Asklemmy

44290 readers
775 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
1
 
 

There's been an influx of content surrounding lemmy here. Some of it is open ended:

  • "What kinds of things from reddit would you like to see Lemmy avoid as the user base grows?"
  • "Lemmy, what do you call users of Lemmy?"

And these are a-ok! There's also been a lot of questions like

  • "How do I block a user?"
  • "How do I join a community on a different instance"

These aren't open ended (at least, relatively). They are objective based, and just need a resolution, rather than discussion. These sort of questions are more relevant to [email protected].

I know there's also questions like "What are you guys doing when there’s multiple communities for the same thing across instances?". I'm inclined to let those stay, there is lots of opportunity for discussion. It's a game of discretion from a moderation perspective, but I assume most can easily guess what is cold hard support.

At least from me, moderation of support posts has been sporadic at best, despite the long standing rule. I will begin redirecting these questions to [email protected], however I'm of course willing to listen to the community here if that's not what is wanted, as well as other feedback.

edit: support posts will now be removed, not locked

2
 
 

I'm hoping this is an ok place to ask a question like this.

I recently had to get a new mouse because my old one broke. I couldn't get exactly what I had before but I got something fairly similar. However, I've been struggling to tune it to feel good to use. It's actually been putting a lot of strain on my arm even after short play sessions.

Does anyone know what might be causing this and how to fix it? What kind of things should I do to find the appropriate sensitivity/settings or maybe I'm holding my arm differently for some reason or maybe I need a different kind of mouse?

If it matters, here's the old and new mice:

Old: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GU8W5AE

New: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D3PNVQWK?psc=1

3
 
 

I was going through my Wal-Mart+ subscription plan that I got for free and I saw their offers. One of which was EMeals, that was a 60-day trial. I thought that this was like Blue Apron or other meal delivery services so I thought I'd take a crack at it and hope that it would get me on a path to eat better.

Turns out, it's just a meal planner. And it's absurd to me why and how would anyone pay for something when there are countless and countless recipes and meal planners readily available for free. Who'd the fuck would want to pay for a planner? That's like paying for a calendar app.

4
 
 

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon is when you never noticed something or saw something before, and then you see it everywhere.

For example say you see a chipmunk in an area you never noticed them before, and now you just see chipmunks everywhere.

5
78
submitted 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

This girl, Abby texted the group chat to tell us something bad happened to our friend Ella, that her mom sent a message saying she collapsed and fainted.

It had been several hours, and Abby said Ella hasn't woken up yet, according to her mother.

I was worried, vented to my family about it, and tried calling her number. It appeared her phone had been turned off.

Later, Ella told me and her BF Michael that it was a prank and that her phone was off because she was on a plane. She was bored and thought no one would care if she was in an actual coma.

I was relieved and Michael was rightfully pissed.

6
 
 

I was running for my train. After entering in the station airlock, for a reason i still can't explain, i turned right instead of continuing straight ahead and BAM, i hit a glass with my face. Now i have a little scar, fortunately hidden behind my eyebrow.

7
45
submitted 23 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

Clearly my eyes aren’t* open and I cannot take in external visual stimuli in my dreams, however I experience them similar to the visual experience in my minds eye or imagination or whathaveyou. Similarly I feel like I experience something akin to touch or feel (like the occasional flying or falling dream, or the feel of grass or something).

I don’t recall having anything similar to smell or sound in a dream though (except occasionally hearing a real sound while waking up that wasn’t actually part of the dream) What’s your experience?

8
 
 

Like, I know why it's being banned or has been banned or whatever. I just don't understand the rage behind to keep this shitty ass social media platform that is essentially Vine 2.0

TikTok has been the detriment to society today as Facebook was and is. People doing stupid challenges. People's attention span getting lower and lower. People pretending they're more popular than life itself because of their faux acting and lip-syncing.

Why keep the piece of shit?

9
 
 

After reading about the "suicide" of yet another whistleblower, it got me thinking.

