I think when I moved from not liking things younger people enjoyed to simply having no idea what they enjoy at all.

I’ve never been particularly with it on trends and such. When I was younger I knew the trends and rejected them in the spirit of youthful rebellion, aspects of my personality were defined by what and who I wasn’t.

Then I got a little older and rejected the things people slightly younger than me enjoyed. This came naturally, because I was no longer the target audience for these things it was easy to write them off as if I were.

Now I don’t even know enough to reject them. My knowledge of what younger people like seems to be about five years out of date. When something new comes along that seems irritating to me it seems to pass so quickly I don’t really have time to register it, and when I find something new I enjoy there’s apparently whole fandoms about it where (presumably… hopefully…) very young people fight about it, and they’re fighting about things I genuinely don’t have time to decipher. It’s like it all moves too fast for my vision to really gain focus, by the time I’m able to tell what I’m looking at everyone else seems to have already moved on.

It’s pretty much naive realism applied to politics.

My understanding is most do but it’s the subject of occasional controversy.

It’s an enjoyable way to engage with fiction and think critically. Everyone in the debate knows lightsabers aren’t real, but there’s established in universe rules and community-agreed principles you typically frame your arguments on. This can keep a piece of media alive for fans, if it was just about watching movies and not really examining them then there wouldn’t be much reason to revisit them, which I feel would be a shame after writers put so much work into creating a universe to explore.

It can give you a good reason to continue to engage with the content, or engage with a community of people who also enjoy the content. In my case watching Star Trek is fun and all but not if I’m just mindlessly consuming the show. Looking at a ship’s engine, liking engines in real life and saying “I wonder how that thing would work” is a good mental exercise, especially when you’ve found others who have the same questions.

I wouldn’t care one bit, nor do I know anyone who does.

The only time I notice someone’s order is if it’s ridiculously elaborate. Like I doubt you’re actually interested in drinking this but abusing a worker for content or entertainment. Otherwise yeah I not only don’t care I probably won’t even notice.

Moreover if I’m in “coffee person” mode I have a little list of cafés I go to. To me judging your order at Starbucks would be like judging your order at McDonald’s. None of this stuff is good so I can’t really be elitist that you ordered fish instead of a burger, we’re just here for convenience.

I just felt less like a sith lord and more like a douchebag most of the time in Kotor.

Evil can be fun if it makes sense. I sometimes enjoy games where I find myself backed into a corner and have to do something bad to get out. Or I find myself genuinely drawn to the power that an evil choice tempts me with. Or circumstances beyond my character’s control compel them to use The Evil to get things done. It can make for an immersive and nuanced story.

The problem is if the “evil” path is more just “asshole” or “kills everyone in sight” then I tend to find it less fun.

Mobile, in browser with desktop mode on.

I’m weird about apps. It’s not even a privacy thing really, I just never got into them as a concept.

A longtime hero of mine from when I first started learning to code. RIP.

My wife probably wouldn’t come with me, my cat wouldn’t make it, I think I would struggle with finding suitable water sources that don’t count as part of the civilized world.

I go solo camping about once a year to remind myself I’d probably die out there but get it out of my system.

At least where I am in the southern US self-checkout ends up being slower.

Ten years ago my experience was likely similar to yours, pretty quick to just scan your own groceries, not much of a line to speak of as some people are opting for a cashier. Go for the self checkout every time.

The trouble now is that there aren’t enough cashiers so almost everyone has to go through self checkout. Longer line but you would think it wouldn’t make that much of a difference.

But they only have one attendant watching all the self checkouts. So if three people are buying beer at once you have only one to go around checking their IDs. If an item (usually a fruit or vegetable) doesn’t have a proper entry in the kiosk’s database and no barcode to scan then the attendant has to go by and manually enter a code scan the item to unlock the machine. For example when buying habaneros my grocery store only had an entry for “green habaneros”, if you selected them the machine would call a cashier over because you picked an item they don’t actually have. Don’t even get me started on their touchy anti theft measures erroneously triggering because you moved your hand weird when setting down a bag.

Again, none of this was really a problem back then, but now at my grocery store it’s one attendant handling 8 self checkouts at once where any number could have these problems to resolve.

This part may be more in my head, but I also frequently feel like I’m stuck behind people who have never used a touchscreen before, or been in a grocery store, or exchanged currency for goods. Someone always needs help with some part of the process and if you add that to the problems I listed above, it can really slow things down.

In 2016 I used self checkout if I wanted to get through quickly.

In 2026 I look for a cashier.

Cult of the Absolute seems to mostly be filled with weirdos.

Very little. I was always content to wait for the actually funny greentexts to break containment and land somewhere else. I went to /b/ in like 2010 after hearing it was funny but it was pretty much just racist. Other boards seemed fine just sort of boring.

Similar experience with Tumblr, I like the funny stuff other people find for me and bring to reddit (and now Lemmy) but the site itself tended to be a little dull day to day.

That tracks with my experience. I visited Japan but knew minimal Japanese (pretty much just 有り難う御座います) and everyone was very friendly and helpful, and seemed pleased the limit of my Japanese was at least something polite.

I feel like one difference is a friendly Mandarin speaker would be less likely to try to correct me if I made a mistake and more likely to try to just interpret what I’m trying to say. I wonder if some of that comes from the possibility of misunderstandings from a tonal language.

I’m a Mandarin learner and there are some things in Mandarin that feel really intuitive for me, and other things that I really struggle to wrap my head around.

Tones are tricky but when speaking I’ve found I can really rely heavily on context to get me through a lot of it. Culturally Mandarin speakers are pretty forgiving, most of them just seem excited I’m giving it my best shot. Not sure if it’s the same for Japanese speakers.

If the answer is anything other than Long John Silvers then you don’t have enough game to get beyond the first date.

Most religions tend to involve a deity that is either alive, resurrected, or concepts like death don’t really apply to them.

Tiamat in ancient Mesopotamian faith is sort of a creator deity, though her death is responsible for creation. The storm god Marduk kills her, splits her corpse in two with one half being the sky, the other the Earth and her tears the source of the Tigris and Euphrates. Tiamat’s spouse and general Qingu is also killed by Marduk and his blood is used in the creation of mankind. So in a sense Marduk is more of the creation deity here who is very much alive.

But you can’t really get anything from a dead god so there isn’t much record of people worshipping Tiamat, at least not quite like they did Marduk.

It makes sense really, why would I pray or present offerings to something that can’t listen when there’s plenty of living deities whose favor I could try to earn to bring rain to my crops or give me healthy sons?

I’ve been eyeing a Cordoba C9 or Yamaha GC12C for awhile. Kind of figure I’d save it to treat myself, celebrate a promotion or something.

I thought about getting something more affordable like you’ve described just to scratch the itch, and maybe that’d be better than depriving myself this long. But I guess having a luxury to look forward to has a positive psychological effect on me.

Depending on the model you probably got a great deal on that Takamine too

Buy a classical guitar.

I’ve been eyeing them for about ten years now but I don’t play enough guitar to justify the cost just yet. At some point I’ll probably just wake up one morning and buy one and play it plenty and wonder why I waited so long.