Hey I just wanted to say thank you for this, I understand how generally anti-defederation you are based on past posts and I really appreciate someone who can re-evaluate their stance on a case by case basis like this as new information comes up.

Never really got into TikTok myself, always just seemed like a worse version of Vine. But I’m also not the target demographic so there’s that.

Hah, fair enough. I was using that more as the generic “go do something that’s not just reading Reddit posts on a computer all day”. But I have also been hiking!

Utah scientists knew that the Great Salt Lake has been drying up, and they have been warning the politicians for years about it. But nothing’s been done, the alfalfa farmers suck up water like nobody’s business and the politicians don’t want to do any major actions that would actually solve the issue. I don’t have the exact figure off the top of my head, but the water level has dropped over half the original height now. A bit frightening to see, I’m convinced the lake will be gone entirely within my lifetime.

The dust causing the snow to melt is the least of our worries, the Great Salt Lake is absolutely nasty. Who knows what kind of dangerous pollutants will now be kicked up by the air?

This appears to be the correct link: https://getaether.net/

Seems more similar to Discord imo.

Politics aside, why debate Joe Rogan about vaccines? He’s not a scientist, he’s an entertainer. I don’t get my medical advice from a person without trained medical knowledge. I wouldn’t take mechanical advice from someone who’s not a mechanic or works heavily with cars in their freetime, that’s how you can mess up your car. Why would this be different? People need to stop giving his opinions so much value when he has zero related education/experience to back them up…

Usually neglect, and then when I realize (seeing wilting or things like that) an over-compensation of watering. Which is why I think succulents may be the better call because apparently they generally require less frequent watering

Yeah I’ve noticed that one growing a little taller lately, been putting it in direct sun so hopefully that helps it out! But yeah my current goal is to keep them alive first, so if the plant gets unnaturally tall but still otherwise happy I’ll take that as a win.

My dad and I did the same thing in our woods, except for us the invasive species was buckthorn! Buckthorn was brought in as a nice bush/hedge plant and ends up taking over. It’s incredible how many different plants grew in their place.

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with microplastics… I try not to be pessimistic but it’s hard not to when more plastic is being made and chucked into the ocean every day

Ah, I didn’t realize there was a succulent-specific community! I will post there, thank you

Oh no worries! The succulents I have are a split rock, dwarf jade, panda plant, echeveria elegans, and I forget the name of the last one but it looks spiky (I’ll look it up later). Three of them are in classic terracotta pots with the single large hole in the bottom, so I could likely do the bottom-up watering method with those :)

Honestly I never truly understood the appeal of cryptocurrency in general.

If you want to make an anonymous deal, cold hard cash gets the job done and doesn’t have nearly as poor of an environmental impact. I guess if you really want to make sure online purchases are anonymous then it can be hard to do that with cash, but unless you are buying something blatantly illegal that shouldn’t be too large of a concern (at least if you are in a first world country). The whole “decentralized” currency argument also falls pretty flat when some of the top used cryptocurrencies are not decentralized (Tether, Usd Coin).

Cryptocurrency feels less like an innovation to fit a need, and more like somebody created something cool as a concept and tried to figure out a use case after the fact.

Beautiful reptile!

While I can’t speak to the mental health mentioned in this post, I used to read all the time, but by the time high school years hit that dwindled and I could barely read a chapter without wanting to do something else. I think that social media really took a toll on my attention span (though I can’t prove that).

What helped me was making a book club with some friends of mine! When I had a deadline in place where if I didn’t finish chapters at a set time (otherwise I wouldn’t be able to properly have a conversation about it with them) that really helped motivate me. This also had the added benefit of exposing me to books I wouldn’t normally read (this is how I was introduced to House of Leaves). I still don’t dive deep into a book as easily as I used to, but it has been improving and like anything else just generally comes with practice.