cobysev

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.

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.

So it’s totally fine to chug a beer, huff some glue and eat a can of cat food to help you fall asleep; As long as you otherwise eat healthy.

I see you, Charlie Day.

Electricity still needs a specifically built medium to pass through before it can form a consciousness, though. You can’t just send electricity through a tree and expect the tree to suddenly become conscious. Electricity is just a key ingredient of consciousness, not the full picture.

Bodies have neutral pathways that allow electricity to simulate consciousness if regulated properly. Same with computers and circuitry.

This is actually my life right now. I retired from the US military at 38 years old and received a pension which I will collect monthly for the rest of my life. On top of that, they messed me up enough that I got the coveted 100% Permanent & Total disability rating from the VA. So I’m getting free medical and dental for life, plus a monthly paycheck from the VA that’s bigger than my pension. My wife also got the same VA deal (she was actually medically separated from the military), so we have double the VA benefits coming in.

All this passive income means we don’t have to work for the rest of our lives. I just turned 40, and after spending the last couple years getting settled back into civilian life, I’m starting to invest my free time into hobbies and projects.

My father just passed away a few months ago and I inherited his house (my childhood home) and its 6 acres of property. My dad didn’t take care of the house or land (he was a bit of a hoarder), so I’m working on fixing up the house and cleaning up the property. That takes up a lot of my free time during the summer.

I wanted to get involved in my community, so I’m on the parks committee and communications committee for my local township, where I help to improve our local parks and trails, and ensure information about our local area and its events is disseminated to all our residents.

I’ve been playing a lot of video games lately. I have a steam library of over 3,400 games and I’ve been picking through my library, trying to discover hidden gems that I’ve missed. My library is so huge because I’ve been a Humble Bundle subscriber for a long time now, so I get nearly a dozen games a month. I also play online co-op games with some old childhood friends of mine every week.

My wife and I picked up Duolingo again recently and we’re trying to learn a foreign language. I’m juggling both Japanese and Norwegian right now. I learned some basics of Japanese when I was stationed there 2 decades ago and I really love the language, so I’m hoping to master it. Plus, I have living descendants of my ancestors who still live in Norway and I’d like to communicate in their language one day instead of forcing them to use English to communicate with me. I also took 4 years of French in high school, and I was stationed in Germany for a couple years, so I have both of those languages cued up to learn if/when I get bored of my first two.

When I was 13, I discovered I was a prodigy at the piano. I taught myself how to play because I heard Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and really wanted to be able to play it myself. My wife is actually sore about it because her bachelor’s degree required that she take 4 years of piano lessons… and I’m still better than her at piano, without ever having a single lesson. Unfortunately, I haven’t touched a piano in nearly 2 decades, so all my skill has gone to waste. So I bought an electric piano recently and plan to re-learn how to play. In my childhood, I had to read sheet music and sort of figure things out myself, but in today’s world, there are all sorts of training and tutorial programs and videos online that I can use, so I imagine it’ll be super easy to get back into it.

My wife and I watch a ton of movies and TV shows. If we’re ever tired and just don’t want to be productive for a day, we’ll just sit on the couch and binge shows or movies all day. When we’re extra lazy, we’ll order DoorDash so we don’t have to cook. We live in the countryside, about a 15 minute drive from the nearest town, so it’s easier to order DoorDash than head into town for food some days. We always tip extra for the drivers, because we know our home is out of the way for them.

When I used to work, I always looked forward to the weekends. But now that I’m retired, I actually find myself hating the weekends and looking forward to weekdays. On the weekends, it’s always so busy in town. So many people running errands, eating out with their families, partaking in local events, crowding parks and trails, etc. But during the weekdays, everyone’s at work, so the town is quieter. Sometimes I like to go downtown and sit in a coffee shop or restaurant for a few hours and just idly browse my phone or read a book. Or go for a walk or bike in one of our parks and just enjoy the peaceful nature. Or browse some stores, knowing it’s just me and the shop owner. I’m not bumping into other customers, I can chat with store owners, etc. I’m starting to understand why old people like to chat up employees so much. It’s kind of nice when it’s not busy.

As a 100% disabled vet, I get free passes to all national, state, and county parks, and there’s a public park with a beach just a couple miles from my home, so I go there in the summer to swim and try to build my strength back up. It’s especially nice on weekdays because there’s no one there. I can swim laps and not worry about bumping into people. And since it’s just down the road from my house, I can head over there anytime, all summer long.

