I’m using Voyager for Lemmy which doesn’t have ads or in app purchases.

I’m 33. Joined up during the APIcalypse and ensuing exodus from Reddit.

Now I feel old because my childhood was basically over before Reddit was born. Am I already old at 33? Gross!

Save WHAT? The gas station takes their bit so I can get to work. The grocery store takes their bit so I can eat to have energy to work, and so I can feed my child. The phone company takes their bit so my boss can keep in touch with me when they want to. The insurance companies take their bits so I can say that I’m insured and have the right to drive, and to put myself deeper in medical debt if anything goes wrong. The landlord takes his bit so I can have a roof over my head. Disney takes their bit so my kid can have her favorite movies and shows on demand because that’s one thing I can give her. And now my coin purse is empty until my employer gives me my bit again. Where do the savings come from, oh wise one?

Just like I wouldn’t know for decades the fact that I grew up with autism that was undiagnosed until 32 years old, was sexually assaulted at 10, and at the direction of the cult my parents raised me in was beaten regularly resulting in CPTSD, all of which I’m still unwrapping in therapy every week. I still push through the pain and the anguish because life is beautiful and it’s my choice every day to continue.

The one thing I thank my parents for above all else is for having me and giving me the choice to push through that pain every single day. Not comparing situations at all but I’ll be there for my kid every single day of their journey and - if they should look me in the eye and tell me it’s all too painful then I will help them find a way to make it easier or make it stop. To insinuate I should have just given up at some point is just defeatist, pessimistic, and wrong. No child had a choice in coming into this world. We all have to deal with the cards we’ve been dealt and the choice to put them down should lie with ourselves as the individual alone and no one else.

My wife had an otherwise completely heathy and normal pregnancy that ended in an “unexplainable” premature birth at 25 weeks 4 days gestation, resulting in a baby born at 930 grams who stayed in the NICU for 100 days and now at 22 months she is reaching or exceeding the health benchmarks for full-term babies her age. The power of modern medicine grows every year. It has come a very long way even in the past 10. The doctors told us there was absolutely nothing we could’ve done differently and I certainly hope my child doesn’t come to me in 20 years and tell me that they’d rather we just gave up.

/opinion of an extremely relieved and proud parent of a child who is clearly very happy to exist.

My Spotify “family” is all over the place. They just all put in my address when they join and don’t have any problems. Just fyi for yourself or anyone else experiencing the same problem.

Not to mention the fact that mental health issues are not handled well by the general public at all. I have seen so much vitriol, dismissal, and skepticism towards anyone who talks about their mental health journey. And in my experience those who will shame me for being overweight will often insinuate that I made up my diagnoses or doctor shopped until I got what I wanted. You really can’t win for losing.

I’ve been to many a pump that instructs you to insert and leave your card, then ‘latches’ onto the card once you’ve inserted it, locking it into place until the authorization for the transaction is complete. I’ve seen them in Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana.

I wonder if they’re prepared for Microsoft’s lawyers to come knocking when they find out their screen space is being highjacked by another company for profit…

I’ve only played on the Steam Deck but I found the controls to be fairly intuitive and easy to use. I’ve played over 160 hours and never once wished I had a keyboard and mouse instead.

I know I’ll get downvotes for this but I switched from Android to iPhone after years and years of using Android while knowing I wouldn’t be able to use iMessage features texting Android users. While knowing I couldn’t and would likely never be easily able to sideload apps, heck even after they had already taken the headphone jack away. I literally do not care about any of that for the purpose for which I use my phone. I just want it to work, without having to endlessly tweak and customize and modify. I like that it does what it says it does out of the box and does so smoothly and reliably.

I like that it integrates well with other apple products. I have exactly 3 contacts I use the native messaging app for. The rest have all been communicating with me through Messenger or Telegram or WhatsApp for years anyway — I’d MUCH rather see governments prioritize making those services talk to each other so I could uninstall two of them but I don’t ever see anyone talking about that even though Apple haters love to bash Apple over iMessage - while ignoring that the RCS protocol Google uses has proprietary bullshit built on top of it meaning that even if Apple adopted the protocol itself the interaction between iPhone and android messages would still be messy.

As I said I know I’ll get downvotes for this but I also know I’m far from alone and this is exactly why Apple has the power it does: it gives its users what they want, even if non-Apple users don’t see it that way. I see so many arguments against Apple that fail to take that into account.

These were clearly all done by either children or by adults who never learned to moderate their use of force. All gas no brakes. Zero sense of finesse.

It’s not even about being on top or being worried about losing status - I’d be fine with giving up what little I have to see a better world. The problem is that a pivot away from capitalism isn’t going to happen without violent revolution, because it would absolutely be met with violent resistance.

I wouldn’t support something that would be guaranteed to thrust my children and grandchildren into a world of chaos, uncertainty, and tragedy that would unavoidably arise during and potentially after a revolution of that scale. And someone has to be holding the levers of power in the end, and how do we guarantee that we don’t just end up shuffling the deck around but playing the exact same game?

It’s easy to be idealistic and say “this isn’t working” but it’s a whole lot harder to convince enough people to dismantle it and deal with the consequences rather than attempt to effect incremental change over a long term.