♪ You’re so pretty. ♪

♪ Oh, so pretty. ♪

♪ You are pretty and witty and GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. ♪

I’m old and unlucky enough to have had many bad sexual experiences, for better or for worse. Unfortunately, by modern standards, I’ve definitely had some questionable experiences where I was taken advantage of (i.e. intoxicated, emotionally vulnerable, etc) and which would likely fall into the non-consensual category these days, so I’ll leave those out, since they were the worst by far.

I’ve had plenty of bad experiences that were totally on me, so for the sake of my own ego, I’m going to disqualify those.

The worse consensual experience I can recall at the moment was awkward and a bit weird. The guy was persistent and braggadocios while pursuing me. He was nice looking and we got along fine online and in phone calls, so when the conversation came up about meeting up for nothing serious, I was okay with that.

We hung out awhile before getting intimate and he was nice enough, nothing seemed off. It’s almost a stretch to call what we did together “sex”, though. He wasn’t able to get an erection. Not a problem honestly, there are still plenty of ways for two guys to have fun. We basically just snuggled together in bed.

At a certain point, though, he just started saying weird or off the wall stuff. I do not know if he had taken some drugs or if he was experiencing a mental health episode. It was like he was hallucinating that he could see the night sky even though we were indoors in his room with the curtains pulled, since he kept talking about how pretty the moon was and things of that nature. And he would ask me the same questions over and over so I know for sure something wasn’t quite right.

If it were maybe 15 years, I could very quickly identify some changes that would easily change the entire trajectory of my life.

At 10 years, it’s hard to say since by today’s perspective, I’ve had my life in reasonable order and heading in the right direction for the past decade. So there aren’t a lot of options to make different choices I’m certain would help me gain things personally. That being said:

I would make a more concerted effort to leave the job I had in 2014. It was a regrettable decision to stay as long as I did and a very toxic work environment for me. I could have made more money almost anywhere else and by that point I had met all the important and amazing people that worked there during my reign, so I wouldn’t have missed out on those friendships.

I do have much better employment skills than I had 10 years ago and most of what I know and do would still apply back then, so I guess I could make use of that to climb the ladder a bit faster and/or earn more money sooner in my career.

I suppose one day to day “exploit” would be that I’d know in advance if any specific purchase was a good decision or not. For instance, I’d know that the car I was going to buy ended up being a fantastic choice or that the piece of crap bookshelf was only going to last me a year before it started to disintegrate at which point I would have to replace it. This could be useful for saving money, since at the very least I could avoid purchasing the stuff that I know would not last or live up to expectations.

I did not have a lot of money back then and certainly not enough to make good use of any stock market foreknowledge from today turn into a big payday. I don’t keep up with lottery numbers. I’m not a sports person, so I wouldn’t / couldn’t make any money off that kind of betting.

If I were motivated enough, I might try to teach myself some music / music production skills and then start releasing my own version of popular songs from the future that haven’t been released yet. Maybe I’d luck out and end up with a lucrative music career! Or similarly, I might try to figure out the patenting process and then start patenting ideas for stuff that had not yet been invented, then do my best to become a bit of a patent troll.

There’s a slim chance I could save the lives of some relatives, but honestly that’s hard to know. I had one family member die suddenly of a heart attack and another that died of an accidental drug overdose. I also had a friend that ignored people’s advice to go see a doctor and ended up the problem she was having was cancer, which she passed away from. Apparently, one of her doctors even told the family that if she had gotten treatment a little sooner, things could have turned out quite differently. We’d been telling her to go for at least a year, but if I could go back I would try a lot harder and be more persistent.

Except that’s exactly how nose canceling ear phones work.

Mine work like this: “Got your nose. Neener neener neener.”

Yeah, of course. I buy one towards the end of every November. It’s a Thanksgiving tradition.

In a way, I’m glad people are slowing starting to come around and pay attention to this. For years, any time I would publicly complain about Amazon customer service online, it was very common for people to be completely dismissive or even blame me. I’d hear statements like “sure Amazon sucks, but they have great customer service” and I’d think to myself, just wait until it’s your time to find out that the customer service isn’t what you think it is.

Long story short, the item came with a broken part. Should have been quick and easy to rectify (send a replacement part, send a replacement unit, or refund the purchase). The seller was completely unhelpful. Amazon customer service would not intervene and insisted that I continue fruitlessly corresponding with the vendor, even though they had an “A-to-Z” money back guarantee if something goes wrong. It literally took months of back and forth between me, the vendor, and Amazon customer service before things were finally refunded in full.

So, basically I gave them another chance and they showed that things hadn’t improved a bit.

So what you’re saying is, I need to go ahead and take some vacation from work and real life and go ahead and dive head first into this game. Gotcha.

You’re such an enabler. I love it! Stop enabling me.

I know I’m not necessarily representative of the average gamer, but Hades is and was one of my favorite modern games. I feel like it’s almost pointless to not buy this game as soon as I can, even if I don’t have time to play it right this moment. Have you played it already at this point, and if so, what are your impressions?

Solid point. But I want it now. I guess I’m still holding out hope that I might have some time to play while I’m traveling in the next month or so.

Does the early access stuff sometimes stop being available? Like if I don’t buy it soon, is it something that might go away until they’re ready to do a full release?

I’m usually a patient gamer type. I think I got Hades in 2022 or 2023 on discount. I’ve also never purchased an early access game. But I’m seriously considering this one.

Main thing holding me back is that I just don’t get to play games very much this time of year, and I probably won’t have much time again until Fall.

This is second hand info, but everyone I know who has ever worked for him basically hates him. He’s a raging asshole, difficult to work with, and just a horrible human being on a personal level. I’ve never met him myself, but the people I’m referring to are all pretty awesome, wholesome people so I do trust their judgment.

