“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

-George Bernard Shaw

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • I’ve seen people argue the real numbers of the decline for China are much worse than they have shared and they may already be past the point of no return like Japan and South Korea. It’s going to be interesting to see how they handle an aging population.

    Asia does have a more recent tradition of kids being the retirement plan so they might fair a little better than places like the US where that is not the norm anymore. The US with their infrastructure crumbling from underfunding and a general lack of care, should provide a good side by side comparison of the ride down with the differences of family versus industry support of seniors.



  • This seems to be the model I’ve witnessed with many apps over the years. Free at first to get traction and users, then ads, then pay one time fee to get rid of ads, then subscription to keep using the app.

    Then there are those that wouldn’t even pay a single fee and get upset at the thought as everything should be free.

    The part that is upsetting is the contributions the early community made is monetized when they were they there for the benefit of the community.

    I do see there are costs to maintaining and updating these apps so I can understand a need to keep revenue flowing for these future costs. The one time payment is a hell of a deal for years with updates to accommodate the revisions needed for each system update let alone functionality improvements.

    In the old days we would buy software for our PC and that was it. There wasn’t really any updates or further support for newer versions of Windows. The software would become very insecure or just stop functioning altogether with enough changes to windows.

    It’s hard to find the right balance. I know I only want to pay once, or heck never, but I want these upgrades and updates too.



  • I’m glad to see this. I was mostly a lurker at the old place for over 10 years.

    Creating posts and commenting at times was difficult and often they were deleted due to some rule or issue. The worst was when users would message to let me know the post had been deleted and they knew due to some other form of the site they were using.

    In all my years of managing Forums before this period it wasn’t that hard to create new topics and participate so I gave up.

    I started lurking here at Lemmy then starting seeing this theme about user engagement going down and not enough content. When I would end up back at the old place after a Google search on something I could see the volume number differences between lemmy and there so I decided to try posting again.

    So far it’s been a lot easier especially in sh1tposting. I did run into a couple of hiccups but overall it’s been a lot easier.

    I’ll enjoy it while it lasts as over time with more users things will change, at least for now the posts are not drowning in comments by the thousands yet. I can keep up with that. It kind of reminds me of my old forum days in the early 2000s.


  • For me it’s a big F you to HP and it has been that way for a many years now. I loved their HP 4250 series laser printers for work. Those things were work horses, almost every part could be replaced, and the toner was cheap for what it put out. I had various HP multifunctions after and they were just garbage. Updates breaking them and disabling them. Not being able to function without all ink and the ink being very expensive.

    Canon and Epson came in second for me on the F you list. I had some great Canon multifunctions but Canon would just abandon them on the support side. If a windows update came along you would lose the ability to use the printer.

    Epson was a true pain in the ass as the driver would constantly break and need to be reinstalled or it would reinstall itself each update and switch back to the default settings. When dealing with many of them in a office environment it was a hell.

    The one special gem that deserves it’s own place in hell is the Xerox 7855. That was one of the worst POS they ever made. It was a contract service unit. It was always breaking down, there was never a tech available to fix it, and when they did fix it, it was not long before it broke again. We paid a lot up front for the thing.

    We had a office party where we rolled it off the shipping deck in the warehouse into the parking lot below. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. Tears of joy. We never used Xerox again after that.

    The multiple home office brother printers we bought just seemed to work. Next time I need to outfit a factory it will be Brother. I currently have a small brother “inkvestment” multifunctions that works great at home due the little printing I need. Comes with a ton of ink and it was cheaper than replacing the ink in my last printer.




  • In school there was a group of mostly white friends that had a Asian kid in their friends group. His nickname was Nip. I honestly didn’t know his real name as another was never used. It was a few years before I realized the connotation that was there once I started studying history. Not sure if it was a parent or where it came from but most of us at the time had no idea how bad it was. It was just his name and he used it too.

    Then I think of my church going father. One of the kindest men I knew. Never had a bad thing to say about anyone unless it was personal thing based on a issue first hand.

    Race wasn’t on his mind at all. Being from the westcoast in a remote wilderness area most of the demographic was white and native with very few in those days what were called east Indians and Asians mixed in. More the exception if at all.

    He worked for a logging outfit and towards the end of his career he was a logging road grader operator. I recall going down a road that he maintained in a Jeep with him. As I was navigating this rough road the logging trucks pounded constantly he told me to watch out for this large rock that was below the surface. Just the head of the rock was sticking up. He called them " the N word- heads" I was shocked. I knew he wasn’t racist and was friends with the only black church member in town but the word just came out of this mouth as easily as any other word.

    I asked him why he called it that, he said that’s just what they were called. He didn’t continue after that day with me as I don’t think he thought about it until our conversation.

    In some ways I did equate this to the numerous white kids I knew singing the NWA lyrics in school despite not even seeing a black kid before but this was in the 90s. I can still hear those lyrics as I type this.

    Now this isn’t to say kids were not nasty, as they were. There were several unkind things used when talking about the native kids that made up to half the school population and more of that where my family lived.

    Back to my grandfather’s time bonds were formed with the local native bands and friends were made but I’m sure the languaged used at times like “Indian giver” wasn’t connected to the real reality.

    I do fear as I get older I’m falling into one of these traps with gender and identity words. I think as we get older and comfortable with our understanding of the world we have figured out, some aren’t really willing to figure out more.

    Despite interacting and having friends from the older local gay community I’ve not been exposed to anyone that introduces themselves with their name and then their pronouns.

    I’m not sure if we can just call everyone “them” or “they” without offending people? Feels like a good starting place but I’ve not learned yet it this is as bad as the N-word?






  • It seems to also be a switching task issue in our minds. These changes of states takes more effort than playing the next video does or just keeping on what we are doing. It’s so much easier for us to keep playing the digital dopamine slot machine that, TikTok, instagram reels, Facebook and YouTube short videos provide.

    From a business sense they want to keep your attention, from a biology sense we are safe and don’t see a need to move with the random rewards another quick video offers.

    It’s amazing how well they have refined getting and keeping our attention. We also get rewarded with dopamine from the anticipation of the next story or short video. It gets we don’t even really need the next video, just the anticipation is enough to reward us with more dopamine.

    I’ve read doing a simple reverse mental countdown of 5-4-3-2-1 blast off helps us switch gears from another part of the brain. It can also help us get out of bed or off the couch.