I also use Voyager. I browse by “All” and subscribe to communities that look interesting. I figured I’d whittle down my interests over time until I have a nice custom feed to browse, but because Lemmy is so much smaller than Reddit, I still continue to just browse by “All,” even after being here for about 2 years now.

I’ve only blocked a few communities, but they were just some foreign-language communities that were dominating my feed for a while. Whomever owns those instances didn’t mark a language for them, so they’re showing up with everything else uncategorized.

I refuse to use TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. I only have Facebook because 90% of my friends and family are there and it’s the primary way I stay in touch with them, but I’d like to get rid of that too.

Regarding TikTok, I was serving in the US military as an IT sysadmin when it became popular. But we discovered that the app embedded itself deep in your phone’s hardware, granted itself full administrative access to your phone, then started trickling all your data to servers in China. And you couldn’t fully uninstall it once you’d installed it once. Your phone was completely compromised if you ever installed that app.

It became a huge security risk and we were told to never use it. It was a horrifyingly effective spy tool China could use to easily collect data on us. That’s why President Biden pushed to ban TikTok in the US.

But of course, TikTok became super popular among our civilian population and they refused to give it up, which led to a lot of pushback against the ban. It never held, and now people are still using it and sharing all their private information with China.

Meta does something similar with Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp, but we at least can keep tabs on what they’re doing with your private data, since they’re an American company. They mostly use your information to build advertising profiles on you, to better catch your attention with ads. But that information could easily be used against you if federal organizations wanted to. ICE could use it to identify non-white Americans and their daily habits and easily intercept them.

Still, if you don’t want your private information being potentially stolen by these companies, it’s best to dump these programs. I don’t install them on my phone or tablet and I keep Facebook’s website isolated on my computer, since it likes to read other open windows and use those sites to fine-tune advertising data for you.

Google has turned into one of these companies that collects data on everything you do, so I’m in the middle of de-Googling my life right now. But it’s really hard because they’re embedded everywhere.

We’re living in a dark time where the only way to prevent corporations and governments from collecting information on you is to stay offline. Which is nearly impossible nowadays. We don’t get privacy in this modern Information Age. Not while Capitalism is still a thing.

That landscape image is called a grid, and you can change it when that game is the first one in your Recent Games list (the one game showing in grid view instead of the normal poster view). If you right-click the grid image in Recent Games, go to Manage, and then click Set Custom Artwork, you can change the grid image.

Any games you want to do this to, you’ll have to start them and then immediately quit them so they’re the first game in your Recent Games list. That’s the only time grid view shows up for any games now.

Before Steam started doing posters for games, your library was composed of nothing but grids. Nowadays, the only time you see a game’s grid is when it’s your most recently played game. So there’s not really a need to change it, unless it stays at the top of your Recent Games for a long time and it’s bugging you.

By the way, you can go to the SteamGridDB to find grids, posters, logos, background images, and icons for every game on Steam. It pulls metadata for every game, then people can upload their own custom artwork and logos. So you can find unique artwork to improve your library. Or add posters to older games that have been abandoned before Steam switched away from grid-only display.

I don’t like having games with blank images, so I update every missing poster, background, and logo that I can in my library.

I still don’t understand why anyone would ever pay for access to news articles. There are plenty of free and legitimate articles on the Internet, and public access TV still broadcasts news. You never need to pay anyone.

Honestly, putting a price on access to news just makes me not trust that organization. It feels like a scam, like paying for bottled water when water is one of the most abundant resources in the world.

Paid subscriptions are only a thing because people bought into it and normalized it instead of boycotting it. That’s why everything is a subscription nowadays and no one can just buy and own a product now. We have to spend our lives paying a regular fee for access to something we never own.

37 was the year I started planning my retirement. At 38, I officially retired. I started growing a beard and was surprised to find a white patch to one side on my chin.

Now at 41, my entire chin has turned white and I have salt-and-pepper hair throughout my beard and head hair.

37 truly is a magical age.

