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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • I don’t think I ever blocked anyone on reddit, but I’ve been pretty block happy on lemmy. Mostly because it’s a smaller community. With reddit, it was easy enough to unsubscribe from the big popular communities and focus on my niche interests and rigorously modded communities like askHistorians. That way I mostly saw stuff that was genuinely interesting to me. And if someone was annoying, they were just one voice among thousands.

    Here on lemmy, there’s not enough activity to be overly selective, and I actually enjoy the casual vibe of asklemmy, showerthoughts and nostupidquestions. While I’d never visit their reddit counterparts, here the community is small and it feels more personal. But this also means that there’s the occasional poster who I’d rather just not have to see. So, to keep my time on lemmy enjoyable, I block them.

    I don’t really think it’s a big deal, I don’t even think it’s a criticism of those posters. It’s really just that the content of their posts / comments are something that doesn’t add value to my experience. I’ve blocked well-intentioned, but obviously teenage, users because I’m not interested in their personal life questions (but they’re entitled to ask!); I blocked someone just for posting too many moth memes when I was getting sick of that fad.

    I’m pretty sure I’ve never blocked anyone for disagreeing with me or my beliefs, but if someone seems like their trolling, or simply has such poor social communication skills that they are coming across that way, I’ll block them. I generally look at users history and check if I’m likely to miss anything in the future. But invariably, the type of user I consider blocking generally has a bunch of dumb, negative or uninteresting comments and posts.


  • As others have said, if it’s a niche hobby lemmy is probably too small to see a lot of activity. Depending on what you’re envisaging, maybe posting on bigger general communities like c/music is more likely to get responses and interest.

    But if you are interested in starting a community, go for it! If it’s small, there’s not really going to be any issues with moderation (or that’s been my experience at least). And if anything does come up there are places here to ask for advice and guidance. But the main issue is that you’ll probably need to promote the community and do a lot of posting without much response until it grows. If that sounds hard, then just post to bigger, appropriate communities and get people interested, and maybe later a specific community had arise once it’s needed.


  • I’d agree with the other poster that maybe setting moderation goals would be a really good first step. I guess it depends if you’re aiming for less masturbation, less porn, or less specific types of porn. And it depends on what level you currently find problematic.

    For some people the problems with the addictivness of porn are linked to the dopamine hits of modern Internet porn, searching for the perfect thing, changing to newer / different stuff frequently. The a first step might be to continue to use porn when you need to, but your only allowed a single fairly tame video that you’ve downloaded. Eventually it’ll feel boring and you’ll it’s not really just porn your craving, it’s the whole dopamine hunt.

    It’s why vapes work so well for many people in giving up smoking. Nicotine is physically addictive and hard to resists, but also just getting your nicotine without all the other fun parts of cigarettes quickly makes it feel less tempting. It’s much easier to give up something meh than something you’re obsessed with.


  • With any addiction or habit you want to change the most important part is not expecting it to just be done with, however hard you try. If you want to stop looking at porn all the time, then becoming someone who struggles with porn, and still breaks every couple of weeks is a big step. If you can keep that up for a longer time you might start being someone who breaks every three weeks and so on. What’s tempting is to say “I can’t do it, so why even try” and just give up.

    Also, it’s up to you why you want to stop a habit like that. Being conscious of your reasons and motivations can make it a postive step (whcih is easier to motivate) rather than just something you’re preventing yourself from doing. When I was giving up smoking, it was helpful to think about postivies (breathing easier, having more energy, not stinking of smoke) because when I felt stressed and wanted a smoke telling myself “no you shouldn’t” wasn’t motivating.

    It can also be helpful to identify the steps that lead up to a difficult decision point. If you’re not wanting to look at porn, but you find yourself thinking “but I’ll just look up some innocent pictures of blahblahblah, that’s not porn, that’s okay” and then suddenly you’re in a situation that requires much more willpower to not fall down the rabbithole.

    Good luck!


  • Commenting cause I’m interested in the answer too. From reading online the basic idea is digging the cellar lower in the ground (how deep depends on your soil) to keep the temperature regular, and adding appropriate ventilation to remove damp and warm air.

    Are you looking for other books because that ones not good? Or because you can’t get a copy of it. Because it’s in Anna’s Archive if you want to check it out (and then, if you like it, try to buy a copy).



