I cut all streaming services out of my life last year, except for Curiosity Stream, a sort of “Netflix” for educational documentaries.

But I haven’t even been watching that in a while, so maybe I should stop paying for it.

I just got sick of rising prices and invasive ads despite paying to avoid them. I use Plex now. I paid the one-time fee for the Lifetime Plex Pass and now I have access to all their advanced tools and streaming content, plus I can rip my movies/TV shows/music to my PC and stream them myself through Plex. No ads, no extra junk, no “are you still watching?” pop-ups. Just hit play and enjoy.

If checking age on social media is all it ever does, then sure, whatever.

You’re forgetting an important detail: you submitted an official ID to prove your age. Which means your face, address, and legal name are also on record. So every time you get age-verified, you’re basically checking in with your full legal identity, leaving a breadcrumb path across the Internet of everything you do. That data can be used to track your online activities and build a database on who you are as a person, based on the things you access.

THIS is why age verification is a terrifying thing for computer access. It’s a form of government tracking that should be illegal. Cops can’t legally barge into your home anytime they want and go through your stuff. They can’t take your computer and scan it for data collection. Not without a court order.

With age verification embedded within your OS, it won’t matter if there’s a court order or not. If your computer is connected to the Internet, you’ve just publicly broadcast all your data to the world, and anyone - cops or not - can tap into that data and build a profile on you. You don’t even need to be browsing the Internet; if your OS is verifying your age, it could also be broadcasting that verification for every program you use locally on your computer. None of your data is safe; it’s all tied to your legal identity and trackable.

Arr 🏴‍☠️

100% accurate. My wife is my best friend in the whole world.

During COVID, a lot of married couples divorced because they were forced to spend time together at home every day and realized they can’t stand being around each other so much. Going to a job every day got them out of the house and away from their spouse/family for a few hours, which made married life tolerable.

But for my wife and I, self-isolating at home was business as usual. We always hang out, even if we’re doing our own separate things. Just existing in the same space together makes us happy. Heck, we both retired young, so we’re now just sitting around the house all day long together. And we’re still enjoying each other’s friendship and love.

Find someone you can vibe with on a personal level, not just someone who’s pretty or has one or two traits you want to associate with. Marrying my best friend has been the best decision I’ve ever made and it pays out tenfold as you get older together.

Chronologically, Metal Gear Solid 3 is the first game in the series. It shows Snake’s origin story, which leads into the original Metal Gear 1 and 2 games for the old Nintendo Entertainment System (long before the Metal Gear Solid series). So it’s a perfect place to start if you’re picking up the Metal Gear franchise for the first time.

Metal Gear Solid ∆ is just a modern remake of Metal Gear Solid 3, so it’s basically the same thing but better graphics and controls. I read once that due to the falling out with Hideo Kojima, Konami can’t legally re-release the original MGS3 game, so a remake from the ground up was their legal compromise.

Now Metal Gear Solid 4 is the only Metal Gear game that hasn’t been re-released on any other platform since it debuted on the PlayStation 3. But Konami plans to finally release it for PC and all modern consoles in August this year. Woo!

I had planned to review Metal Gear Solid ∆ for my Lemmy screenshot series, but I was having so much fun with the game, I forgot about preparing a review and just played my way through it. MGS3 is my favorite of the entire franchise! There’s something rewarding about actually trying to avoid detection in a game. It’s easy to go in guns blazing, but sneaking past guards and not alerting anyone? That takes skill and dedication.

I gave up Reddit the day I moved here. Haven’t been back to Reddit since. I much prefer it here.

This gif is from an episode of Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’? It was her and her brother’s YouTube channel before she became a famous voice actress.

Each video short was a comedy sketch loosely based on a particular video game. This one was based on Civilization 5, and is much funnier than what’s shown in the gif. Here’s the video.

The bearded guy at the table is her brother who made the channel, the other girl was his girlfriend (dunno what their relationship status is now) and the old white dude is their dad.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh.

It’s like posting “lol” or “roflmao” in text, when your face doesn’t even change IRL. Except we’re voice chatting, so he’s using a laugh track instead of “lol.”

I voice chat with friends on Discord pretty regularly. I have one friend who, instead of laughing, will click a laugh track on our soundboard, filling the voice chat with boisterous sitcom laughter. I don’t know why, but that’s kind of unsettling.

TL;DR: “Making democratic threats legible,” i.e. spreading the word about how every action Trump takes is a threat to our democracy. It has been proven in several other countries run by authoritarian governments to be effective at stomping out fascism before it can take hold.

Saved you a click.