Interesting… This was right about the time that I started getting pop-up messages on my phone about pre-ordering the Pixel 10 Pro and getting $450 off. Coincidence? 🤔

I posted a review here earlier this year, but A Way Out was an excellent 2-player co-op game! I really enjoyed it. Story rich puzzles with some action interspersed. And it’s split-screen even if you’re playing online, so you can see what your partner is up to and coordinate with them. The ending was heart-wrenching too! Such an emotionally impacting story. Check out my review for a spoiler-free intro to that game.

Diablo 3

My wife, two friends, and I all played Diablo IV online together. We beat the main campaign together and had a lot of fun with it. We’re trying to beat the expansion campaign too, but my wife and one friend dropped out, so it’s just been me and a buddy powering through it.

That’s a game where you can just have fun dicking around in the world, even if there isn’t an objective. And it has plenty of endgame content to keep you entertained after you beat the campaign.

I got my glasses in 9th grade (~15 years old). I just went to school one day and realized I couldn’t read the chalkboard at the front of the class anymore. Within a week, I had an eye exam and my first set of glasses.

Personally, it took me a couple years to adjust to them. I had 20/10 vision all throughout my childhood (I can see at 20 ft what most people see at 10 ft). My vision was better than perfect. So it was very distressing to all-of-a-sudden not be able to see clearly and it took me a long time to get used to it.

Also, glasses limited my range of view. Whereas I had a wide view normally, glasses put a smaller focused frame around my field of view, so I could only focus on details mostly straight ahead. Everything that moved in the corners of my vision spooked me because I couldn’t focus on it without turning my head toward it. I was very jumpy for a long time.

My vision isn’t terrible. Even at 41 years old now, my prescription is pretty weak. I’m nearsighted, so I don’t even need my glasses for things up close, just long-distance viewing.

And thankfully, it’s been stable for a long time. It’s hardly changed in the last decade and a half. As of last year, my optometrist has been telling me my eyesight could potentially get much worse, now that I’m over 40. So I’ve been told to report back if I notice another sudden change in my vision. But I’ve been good so far.

I wanted to get PRK surgery for a while and I could’ve opted for a free surgery through the US military while I was serving. But things kept getting in the way of my request, and I finally decided to just leave it be. Especially as I got older; I was afraid I’d only be able to enjoy being glasses-free for a few years before I’d start needing reading glasses or something.

Also, my mother spent over 40 years working for the State Services for the Blind, so I grew up around a lot of blind people and always feared losing my vision. So I was a little terrified of getting eye surgery and potentially getting a botched job.

If you want to read the books, it’s 4 novels: Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Hannibal Rising.

You can skip that fourth book if you want. It’s a prequel story that shows how Hannibal grew up and what turned him to cannibalism. The author (Thomas Harris) wanted to keep him a mysterious character, but Hannibal was so popular, people kept demanding to know his backstory and Harris knew that if he didn’t tell the story, someone else would. So he begrudgingly wrote an origin story.

You can tell he didn’t want to write it. The writing style is completely different than his other books. It’s very direct, like he’s just dictating information instead of weaving a tale.

Red Dragon follows Hannibal in prison and the detective who caught him, using Hannibal’s intellect to help catch a psychotic killer on the loose.

Silence of the Lambs is basically the same story as Red Dragon, except replace the brilliant veteran detective with an amateur FBI trainee, whom Hannibal takes an interest in.

Hannibal is a direct sequel to Silence of the Lambs, showing the FBI trainee’s exceptional career and eventual downfall, thanks to the patriarchy.

The Hannibal quadrilogy is one of my favorite book series. I’m sad that the movie version of Hannibal didn’t understand the point the books were telling. And the Hannibal Rising movie was a terrible B-movie plot about a young psychotic kid getting a taste for murder. Didn’t really feel like a Hannibal movie at all.

I haven’t seen the Hannibal TV series, although I hear it’s pretty good. But it’s an original story, so may not be very loyal to the book series.

