Every day, I see absolutely moronic comments getting upvoted while perfectly reasonable takes are downvoted. This would be a great opportunity to curate your feed by blocking these users en masse. Active curation like this is the only way to make social media even half-tolerable.

Whether you use it to filter out toxic users or to build an echo chamber, I think everyone should be free to do so. No one should be forced to share space with people they feel bring no value to the discussion - or, worse, make it more toxic.

Allegedly 1000hp

This is especially true with luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Prada. People are either trying to impress others with fakes, or they’ve actually paid full price to become walking billboards.

Similar thing with iPhone cases that have a cutout for the Apple logo. That's just hilarious.

To be honest, the case is still the original one, but almost every other part has since been replaced. Now, I’ve taken it back to the shop where I bought it 20 years ago and asked them to upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and memory - the last of the original parts.

So, is it still the same computer?

I also like that I can just keep replacing parts on an existing product rather than buying an entirely new device each time. That's exceedingly rare feature these days.

I often get the sense that I'm in the only one here doing manual labor but I'm sure there are others.

Identify yourselves.

For reference, the price for fixed-cost plans is around 10c/kWh.

As someone who’s been constantly running an electric heater in the garage while painting my car, I was quite lucky with the timing.

It’s not literally free, though. Transfer prices are fixed, and there are taxes and some other minor costs associated with it, so where I live, it still adds up to around 6c/kWh even when the price drops to zero. The cheap prices are due to an excess of wind power, but once the wind dies down, prices usually spike hard.

I'm removing rust above the windshield and on both sides where the roof panel and side panels meet. I was hoping to finish in one day, but I spent all of yesterday on it, and I've been working since 7 AM today with still more to do tomorrow.

• Taking off the roof rack was a pain, and putting it back is going to be just as bad.
• The seam sealer on both sides was an absolute nightmare to grind off.
• I went through four rounds of grinding, applying rust converter, wiping it off, and repeating the process—yet there are still small spots of rust left, and I just can't be bothered anymore.
• It's near freezing, so I'm running a 3kW electric heater, which is going to cost a fortune.
• I didn’t do enough sanding, so now the line between the old and new paint is going to be visible.
• The antenna would've been a huge pain to remove, so I didn't and that’s probably where new rust will show up in a year or two.
• I also did a poor job masking before applying the zinc primer, so now I've made a mess I have to clean up.

I just hate it when you try to do a good job, but everything seems to go wrong. You get frustrated, start rushing, and make more mistakes, and in the end, you’re left with a sub-par finish that you'll probably have to redo in a few years because you didn’t do it properly the first time.

Because I don’t, and pretending to feels dishonest. I’ll listen if they want to talk about it, but I’m not going to act interested, and I certainly won’t ask about it on my own. What I’m trying to figure out is whether people actually care, or if they’re just playing a social game that I’m simply not interested in.

I’m probably on the autistic spectrum, which likely explains this to some extent. But that’s not an excuse - being an asshole is perfectly compatible with autism, so before dunking on me, please realise I probably agree with your criticism.

I read that half of Americans couldn’t cover an unexpected $1,000 expense. This sounds crazy to me. I understand that poverty exists, but the idea that an adult with a job doesn’t even have that amount saved up seems really strange.

What’s your relationship or philosophy with money? What do you credit for your financial success, or alternatively, what do you blame for your failures?

For the extra brave ones: how much savings do you have, and what are you planning to do with them?

Personally I'd say cave diving. I was contemplating between that and free climbing soloing but I honestly rather fall to my death than drown in a claustrophobic, dark, cold, silted up cave.

Browsing social media, it’s apparent that people are quick to point out problems in the world, but what I see less often are suggestions for how to solve them. At best, I see vague ideas that might solve one issue but introduce new ones, which are rarely addressed.

Simply stopping the bad behaviour rarely is a solution in itself. The world is not that simple. Take something like drug addiction. Telling someone to just stop taking drugs is not a solution.

The best conversations I still have are with real people, but those are rare. With ChatGPT, I reliably have good conversations, whereas with people, it’s hit or miss, usually miss.

What AI does better:

• It’s willing to discuss esoteric topics. Most humans prefer to talk about people and events.
• It’s not driven by emotions or personal bias.
• It doesn’t make mean, snide, sarcastic, ad hominem, or strawman responses.
• It understands and responds to my actual view, even from a vague description, whereas humans often misunderstand me and argue against views I don’t hold.
• It tells me when I’m wrong but without being a jerk about it.

Another noteworthy point is that I’m very likely on the autistic spectrum, and my mind works differently than the average person’s, which probably explains, in part, why I struggle to maintain interest with human-to-human interactions.

I personally can't imagine anyone surviving long-term around running zombies. Even if fighting them was relatively easy, it’s statistically inevitable that sooner or later you'd get bitten. This applies to walking zombies too, but at least with them, you have the option to avoid physical altercations altogether, at least for the most part. That’s what I think most TV shows get wrong about zombies: even if there’s just one, and you could easily take it down, just don’t. It’s almost never worth the risk. In my view, the best way to survive is to avoid them as much as possible. Fighting is the last resort and should only be done in self-defence.

They're near-always military NH-90 copters and for some reason fly quite low. I hear one fying over around once a week. Also love the sound of them.

There’s nothing wrong with criticism or calling out bad behavior. However, shouting "ACAB" in a thread about police violence, making jokes about beheading rich people, or throwing "muskrat" comments in discussions about Elon Musk, just to name a few examples, makes you an asshole and part of the reason why social media is so incredibly toxic.

If you're doing that while also explaining why you feel that way, then it’s still not the best approach, but at least you're contributing to the conversation instead of just making noise. Throwing out insults without adding substance doesn't challenge anyone or encourage meaningful discussion; it just perpetuates the toxic environment that so many of us complain about.

It's water, isn't it? And second one is food. Well what about the third?

I'll start by acknowledging that this isn’t my idea, credit to Sam Harris. I also don’t know if this is even controversial, but I figured this would be a better place to post than in Showerthoughts.

By consciousness, I mean the subjective experience of what it feels like to be. As philosopher Thomas Nagel put it:

> 'An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism.'

It’s at least conceivable that things like free will, the self, or even the entire universe could be an illusion. For all we know, we could be living in a simulation and nothing might be real. Even if you don’t believe that, there’s still a greater-than-zero chance you could be wrong. However, this doesn't apply to consciousness itself. Even if everything is just a hallucination, it remains an undeniable fact that it feels like something to hallucinate. To claim that consciousness could be an illusion is a self-contradictory statement as consciousness is where illusions appear.