Cheers - we’ve just celebrated the instances 1st birthday and I was surprised to see I was an early member.

I am very laid back (my Dad always said I was nearly horizontal) and I never get angry, I rarely even get flustered or impatient. My Dad was a very good man and I try to follow his example as much as possible. As his health declined and I started caring for him (a real privilege as he helped so many it was only just that he got help in return when he needed it, even if it couldn’t possibly fully pay him back) and, as I picked up some of his slack I did wonder where he found the time or energy. Since he died, I have felt like a sheepdog without a flock and have found myself adopting various people - I helped a friend through her cancer journey and her son start university, I took another friend to hospital sufficiently often that she just told the staff I was her “hospital husband” (which did stop them asking questions, usually with a roll of the eyes) and, as I don’t drink, I ferry people home from the pub.

However, I can be… thoughtless and this can be really annoying, especially to the easily angered - I’ve lost a friend over it and my brother isn’t exactly my greatest fan (the other year, my niece asked if I wanted to know all the nasty things my brother said about me and I declined - if we knew what people thought about us, we’d tear each other apart). I can also be rude to people but just where it’s funny, you just have to know your audience (it can appal any bystanders though). I’m also not very emotionally expressive and I suspect at least one friend thinks I’m a sociopath.

So am I nice? Although it might depend on who you ask, I’d say no. However, I try to do as much good as possible - if anyone needs help, I’ll drop what I’m doing and pitch in.

What I do when I have spare time: write. I just don’t seem to have had any spare time recently.

If it’s all in the same community then speak to a Mod.

If that doesn’t work or it is spread across a number of communities then peak to Admins from your home server, Beehaw’s and the other posters. If there’s a post with obvious harassment, then report it and that report goes to those Admins.

Is this dead? The connection just times out.

They Live.

The Thing but not The Thing From Another World.

Most things based on the work of PKD.

A lot of Lovecraft adaptations have to be a bit loose (because his stories tend not to lend themselves to films and he wasn’t a good person) and are all the better for it - Re-animator, From Beyond, The Color Out of Space, Dagon, etc. plus quite a few fan films.

Flash Gordon film.

The first two Blade films - they struggle to make great Blade comics.

The Legion TV series.

It wasn’t even a book, more a sketch, a joke even. A lot (most?) of the adaptations of PKD’s writing are better than the original. And yet, the core concepts, about the nature of humanity and reality, break through and inspire some truly great work.

It’s okay to generalise about people who generalise about people.

Good second half too:

That search/SEO is broken seems to be part of the game plan here.

It’s probably like Russia burning Moscow against Napoleon and a hell of a privilege Google enjoy with their monopoly.

I’ve seen people opt for chatGPT/AI precisely because it’s clean, simple and spam free, because it isn’t Google Search.

And as @caseynewton said … the web is now in managed decline.

For those of us who like it, it’s up to us to build what we need for ourselves. Big tech has moved on

That’s why we are all here.

It’s interesting to think that Big Tech might just move on from the Web, leaving it to us ordinary humans to go back to the way we were doing it in Web 1.0 just with fancier tools at our disposal. I quite like the idea.

That’s me.

And being antifeminist doesn’t even benefit them that much.

The only people benefitting are those peddling the lies to disgruntled young men, partly as a grift and partly as misdirection from the real sources of their issues.

But at the same time I don’t see how much people who are not cis men can do so much to really help them.

And it shouldn’t be your job to fix young men but I am as stumped as you and I worry about people like my nephew who is early teens.

There’s [email protected] but I don’t know if that’s not just preaching to the converted.

My point was that cishet men may have it hard to find someone because they are not catching up with progressive and emancipatory values.

It’s worse than that - things seem to be regressing, with a widening political divide between men and women, especially noticeable in the younger adults.

It definitely feels like the modest progress that was made is now being eroded away

Keelhaul the offenders, oh Black Pharaoh¡

Lots of people love to cuddle dogs as self-care and by golly, that’s just as wholesome as it gets.

This message is about as wholesome as it gets.

Who doesn’t love cuddling a dog? I bet even cat people wouldn’t say no.

It feels like there’s an opportunity for shenanigans here.

I just have everything in a drawer with morning on the left and evening in the right.

My Dad needed a lot more pills on an intensive schedule but most pills were morning and evening, so I had 2 seven day pill boxes that I’d refill as they emptied and a system of alarms on my phone (that included the dose) for the other pill that he needed at intervals through the day.

So you should be able to find the right box for your pill regime and then you just get used to sticking to it, so you know if you missed one because the slot still has pills in.

Really the only trick they missed was turning it into a pyramid scheme but that might sneak in if you use the app a lot, although imagine the “success rate” on this is abysmal and a lot of users will drop out quickly.

If you are an open-minded cis dude who respects women and sees them as equal human beings you’ll have no problem finding anyone.

It’s not always that simple. For example, I cared for my Dad 24/7 which involved a convoluted pill regime (and a series of alarms throughout the day). My social life took a real hit. There are also mental and physical health issues, as well as financial aspects.

All that said, anyone thinking this is the solution deserves to be scammed because it is hardly informed consent.

This seems to be sleazy conmen faking interactions with women to convince wannabe pick-up artists to pay for their app. It’s like some new circle of Hell.

Brian Blessed once sent me a Christmas card with “GORDON’S ALIVE” in big letters across it. My username is from Flash Gordon, not Star Wars or Warhammer.40k.