Personally, I’m still irritated at the end of Hannibal (the 2001 movie). Spoilers for the end of the film and book ahead:

In the book, Clarice Starling has gone as far as she can in her FBI career. She became famous for solving big cases, moved up the corporate ladder, but that glass ceiling kept her from advancing. Too many misogynistic “good ol’ boys” at the top, who not only prevent her from excelling in her career, but take every tiny mistake and blow it up into a potentially career-ending scenario.

Enter Hannibal Lecter; the suave and highly intelligent cannibal serial killer. He’s outraged that Clarice’s coworkers and bosses are actively objectifying her and ruining her career.

Long story short, at the end of the book, Hannibal rescues Clarice and gives her misogynistic boss an impromptu (and tasty!) lobotomy. Clarice ends up running away with Hannibal, because she realized he’s the only person who respects her as an intelligent human being and not a piece of ass.

The movie chose to keep her loyal to the FBI and combative against Hannibal, even though the FBI actively tried to destroy her life. Hannibal escapes alone and the film just kind of ends. It was a complete non-ending.

The whole point of Silence of the Lambs and its sequel, Hannibal, was that Clarice was a woman trying to survive in a “man’s job,” yet proved she could belong - and excel - through her own skill and intellect. Silence of the Lambs did a pretty good job showing that on the big screen, but Hannibal didn’t get the point of the story and decided the hero shouldn’t end up with a cannibal, period. They treated him as more of an irredeemable monster.

It’s kind of the “man vs. bear” meme, except replace the bear with a cannibal serial killer, and the girl still chose the cannibal as the safer choice to her co-workers.

I find this easier to understand with comic books, since I’m a bit of a collector:

Action Comics #1, the first issue to feature Superman, originally printed 200,000 issues in 1938 and sold for 10¢ each.

But because it’s a highly desirable issue and there are currently less than 100 copies left in existence (that we know of), their value has skyrocketed. One copy sold for $6 million last year! It’s worth a lot because it’s so rare and so many people want a copy for their collection. Scarcity makes the price go up, because it’s valuable and desirable to so many collectors.

Money works the same way, but in reverse. Back in 1938, when that Action Comics #1 released, it was only worth 10¢. Back then, there wasn’t as much money in circulation in the US, so 10¢ could buy you a lot of things. Comics, groceries, gas, etc. all were less than a dollar.

But every single year, the Federal Reserve orders more money to be printed for circulation. More money in circulation means that it’s all worth less.

Remember that Action Comics #1? When there were 200,000 copies available, they were worth only 10¢. But now that there are less than 100 left, they’re worth millions. Money is the same way, but it’s moving in reverse. As more is printed, it’s all worth less.

Back in 1938, a comic cost 10¢. But today, there is so much money printed and in circulation, that a modern comic costs about $5. That’s 50x more expensive! The overall value of comics hasn’t changed; they’re just paper with printings on it. Heck, you could argue that it should be worth less today because they’re so much easier to print with modern technology. But because there’s so much money in circulation, its value has tanked and you need lots more money to buy the same product.

Granted, money doesn’t stay in circulation forever. Bills get old and tattered and eventually become destroyed and unusable. Coins disappear or get melted down. Both types of currency get returned to the Federal Reserve to be removed from circulation and destroyed. But we still print much more money than what falls out of circulation each year. And they estimate how much money is in circulation annually to better approximate inflation each year.

So why do we keep printing money? Because more and more people are born, more products and services are being made and sold, and our economy keeps growing. We can’t just circulate the same amount of currency forever; our economy would stagnate and certain groups of people would just never earn money. And in our capitalist society, if you don’t have money, you can’t survive.

So… We keep printing money to keep up with the demands of capitalism, and the growth in circulating currency means it’s all worth less. Therefore, it costs much more to buy the same item as time goes on. A comic in 1938 costs 10¢. Today, it costs $5. Because there’s so much more money in the world, the value of money is less and you need more money to buy the same things.

I retired young. I had joined the US military at 18 years old and signed up under an IT profession. It started as a jack-of-all-trades IT job (if it touched a computer network, we managed it), but as the years went on, they started specializing us. Because if you’re a jack-of-all-trades, you’re a master of none, and the military wanted subject-matter experts. My final job was basically a server administrator, although they never fully adopted to the specialization change, so I was still doing odd IT work outside of my job requirements until I left the service.