I have a few other hobbies and projects on the back burner. A buddy of mine wants to build furniture and I’ve always been interested in woodworking, so we’ve talked about maybe starting up a workshop in my garage. Plus, I was a pro at electrical engineering stuff in my high school years, so I’d be interested in learning more about that field. My house is in rough enough shape, my wife and I have been talking about just tearing it down and rebuilding from scratch, so we’re currently designing our dream home right now to see if that’s a feasible project. We have enough land that we’re interested in learning how to garden. Ideally, being able to live almost completely off our own produce. I’d also like to set up a giant solar panel array in our back field, so we don’t have to pay much (if anything) for electricity anymore.

Plus a bunch of other little interests that I want to indulge in over time. In the meantime, I don’t have much of a schedule. I go to sleep whenever I’m tired and I get up whenever I naturally wake. I’m a night owl, so that means I’m usually up most of the night and then sleep until almost noon most days.

I dunno what else… I guess I’m just living in the moment now, trying to focus on what makes me happy each day and not worry about trying to be productive or accomplished. I did all that when I was working, and now I can just focus on being comfortable. It’s a wonderful feeling, knowing that I have no commitments outside of my control. My wife wants to go back to work one day, but I think I’m done. I much prefer the ability to plan my own days on a whim and not get tied down with long-term commitments. Every day is an adventure that I get to choose.

I was born and raised throughout the whole Memphis Design era, reluctantly tolerated the Y2K era, gained a little hope for humanity during the Frutiger Aero era, then subsequently lost all hope once the Flat Design era hit.

Maybe it’s just a weird mental imagery thing to me, but if I’m talking about sides of the bed, I first mentally orient myself in the room of that bed before I can explain which side I’m talking about.

If I’m talking to someone whom I don’t share a bed with, it feels weird to describe the bed from my perspective in it. I’d rather explain from a neutral position near the bed, not my position while using it. Especially if I’m talking about other people’s beds. I don’t want to imagine myself in their bed before discussing a side of the bed.

To me, there’s a huge difference between the generic “left and right” side of the bed from the perspective of the foot of the bed, and “left and right” side based on which side I occupy at night. One feels far more personal, and I’d rather not deal with that visual, or risk other visually-oriented people like me imagining me in bed.

If I’m talking about sides of the bed, I’m almost never in the bed at the same time, so I would be talking from a position at the foot of the bed. Beds are practically never in the middle of the room, so I wouldn’t be standing over the head of the bed while orienting. So the foot of the bed is the default position to reference.

If I’m in bed and talking about sides, I usually just guesture and say, “this side” (or “your/my side” if I’m talking to my wife) instead of designating left or right.

Yes, it’s called mouse drifting. Basically, back in the early days of laser mice (which replaced the roller ball mice technology), the sensors weren’t as advanced as they are today, so they would be “detecting” slight movements. When in fact, the mouse was stationary.

Oh damn, I’m starting on the Boomer habit of complaining about Zoomer culture when it’s actually Alpha culture.

It feels like yesterday, Boomers were complaining about how annoying millennial kids were, when we were actually adults in our 20s/30s at the time. I’m just realizing that was over a decade ago, and now I’m doing the same thing to Zoomers. Someone please stop time before I get any older; I want to get off.

Had to guess on the boomerang. I’ve seen boomerangs but didn’t know that’s what they’re called nor have I ever posted one.

I’ve never heard of a “boomerang” that wasn’t referring to the Australian tool/toy. I totally guessed on that one too. I don’t post videos to any social media platform, so I was totally out of the loop on that one.

Skibidi toilet? As a 39-yr old millennial, I’m aware that was a thing like a year ago, but I assumed it was a Zoomer meme or something. I can’t get past that captcha.

EDIT: Upon looking at it again, I see it just wants me to type in “what is skibidi toilet” into Google, not answer what it is. Ugh, I’m turning into my Silent Generation/Boomer parents.

Very true. I also have investments that I’ve been sitting on for over a decade now. I’ve been mostly ignoring them, pretending they don’t exist until I reach retirement age. My cousin has his own investment firm and he’s been handling financials and investments for several members of my family, so I know it’s in good hands.

I had an actual piggy bank as a kid, where I collected loose change.

