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Joined 26 days ago
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Cake day: August 18th, 2025

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  • Gen X here. My mother (boomer, hippie) would have friends over and they’d smoke, they’d send the friend’s kid up to my room, upstairs and around the corner. Didn’t matter if the door was open or closed, they were in the makeshift den (converted garage) stoned outta their gourds. I had a few girls up, and I remember one flashing me and being nervous about it. Looking back I think she was giving me a hint, somewhere between “I wanna see yours” and “come get this.” But I was a dumb teenage boy and I think I just played on the Nintendo or the computer (had both in my bedroom). But yeah, had a few girls up there, and it didn’t matter if we had the door open or closed, if we wanted to hook up, our parents wouldn’t have known (except my bedroom was directly above the garage, though my mother would also play her records, so maybe they wouldn’t have heard thumping).

    Straight guy, but again, I wasn’t really interested in hooking up in those days. And when I say “friend’s kid” I mean boys or girls, as young as 5 or 6 and as old as 16 or 17. I was 13-15 when I lived there. If it was a little kid, I was designated the babysitter and would entertain the kid. I was pretty good at it. Only one or twice was it a girl my age. About half the time it was a boy, and about 3/4 of the time they were way too young — not that I was really into girls, or enough to try to make a move even if they were the right age. They were all, as the guy says in Fight Club about airplane neighbors, “disposable friends.” Or was it “single-use”? So I never made a move on the girls my age; whether they were attractive to me or not, we just played Nintendo or computer games or looked at comic books or something.




  • There’s a community here on Lemmy that I used to follow, something like “share anime art.” It’s all AI generated. Or at least, the user who is keeping it going is just posting that. They are not being disingenuous; while they don’t tag it as AI (that I have seen), they DO include the prompt, which is pretty transparent in my book. Nothing against that user at all.

    In fact, the art looks pretty official. That said… it maybe looks too perfect? Official art usually has copyright tags in the lower right corner. The prompt specifically avoids any kind of copyright or artist tags. Fan art typically does have tags of some kind.

    If someone were trying to fool me, they probably could. AI art has gotten to that point. But at this point, my old ass just doesn’t trust anything without verifying. I was among the first on the Web and we didn’t trust it then. There was a time when we grew to trust the Web. Now we can’t trust it again and that’s fine with me. I’ve always tried to be genuine, but I also wouldn’t recommend anyone blindly trust me, either. Just take everything with a grain of salt and it’s fine.


  • I have something like that on my iPhone, except it’s like 150GB of media (it’s a 512GB phone).

    I have a lot more on my Plex server. But, sometimes I’m without Internet and it’s nice to be able to queue up a favorite video or movie without worrying about my network connection.

    If you only have 10GB, any phone should work. A newer one will have faster data rates than a flash drive. iPhones are guaranteed to. Good Android phones use UFS 3.0 or better which is only slower than what’s in an iPhone on paper. In real usage you won’t really see a difference. Plus, you have a screen on it so you can watch whenever. I mean the cheap phones now start at like 64GB, iPhones and probably Android flagships start at 128GB, even from a few years ago. So it’s plenty of space and it’s also emulators and books and whatever else you wanna throw on it. Oh yeah, music too.


  • Yeah, I know about Telegram’s limitations. Been using it for ages, just to chat with my wife since she uses Android and I’m on an iPhone, and I don’t do social media. It was the best way for us to message back and forth and we haven’t moved off of it.

    I have Matrix, Signal, and Session as well. Nobody chats me up on them but I keep them as options because why not? My phone has 512GB. Most is music and video. Apps are nothing to me.


  • IANAP but it seems like it would be trivial for a client app to do. Look at the combined vote weight (e.g. -8 + 4 = -4) and if it’s below user inputted threshold, don’t display it.

    That said, Lemmy isn’t Reddit. When I see a post with a negative score, I can sometimes see why it’s not popular, but it’s seldom straight up garbage, and I can still vote accordingly. Never used the feature on Reddit because I’ve been brigaded by entire communities for acknowledging that their favorite show’s latest season exists (it’s not Game of Thrones, but similar energy), and I don’t think people should have the right to censor others; I believe each person should have the right to choose what they see.


  • What resistance? It seems to me that there is not one big organised resistance that is taking members.

    Find a local event and network but be careful about it. The US had that “no kings” thing early in the summer (or before?). That was just a bunch of people against tyranny. No real organisation to it. So you’d go to something like that and just talk to people.

    It helps if you have an anonymous way to chat. Something like Signal or Matrix or one of the others. Even Telegram would be better than using something public or corporate-backed, like SMS for the former or WhatsApp for the latter. But be careful with Telegram, read up on it, it’s not a solid recommendation but it’s better than nothing. Fortunately there are alternatives. Even if the other person isn’t tech savvy — you probably are by being on Lemmy. So, show them the way.

    Occasionally contact them through anonymous chat, just see how they’re doing, and discuss future plans.

    Also, aside from demonstrations, places where like minded people meet. For the authoritarians and conservatives, that’s church, the local BBQ spot, and other, more obvious groups. I feel like they feel they can operate more openly since the US president is one of them. Used to be, these guys wore masks and were hidden, joining them wasn’t about finding them, they’d find you, that kind of thing. Nowadays it’s all out in the open. But I think liberals and progressives have meeting places, too. In response to church, for example, you should know that The Satanic Temple is not about devil worship, they’re about resisting Christian imperialism. They’re the ones fighting churches trying to get the Ten Commandments posted in every classroom. I’m religiously neutral, so they do not interest me, but they’re certainly an option. For the anti-theist/“hard atheist,” they’re a good option.


  • Might be niche, but I was reading the manga for The Promised Neverland and said they should get Erica Mendez for the voice of Emma based on her performance as Konno Yuuki from Sword Art Online II. Lo and behold they cast her!

    Also when Fallout 3 or maybe New Vegas was the newest Fallout, I said they should add a settlement system. I said after the main story the existing settlements should face ongoing assault from raiders, ghouls, and other enemies and you should be able to shore up the walls, add turrets, hire more guards, and outfit them with better weapons and armor. A lot of people said that would be too complicated. Then Fallout 4 came out and they did just that.



  • From back then? The Lonesome Jubilee by John Cougar Mellencamp.

    These days I just use Apple Music. Costs less than Spotify, pays artists more, and doesn’t finance the alt right. (Well except for that dumb participation trophy Tim Cook gave Trump.) Anyway, I pay for music because I love music, and I neither smoke nor drink, so it’s like, my vice, I suppose. That and coffee.

    Anyway, I have access to all the music I had back then and since on the handheld Mac phone I carry in my pocket.


  • We didn’t think about the absence of things we’re didn’t have. It’s easy to look back and say “I could have gotten away with so much” but we didn’t think about it.

    Your whole life being recorded was a thing for my generation (X)… if you were rich. Rich families had video cameras and they did record all kinds of things. Birthday parties, holidays, vacations, and so on. We saw cameras. We either tried to avoid them, or tried to flip them off — so the cameras avoided us. They didn’t wanna see the poors anyway. And for the most part, they were, and mostly did their filming, in places you couldn’t go if you/your parents worked for a living.