I’m 32 and I am constantly baffled by how inevitable we assume social media is. There are constantly articles and videos and blogs and vlogs and insta stories about how instagram and such make us either unhappy by constant comparison, by sucking up our time, by reducing our attention span, or by altering our brain chemistry. And all of this is presented in a way that doesn’t even question whether we… need an instagram account?

When facebook etc started to come around I quite immediately realized that if I started to engage in this, in trying to present myself online or look at others’ presentations of themselves, that would be the end of me. It would suck me in. I stayed away from the beginning and I still have no instagram, facebook, tiktok, etc. I have no account on a platform where I would ever even be able to post pictures or stories of myself. And I am by far not a social outcast, introvert or alternative person. By most accounts I am very average and mainstream and I do just fine without social media (unless you count lemmy or watching some youtube video as social media). I manage to make new friends and even know what is trending without following vlogs and blogs and whatnot.

Like, there is a life - a livable life, a life not on the outskirts of society - where social media just doesn’t play a role. Where you don’t need to consider whether this picture of you is providing too much personal information.

I’m pretty sure that’s what they used to do to be able/allowed to eat meat during lent

I’m not sure what country you are from, but as someone whose vote literally is counted before I even see a ballot, let me tell you, please vote or at least do something. If you don’t like the way politics in your country work, go out and demonstrate. Take it to the streets. Talk to your neighbors, make leaflets. But please don’t just go bitter and sit in your corner because everything is shit anyways. Because this is how we ended up with a lot of the messes we are having now. I “voted” for the first time this year in a rigged election and before that I also always thought the way you do. Democracy is dead, why bother, my vote doesn’t count anyway. But once I stood in this fucking line and smuggled in a non erasable pen and voted and went out knowing no one will even look at this ballot something changed.

Fwiw, I lost about 4 kg of my average weight (That was about 7% of my body weight) when I stopped smoking. A couple of years down the road I also quit drinking which also decreased my average weight by another 4 kg.

(With average weight I take into consideration that I have natural, not dieting related fluctuations of about +/- 1 to 2 kg. The fluctuations are still there but the mean they deviate from is vastly different.)

Maybe I should add that I am still eating about five pounds of sugar a day and I haven’t done sports since 2012, so don’t assume that quitting smoking meant a healthier lifestyle (sadly).

I’m sorry but when I read “pride month is defeated” in the context of a heterosexual engagement my mind immediately assumes the dude is a closeted homosexual who chose her as his beard instead of coming out. And this is how he “defeated pride”. By choosing a heteronormative lifestyle over his actual preferences.

The most optimistic scenario my head can come up with to make the sentence make sense would be that she’s bisexual and because of him she chose to commit to a heteronormative relationship.

In any way, for a lack of a better term, putting your engagement in context of defeating pride makes you look quite gay.

What would be a realistic net worth of a person who earns less than $1 a day and lives habd to mouth for you?

Bro, me too - but for August 2017.

For context, I missed the eclipse in Germany in 1999 because we were visiting family abroad with my mom. So we said back then that we will find a way to see an eclipse. That was before the internet, my dad and sister had VHS taped the event from TV and there was a graph with dates and a map for future eclipses so we kinda knew that sometime in 201x there will be one in the USA.

Fast forward 17 years and we start planning. For us this includes not just an oversea flight and expensive hotels but also getting visas (we’re not German) and finding how to get to the place in the USA that is least likely to be clouded and we both don’t drive.

It was also the first time I ever slept in a tent. I think we ended up in Madras, Oregon. Man I can tell you we were nervous wracks when the weather forecast didn’t look good. But we ended up lucky and had a clear sky after all.

It’s beyond heresy.

Well ok but this ONA has nothing to do with Christianity, they explicitly state it’s a militant Satanic left-hand path occultist network. I mean being Satanic kinda goes hand in hand with heresy.

As with many other occult organisations, the Order shrouds its history in “mystery and legend”, creating a “mythical narrative” for its origins and development. The ONA claims to be the descendant of pre-Christian pagan traditions which survived the Christianisation of Britain and were passed down from the Middle Ages onward in small groups or “temples”

Feel free not to like him, but it seems very biased to assume a 17 year old cannot consent to sexual relations with a 23 year old, but a 18 year old totally can. In the Western world a big majority of people have their first sexual experiences in their teenage years. Naturally, age gaps happen.

On a further note, you might want to look up terms like ephebophilia, hebephilia and pedophilia before accusing people of being pedos. And neither does a victim need to be underage for a perpetrator to be molesting them, nor are child molesters necessarily pedophiles. The majority of child molesters has no pedophilic tendencies.

He is Swedish. The age of consent in Sweden is 15. So there is nothing to “admit” here except that he might have been quite successful in hitting on girls all along.

Well that’s $1000 well spent if she found joy and entertainment and even something like success by being the number one worldwide in this game. I’ve seen much more stupider Guinness world records. And much more stupider ways to spend money.

I assumed she just didn’t want to argue with a toddler who desperately wanted her to wear that. I mean, pick your battles. Save the energy for a bigger one and wear a tinfoil hat. But the present thing would be much more wholesome

It’s a speaking donkey so don’t assume standard donkey laryngeal and//or oral anatomy

That’s where James Acaster’s arch nemesis got all his cabbage to terrorize the poor guy

I just want to use this to thank you for enriching everyday life and such an uncreative time passing as scrolling with interesting and versatile art. I sometimes imagine you being hired by Foster Lipowitz to introduce the masses to art.

And this one - that’s a(nother) picture that will be stuck in my head.

You know we all are so focused on him not being reelected in 2024 that we forget that if he won’t he’ll definitely find a way to run again in 2028 and we have all this hell all over again

Did… Did you just make the post wholesome?

As a parent with a toddler who seems to be light-years away from understanding this concept, when do you think that understanding starts to kick in? Like, what can I expect at age 5 or 7?

Just to be clear, I brought the toddler, they didn’t provide the toddler

More. Definitely more