My parents gave me a weekly allowance for doing chores. Although they would forget about it for months on end, and when I reminded them, they’d just give me a $20 bill to make up for it.

I mowed lawns to make money in the summer as a kid. Also did some farm work when I hit my teens.

I wrote checks for a lot of things as a teenager. Even wrote a few just to exchange for cash at the bank. I had a debit card, but the ATM charged a fee for withdrawals. Checks were free.

I joined the US military at 18 years old and their primary banking institution (USAA) would only do direct deposit paychecks, since they only had a couple physical locations across the US. It seemed very high-tech at the time because everyone else in the civilian world were getting physical paychecks they had to manually cash in at a bank. I could only reach my bank through their 24-hr hotline, and I needed to fax documents if they needed any paperwork signed by me. I used to get a statement in the mail for every paycheck, but they stopped that around 2007 or so. Now they’re almost 100% online.

My dad just died a few months ago and I’m in the process of inheriting his house (my childhood home) right now. My wife and I have been living with him for the past 2 years because we couldn’t afford a decent house in today’s market. I actually needed a blank check for the closing on the house (I’m buying out my sister on her half of the inherited property - using the money I inherited from my dad) and USAA emailed me a PDF of their checks, since I haven’t used one in over a decade now.

Oh, and I’m receiving a pension now. The military did away with pensions in 2017, opting for a 401K-like program instead. But I joined the military when pensions were offered, so I was grandfathered into their old pension program. I get a direct deposit into my bank every month for the rest of my life now, and I retired after only serving 20 years in the military.

Plus, they’re giving me free medical and dental for life because I’m 100% disabled according to the VA. That also includes a monthly VA paycheck bigger than my pension! My wife is also 100% disabled by the VA, so she’s getting the same medical/dental and pay deal. She was medically discharged from the military though, so she doesn’t have a pension. I was almost medically discharged, but I was so close to retirement and could still do my job, so they put me on a medical waiver and let me coast to the end.

I’m only in a good place financially because of my military service. They really took care of me. Even gave me food and housing allowances on top of my regular paycheck, so I could afford to eat and rent a house wherever they stationed me. If not for my service, I would probably be stuck in the same position as every other Millennial/GenZ/GenA now.

Although it does help that I was fiscally responsible. I had a lot of military buddies who would blow their paychecks on booze, clubbing, women, and cars. Especially on cars. Then they leave the military broke and can barely get by. I was an introvert, so I pretty much stayed in my room and saved my income for decades.

The director insists the alien plants winning was the original ending he wanted, but he was forced to give the film a happy ending at the last minute. The director’s cut gives you the original ending in all it’s evil glory.

There’s also an original Little Shop of Horrors released in 1960 that stars a young Jack Nicholson. That film has a different ending than both endings of the 1986 remake.

That’s why I said their time travel theory doesn’t make sense. The movie doesn’t even follow its own logic.

Back to the Future had an extremely convoluted time travel theory that didn’t actually make sense, but one interesting idea they sparked is that you create branching timelines when you go back to the past. Meaning your present timeline remains unaltered, but you basically skip to a new reality when you time travel. Essentially, they claimed the multiverse exists and you travel across dimensions, not necessarily time, when you used the Delorean.

Maybe this is why we never meet time travelers. Because our current universe is an unaltered world and any time traveling that happens here just sends people to other universes instead of our established timeline.

This theory is kind of nightmare fuel when you consider Doc and Marty left Marty’s girlfriend on her porch in a dark future and just expected her to be there when they “fixed” the timeline. Nah, bro. You just abandoned her in the darkest timeline. The girl you picked up was an alternate reality version of her.

*EDIT: Back to the Future, not Bank to the Future.

Heh, nice try. Sync for Lemmy saved me with their link preview.

But yes, sometimes you need to go into Ublock Origin’s settings and manually update to stay ahead of YouTube’s updates to their filter blocking.

I was gonna say, you guys get YouTube ads? I’m still blocking them, so I’m still a target for Rick-rolling.

Forrest Gump is super racist revisionist history, where a low-IQ white male accidentally causes all sorts of large political and social historical events that were actually initiated by black people in real life. Plus there’s a ton of other messed up sexist/racist portrayals throughout the film. It’s a pretty awful film. And it stole the Oscar from Shawshank Redemption!