After 20 years of service, I qualified for retirement from the military, which I jumped on. I was grandfathered into the old pension program, which means I get about half my base pay every month for the rest of my life. The military also kind of broke me (physically and mentally), so I’m 100% disabled according to the VA, even though I don’t look like it. That comes with it’s own free lifetime medical and dental plan, along with pay that’s twice as much as my pension every month.

So… I decided to take an early retirement at 38 years old and actually spend some time enjoying my life for once. The military was constant stress and focus on the mission. I didn’t get to spend much time focused on my own life because I was constantly being moved around the world at the whim of the govt. So now I’m settled down and just enjoying not having any responsibilities except what I choose to focus on.

I did try to find other IT work when I left the service. But I couldn’t get a call back from anyone, even through the military’s transitional internship program. Eventually, Google reached out to me, but their “internship” was to give me free access to their online training programs on Coursera for 6 months. They never called me back after that.

Eventually, I realized I didn’t need to work to survive. I wasn’t filthy rich by any stretch of the imagination, but my passive income was enough to live comfortably on without working another day of my life. All my basic needs were being met and I had enough extra each month to squirrel away a little bit for a rainy day. So I chose that path. It’s been just over 3 years since I retired and I’ve never been happier.

I mentioned in another comment that I’m using Gboard, which is Google’s POS keyboard. It’s not great (and I’m looking for better replacements currently), but it does learn words if you swipe them 3 or more times in a short time.

I have a unique first and last name that never pop up in dictionary words or common name lists, and Gboard swipes them for me now, because I’ve used them enough times in typing and fixed their attempt at autocorrecting it. Or if it mis-reads my swiped name, it’s usually one of the suggested corrections across the top of the keyboard.

I really don’t like Gboard, but it’s been the best I’ve found lately, so I always install it on new phones and tablets as soon as I get them. I’m getting suggestions in another comment thread here for viable FOSS replacements, so I’ll need to test those out.

I’ve been using Gboard, Google’s keyboard. I don’t like it and am currently trying to de-Google my life, but I haven’t found a better swipe-to-text keyboard yet.

You’d think it would be easy to replace Gboard. Ever since Google started inserting AI into everything, half my words don’t swipe correctly, or they’ll give corrective suggestions on the top bar that are way off the mark. It was way better about 5 years ago. But it seems most keyboards are also using AI to predict swiping, so I can’t find any that work better at the moment.

I used to hate touchscreen keyboards, but then I learned about swipe-to-text. Now I can swipe words on a digital keyboard faster than I can type them on a physical keyboard. I can’t go back to pressing individual keys now unless it’s on a desktop computer keyboard.

That kind of looks like my childhood bedroom, except the carpet needs a lot more bright yellow mixed into the orange. And I didn’t have furniture like that. My walls were definitely that vibrant orange color though.

OP’s description of bright carpeted floors reminded me of my childhood bedroom. I grew up in the '80s, but my home was built in the mid-'70s and every room was a different color. My bedroom happened to have bright orange-painted walls and thick shag carpet that was orange and yellow. When the sun shone through the window over the carpet, it almost looked like the floor was on fire at first glance.

I loved that carpet, but my parents made me replace it with a thin, ugly, dark brown carpet when I was a teenager. As an adult, I understand why. That old carpet must’ve been impossible to vacuum, as thick as it was.

Regarding the color scheme of the house, my parents’ bedroom was light blue with a patchy blue carpet (varying patches of blue between borderline white and vibrant blue). My sister’s bedroom was pale green with green carpet. The bathroom was half yellow, half light green, with yellow flower wallpaper on one wall and pale green carpet. It had a matching green toilet and green plastic shower/tub insert.

The living room was pale yellow, the dining room was a vibrant red, and the kitchen was just white walls (with some wallpaper designs in places) with dark brown wood cabinetry and white laminate countertops. The hallways and living room/dining room had a reddish-brown carpet that bleached in the sunlight and looked pale and awful by the time I was a teenager.