I’ve noticed a downward trend, not necessarily “dropped off suddenly”. One of the most notable signs I’ve seen is from the new comments sort.

When I’m interested in seeing what’s actually active and where the action is at, one of the things I will do is click to sort by “New Comments” and change my view to Comments. Typically I go to that page, see if any of the headlines or comments catch my attention, then go read or reply.

In the past couple of months, I’m seeing more and more new comments on that first page of results that are 5+ minutes old. When I get to the bottom of the page and click to refresh the results, there are times now when I don’t even get a full new set of comments because there haven’t been enough new ones to bump the prior comments off the first page.

That didn’t used to happen much at all, it was rare enough that it really sticks out when it does happen. Typically, the comments on that first page would be anywhere from seconds to maybe 2 or 3 minutes old and every time I hit refresh (I wasn’t spamming the button), I’d have a completely new set of comments to peruse (other than a bug in older versions of Lemmy that would cause some comments to get stuck at the top of that page even when they were significantly older than anything else).

My overall interpretation of this is that it appears there’s less commenting, at least during the times of day that I tend to be most active on here. Of course that’s not the only possibility. But like OP, I’m noticing a lot fewer posts in those top 6, top 12 filters with lots of comments than I used to see. So, those types of observations do have me thinking things are on a bit of a down trend. It could be a seasonal thing, perhaps a temporary lull.

Fish don’t stink underwater the fish don’t stink.

Just thought I’d mention that there are species of fish and other animal groups that are all female or close enough to it that their populations do not rely on males to propagate. For example, Amazon mollies. I couldn’t tell you if any species of betta are capable of parthenogensis, but as a general statement “If you would have only females, the entire fish species dies out” isn’t universally true.

Although it’s possible that female bettas want strong males, I’m certainly not a female betta and don’t want to get too far into the territory of anthropomorhpism and there are certainly other possible motivations and processes going on than simply wanting “strong males”.

But really, all this seems to be veering oddly away from the original topic and my first comment, so I’m just going to leave it at that.

It’s mostly only the males that don’t get along with each other. Given enough space, females can be peacefully kept together in sorority tanks. Similarly, a trio or harem (i.e. one male with multiple females) is typically safe as well and the fish get along just fine, given a large enough tank and appropriate stocking.

Also, most reputable breeders and sources of information will tell you that 5 gallons / 19 liters is the minimum suggested tank size for a happy and healthy fish in optimal conditions. While they can certainly survive in much smaller bodies of water, it’s not ideal and in some cases it’s actually harmful.

Some of it depends on your circumstances, honestly. What’s applicable and works for me, may not be applicable and work for you in your situation.

One thing that really helps me in my situation is a product called Mosquito Bits. It’s a microbial product that you add to anything that might contain standing, stagnant water. It kills mosquito larvae and is quite effective at it. I place this in the saucers of outdoor plants, in equipment that tends to collect water after rain, and even sprinkle it in plants that tend to collect water (ex: bromeliads).

I’ve also read and heard that using aromatic wood mulch, like cedar, around the outdoor living areas can help somewhat.

The biggest disappointment in terms of products that don’t seem to be terrible effective was a Dynatrap. I had acquaintances raving about it, saw some people on other sites like the R-word saying good things about it, so even though they are expensive and require yearly bulb replacements, I gave it a try. It really did not make a dent in the mosquito population, and worse, it traps so many other kinds of insects including beneficial insects that I consider it to be a failure. I’ve opened up the trap to empty it, and there just aren’t many mosquitos in there, just lots of moths, flies, beetles, etc.

The definition of these “generations” is arbitrary and subjective. The reality of the matter is no such person exists. So, I completely disagree.

Even if everyone in the world agreed that Gen Z is all people born between 1995 and 2010 (which would require you to be ignorant, naive, or just plain stupid), it ignores the reality of things like geography, culture, time zones, etc. Literally hundreds (if not thousands) of people could have been born at the exact same moment of time, but due to the magic of time zones, some would be Gen Z, others would not. That’s super arbitrary if you ask me.

So, it’s more like theoretically some person is the oldest member of Gen Z, for some given interpretation of what “Gen Z” means. But in practice, there’s no such thing. In some ways it’s like a mathematical limit. There’s no smallest number greater than 0, because you can always devise a smaller fraction. But, if you artificially and arbitrarily limit your resolution (let’s say to 1/10th), only then can you declare some number the smallest (ex: .1).

just*

It’s the one place some of my family can figure out how to use where they can make a transphobic joke about Mother’s Day for men in dresses is April 1st and get enough positive interactions that they think they’ve actually re-posted something relatable and clever. So it does have that going for it.

I like the taste, but I don’t like the price.

Taste-wise, they taste like pretty much all the cactus fruits I’ve tried so far. There’s not a whole lot of flavor to them, just a balanced sweetness (when they’re ripe), but not overwhelming sweetness. At least in my part of the world, prickly pears are more cost effective and very similar in terms of taste, but for some reason, less often available.

To me, one of the appeals of cactus fruits is the texture from the slight crunchiness of the seeds, which is a good balance to the consistency of the fruit. Also nice that there’s typically not a lot of tartness or bitterness. I like tartness and bitterness in some fruits, but these are a nice change of pace.

Overall, if they were cheap, I’d be eating them a lot more. These epiphytic cacti are fairly easy to grow and bloom as house plants, even in temperate climates, so if you do really enjoy them, it’s something you could potentially grow yourself. And obviously if you live in a tropical to subtropical climate, you can probably get away with growing them outdoors.