I actually prefer Lemmy because it’s less active. I browse Lemmy’s version of r/All and I have more than enough content to keep me entertained for hours. Plus, when I find a popular thread, I can actually contribute to it and my comments aren’t buried under 10K other comments within a few hours. I feel like I can actually communicate with the community here, instead of shouting into the void like on Reddit.
Personally. I don’t consider it a vacation until I’m cut off from everyone and everything. Let me relax in peace for a while, without distractions.
Truth. I just retired from the US Air Force 2 years ago. Spent 20 years as an IT technician. Most of the time, I just worked in a safe, secluded server room. Even while deployed to Iraq, I pretty much worked and lived in bunkers. Wasn’t even allowed to leave the base. My job was pretty safe.
I deployed to a Marine camp once in 2005. My Marine boss said she hoped to god she never saw an Air Force person with a gun in their hands. She said that would mean the planes are down, the base is overrun, and the Marines are dead. She said we were literally the last line of defense. So if we were ever attacked, she told me to just hand my weapon and ammunition to the nearest Marine and go take cover until it’s all over.
I tried to sell my car on eBay back in 2008 - the first thing I ever attempted to sell on their site. I’ve bought a few random things from eBay over the years, including my car 3 years prior.
My account was immediately flagged for potential fraud and locked down. The only way they’d clear it was if I photocopied my driver’s license and mailed it to them; they wouldn’t accept a digital copy.
I just created a new account and have been using that ever since. I ended up selling my car outside of eBay; I’m never attempting to sell a vehicle through their site again.
That’s the route I took. I recently bought a 48" 4K monitor, hooked a mini PC up to it, and now I stream my movie and TV show collection through Plex. I still have Internet access on my “TV,” but I’m in control of what pops up (I block all ads on my home network). I just use a small wireless keyboard and mouse instead of a remote.
I haven’t actually owned a TV since about 2008. I have better media options through computers, and the technology just keeps getting better. Cable and public access television are a pain because you’re constantly bombarded with ads. With my own computer, I can circumvent ads and get a solid viewing experience.
NEVER click decline all. There are loopholes built in that still grant access to “legitimate interest” cookies, which are recognized differently from “consent cookies.” If you click reject all, it still allows collection of certain personal info through cookies labeled legitimate interest. Which is entirely up to advertisers to categorize.
As annoying as it is, always open up options and manually uncheck cookies.
I have a buddy who would rage quit when he dies in games, then rant about how there’s no advantage for skilled players and, “this game is all luck!”
He was exceptionally good at strategy games. Back in the days of Warcraft II, he would spend days writing down exact second-by-second instructions for building the perfect base to dominate the map. (“Dedicate 4 seconds to starting this building, the next 9 seconds are needed to harvest this resource, then 13 seconds to start recruiting 4 infantry,” etc.).
By the time I had made maybe 3 buildings and a few peons harvesting resources, he was already invading my base with a massive army. He probably could’ve gone pro, if esports leagues were a thing in our youth.
But he was a terrible loser. If his strategy didn’t go to plan, he would throw a fit about the game cheating and being all about luck instead of skill.
I retired last summer. This is basically how my week goes. Trying to fill the void with some hobbies or entertainment.
I was serving in the last couple years of my military career when the pandemic started. The military took it very seriously, because we still have a mission that needs to be accomplished. Anyone dropping out for a severe illness would compromise our capabilities.
So we went on full lockdown. No one was allowed to leave military bases unless you lived off-base, in which you were only authorized to go straight home and then back to work. It was highly recommended you order delivery services for groceries and stock up so you wouldn’t need to leave home. Going to the grocery store was the only exception to the lockdown, but it was considered an extreme risk and should be avoided if possible.
Our work shifts (in my unit, anyway) were split in half. Half the crew came in for the morning shift, then thoroughly disinfected the office, locked up, and went home. Then 30 minutes later, the second shift would come in and do the afternoon shift. The 30-minute break ensured no physical contact between shifts. The split-shift allowed a shift to take over full work days in case someone on the other shift got sick. Their whole shift would stay home for 2 weeks to ensure the contagious period passed before sending them back into the office to resume split shifts.
We would’ve moved to work-from-home (WFH), but unfortunately, I happened to be working in an Intelligence unit at the time and 90% of their job was on classified computer systems, which we couldn’t access from outside the office. I was an IT guy, fixing the Intel guys’ computers, so I did WFH for a few months, managing their unclassified computer accounts from a laptop. But eventually, I was needed in the office for their other systems.
We were also required to wear masks outside of our homes at all times. Anyone caught without a mask anywhere - even sitting in our car on the drive to or from work - could be punished for violating a direct order from our base commander. We used to make fun of conservatives who bitched about how uncomfortable the masks were and how they couldn’t breathe while wearing them. We had to wear them all day without breaks, from the moment we left home until the moment we got home. I empathize with emergency room workers; it was brutal, but it wasn’t impossible to do, and we got used to it eventually. After a while, I started to feel naked without my mask on.
In the last 2 years I served, we had a few people drop out with COVID-19 (their civilian families brought it home from their work/school), but the majority of us stayed COVID-free.
When I retired last summer, I moved in with my elderly hermit dad who lives out in the countryside. He avoided leaving his house for the whole pandemic, and even now rarely goes into town. He, my wife, and I are still COVID-free to this day.
My sister and her family caught it 3 times! But my sister married into an ultra-conservative religious family who thought the pandemic was a hoax and continued to hold religious parties and barbeques for the neighborhood all throughout the pandemic (They were anti-vaxxers too; something my sister fought with her husband about long before the pandemic occurred). There were a few scares when she came to care for our father and then got diagnosed with COVID-19 a day or two later. But somehow, my dad never tested positive for COVID antibodies. And despite my sister’s husband losing his sense of taste and smell (which is still not fully recovered to this day), her whole family has thankfully survived their run-in with COVID.
Ugh, don’t call word art memes “old school.” I still see those as new-ish Gen-Z memes. When those started popping up everywhere in the past decade, I had my first boomer moment: “What the hell is this garbage format? It doesn’t make any sense!” My millennial ass is getting too old for this shit.
And here’s the original but it’s weird.
Oh… He’s one of those people. Looking through his other comics, he’s super pro-Trump, ultra-conservative. It’s a shame because his art style is nice, but it’s all political garbage posts.
I knew a guy when I served in the US military who got caught cheating in a semi-related way. He got assigned to a base in a new state and his wife refused to relocate their whole family for the few years he’d be assigned there, so he went by himself, leaving his wife and kids in his home state.
Turns out, he was sexting one of his younger subordinates at work. One of his daughters found out when she tried to use an old tablet and found out his account was still synced to it. She saw all his texts updating in real time.
He was ultra-conservative and didn’t believe in divorce, so he was doing everything he could to save his marriage. His wife forced him to install security cameras in every room of his apartment and banned him from going anywhere after work. She knew his schedule and expected him home immediately after work ended. He was basically on house arrest until his job was done and he could move home.
The last I heard, he told his wife the landlord needed to paint the walls, so he removed all the cameras, dunked them in the bathtub, then played dumb when none of them would work when he set them back up again. He was seen inviting young women over to his apartment after that. So, you know… he didn’t learn his lesson.