Unless im sleep deprived or intoxicated, pretty instantly. But although I sleep pretty well, I generally wake up regularly through the night to turn over, flip my pillow etc. So, waking isn’t usually a shock. Maybe if I got woken by an alarm I’d be confused, but generally I wake up a few minutes before my alarm.

Was there a specific event that coincided with the blackout? I don’t know the details of current US events, just that they’re crazy and depressing.

I don’t think I’d feel like I lost a part of me if I my account got banned. But I could imagine feeling pretty angry if it was unfair, and frustration at losing access to save post or conversations with that I still reference.

But I do think an account is a ‘face’, just like in real life. I talk differently at work than with my friend, I speak differently to my boss and my students, and even different friend groups have different ways of talking or humour they enjoy. In that sense my lemmy account talks about some stuff I wouldn’t bring up with certain people, and there’s some stuff I wouldnt post on here.

If you’re trying to blame “stupid consumers” or “evil companies” you’re not thinking about things systemically. Of course, under our current economic system, companies are going to end up exploiting, because there’s lots of pressure to maximise profits, and minimal pressure to avoid decisions that make money but harm society. And consumers are going to make bad decisions, because they live in a society where they are constantly bombarded by advertising and social values that encourage spending and don’t punish buying unnecessary shit.

The naïve (or self-serving) status quo view is “but consumers should know what they can afford, and not waste money. And customers should take their business elsewhere if a company does bad things”. If that’s really what you want to happen, then create a system that incentivizes that - have strict rules on credit and loans, so that people can’t buy takeaway food on credit, enforce strict anti-monopoly measures so that there lots of genuine alternatives for consumers to turn to, have requirements for news media to inform the public about all the actions that companies take that are harmful to the environment, their workers, or the general population (and make clear who are their competitors, and only those alternatives that aren’t owned by the same conglomerate), and so on…

If someone promotes a system that relies on “personal responsibility” but doesn’t promote tools that facilitiate that responsibility, then they are being disingenuous.

AI bot, check the post history

My experience in the UK was the gruyère was a bit bland as a cheese. But since moving to France that’s changed completely. Gruyère can be of widly different qualities and aged for different times for very different end flavours. The opposite is true of cheddar, which in Britain is a big spectrum of flavours and textures, but often in France is a pretty bland ‘burger cheese slice’ affair.

I’m not sure if they’re what you’re looking for, but their are various little mental exercises you can do depending on what your trying to achieve.

Relaxing visualisations - if I’m trying to sleep and I’m too worked up about something to relax, I close my eyes and visualise a peaceful scene, e.g. being on a warm tropical beach, the heat of the sun lulling me to sleep, the gentle lapping of the ocean… It doesn’t always put me immediately to sleep, but it helps get my brain out of the problem-solving stress mode.

Sensory engagement - if I’m feeling anxious and getting stuck in a panicky loop, I try to engage my senses. Notice four things around you that you can see, three you can hear, two that you can smell, and a texture you can touch (a stone wall, your jacket’s fabric). This works well because when I’m stressed my brain doesn’t want to be told to “calm down”, it’s trying to warn me of danger. So instead of forcing some relaxation, I engage my senses, checking my surroundings, and generally there is no danger, just the hubub of normal life. This reminds my lizard brain that although being worried about missing a deadline is stressful, I’m not in immediate physical danger and should calm tf down.

Sense of perspective - when we are in an emergency our sense of time shrinks so we only focus on the immediate problem. As we relax, we become better able to consider the larger future. This is great in a crisis, but also leads to dumb overreactions. So, if something goes wrong, and in the grand scheme of things it’s actually not a big deal, but to me right now it feels like the worst, I use this technique. I visualise my surroundings and then begin zooming out, viewing my self from above, seing the room and then the building, the pulling out like a map tool, seeing the area, the country, the globe. I sometimes continue, visualising the solar system and the milky way. After that, it feels a lot easier to shrug and accept that whatever embaressment or frustration felt like it was going to ruin my day is, in fact, just not that important.

