cobysev @ cobysev @lemmy.world

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549

Joined

2 yr. ago

Years ago, when I learned that World of Warcraft allowed you to either speak in common tongue or your character's native racial tongue, I would park my night elf in capital cities and shout in Darnassian about how night elves are superior to all other races. Got a lot of LOLs from other night elves.

There was one low-level night elf who popped up once to rant back in Darnassian about how dwarves were the superior race. Guess someone made a new character to see what all the shouting was about and got offended. We had a pretty fun debate over the characteristics of both races, and it came down to personal preference by the end.

I miss old WoW.

This is the only way I can watch them. I don't want to waste several days watching a film a night. Give me the whole epic from start to finish in one sitting! My ADHD hyperfocus will help me power through it, as long as I have enough drinks and food prepared.

Add in The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit at the beginning and you have a pretty full day. The Tolkien Edit is a fan edit that removes all the fluff that's not in the books and combines the Hobbit trilogy into one 4-hr film.

The Air Force got me by mentioning that college was practically free (became 100% free a couple years into my service) and that my job training counted toward a degree in my field. Also, I would get food and housing allowances on top of my paycheck, so I could afford to live anywhere they stationed me without spending my own paycheck on bills and food. Plus, free travel around the world on the govt's dime.

I also was given the option to retire and collect a pension for life after only 20 years served, which I took advantage of. At 38 years old, I retired and now I don't need to work anymore. Granted, my wife and I both earned 100% disability from our military service, which pays out more than my pithy 20-yr pension and allows us to be fully retired. But still, the military took pretty good care of me while I was in.

I'll admit though, I signed up one month before 9/11 happened, and as soon as the planes hit the World Trade Center, my first thought was, "Fuck... I just signed up to die in some foreign war." Thankfully, I survived that conflict; although my disability rating might suggest otherwise...

I love Xena! It's technically a '90s show, but it fits with the '80s Sword & Sorcery theme pretty well.

I've always been fascinated with the '80s Sword & Sorcery genre; e.g. Willow, Conan the Barbarian (the Schwarzenegger versions), Deathstalker 1-4, Labyrinth, The Beastmaster, Red Sonja, The Neverending Story trilogy, Dragonslayer, Masters of the Universe, Ladyhawke, etc. Just to name a few.

I dunno why they fascinate me so much. I'm a very outdoorsy kind of person and I guess I like the simplicity of the medieval settings and lifestyle. Living freely off the land, going on grand adventures in undiscovered realms, fighting against evil forces who want to rule the world, and a hint of magic to make it that much more interesting.

Plus, the sets and costume design were pretty simple back then. I feel like I could probably make my own Sword & Sorcery films in my forested backyard and they'd turn out just about the same quality. I actually enjoy going to Renaissance fairs every summer, just because it feels like I stepped into one of those old classic films.

When I was living in Europe for a few years, I joined the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), which is a global organization that reenacts pre-17th century lifestyles. Since I was in Europe at the time, we would actually rent out castles and would spend weekends living like medieval peasants and/or nobles, and learning all sorts of primitive trades like blacksmithing and tailoring. It was a ton of fun! Sword & Sorcery films just take that a step further, with action/adventure and fantasy elements mixed in.

It's being sold via ConcernedApe on that Steam page I linked in my previous comment. So he's earning the money from sales.

Uhh... I guess it's not technically DLC, but ConcernedApe is selling the game soundtrack for $5 on Steam. It's in the game's DLC category, but unlike some other soundtracks on Steam, it's not dependent on owning the base game to purchase.

But it's also downloadable content, so it is DLC... I guess it depends on how you want to define DLC nowadays.

If one soccer player passes the ball to another and they score is that manipulating the system? It's playing the game by the rules. What is the alternative to people dropping out of the primary? Should they be forced to keep running even if it's clear they won't win?

This is a bad analogy. A better one would be that a soccer player was kicked from the game for a penalty, but as they're leaving the field - while the game is still active - they kick the ball to one of their own players who then scores the winning goal. That's totally unfair; the penalized player was already out of the game and shouldn't be influencing it further, more or less helping to score the winning goal.

A truly democratic election would allow for all voters to be informed and making their own logical choice for president. But instead, we have millions of uninformed voters who are clinging to every word of whatever candidate they happen to associate with first. And when that person doesn't make the cut, they throw their support behind another specific candidate still in the running. Instead of telling their constituents to make informed, logical decisions on their next choice of candidate, they're leading their flock of followers to whomever they're being paid to support after dropping out. And you know these guys are being paid to push certain party-approved candidates. I mean, we just recently learned that the DNC specifically pushed out all their legit candidates so they could throw support behind Biden and crush Bernie.

I don't think this is very democratic. It's misleading at best. But until a majority of people actually take the time to properly research candidates, it's the corrupt system we're stuck with.

