers, or do people only use a smartphone as their main/only device? 4 months ago:
Lol, was waiting for this comment. DeX gang rise up.
(It is OKish)
- Comment on I feel my life is empty. Is there any way to stop this? 4 months ago:
You, my friend, need an adventure. Any adventure, even if it sounds small and dumb.
I creeped your post history (sorry) - did you end up taking that bus trip you talked about a few months back? If so, what was that like? If not, any reason why you feel you shouldn’t do it now (or soon)?
I’ve felt like you before, at least the way you’re describing it. My solution was mundane adventure - walk a stupid amount to a place you could easily get to by car. Strike up conversations with strangers by leaving your phone alone re: directions/things of interest/etc. unless absolutely necessary. Set yourself some boon to obtain - a beer at Pub X, a meal at place Y, whatever - and make the journey a little less convenient/a little more scenic than you might do by default.
The above isn’t for everyone, obvs, but take the idea of an adventure or ‘quest’ and see if anything strikes you. It can be as grand or mundane as you want it to be.
Just one option among others.
- Comment on Colombian president says cocaine 'no worse than whisky' 5 months ago:
Holy shit - thank you. I knew there was stuff that happened at Oak Ridge but didn’t know any details.
Damn…
- Comment on Colombian president says cocaine 'no worse than whisky' 5 months ago:
Bro, share a link if you can, PLEASE.
This sounds like Donald Ewen Cameron’s work, but somehow even more fucked up than what I’ve heard about re: him to date. I absolutely need to know more.
- Comment on Flohmarkt - a Fediverse replacement for Facebook Marketplace 5 months ago:
Does it? If you set up an instance for your local community/city/whatever, and name it something that makes sense for your intended userbase, I think it would be fine.
It goes from “I sold my couch on FlohMarkt” to “I sold my couch on Local Ottawa Marketplace” for the ‘normies’ out there. They’re not going to care about the underlying software so long as their couch gets sold.
Do recommend a DIY local advertising strategy if trying to get something like this running, though - posters at IRL flea markets, adverts in small community papers for antiques and collectibles, crossposts/links to postings on stuff like MaxSold/Kijiji/Craigslist/GumTree/FB Marketplace/[insert online marketplace operating in your area],that kind of thing.
Focus on the current primary use case of centralized marketplace services (buying shit from your neighbours), then introduce the “Oh yeah, we’ve also set it up so you can see postings on Local Toronto Marketplace, Local Kingston Marketplace, Marché Local de Montréal” etc. from there.
I really, really think talking to people in terms of specific instances over the overarching platform/protocol is a way around ‘normie’ confusion about the Fediverse when first trying it, then getting exposure to how it works in practice will help them understand the nitty gritty stuff better. Is this problematic in some cases, like with Lemmy? A little bit, yeah. For something like FlohMarkt? I think less so.
(‘normie’ in quotes 'cause I’m not the biggest fan of the term, but it’s a useful shorthand)
- Comment on The 2025 SJW Update: Donations, costs and other points 5 months ago:
I’d also appreciate an official update of this at some point (I’d be fine with end of Feb for the first update). What I have right now is some napkin math, as someone who sucks at math:
Ko-Fi: About $401.60 at the time of this post ($160 x 2.51)
Librepay - I made an assumption based on remaining weeks in 2025 last time, but idk if that’s actually how it works, so I’m changing it to a full calendar 52 weeks here (if someone has a source on how librepay comes to the per week figure, let me know, because I do know it takes lump sums and divides it to add to a weekly value): 28.66 x 52 = $1490.32
Assuming this is all 100% accurate, puts current total at $1891.92, about 55% of the proposed 2025 budget.
Please do not take this as gospel - I think I’m in the right ballpark but that Librepay per week thing is throwing me for loop. I think Ko Fi is more straight forward and the $160 is not a per week goal thing