nimble

yeah, I don’t understand when people get hot against downvoting. Sure, it sucks if people don’t like what you post, but people need to be able to voice both agreement and disagreement. I mean, in real life, if you’re in a situation where you’re not allowed to disagree, merely demur or agree, it’s usually considered toxic. It’s not healthy, at any rate. Making silence the only “no” allowed doesn’t work because silence is usually taken as a softer form of agreement. And while people are usually allowed to comment negatively, this isn’t great because people will usually want to avoid that unless they’re in the mood for a fight. Not everything is worth an argument, and downvoting allows people to give their opinion without having to dwell on the post or comment in question. Allowing for some ‘unfair’ downvotes works because the majority will be for more rational reasons, like for posts that are cruel, wasting space, deliberate misinformation, and so on.

The other thing too is that people seem to forget we’re not on Reddit, where the voting mechanism was used against people, whereas here only your own voting patterns are reflected upon you. I mean that we don’t have the karma system which did make the voting a problem. Downvoting in the fediverse isn’t going to affect the other person’s ability to post again elsewhere. I can understand people getting very hot about downvotes if they had bad experiences on Reddit and assume the system works identically here (again, it doesn’t! Although feddit.online (or PieFed?) will remove your ability to downvote if your ratio hits 0, and you can upvote some stuff and get your downvotes back :V ). I do wish documentation was clearer/easier to find. Gets a little confusing how each instance is a wee bit different, plus we say Lemmy, but there’s also PieFed, and then there’s also the rest of the Fediverse…

The phone has a great deal more distractions on it than the e-reader does. The brain has a much harder time focusing on a task in a distracting environment (in this case, device choice). If I want to read, I use the e-reader since it’s got better proportions than the phone, it has a much easier to read screen than the phone, it’s definitely sturdier than the phone, its screen won’t get streaky from finger oils like the phone’s does, and best of all it lacks all the distractions that come with a phone. When one wants to read a book, one usually prefers to immerse themselves into it, and not to be popped out constantly by notifications of any sort. It’s an activity that should require an hour or two, which means it’s pretty bad for doing on the phone, whose battery will not last. Since the phone is important for other tasks, one prefers not to be caught out without power to use.

Oof, I have a cat like this. Usually she’s not too bad, but if she gets agitated at all she’s a horror story. 17 years of this, too. Normally, it’s better to just tire the cat out with playtime during the day at a time more convenient for you. She wants attention, mostly. If cats didn’t have social needs they wouldn’t make good pets, and cats do have a strong need to socialize with their humans. Normally she’s good and only comes in at about 9, 9.30am when I usually want to get up. But sometimes she gets it into her head that we need to be up much earlier, usually if we’re having trouble sleeping and she notices we’re sort of awake. Or lately she wants the faceted crystal baubles in the window to throw off rainbows for her to attack, but it’s the wrong time and she doesn’t get it and thinks we activate it. She’ll take me to the stair window first thing when I get up, and put her paws up on the sill and complain and complain, but there’s aught I can do!

The contrast is that if I or my partner are feeling sick or depressed in the morning, she’s just the sweetest, kindest creature and will just snuggle and purr, and won’t care what time you finally get up. But if you’re healthy? Forget it. We say that she’s Momma to our Owen, for those of you who have seen Throw Momma From the Train.

It depends. Health metrics, when used correctly, can be useful. I mean, back before smart devices some of us were taught to monitor our heart rates regularly with our fingers, a clock, and if you need to track this over time, a notebook. A smart watch just makes it a lot easier to do. Tracking stuff for health or habit is not a new idea (Benjamin Franklin, for example, promoted tracking behavior and thought in order to improve oneself) and it is useful. Trying to keep track of detailed information in your brain will not work because our brains just don’t do that very well, so we invented writing for that purpose.

That being said, tracking is only useful when you need to do it for a specific purpose, and often only in the short term barring exceptions. I tracked my water intake for a while to figure out how much dehydration was a problem for me, how much water I actually needed to feel more comfortable, and about how to schedule that so I could get the right amount each day without a tracker. I used tools to develop discipline, but which discipline is correct and effective. Otherwise, using subjective data only, we might just engage in self torture (ie, relying on what we believe or want to be the case, not necessarily what is the case). Similarly, I’ve been adding sensors in my home because it’s good to know the temperature, humidity, air quality etc especially when we’re curious about whether the devices we use for certain conditions are working, necessary, effective, etc. We made some serious quality of life improvements so far, too, thanks to that data.

The short of it is tracking is like doing research in a lab, but people treat it like a gimmicky toy. They don’t have a reason to monitor (whatever metric), they just like the idea of doing so, to feel like they live in science fiction.

Oh, sure, although mostly older stuff (The Real Ghostbusters, Freakazoid, Sonic Sat-AM, Digimon Adventure 02 specifically, Batman The Animated Series, etc). Nostalgia is certainly a factor, but I enjoy animation and especially appreciating the work that goes into creating a cartoon. Helpfully, a lot of the shows I grew up with in the late 80s and through the 90s were only sort of intended for children and were made by people who loved art and animation and wanted shows they could enjoy, and not just slop intended to sell toys (not that I don’t watch The Masters of the Universe on occasion. What a goofy fucking show. I watched it a lot as a kid and always said I hated it, but obviously I didn’t. Today, an Orko figurine lives by my computer). TRGB slips after the first two seasons, but the others I enjoy wholly. Eh, there’s others I like too but only watch piecemeal and on occasion, like Dexter’s Laboratory and Power Puff Girls. I need to find Pinky and the Brain to rewatch. I wonder if I would enjoy rewatching Inspector Gadget?

Newer stuff not so much. I mean I like animation a lot as an art, but also, I am very picky when it comes to style, so most newer programming for any age is right out.