Old guy in the USA. My first car was a sport motorcycle so six speed with clutch and shifter. I have a sedan with an auto trans, but also a 4WD truck with manual. When I learned to drive in my teens automatic transmissions were not as nice as they are now, just three speeds and not very smooth. Now they’re typically six speed and much nicer. I really dislike a manual trans in heavy traffic, quite a chore.

I do 76F in the summer for AC and 68F in the winter for heating. Try to use minimal heating and air and still maintain a comfortable range. Can get expensive if working the system too hard. If it wasn’t a matter of cost I’d leave it on 72F all the time.

Evaporative coolers are great if you live where you can use one, much cheaper to run and they can work pretty good as long as humidity isn’t too high. I had one in a house I lived in before along with a regular AC system. It was a good to have and saved a lot on the electric bill. If it was dry enough out the AC unit was not needed.

Haven’t used a heat pump before and don’t know much about them. If they work as well and cost less to operate that would be a good option, but I wouldn’t use one if it’s a downgrade in performance. Rather pay for the comfort.

Stardew Valley: I really enjoy the game and play it on PC. It saves the game only at end of turn which is a game day. If I’m not able to finish my turn I have to put the computer to sleep instead of shut it down. Also if I make a mistake which is easy to do I have to start from the last save which can lose a good amount of progress and sometimes random pickups. Though it’s my only peeve with the game so it’s still doing better than most.

I never thought Reddit was addictive. I actually spend more time on Lemmy in a day than I did on Reddit. My browsing habits changed though. Reddit is so big I only looked at a few niche subreddits. Lemmy being much smaller I view a much wider range of topics. It’s a different and better experience for me.

Haha, most of my opinions are unpopular. Some posted in this in thread I agree with.

I think sci-fi has it right with that, I mean you’d only get up out of your chair or whatever receptacle to perform bodily functions. Most people think everyone would turn into fat blobs, but I think that’s not the case. There’s this one sci-fi where I think they got it right, most people became emaciated due to a failure to eat and get any exercise.

Oh and I’ll take the blue pill, VR all the way, reality blows. Though some might say reality is already virtual. It’s an interesting hypothesis, sure would explain a lot.

uBlock Origin forever and always.

Haha, most important program on my computer. My browser is a uBO support system.

I like them when they are actually amusing. Problem is that’s maybe one in ten so it’s not worth browsing them. If someone posts one and it’s actually good, no problem.

For the longest time I used my hand lathering with the bar first, then realized using a washcloth works much better.

I spend more time on Lemmy. More interesting content, more commenting on my part.

It’s kind of a tough call. In my case I keep a library of Blu-Ray and DVD disks. I’ve ripped them to network storage so I don’t actually need them, but I did spend an amount of money collecting them. So at this point I just keep them for posterity.

In general I have a rule about not keeping stuff I don’t use, but there’s always exceptions. There’s been a few things I’ve wished I had not parted with, but if you never get rid of anything you’re just hoarding. I’m more of an anti-hoarder and it’s cost me before. On the other hand there’s too much “material stuff” in life. Best to keep it minimal.

Hard to pick a favorite from the long list.

Well I’m not wikipedia here, just going on things I’ve read in past. You can either believe it or not believe it, suit yourself.

In the pre-internet days it was a well known fact that major media outlets in the USA had federal officials on staff to put the kibosh on issues of national security. That criteria has since broadened. For anyone that still watches news media on TV they can see for themselves the stories that never get past the editorial desk.

I’ve read claims of the same federal scrutiny happening for large social media outlets. These are USA companies operating in the USA so they fall under jurisdiction. They’re certainly not going to advertise that’s the case. I don’t doubt this is happening for a second and in their own best interest they keep it on the downlow.

I’m not sure I understand the comment. You meant 99% of those complaining are posting hostile shit? If so, it’s the 1% that post intelligent and legitimate counter arguments we need to allow a voice. It’s not uncommon for legislation to push through under the guise of some public benefit that further erodes our civil liberty. As US citizens we need to be vigilant about that kind of thing or we’re just throwing our freedom away.

I could have made that a lot longer, but I just wanted make a few points without creating a wall of text.

Of course there’s garbage you don’t want to see in a community. But the difference is there’s an actual human being I entrust to the task of removing it (the moderator). If I don’t like how a community is moderated, I can go to another community. Mods make these calls for the sake of quality and topicality of their particular community, not because of some ulterior motive.

This is in comparison to an institution of some kind using keyword algorithms to mindlessly remove intelligent discussion only because it may be against some kind of predetermined policy. The US government does this. They have official agents placed within the staff of major social media outlets for this purpose.

The only thing I said about Musk is that it’s a positive he tried to reduce censorship. I never implied that he removed censorship altogether. Twitter is still guilty of curating content same as the others. However Threads has flat out stated a full tilt censorship agenda.

Threads is pretty blatant about censorship and sharing of user data. They use terms like “a friendly space” and “convenient” to sell it to users. So you’re actually losing something by jumping ship from Twitter. The one positive for Musk era Twitter was an attempt to reduce censorship, but the crazy things the company did otherwise far outweigh it.

One of the shitty things profit driven social media sites do is curate content to create a more advertiser friendly space. It even extends to special interests and government interests. I mean what do you call that when public information is curated by the government. I sure as hell don’t want my US government telling me what I can and can not discuss in a public venue.

In the USA there’s a little thing called the first amendment. Granted these are companies and don’t necessarily have to adhere to civil rights in the same way government agencies do, but in effect they’re doing the same thing. The US government should absolutely not be coercing these US companies into censoring content, which they are.

It works great for that. It’s also good in automotive for bulb sockets, I’ve used it for that as well. It’s amazing actually, slop some in a socket and next time you pull a bulb it will still look brand new, even if not well protected as the case with antique cars. You would think it might interfere with electrical contact an Vaseline is completely non-conductive, it doesn’t seem to at all. You can also use it on car battery terminals and it will completely stop any corrosion, however I actually use 90W gear oil on those since it attracts less dirt and works as well.

I have this thing about astronomy. Kind of a perspective thing of our place in the cosmos. I try to remember all the distances of planets from the sun and distances of moons from their planets. Also the diameters of solar objects. There’s other factoids I try to remember about neighboring solar systems and galactic bodies. For example I remember the black hole at the center our galaxy is called Sagitarius A and its mass is 4M suns. The black hole at the center Andromeda our closest major galaxy at 2.5M light years is 25M suns. The black hole at the center M87, the closest active galaxy at 50M light years is 4B suns. I didn’t look that stuff up so tell me if I didn’t get it right.

That Eucerin makes really good stuff. They have a thick healing cream that’s amazing, like supercharged moisturizer. I use it on my feet once in a while to avoid skin problems.

I use it to lubricate machine parts at times. Also good coating for rust protection like the sockets of outdoor bulbs or tools in storage. There’s better products for skin protection. Years ago it was commonly used for infant diaper rash, but again there’s better products for that now. I don’t think I’ve ever used it on my body, it’s made from petroleum so it’s really just highly refined axle grease.

They made a funny joke about them in the movie Idiocracy, they thought they’d be around forever; Evolution of Fuddruckers