When working at large enough company, it's entirely possible that at some point you will get across some information the company does not want to be made public, but your ethics mandate you blow the whistle. So, I was wondering if I were in that position how I would approach creating a dead man's switch in order to protect myself.

From wikipedia:

A dead man's switch is a switch that is designed to be activated or deactivated if the human operator becomes incapacitated, such as through death, loss of consciousness, or being bodily removed from control. Originally applied to switches on a vehicle or machine, it has since come to be used to describe other intangible uses, as in computer software.

In this context, a dead man's switch would trigger the release of information. Some additional requirements could include:

  1. No single point of failure. (aka a usb can be stolen, your family can be killed, etc)
  2. Make the existence of the switch public. (aka make sure people know of your mutually assured destruction)
  3. Secrets should be safe until you die, disappear, or otherwise choose to make them public.

Anyway, how would you go about it?

10
 
 

So I'm not sure if this is age related or not. I'm a 21 year old male, maybe you could share your age as well.

So basically for a long time (probably my whole life) I had this deep longing/fantasy to live at a different place than the one I'm living right now. As if I don't belong where I'm from and need to be somewhere else to truly feel home. I'm from northern Germany and always had the deep desire of traveling places.

When me and my family went on vacation when I was a kid for example when we flew to Egypt it felt like a wonderful dream as if I was in heaven or something. I just love when I'm in totally different environments like coming from the cold Germany into a tropically warm climate, in a country that is very different, with very different culture and mentality in this beautiful and gigantic hotel resort.

Idk how to describe it but it's like my core desire got fulfilled.

I never felt home here in Germany and my deep desire always was to live somewhere else where there is a very different culture and environment.

A significant amount of time I always wanted to go to America. I've never been there so far unfortunately.

But I always had this feeling that I didn't felt right where I'm from and was always searching for this place where I can feel home, where it's wholesome and I feel freed from all worries, where I have deep/meaningful connections and can fully live in joy and embrace every little moment of life in this deeply joyful way like living like a child again.

I assume a lot of this is probably just some psychological phenomenon that is inducing a fake/unreal fantasy. I assume even if I could move to some other country I might not feel as joyful like when I was a kid and even if I do, at some point it might not feel special anymore and it might not be like I hoped.

So maybe this is just this classic "the grass seems always greener on the other side" thing and in reality it might not be like that.

But I wonder does any of you also have this deep inner fantasy of living in a different place/culture where it kinda feels magical to live and you have ultimate happiness? It might be something unrealistic or a place that doesn't exist but it's like a deep feeling in me and I wonder if others also have it. Maybe it goes deeper and it is this "leftover" from childhood that I remember and that I'm longing for? Maybe it's a fantasy of being a kid again?

11
 
 

For example, Marmite Crumpets don't exist. You cannot buy them at the supermarket. To be clear: you can buy crumpets, you can buy marmite, you can buy butter; but you have to assemble them at home.

If you walk into a breakfast cafe, they will happily serve you sausage / egg / bacon / french toast / bubble / squeak (whatever that is). But no marmite crumpets. If you ask them to make it, they will give you a very strange look. It's not typically offered. It's something you just have to make at home.

It is unbuyable. Any tourist who comes to the UK to try a Marmite crumpet would need to bring a toaster or an oven with them, or quickly befriend a brit and hope that they have all the ingredients at home.

It's not a secret. You just can't have it.

*munches into crumpet thoughtfully, and salivates at the juicy savory delight, whilst staring at you pityingly and condescendingly*

Anyway, what's something that I could never experience unless I made it myself in your local?

12
 
 

Most online communities have a low barrier of entry and effectively no user onboarding, and end up becoming chaotic messes where content is difficult to navigate. Obviously this is fine for more chatty communities, but is unfortunate in more serious and discussion-focused forums and for content archives. Even on Lemmy, there are communities where formatting rules are completely ignored[1]. This results from a combination of site design, moderation, and user respect for the community (three things notoriously bad on reddit-like sites, and well, most popular sites)

A couple of exceptions to the trend are forums which enforce a barrier of entry and quality control (unfortunately I can't recall any right now, but I would love to hear of some!) and some booru IBs. A booru site is an archive where users upload media without titles and tag it for easy searching. If a booru manages to enforce a decent quality of tagging (and there are mechanical ways to assist with this, such as tag aliases) then the site becomes a well-organized online content community.

