Cheers - we’ve just celebrated the instances 1st birthday and I was surprised to see I was an early member.

I am very laid back (my Dad always said I was nearly horizontal) and I never get angry, I rarely even get flustered or impatient. My Dad was a very good man and I try to follow his example as much as possible. As his health declined and I started caring for him (a real privilege as he helped so many it was only just that he got help in return when he needed it, even if it couldn’t possibly fully pay him back) and, as I picked up some of his slack I did wonder where he found the time or energy. Since he died, I have felt like a sheepdog without a flock and have found myself adopting various people - I helped a friend through her cancer journey and her son start university, I took another friend to hospital sufficiently often that she just told the staff I was her “hospital husband” (which did stop them asking questions, usually with a roll of the eyes) and, as I don’t drink, I ferry people home from the pub.

However, I can be… thoughtless and this can be really annoying, especially to the easily angered - I’ve lost a friend over it and my brother isn’t exactly my greatest fan (the other year, my niece asked if I wanted to know all the nasty things my brother said about me and I declined - if we knew what people thought about us, we’d tear each other apart). I can also be rude to people but just where it’s funny, you just have to know your audience (it can appal any bystanders though). I’m also not very emotionally expressive and I suspect at least one friend thinks I’m a sociopath.

So am I nice? Although it might depend on who you ask, I’d say no. However, I try to do as much good as possible - if anyone needs help, I’ll drop what I’m doing and pitch in.

What I do when I have spare time: write. I just don’t seem to have had any spare time recently.

If it’s all in the same community then speak to a Mod.

If that doesn’t work or it is spread across a number of communities then peak to Admins from your home server, Beehaw’s and the other posters. If there’s a post with obvious harassment, then report it and that report goes to those Admins.

Did ianovic68 steal his bike in the 90s?

It wasn’t even a book, more a sketch, a joke even. A lot (most?) of the adaptations of PKD’s writing are better than the original. And yet, the core concepts, about the nature of humanity and reality, break through and inspire some truly great work.

Here is the episode of The Restoration Man that documented the project - they go into the planning side of this in-depth because it’s really a head-scratcher. The owner tried many times to get planning for more subtle alternations but they kept getting knocked back because it has to be distinctive enough that it’s clear what is the old building and what are the new additions. What you see is the result of that messy process.

I remember when this hit the news and do hope it’s been redone since.

edit: no updates on the Scottish Castle Association since 2012 and TripAdvisor photos show it unchanged other than some weathering.

edit2: Here is the episode of The Restoration Man that focused on the tower and it explains the planning process that led to this monstrosity.

How to work with someone that regularly arrives as the wrong answer?

Yes.

Good second half too:

That search/SEO is broken seems to be part of the game plan here.

It’s probably like Russia burning Moscow against Napoleon and a hell of a privilege Google enjoy with their monopoly.

I’ve seen people opt for chatGPT/AI precisely because it’s clean, simple and spam free, because it isn’t Google Search.

And as @caseynewton said … the web is now in managed decline.

For those of us who like it, it’s up to us to build what we need for ourselves. Big tech has moved on

That’s why we are all here.

It’s interesting to think that Big Tech might just move on from the Web, leaving it to us ordinary humans to go back to the way we were doing it in Web 1.0 just with fancier tools at our disposal. I quite like the idea.

Got pretty tired of playing furry porn community whackamole.

Coincidentally, the furry porn whack-off-a-mole community is not very popular.

I don’t block any but, as an Admin, I tend to check on all communities (theoretically) in case there’s shenanigans. As I am on a smaller instance Local is manageable and then I use Subscribed. All is too much of a firehose of content to use much. So I am more opt-in than opt-out.

My preferred way to browse here is using All and blocking communities I don’t want to see. That way I get exposed to new things I wouldn’t seek out on my own (for example: British archaeology)

Glad you like it.

And being antifeminist doesn’t even benefit them that much.

The only people benefitting are those peddling the lies to disgruntled young men, partly as a grift and partly as misdirection from the real sources of their issues.

But at the same time I don’t see how much people who are not cis men can do so much to really help them.

And it shouldn’t be your job to fix young men but I am as stumped as you and I worry about people like my nephew who is early teens.

There’s !mensliberation@lemmy.ca but I don’t know if that’s not just preaching to the converted.

My point was that cishet men may have it hard to find someone because they are not catching up with progressive and emancipatory values.

It’s worse than that - things seem to be regressing, with a widening political divide between men and women, especially noticeable in the younger adults.

It definitely feels like the modest progress that was made is now being eroded away

Really the only trick they missed was turning it into a pyramid scheme but that might sneak in if you use the app a lot, although imagine the “success rate” on this is abysmal and a lot of users will drop out quickly.

If you are an open-minded cis dude who respects women and sees them as equal human beings you’ll have no problem finding anyone.

It’s not always that simple. For example, I cared for my Dad 24/7 which involved a convoluted pill regime (and a series of alarms throughout the day). My social life took a real hit. There are also mental and physical health issues, as well as financial aspects.

All that said, anyone thinking this is the solution deserves to be scammed because it is hardly informed consent.

This seems to be sleazy conmen faking interactions with women to convince wannabe pick-up artists to pay for their app. It’s like some new circle of Hell.

“If you’re driving a truck today,” he said, “my expectation is you’re going to be able to retire driving a truck.”

Probably true as it will take a while for them to ramp the numbers up to cover the shortage in truck drivers, and they’ll still need drivers for that last mile (as these trucks work best going between depots on freeways) but how long will being a truck driver be a viable occupation? When it’s one of the biggest areas of employment, can everyone transition to other logistical jobs, as suggested by the article?

It’s why I prefer the Misskey forks to Mastodon. I hope that, as Fediverse services mature, we’ll see more of them take that approach, and/or use customisable algorithms like Bluesky.

That’s fascinating, thanks for the information.

I suppose a hand doesn’t naturally have much fat in it, so using fat to bulk it out can have odd side effects.