Technically yes, but I don’t mean technology as phones/laptops/tablets/etc. Imho, the biggest factor in social isolation is atomization due to bad urban planning. When everything and anything is only accessible by car, you lose any connection with your local neighbourhood and local stores/cafes/etc.

In environments where people walk around the neighbourhood, doing small daily shops, going to local businesses and taking mass transit to work/school/restaurants/bars, then you’re much more likely to interact with people rather than driving around in your social isolation-mobile.

Urban planning can be considered a form of technology, which is why I said technically yes.

EDIT: Oh, another big factor here is the loss of the third place. It still exists in some places (local pubs in British towns, local coffee shop in Portugal, etc), but in places without a socially normal “hangout spot” that is separated from both home and work/school, it’s much harder to meet acquaintances which may in time become friends.

Presumably Valve’s lawyers can make this case, so I guess we’ll see if the judge is receptive to it.

Thanks for the link, it was a very interesting read. While it is disappointing that it’s not actually a collective (assuming this blog post is accurate), having a platform run and owned by 6 creators is still better than YouTube’s governance structure, and still has the advantage in having both the capacity and desire to invest in creators.

An advantage of funding things via a collective like Nebula as opposed to each individual creator managing their own patrons is that new creators can start making bigger, more expensive projects quicker. Even established creators have this advantage, they can take bigger risks on bigger projects with the safety net of a share of the nebula pie.

I don’t think a project like The Prince would exist without Nebula, for example.

Absolutely. Fdroid is awesome.

I hate the fact that there’s no simple, free, ad-free note-taking app either inbuilt or on the app store. Just something simple and local to take a quick shopping list or a name or something like that. Fdroid has me covered for that.

Ublock origin isn’t the only ad blocker out there. If you like Ublock origin, use Ublock origin lite. It’s fully V3 compliant.

LLM’s aren’t real AI

I think that’s mostly a semantics issue. When people talk about AI here on Lemmy, they generally mean AGI. LLMs are not AGIs, as far as I understand it.

anti-anything google

I hear that. Went through the technical reasons for the manifest V2 deprecation (if this is only to target ublock origin, why did they implement filter lists into the browser? Why does ublock origin lite work just fine?) and it got more downvotes than upvotes. Haters gonna hate I guess :))

This video does an ok job of it.

While we’re on the topic of EU initiatives, the tax the rich initiative still needs signatures. It aims to set a floor on tax rates for the very wealthy, and have member states use that new money for environment, employment and social policies.

They’ve hit the threshold for France and Germany, but still need more signatures everywhere else.

Tourists in Bulgaria, for example, always get caught out by this. They shake their head for yes and nod for no.

Exactly what I wanted to say. All that talk of “perfection” makes me imagine them snapping and going full psycho because a train was cancelled and they need to book a different one.

To OP: just stop trying to plan that much. A general plan is good. Just be aware things will change and that’s ok. As long as you two are having a good time, the rest really doesn’t matter as much as you think it does.

If you want a little psychological trick to make the trip more memorable than it otherwise would be, whatever you think is going to be the most impressive, save it for last. Our memories have a very strong recency bias.

pi ends with the digit 9, followed by an infinite sequence of other digits.

That’s a very interesting use of the word “ends”.

Good thing I double-checked to see if someone else made this point yet.

Yeah. Not only that, but the splash screen when you launch the game makes it incredibly clear that it’s one guy called Greg (very humanizing) and he’s working on it, but he’s not some superhero.

So basically the Lemmy version of Subreddit Simulator, but allowing users as well?

Yes, absolutely. That is a concern that I too share, fellow meat being. We should be vigilant against superior, more capable, and really friendly artificial intelligences.

At every step in the process, it looked to those around me that whatever I was using was going to be used forever. I didn’t set any lofty goals

This is absolutely the right approach, even if you were planning to quit from the start (not the case with you, but still). “This is my last ever cigarette” just caused me to delay and delay and delay. The only realistic way to do it for me was one craving at a time (“I’m not smoking for the next hour”), then a day at a time. Handling the hours and days was hard, but once you do that the weeks and months take care of themselves.

Vaping for me was a major misstep. Just caused me to consume more nicotine than when I was smoking.

There’s two separate addictions going on with smoking: habit and chemical. What patches, nicotine gum, etc are trying to help people do is tackle them separately.

This means you can focus on getting out of the habit of lighting up after a coffee, or after a meal, or whatever triggers you had, while delaying the chemical withdrawal which seriously messes with your head until later. Tackling the two seperately is easier for many people.

With that said, patches don’t work for everyone, and I hope you find the cessation aid (if any) that works for you. Quitting smoking is an absolute bitch.

For me personally, the most helpful aid was nicotine gum, and then swapping out the nicotine gum for normal gum once I was confident I’d kicked the habit part and could focus on the chemical withdrawal.

The kitchen is operated by volunteers and rely on donations and food banks. I Believe this is also common practice in many temples within India proper.

Here’s a great little mini-documentary on that I saw on exactly that a few months back. Sikh temples seem amazing in terms of the sheer numbers of people they feed with no limiting criteria.

Lol, took me a minute to figure out you’re literally talking about a football match happening now. I was re-reading my comment thinking “Wait, what’s this got to do with Ukraine? Did the Romanian government do something that hit the news I don’t know about? What does this mean?!?” xD