Was hearing something from an English literature professor recently. He was arguing that we were on track to have a new cultural renaissance, because historically cultural transformations have come when the ‘guardians of culture’ (the tastesetters, the academy, etc) spend all their time in ever increasing arcane and self-referential debates. Then groups from outside of the cultural institutional power start doing something very new and vibrant and it ends up transforming cultural expression.

I guess the downside is that even ‘soon’ in this context could be 50 years, and it’s quite likely you won’t recognise or like what the new art when it emerges. Renaissance art is beautiful, but at the time it was seen as base and anti-intellectual, taking the abstract symbolism of medieval art and replacing it with “this statue of a guy looks reeeealllly like a irl guy doesn’t it!” Uhh, well done Michaelangelo, I can see a naked guy whenever I go to the baths, what does your ‘art’ say about his place is the cosmic order, his eternal destiny and the state of his soul?

Nothing surprising in there for me (although I’ve met some people who would benefit from reading it…) but then I started reading it from the perspective of self-talk.

I know I wouldn’t accuse someone with adhd of “always overreacting” and I’d never tell them "you’d have so much potential if you just try harder.” But I wonder how often I think that to myself, and how little good it does…

Had a quick search on Google scholar, lots of stuff comparing general rates of engagement with hobbies in different countries, especially linked to helping older people. Thiscompares some countries, and observes that both wealth and wealthy inequality lead to less engagement with hobbies (which is why the US is relatively low).

I found this one that discusses how covid impacted different types of hobbies in various countries, but I couldn’t see a quick table of hobby prevalence. Just comments about stuff like cooking being more affected by covid in anglophone and Hispanic countries.

It’s worth giving it a go! Here’s a recipe that bakes a foccacia at 200°. At worst it’ll be less than perfect, but it’ll definitely be edible!

It would be helpful to know what you’re baking? It might be cooking longer at lower temperature, but it might also be about adjusting the size (a larger cake is usually cooked at a lower temperature to allow the centre to cook before the outside over-browns).

While it’s absolutely true that baking is a strict formula, I don’t agree that not reaching a given temperature means it’s necessarily doomed. It might achieve a somewhat different outcome, but for a whole bunch of baked goods a lower or higher temperature with adjusted time will produce something perfectly acceptable.

As you say, most people have no idea what temperature their oven actually produces, or fail to adjust for the strength of fan assist or placement in the oven. Sometimes this leads to frustration and failure, but many delicious cookies have been baked with imprecission.

I’ve got some tiles on my keys and my earbud case. I’m mostly pretty good with my keys (thy have hook hy the front door), but for the occasional time I’ve need to find them in a rush and they aren’t where they should be the tile has been very helpful. The ear bud one I use multiple times a week, and before I had it I’d regularly waste hours searching through my clothes and bags looking for my headphones (only to find that they fallen off the table and were now in a shoe or something).

So, if you’re prone to misplacing stuff they’re amazing. But if you never lose stuff then I doubt they’ll be very helpful.

I might be a soyboy but at least I’m not fashy.

But don’t we have lots of insults for other categories of people? People call people soyboys, incels, tankies, fashy, bible thumper, nepo babies or basement dweller.

Aren’t those just the modern version of “jocks” and “limeys” (I went for those because I’m Scottish and British, you can mentally fill in the alternatives…)

I’ve not noticed that in particular yet. but it might be because I block accounts that don’t add constructively to the comments, so maybe I’m not seeing a lot of the worst behaviour.

I’d say, post as often as you can be bothered and make interesting content. I rarely pay attention to the username beside a post, so I’m unlikely to judge that it’s the same person who posts 99% of posts in a less popular community. But if I see lots of examples of posts on a topic, it’s easier for me to remember about it and think “I’ll post there”.

What interface/appnare you using? On boost its exactly the same process for upvotes or downvotes. I don’t think an extra step would make any difference, I don’t downvote very often and when I do it’s because I think it’s worth doing.

I feel like “going viral” partly covers that? When you make an offensive tweet before boarding a plane, and get turn off flight mode to realise the world has judged you and you’ve lost your job?

If you specifically mean how the Internet can misrepresented a country because most people online have never been to Montenegro or Bhutan, then it’s maybe just “bias”?