A phenomenon I’ve seen that’s rather interesting is I moved from the US to Spain, and everyone here is friendly and far more trusting and kind to random strangers than the US ever was. My suspicion and anxiety around strangers has dropped significantly.

The number of random conversations I get into is much higher, people take an active interest in small talk even when standing in line, I’ve had more people randomly approach me to ask for help, and the idea of someone hurting you physically is an alien concept.

If you’re from the US, I think the US is just cooked man. Spanish internet, at least from what I’ve been able to find, is also more civil, even in places talking politics. Now maybe I’m not in the myriad of WhatsApp groups where people are actually getting I to it, but the public facing side of things is far more civil, and I rarely see Spaniards in mainstream socials like reddit and whatnot. The joke I’ve heard is that Spain “hasn’t really gotten on board with the internet yet”.

I think that the modern internet is fed by a social media stream that incentivises devisiveness. Engagement is higher on negative posts, and engagement drives the algorithm. I’ve long been against algorithms feeding you content because those algorithms are slanted to keep you engaged longer, which means showing you content that will upset you, then calming you down with kitten photos until you’re ready to get into another fight.

So to answer your question, I don’t think it’s a chicken and egg problem, I think it’s a problem with amplification. I think the English speaking internet has long been US centric (or at least caters to the US unfairly) and the US has bred a suspicious and anxiety ridden society. Then corporations came along and figured out just how much gas to put on that fire to squeeze money out of people through social media to take control of what was once a free space of creativity and turn it into an engagement farm, where art and conservation has been converted to “content” and distressing news and devisive conversation has become tools to keep you invested in your feed long enough for them to build a consumer profile on you to ship you targetted ads on Amazon. This in turn amplifies the suspicion and fear already inherent in the meatspace sphere, which feeds the online polarization.

When you stop either one - either unplugging or entering a calm and connected IRL space (like I did) you break the amplification, and the anxiety stops. This is why “internet detox” is a thing people try to do.

The internet in its current form is addictive, and like a parasite corporations have learned exactly how much they can take from you and not kill you. It wants to keep you engaged and scared, but it is also exploiting societal issues that were already present to begin with.

That’s legit. I have a burner account that is only used for things I absolutely have to, like my utility bills.

In many parts of the world Whatsapp is the dominate communication platform. My landlord sends me my utility bills through WhatsApp, as is my doctor’s scheduling platform, and my vet’s contact info, etc. It’s basically impossible to do things without it.

This still does not fix the problem of “I asked you because I wanted your input, if I wanted to ask the chatbot I would have”. The core issue.

The problem is the unearned confidence in the answer they know nothing about. Is them saying “I asked the ai and it said…” better than them asking the ai and not prefacing it? Yes. But the problem is asking the AI and then answering the question in the first place.

If you don’t know, say I don’t know, don’t regurgitate information feom thr AI. We all have access to the same tools, there is no reason to use AI to answer the question I asked you, because if I wanted what AI had to say I’d have asked it myself.

The main problem is if I’m going through the trouble of asking a question, I want your thoughts or expertise on it. If I wanted the robot that’s wrong half thr time to give me an answer I’d have asked it.

In places like work its even worse. I’ll ask a question only for a junior who has no experience in the thing to answer “well Claude says this-” thanks. You just wasted tokens and gave me info that you don’t know anything about so you can’t verify the legitimacy of it, and now when people search this problem in the work chat in the future they might take your unverified information as gospel.

Its a waste of everyone’s time and money to give subpar unverified information

When I was in the office I would browse the internet or wander around to waste time when I’d completed my tasks and wanted to avoid having more dumped on me. Now I clean the house or meal prep or play with my cat.

I’m still reachable by slack for emergencies. If anything I’m MORE available because people don’t have to wander around the building to find me if something explodes.

If it’s single unit why would women not use it anymore…?

My work had gendered single unit bathrooms but the women’s bathroom was farther away from the office space and since it was single room people of any gender just used the closer one regardless, and eventually they just swapped out the signs to gender neutral ones because of it’s single stall who gives a shit? No one is going in there with you.

Vaultwarden handles them just fine. Was a nice surprise feature

How will the upcoming android changes affect this? Most of the emulators would be sideloaded right?

Would love this but worried it’ll become obsolete / locked out of updates once google does it’s stupid shit

We have lovingly dubbed our table “pink tie” because we try to go in black tie but end up improvising in the worst way half way through.

Oh we need to sneak in? Uhhhh ok here is what we do. Hack the employee database, find Tim the IT guy. On his way home kidnap him, stop at a fast food place and demand to know his order, spend 2 hours roleplaying his interrogation. Ultimately decide to pretend to be a pizza delivery person dropping off pizza for a meeting, then say you need to use the bathroom to get an excuse to wander around. Get to the server but panic as you realize it’s been too long for the pizza guy to be “in the bathroom”. Rip the server off the wall and chuck it out the window and have the mage catch it with magic. Get caught trying to sneak out and get into a fight then hide the body in the janitors closet. Security on the way out gets suspicious about the blood on you. Explain it’s marinara sauce from dropping the pizza and start crying on demand about how your boss is gonna fire you because you suck so bad at your job and how you CANT miss rent again or you’ll be evicted and and and-. Roll deception VERY well. Make the guard uncomfortable so they shoo you out.

Success!

I use audiobookshelf to manage my TTRPG pdfs. It can correlate multiple files under one “Title” which makes organizing ttrpg stuff simple and it’s a nice interface. Plus it’s self host able so I can share it with the other people at my table. I just wish the PDF reader was a little more robust but it mostly does the job.

If the partner is snoring loudly they might have a form of sleep apnea. They should get a sleep study done just to check. My husband’s snoring was so loud I could sometimes hear it through earplugs. He had sleep apnea, now he uses a CPAP machine and no more snoring and better sleep for both of us.

I see the “agree to disagree” as a bit of a social flag for the conversation that says “I don’t wish to get into it / continue arguing about it” because there is no way to respond to it. If you try to continue the debate you look like an asshole, and if you drop it the person who says it gets to continue being wrong without being challenged.

It’s very annoying and I hate it.

Unless you’re like me and the websites you use for work require it and don’t work in literally any other browser (I have tried everything)