Cracks_InTheWalls
@Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on What's the point in getting married? 18 hours 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 3 days 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 ❤️ 2 weeks 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. 2 weeks 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 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 1 month 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? 2 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? 2 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' 2 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' 2 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 2 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 2 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
- Comment on The 2025 SJW Update: Donations, costs and other points 2 months ago:
Between both, and keeping in mind the Liberapay donors may be doing recurring contributions rather than a lump sum for the year (so may need to stop if something comes up for them), we’re looking at about $960 give or take for 2025 so far. Nice!
- Comment on The 2025 SJW Update: Donations, costs and other points 2 months ago:
If you want to see what that looks like in the relevant context here (Canada), check out what lemmy.ca is doing (fedecan.ca). Would be curious if there’s non-Canadian instances taking this approach too.
I assume there’s at least some tax benefits/less of a tax liability to TheDude if doing this, but likely requires an additional level of support from folks too for the adminstrative aspects of that.
- Comment on The 2025 SJW Update: Donations, costs and other points 2 months ago:
Checked it out, it is truly tesh.it. Definitely a nice lookin’ frontend!
- Comment on The 2025 SJW Update: Donations, costs and other points 2 months ago:
Reading some deets:
Liberapay - does not take a cut of payments, the service is funded by donations to its own account. However, there are payment processing fees. The fees vary by payment processor, payment methods, countries, and currencies. In the last year, the average fee percentages have been 3.1% for the payments processed by Stripe and 5.1% for the payments processed by Paypal.Ko-fi - No fee for one-off donations (editorial: FUCK), 5% platform fee to use premium features/become a Ko-Fi contributor (basically to give Ko-Fi a cut in exchange for premium Ko-Fi features for TheDude and co)
- Comment on [sh.it.post] We're #5! We're #5! 2 months ago:
Hey, much respect to that.
- Comment on [sh.it.post] We're #5! We're #5! 2 months ago:
I just want to take a moment to say your username is amazing.
- Comment on [sh.it.post] We're #5! We're #5! 2 months ago:
See, everyone is coming in and talking about different means of measuring instances, the implications for the fediverse and the position of federated services against corporate monoliths like reddit.
But you, verity - you get it.
- Comment on [sh.it.post] We're #5! We're #5! 2 months ago:
So!? We’re #5! Or 4! Or something!
(Not everything needs a point - I just felt like posting this. Though it does look like it’s started a discussion about the relative size of lemmy and different instances, which is neat to think about once in a while - or disheartening depending on your perspective)
- Comment on [sh.it.post] We're #5! We're #5! 2 months ago:
Man, I just wanted to chant “We’re #5”, now I have people coming at me with facts. :p
(Jokes aside, I appreciate it. There’s nuance to these metrics and what best accounts for ‘size’, particularly for those cases/services where the metrics reflect a little bugginess anyway)
- Comment on [sh.it.post] We're #5! We're #5! 2 months ago:
I mean this is the ideal. Most of the time I’m right there with ya. I’m just really attached to this instance - doesn’t mean that others are bad for not being on this (upon review, actually somewhat problematic) list.
- Comment on [sh.it.post] We're #5! We're #5! 2 months ago:
Huh, you’re right. In fairness this is cropped from an image shared on the AskLemmy .ml thread, so I’m not 100% sure what’s going on there.
- Submitted 2 months ago to main@sh.itjust.works | 95 comments
- Comment on The State of Lemmy (drama) 3 months ago:
Wait, you’re American?! Fuck you! blocked
Kidding, of course - you’re one of my favourites too. Think you could’ve chosen your words more carefully in the OP exchange - jealousy is a bit of a trigger word, it’s more than the U.S.’ reputation internationally is … sketchy, even before the last periods of particular sketchiness. But some people just expand this to all individual Americans, which isn’t fair - most Americans I’ve met are just normal people just as bewildered as the rest of us are at the state of the world (and the U.S’ place in it).
- Comment on Announcing FediMeteo – Weather in the Fediverse! 3 months ago:
Year of the Linux storm.
- Comment on Shit Post 3 months ago:
I’m embarassed about how often I think about this chart.
- Comment on What do people (as in, IRL) actually think of the [alleged] perpetrator involved in the NYC shooting? 4 months ago:
So far, it’s mostly been these points:
- Murder is wrong. Thompson should not have been murdered.
- Nevertheless, this was bound to happen eventually, and [people I’ve talked to about it are] not upset that Thompson is dead.
- Comment on People born after 2000 have never seen the cosmic microwave background on their TV set. 5 months ago:
On a CRT? Sure, probably a lot haven’t seen it. On a modern TV? Still possible for some - mine does this if I hit the channel button rather than volume accidentally.