I may be in the minority, but I kinda enjoy hearing Aloy muttering to herself throughout the game. Partly because I catch myself doing it all the time, so I don't feel alone in the practice.

But also because I know the voice actress for Aloy (Ashly Burch) as Ash in the YouTube series, Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'? and to this day, it's still amazing to me to hear her speaking so deadpan seriously. I'm used to her Ash character basically being an animated, loudmouthed wildcard, not this dramatic, serious character. And I kind of enjoy knowing that Ashly has a bit of range to her acting; she's not some kid who repeats the same YouTube personality she became famous for; she can actually act.

Doesn't matter where you start; like the old-fashioned food pyramid, the whole chart lists everything you need to be healthy and well-rounded in life, with the larger-sized portions indicating that you need more of it.

Have you ever tried to drive a tank through soft muddy terrain? Those tanks will sink into the muck at the bottom and be stuck.

Be careful... Don't just click "Reject All." There's a category called "Legitimate Interest" that will still be enabled.

It was meant to be a way for websites to collect relevant data for adjusting content to your interests, but it's been so loosely defined in legal requirements that literally any advertiser could pull your personal data through that category and use it however they want. This legal loophole is how websites continue to collect data and build profiles on you without violating the law. And clicking "Reject All" won't disable anything in that category.

As much as it sucks, you still need to review all categories and manually change your advertising settings, then click "save preferences" (or however it's specifically worded) instead of just clicking "Reject All."

Same here. I exclusively browsed Reddit via app on my phone and tablet. After watching my wife struggle with the official Reddit app, I decided I would never use it. So when that became the only option, I decided it was time to move on to Lemmy.

Besides, I'm very anti-advertisement and Reddit has turned very corporate lately, looking for every way to make a buck at our expense. So I'm done supporting that site. Information and community discussion should be freely accessible, not buried behind paywalls, awards, and advertisements.

That might've been a shot before he was hit. The gunman fired off multiple rounds and Trump didn't immediately react. Plus, the bullet that hit him caught his upper ear. That one looks too low.

[...] I don't think YouTube is even profitable for them.

Correct. Even Google, one of the richest companies in the world, is struggling to afford the massive infrastructure required to run YouTube. That's why they've been cracking down on ad-blocking software lately.

Also, this is likely why they've been pushing their new updated Chromium-based infrastructure for web browsers, which will prevent ad-blockers from working on websites. If you're not using Firefox or Safari to browse the Internet by now, you should switch. They're the only independent browsers not using the Chromium framework.

American here, who has spent about a decade living in various countries around the world.

The biggest problem with my fellow Americans is that we're raised in an isolated country, which only borders two other countries (Canada and Mexico). And our country is so massive, probably 90% of Americans don't live anywhere near either country border.

Crossing borders is a big deal too; it's not like Europe where you can be driving and suddenly see a sign welcoming you to a new country. There are checkpoints, blockades, passports, regular inspections, etc. Especially since 9/11 happened, our borders have become even more locked down. Plus, going anywhere else requires expensive plane tickets to fly over the oceans.

This leads to most Americans having no social interactions with foreigners most of the time. We're fully ingrained in our own culture bubble and we don't get a lot of interaction with other cultures, outside of stereotypes through pop culture.

Combine this with the fact that we're taught from childhood that we're the "greatest nation on Earth," and you get an entire culture of entitled, narcissistic jerks who think the American way is the best way.

Our education has been failing for decades now, thanks to politicians on both sides of the aisle realizing that we're more easily manipulated if we're less educated. So there's this race to the bottom, where we're being fed lies and embellishments about how great America is and how we're this amazing country that the rest of the world looks up to and admires.

With this entitled world view, it makes Americans scared when foreigners come to our country because we only know of their culture through stereotypes and we fear their culture taking over our "amazing and most perfect country." Just as we've stepped into other countries and spread our own democracy, we're afraid other nations will attempt to do the same to us.

It doesn't help that we have an entire political party who maintains their voter base through fear mongering about foreigners taking our jobs, stealing our women, and destroying our "great culture" for their "backwards and corrupt" values. It's complete lunacy, but to the average American who has no regular contact with the outside world, it seems plausible.

So yeah, a lot of Americans get uncomfortable when foreigners speak their native language around us instead of English. They tend to find it rude at best, and offensive/dangerous at worst. And some of the worst Americans travel abroad and expect everyone to essentially worship the ground they walk on, so they get offended when other people don't know or speak English. It's a really messed up world view, but it's hard to change when we live such isolated lives.

My name's Coby. Close enough. People call me Colby all the time.

I used to use Gboard. I still do, but I used to as well.

It used to be my default. Every time I got a new android device, I would immediately install Gboard before doing anything else.

But lately, it's been garbage. It's been getting words wrong that I never had problems with previously. It randomly capitalizes normal words in the middle of sentences and I can't seem to train it not to do that. Like "Ever" is the standard capitalization now. I need to manually fix it every time I use that word.