  • It really depends on how you define the traits of autism. Traits like “difficulties in social communication” are a big part of ASD profiles, but a condition like ADHD can also lead to problems in social communication for entirely different underlying reasons. Basically any complex human capability can go wrong for a variety of reasons, and completely different conditions can lead to quite similar problems, just because those problem areas require that everything is running together smoothly.

    That said, I did an autism screening as part of my adhd diagnosis, and came out with 0/40. I joked, “oh good, so I guess at least I’m normal in that area” and they replied “uh, normally people get around 10-15/40, 0 is pretty rare”. So I guess I’m pathologically un-autistic.



  • I just got the pixel 8a, because I wanted a small phone and it was the only one I could find that was available at a reasonable price. Happy with it so far! Not installed Graphene but the possibility definitely influenced my desire for a pixel. If Google ruins android, nice to know there’s an alternative. Other big plus is wireless charging, it’s my first handset to feature it and my last three phones have each needed replaced in under two years due to problems with the usb C port.


  • I’m not disagreeing that it’s a working clas slur, I know that. But you asked what the well agreed upon name is for that subculture is… and sadly it’s a slur. I’ve seen people describe themselves or their style using that word, I’ve been people put in dating profiles (both as a self description, and as something they’re looking for).

    This fashion article uses it repeatedly (and acknowledges it’s contraversial origins as a word), but also uses “casuals”, “English working class youth” and “football hooligan” as subculture groups that wear that style of urban street wear.

    If you don’t like it, don’t use it. But it is the common agreed upon term that you wanted to know. British society doest have quite the same issue with race as the USA, but It has a huge problem with classisim, and it is made much worse because people don’t even see it as a problem. You said that people wouldn’t Just describe a guy in dredds using a racial slur, but they would have 80 years ago. Britain is still at that stage with its attitudes to working class culture. And appropriately, “Chavs” by Owen Jones is a good introduction to people interested in the issue.



  • Much more as a middle aged person than when I was a teen / younger adult. Probably still less scared than when I was a little kid.

    I watched a lot of darker / violent movies when I was 15-25, and really enjoyed them. But over time I started finding horrible stuff happening really hard to watch. It’s not so much the fear, it’s just that I can now empathise and imagine suffering in a way that I just couldn’t when I was young.

    I can’t enjoy a stupid slasher movie when all I can think of is how the families of the dead teens would have to deal with the grief. Even action movies, unless they’re pretty campy, just remind me of what real people genuinely and tragically have to experience.

    It’s kinda shitty. Sometimes I think i need to desensitise myself, but it also means that older movies where violence and darkness is often implied are still really impactful.




  • For you, what’s the value in reading the exact minute? (genuine question, not snark!) In your example it looks like it’s 9:23 but it’s actually 9:22:45… Is that a problem? Probably by the time you do anything with that information fifteen seconds will have passed and it will be 9:23.

    For most people, I think analogue is more of vibes way of telling time. You don’t need to know that it’s 7:47 you just glance and see it’s almost ten to eight, and you have to leave soon. I find that I’m basically translating digital time into those approximation anyway. If you like that kinda vagueness and have an android watch then I’d recommend Twelveish as a watch face.


  • You can subscribe, or view All and then you’ll see everything as its posted. But there will be a complete mix of stuff from different languages and interests, so you need to start subscribing to communities you like, or blocking communities that don’t interest you (for me that’s all of the anime / furry stuff).

    It’s nowhere near as big as reddit, so it doesn’t have the same number of posts or range of interests. But I think the community is better, discussion more personal and popular posts have dozens of replies not hundreds, so it’s less faceless.


  • Some kids make fake ‘fairy’ photos in 1917 and lots of people believed them. As others have mentioned, the USSR removed people from photographs. A forged will in the middle ages let the papacy claim authority over Europe, and shaped the western world as we know it today.

    There have always been lies and fakes, and there’s always people who’ve ignored real evidence claiming it’s been fake. AI certainly makes things worse, and will be used to discredit legitimate evidence as much as it is used to fake shit. But humanity has lived most of its existence without a “pics or it didn’t happen” attitude, and will continue to figure stuff out (and make mistakes) through investigation, interpersonal trust and community.