BG3…soon. :)

That’s all kinds of messed up. To not value experience… it feels like all over the world in “advanced societies” we live in so much stress and are pulled in so many directions, flailing, trying to stay afloat in a cutthroat world. No wonder people aren’t having babies.

Here in the US housing is unaffordable. More and more young adults can’t leave home and start building their own lives and creating their own families. Salaries aren’t even remotely keeping up with expenses. Without security why would someone contemplate getting pregnant?

The response of leadership in the US feels like they’re creating a climate of forced pregnancies instead of solving the root cause. Such gross economic inequities as we have here create lives of despair and shut down the dreams of humanity. Those dreams are the fodder for building strong neighborhoods, having children, investing time and money into your community. Instead we have despair so people hide in their shells, protect themselves; even to the point of being willing to harm others.

I’m a blue person, stuck in the southeast. I’m nearly 59 years old, so I can’t transplant easily. My spouse has family roots and a house here too. (I don’t, I’ve been more mobile before I met her).

She’s not likely to sell her house either (despite being liberal) because she bought the home she grew up in; Nostalgia. I’m hoping that in 8 years when I retire, she and I will be more on the same sheet of music. Maybe she’ll be ready to downsize (though she still harbors the idea of keeping the house, renting it, and being able to will it to her daughter), and we can consider leaving.

The only game plan I can come up with is get a nice van as our “second home” and live full time on the road; Quite an expensive way to escape. Sigh…I hope she and I sync up eventually.

Yikes! I had no idea there was any way to lose money when credit card rates were so high. The article says that they had to approve people with lower scores than they would normally do, so they are having to write off double the volume that other issuers are.

…and I just opened my savings account with Apple/Goldman a couple of months ago.

Holy crap…this is great news. I can’t wait.

I have no words…

I tried playing a bit with some small money I was ok with losing. I didn’t lose much, but realized in short order that there was no way I could ever get enough info to make a rational decision. Nearly every method/recipe/chart that I saw showed analysis after the fact. Welp, I can take anything in hindsight and make a story that fits the picture. But I never felt like there was any way to be predictive. I was only ever going to be flying blind.

I never stepped even a tiny bit beyond my tiny attempt at trading. I learned my lesson. I’ll just stick to my index funds/401k/retirement plan and hope for the best.

Wow. Those are huge subreddits that are now unmoderated. Is Reddit planning on using bots to auto mod these and hope they catch all the spammage?

If I were to become wealthy enough to have this luxury, I would probably goof off and video game the first month. I say this because it’s what I used to do when I was in school and had summers off.

After the boredom kicks in, my brain usually shifts to more creative endeavors. I imagine I’d do some of the projects I used to love. Calligraphy, creating my own language, photography, astrophotography, light gardening, travel to see museums, hiking, visit parks, read, wood working and carving, small projects around the house. Oh wouldn’t it be grand!

I intend to stay here on beehaw. It will take me a while to get over the habituated behaviors I had with reddit, but the quality of the posts over here is high. I don’t feel like voices are getting drowned out over here. So reddit won’t miss me. Over time, I won’t miss reddit. All good things must end.

Now time to enjoy watching how new communities and the software driving Lemmy develop.

That’s my thought too. Even before this, I felt like I was reading automated posts and chat bot responses on reddit. It seems like a zombie forum where most of the “people” weren’t really real, it was just recycled content, laugh tracks, and being force fed content posted by reddit itself (versus users) scraped from other places.

Y’all have done a wonderful job. I’m in this for the long haul. I’ve donated once and will again. I think I’ll set up a recurring one this time.

I work in tech in a financial aid office. We regularly get slammed with last minute changes from the govt with little details on how they need to be implemented. So we deal with high volume, high detail (because money is involved as is auditing), and high intensity/speed. It’s an ugly mix. I feel like y’all could be in a similar boat. All I can offer is hang in there. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. We support you and I bet you’ll discover some crazy talent in these communities that has the intellect, time and energy to help out.

Interesting times to say the least.

Thanks @[email protected]. That is indeed where I saw it. I forgot the link in my post.

Interesting. The comments are now lagging well below normal. Here’s a screenshot from the blackout tracker. The red arrow shows how reddit is still spamming lots of new posts, but comments are much lower than usual. Normally, at the peak times, comments are at or even above the number of posts. Not today though.

It looks like the activity is flattening now. I guess the stale content is starting to have an effect.

I’ve been curious as to what the end user experience on reddit might look like today and tomorrow. The blackout tracker seems to show fairly typical activity though. https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/ That perplexes me.

Maybe people are still checking reddit like usual, but many posts are hours old in the private subreddits that they may subscribe to? I know a percentage of subreddits didn’t go dark, but those wouldn’t be big enough to cause engagement to stay at the usual levels. Anyone hazard a guess as to what’s up?

Oh…thank you guys for keeping up with all the chaos from us new folks slamming your servers!

I remember years ago when Enron and Worldcom collapsed. People who were retired/nearly retired lost a lifetime of investments. They found themselves on the cusp of their elder years and thrust into poverty overnight.

If (when) the stock market fails everyone is going to be in that same boat because all other avenues of saving money other than shoving it in a mattress or burying it in your yard is ultimately tied up in the market. I have to contribute to a 401k and pension plan to get employer contributions. So instead of a safe CD or savings account…my extra money is “playing” the market. I don’t like this and predict it’s going to get really ugly for lots of folks when finance buckles. I’m 10 years out from retirement and on edge just thinking about this. Then again, I know I won’t be alone.