It's been forgetting my name, which is annoying because I have a very unique first and last name and I had previously trained it to swipe my name.

It's also just sticking with variations of a suggested word instead of giving me words in the same swipe area to select. Like if I swipe "food" and it autocorrects with "good," my options to correct the autocorrect are things like "goodness," "goody," "God," etc.

I'm trying to de-Google my life right now, so finding a new digital keyboard seems like a good idea. I'm gonna try some of the suggestions in this thread. I am definitely NOT recommending Gboard.

Thinking in terms of words and sentences always felt really slow and tiring, so I took the "picture is worth 1,000 words" metaphor literally and just visualize thoughts instead of using words. I could spend a few seconds/minutes piecing together a scene or conversation with words, or I could just instantly see it in my mind and have an innate understanding of the concept or situation, almost immediately.

Of course, this makes it harder for me to communicate verbally (especially since I'm an introvert), so I've had to spend years practicing conversations out loud. And since I think in terms of images, I'm basically translating visuals to words every time I open my mouth. So I can be a bit awkward and fumble over words sometimes. I spent a lot of my youth just lost in my own head, because dealing with the real world was like trying to translate a foreign language in real time. It was exhausting, so I was just the quiet kid growing up. Kept to myself, for the most part, and just absorbed information about my surroundings.

In the novel Hannibal Rising, they explain Lector Hannibal's brilliant mind as a sort of visual hallway, with many rooms branching off of it. Any time he needs information, he takes a mental stroll down the hall and into the various rooms, where he's filed away all sorts of knowledge. It's how he can recollect fine details about almost everything he's exposed to; he visualizes filing it away in a particular room in his mind, so he can go back to retrieve it anytime he wants.

I always loved that concept of a visual recollection, but I feel it's too complicated a visual for myself in particular. It takes time to take that mental stroll down a hallway and go through files in my mind, so I keep it simpler and try to just jump right to the visual I need. If I can't find it, then I can't find it. Trying to keep mental files of everything just seems like way too much work for me, even if it would work as a shortcut to memory recollection.

When puberty first struck me (about 25 years ago now), I found myself in a strange battle for control over my mind. I felt split in two directions: my intellectual side, which I felt was my true self. And my instinctual self; the impulses that tried to betray the strict moral compass I had in place. Almost a sort of Jekyll and Hyde thing, now that I think about it.

I actually had a mini-struggle with this concept of a mental "self" when I was in elementary school. I was obsessive about details and had to do things in a particularly structured way. But I noticed that my peers were very lax about details and just did the bare minimum to accomplish tasks, sometimes very messily. It bothered me, and I spent several weeks agonizing over whether I should relinquish control and just be a messy, disorganized person like my peers, or if I should keep suffering under my mental structure and discipline. I didn't want to stop hyperfixating on minor details, but I felt like life would be less stressful if I could just give up trying and go with the flow. Little did I know I was already suffering from ADHD, even way back then. I wasn't even diagnosed until I was 37 years old.

But as I started to mature both physically and mentally, that split between being "normal" and being "organized" became my instinctual and intellectual sides, and I spent many years fighting to hold true to my morals and personal beliefs. ADHD won in the end, and I refused to give in to my instinctual impulses all my life. And the older I get, the easier it is. As my hormones and testosterone cool off with age, I get less impulsive drives. I'm more careful and more patient, with less effort.

In regards to OP's mental "depths"... I don't like to avoid topics just because they give me a negative vibe or emotion. I'm a realist, and I've always wanted to understand the world I live in, including the good and bad. I don't want to trick myself into a false understanding of the world; I want to see it as it truly is, so there's no misunderstanding a situation I find myself in.

So unlike OP, who has layers of their mind where they tuck away negative thoughts, I prefer to process and deal with them up front, come to some level of understanding, and then file them away. Once I've processed it, then it doesn't hurt me as much in the future and I'm able to deal with it in the moment without freezing up or suffering from emotional reactions when I least expect it.

It makes me more adept at handling real-world situations as they come at me. Which was really handy when I served in the US military. When you're being attacked by an enemy force, you don't have time to be horrified at the carnage around you; you need to be present in the moment and focused on the next step to survival. If something truly shocking happens, I can set that thought aside while I focus on what needs to be accomplished first. Once everything's said and done, then I can sit down and process that shocking situation I dealt with.

TL;DR - I visualize thoughts instead of speaking or forming words in my head, because it's much faster. Also, my ADHD mind is a battlefield, wrestling for organization over impulses. ALSO also, I'm a realist who prefers to process everything up front, good and bad, instead of just tucking away negative thoughts and emotions and not dealing with them.

Meh, don't feel confined to the sidewalk. Be adventurous. There's a path to the left there, where others have continued their walk.