The kitchen and entryway had tan laminate flooring with designs; the only non-carpeted space in the whole house. Oh! And the entryway had white walls, but the bottom 4 feet of the wall had that brown wood paneling that was everywhere in the '70s and '80s.

The first floor of my house, which was built as a separate apartment, was almost exclusively wood paneling for the walls, except the bedrooms, bathroom, and kitchen, which were just white. The carpet was an ugly tan and the kitchen and bathroom had white laminate tile floors.

My sister and her husband, who lived in our childhood home for a while, remodeled and repainted/recarpeted the whole house, but she kept the different color scheme for each room. Now my bedroom walls are tan, master bedroom is light green, her old bedroom is a bright peach color, the bathroom is a light green, the living room is light blue, and the dining room is still red.

She put tiles on the kitchen walls to bring some color to that room, laminate wood paneling on the floor for the entryway, kitchen, and dining room, white laminate tiles on the bathroom floor, and the rest of the house got an off-white/tan carpet with brownish speckles throughout it.

The first-floor apartment had all the wood paneling on the walls removed and the walls were just painted white. One wall of the living room down there was painted a dark bluish-gray by a tenant we had, and I just re-did all the carpets down there with a light blush-gray color. I added a large gray laminate square by their front door so people aren’t stepping immediately onto carpet when they enter into that apartment, and my sister did an awful job with black ceramic tiles in the kitchen. I need to tear those up and replace them sometime; they’re a bit uneven. The bathroom is still white laminate tiles.

My username is most of my real name already. All of my friends and family know this. I even make comments all the time about stuff I found on Reddit/Lemmy/Discord/etc. No one cares. Not a single person has attempted to look me up; at least no one who has admitted it.

I try to be true to myself online. It’s easy to hide behind a username, and eventually you start thinking you’re invincible; that no one will figure out who you are. And you start saying things that might hurt you or ones you love if it ever got out.

I choose to avoid that altogether and just be myself online. Keeping a username that can be tied back to myself keeps me in check and ensures I only say or do things online that people who know me in real life would respect. It helps me to be a better person, even with the anonymity that the Internet may bring.

I personally really enjoyed New Dawn, but it gets a lot of hate from the community. Maybe because each Far Cry game is a completely unique game, and New Dawn is just a continuation of Far Cry 5. I read a lot of reviews that said it didn’t bring anything new to the franchise. Of course! It’s just part 2 of a previous game! You get to see what the world is like 17 years after the events of Project Eden, so the map is the same and a lot of the gameplay mechanics are the same. You do have a community that you’re trying to build up; restoring order and safety amongst survivors of the nuclear fallout, so that’s unique.

One thing I didn’t like was that your character from Far Cry 5 (the Deputy) makes an appearance in New Dawn. Turns out they’ve been brainwashed by Joseph Seed after spending 17 years trapped in a bunker alone with him, so they’re fiercely loyal to Joseph now. Fortunately, Joseph is not the enemy in this game. You actually ally with Joseph’s new group New Eden, so the Deputy (now called The Judge) becomes a gun-for-hire.

I did not like Primal. I played a couple hours of it and just couldn’t get into it. It’s more of a survival game than a Far Cry game. You have to craft everything to survive and you have a stamina bar that depletes unless you regularly eat and sleep. Fast-traveling takes a huge chunk out of stamina, which is annoying and defeats the purpose of “fast” traveling, but I guess it’s realistic.

Unlike most Far Cry games where you’re isolated in a region, trying to overthrow a dictator-wannabe or something, Primal is more about building a community and eventually becoming chief of your own tribe. Sure, there are other tribes to fight against, but it just felt weird not having a solid objective besides surviving. Maybe there’s more plot to it and I just didn’t play enough to get into it.

I still haven’t played Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon. I own both of them and I’ve been meaning to get around to it. I’m an '80s child, so I love the retro-futuristic aesthetic of Blood Dragon. Are they related in story at all, or is Blood Dragon just a standalone expansion for Far Cry 3? If it’s unrelated to Far Cry 3’s plot, I might just jump into it and check it out.