I live in a forested countryside in the Northern Midwest. Leaving the windows open invites in bugs and other small critters. Even with screens on the windows, insects crawl through the cracks, and I’ve definitely had several field mice chew their way through screens. I also have rabbits and possums who tend to nest up against the foundation of my house, and if a lower window is left open for prolonged periods, I sometimes find babies nesting in the window frame.

If I open my windows, it’s for a limited time to get some fresh air moving through the house. I’ll turn on strategically placed fans in various rooms to encourage rapid airflow through the house so I can close the windows sooner.

I only open windows in the winter if I need to cool a room quickly. For instance, I’m renting my first floor to a friend and I live on the second floor. But I only have one HVAC unit and thermostat for the entire house. The first floor always stays a few degrees cooler than the second floor (heat rises), so I keep it a little extra hot upstairs to ensure I’m not freezing out my friend. But I’m always hot in general, so I’ll either have fans on me all winter, or I’ll occasionally shut myself in a bedroom and open the window for 15-20 minutes, just to lower my body temp a bit and help me tolerate the hot house.

There have been a few winter nights where my wife and I have left the bedroom window open to cool down our bedroom, while burying ourselves in thick blankets. We don’t sleep well if we’re sweaty and stuck to the bed. I usually get up a few hours later and close the window, so we don’t freeze overnight.

Interestingly enough, the reason Brad Pitt is advertised so heavily is the reason I still haven’t watched it.

Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s an excellent actor and I enjoy seeing him on screen. I just don’t understand why an F1 movie needed Brad Pitt. I’m here to watch race cars, not some famous actor behind the wheel!

If they cast an unknown in the lead, I’d be more intrigued because I’m interested in Formula 1 racing. But putting a famous guy in the lead makes me feel like this is gonna be some dramatic feel-good fantasy story, not something more grounded in reality.

And yes, I know this movie is just a giant advertisement for Formula 1. But that’s a real motorsport race, so I’d be more invested if the movie felt like watching a real person’s story, not an actor telling a fictional story in the setting of F1 racing.

I laughed at this joke, then looked over at my end table…

I know this is a shitpost, but to answer honestly… the last pear I had was when I was a child, and I’m in my 40s now.

I still remember their wonderful taste and I haven’t been intentionally avoiding them. I just never came across an opportunity to eat one since my childhood. I’ve primarily consumed apples and oranges over the years and I can’t even remember seeing pears at the store.

Maybe I should go check out my local grocery store and buy a few.

This is why I keep a tablet next to my bed. When I want to recline in bed but watch something, I can do it on a decent-sized screen instead of squinting at my phone.

But my couch also has two “zero-G” recliners on either end of it, which basically means they recline so far, my feet are slightly elevated over my head. So I don’t really need to go to bed to lie down and watch something.

It’s more about if I’m trying to settle down for the night or not. I have wireless headphones for my TV, so I can watch shows late into the night without disturbing anyone, but if I’m gonna fall asleep myself, I’d rather be in bed already so I can just set down my tablet and sleep without any more effort.

That was the first Final Fantasy game I played all the way through. And the first one I owned. It will always hold a special place in my heart.

Note: I was a teenager when that game released, and I related hard to Squall’s emo attitude toward everyone and everything. I thought he was so cool. Replaying it as an adult though, I cringe every time Squall has to interact with anyone. He’s basically a whiny baby who only has friends because a bunch of people decide to ignore his antisocial tendencies and indulge his emo behavior. Nobody would tolerate him in real life. Why did I like this character?!

The Gary Jules cover of Mad World, for the Donnie Darko soundtrack.

Similarly, the original song by Tears for Fears sounds really upbeat and happy, but you’d never know it was a sad song unless you paid attention to the lyrics. I love both versions!

I barely got grandfathered into a pension program with the US military. They went away in 2015. I had served over a decade at that point and they still let me retire in 2022 under that program. The new program is a sort of 401k type system, but I didn’t have enough years in service to contribute to it for retirement, so they didn’t even give me the option to switch over.

Granted, I retired after only 20 years served so my pension is not very big. But it’s money in my pocket every month for the rest of my life, so I’m not complaining. I’ll never starve or go without shelter.

I saw this article with a giant photo of Trump’s face and the line, “Later found dead” and I got my hopes up for a moment.

There was a moment in that fight where Pink got killed and dropped a bunch of grenades when he went down (an ability one of your custom uniforms grant you). And we all happened to be grouped a little too close together, so we all got blown up by him. That’s my one death in that mission - a team kill. I wonder if that did enough damage for his score, or if he kept flagging people with his rifle while shooting enemies.

That’s one of the interesting things about this game. Some players have asked the devs for the ability to turn off friendly fire, but they refuse, saying that friendly fire is funny and part of the ridiculousness of the game.