Most boorus I've found allow NSFW content, so here are some work-safe examples:


Note: feel welcome to list slow or 'dead' sites!

13
 
 

Context: I noticed I have some clothes from 10 years ago that are still good to wear, and some newer things I have barely worn yet. I wondered if I reached a point where all the clothes I own would be enough to last for the rest of my life. There is a dresser and a closet worth of things.

For the sake of this question, let's say you can't buy, borrow, steal, receive as a gift, find, or make anything new to wear. All you get is what you have now. Is it enough?

14
15
 
 

RFF was a community building victory but in a space that is paradoxically much too wing clipped by a lack of diversity in platforms, an abundance of dramatic fragmentation with poor or intentionally no tools for artists to navigate such waves, whilst simultaneously enduring clout and corpo invasions. A landscape hard to sustain the labour and connections to radiate the vibes and build the connections we deserve.

Perhaps after a pause away from the exhaustion and negativity of the general fedi and maintaining a community project, there may be some space for legacy resources. That ain't now.

I really liked listening to this radio, especially at work. If you have radio suggestions that are in the same style, that is to say out of the ordinary, they will be welcome! All musical styles are okay for me, don't hesitate to share.

16
17
 
 

When I see "the FDA has stated..." I automatically think it is probably a corrupt conclusion bought by some powerplayer to maximize their own profit instead of having to do with whether the statement is true or not. I've always viewed FDA as basically a council of a bunch of power players on boards of Big Capitalism companies like Pepsi that make decisions based on control and market share rather than health.

but I see posts now about how trump attacking FDA equals bad. So is my view of FDA wrong? Are they noncorrupt? Are they a necessary evil? Should they be thrown in a volcano and remade?

18
 
 
  • Lying leads to a huge mess, don't start

  • When you start lying, you're not good at it yet

19
 
 

Me go first:

  • Most printer: we all know ...
  • Keurig: a coffee pod machine that use one-time pod. They once refuse to use third party pod with a chip.
  • Juicero: a luxury juicer that squeeze juice from repack pod (which you can squeeze by hand). The machine will only work with pre-pack pod. You cannot make the machine work with your own food or vegetable.

You know any ? Any product, startup, dead or alive.

20
 
 

Tangentially related:

21
45
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

I have ADHD, and take adderall XR for it. However, for the past almost month, I have been without it because my pharmacy has a shortage of it. At first, I didn’t experience immediate problems except for increased appetite and maybe a few other minor issues but for the past week, i have developed anxiety and worry about things more strongly than I typically do. Is this normal? And based on your experience, does adderall “decrease” anxiety?

22
 
 

How much of the data do you think is collected, kept, and used long term? i.e. what proportion and amount

(I realize this might be a better question for privacy, but I managed to get myself banned for flaming some piracy folks)

23
 
 

I've become the tech guy, and family are extremely entitled to my services. My mom especially. BTW I can't cut her out, because I still live with her and she EXPECTS me to fix anything computer related. She won't take no for an answer.

I've tried to keep track of her passwords with a password manager, I've spent literally 8 hours in a single day filling out captchas and replacing passwords, and I've spent even more time trying to teach my mom how to use the manager.

She CAN'T learn it, and always makes a new password, which she doesnt keep track of and expects me to fix it. What the hell do it do? She uses firefox, with auto refill on, but it doesn't autofill on her iphone.

24
 
 

I bought some hockey sticks recently. Free shipping over $300. UPS made me pay $50 on delivery for "Duties or taxes are due on this package." The seller did not list the potential expenses outside of what was paid, and said they have no control over this.

Has anyone else run into this (with anything)?

I have never paid duties as a direct fee for anything not purchased in an airport. Shipping was Canada to U.S.

25
 
 

Is there any way to get unbanned or at least plead my case?

view more: next ›