Yes! I love to incorporate all kinds of colors and patterns in my outfits while maintaining a distinctly “alt” style, and to see others do the same. I’m half-considering posting a few looks if I find the right community but think the desire for anonymity won’t let me.

Having fun with your style and enjoying the music and your community/events is way more important than fitting in with a certain aesthetic.

I read that in the voice of a German excited to show you his kitchen.

I wanted to find out where it came from because it’s such a clever and fun design. Found a Facebook post from someone who says they made it themselves after being inspired by another artist who makes furniture out of sea mines (I assume they were referring to this one).

So I guess it can be called…minecraft.

As others have already said, exposure can be a good way to overcome fear. Start by going somewhere nearby. Maybe ask a friend or someone you feel safe with to accompany you on walks or public transportation a few times until you are familiar with the route or area. Download an offline map in case you get lost.

You said you feel out of place at your local library , but they’re a quiet, safe place where everyone generally minds their own business. You can probably even bring take your own ebooks there to read. You don’t have to interact with anyone if you don’t want to, just get used to being in a different setting.

Canada has been boycotting American products and imposing counter-tariffs on them. Their prime minister also announced a plan to reduce reliance on the US by requiring its federal government to buy from local suppliers, creating a fund to help sectors most affected by US tariffs, investing in Canadian agriculture, and training its local workforce, among other things.

Here’s a link to that goes into detail about the measures being taken.

I often combine grocery shopping with the walks I take. If I’m not in a hurry and don’t need too many things that would be hard to carry, I’ll stop by the grocery store. When the weather is bad I might buy enough to avoid going out far for the next few days. I also keep a list of what I need to buy on my phone and update it when something runs out or is bought.

Hot.

Also the inspiration for 🫃

An infestation.

It is possible to exclude romantic and sexual activities while still having feelings for someone, and sometimes those feelings will subside with time, but whether you can manage that in a healthy way is up to you.

Also, platonic by definition is “of, relating to, or being a relationship marked by the absence of romance or sex”, regardless of whether the participants are straight or not.

Yes, analytics aren’t inherently bad. They can be helpful in planning inventory and improving services like you said, but that can be accomplished with anonymized data.

The problems arise when more data is collected than is necessary to make helpful business decisions, when highly specific individual profiles and digital footprints are created, and when the data is shared with third parties who can use it for purposes other than the ones listed by who you first gave them to.

I don’t think it’s wrong for shops to offer a simple, optional reward program (spend x amount, get y discount) as an incentive to shop there. Often you can enter a fake name and temporary email address or email alias (simplelogin.io has a free plan for aliases).

It’s excessive data collection for targeting advertising, the push to install apps, and dynamic pricing which I strongly oppose, especially when there is a lack of transparency surrounding it.

I’m pretty good at mentally filtering out posts and comments I’m not interested in that come up on my curated home feed. Even in topics I dislike, there can be informative or entertaining discussions so I don’t block unless it’s obvious spam or a bad attempt at trolling.

I also don’t like the low effort comments such as “fuck (unpopular thing on Lemmy)” but then I realized that it doesn’t matter enough to engage with or be annoyed over.

A few that come to mind:

• Festen
• Das Leben der Anderen
• La haine
• Relatos salvajes
• La vita è bella

Here is a neat listing of fediverse applications and their uses.

Of these I have only used Lemmy and PeerTube. Planning to try out PieFed soon.

I don’t set New Year-specific goals anymore since I find that being honest with myself about efforts from any starting point is more helpful than promising to make significant life changes at a specific date. That being said, my general goals are:

• Be more involved in community and humanitarian events
• Put on more muscle
• Set aside a large chunk of my income every month for my future plans
• Make opportunities to have new experiences

I looked up what constitutes a unit of microplastics and the definition I found in this article was “any synthetic solid particle or polymeric matrix, with regular or irregular shape and with size ranging from 1 μm to 5 mm, of either primary or secondary manufacturing origin, which are insoluble in water”.

Because “microplastics” is a broad term that covers particles of varying size, structure, and weight, researchers refer to them in terms of number of particles per unit or total mass of microplastics per sample.

Everything habit you described as a “poor person habits” is just being environmentally conscientious and not being wasteful. It’s good practice regardless of whether you have money or not.

I take immense satisfaction from finding things on sale to the point of delaying buying them until I can get a good deal.

Thanks for providing a source!

I just noticed that we have nearly identical usernames, down to the instance 😯 I had to do a double-take when I saw the comment thread. It was not my intention to imitate you. I am simply not creative when it comes to choosing usernames.

Here is one article which makes a similar point, and another which discuss the strategies of scammers and profiles of people likely to fall for scams. (I made the original comment and am not the lime who responded to your citation request). I will address your other comments on the topic here.

I can also offer my anecdotal observations about Nigerian scams from time I spent scambaiting when I was younger, back when I thought I was doing a service by distracting scammers’ focus away from someone vulnerable, and because it was amusing to see what stories they’d come up with.

• You were correct in saying that the opening messages would be copy-pasted stories with details changed.
• The stories had flaws and inconsistencies, lacked detail.
• Confronting the scammers immediately or refusing to switch to their platform of choice usually caused them to disconnect immediately. The excuses would come later when they were invested in a longer conversation and didn’t want to lose a potential victim.
• The general theme was that they are from a country other than Nigeria, or military sent overseas, stuck in a bad situation and need help. If I pretended to be male, there could be a romance angle.
• Sometimes they would admit where they are really from (confirmed with an IP grabber) but change their story and try to get sympathy by claiming scamming was the only way they could earn enough to survive.
• Gift cards were the initial payment method requested most of the time.

The long, elaborate (often romance and crypto-themed) scams you are thinking of are likely pig-butchering scams originating from China. Perhaps Nigerian scammers have evolved their strategies since then too; it has been years since I bothered to engage with them at all.

So no, I was not perpetuating a meme about scammers “preselecting stupid people”, nor did I say that everyone who falls for scams is stupid. Many are lonely, elderly, unfamiliar with technology, desperate, or kind-hearted but naive.

Often times scammers will deliberately tell unconvincing stories with errors in details and spelling to immediately filter out people who are cautious or observant enough to challenge them.