Nepenthe

Uh…then you have kids? If you want them? I do not think I understand the question.

Ah yes, the only two functions, reproduction and opening jars /s

Recently, scientists successfully induced the stem cell of a male mouse to transform into an egg instead of sperm.

The resultant litter was in all respects normal and, while we are talking about baby steps (ha) with mice instead of humans, I’m sure that would be a when, not an if.

The biggest immediate concern would probably be depression and osteoporosis. Pretty sure the depression wouldn’t be very new, sadly, for anyone still paying attention to anything around them at all, but it doesn’t need to be added to the pile for a demographic that already doesn’t tend to reach out.

I had to scroll back up just because she’s so pretty. That’s a quality cat, right there, and she knows it.
11/10 would kiss on her lil forehead.

It’s really a mix of both. More heavily the way the site has been for years because people love drama more than anything else. If you want the sweet serotonin of karma, you’ve gotta be simultaneously the funniest, meanest, and most jaded person in the room, and everyone is jockeying for that position.

It just breeds assholes by design. I’ve noticed my own behavior has changed, too, since leaving that place, although partially that’s because I just didn’t want to be like that anymore.

But it really has been noticeably affected since the protests. I was originally trying to stay for one single sub I was in, because they were the kindest, calmest community I’d met since back when forums were a thing.

Just the best group, for reasons none of us really understood and some of us kept trying to find psychological commonalities to explain. Truly 98% of them were people I’d chill with irl and I still know a few on discord. And also here. If you’re reading this, hello!

But the migration away was enough to completely alter the atmosphere imo. A lot of the more conscientious users left for other pastures, leaving behind those that were more neutral or even openly hostile about the protests.

There began to be fights and insults thrown where before this, any aggression had been unusual. The posts took a turn that reflected that feeling and I really stopped bothering with the place after a few months. I’m still a bit sad about it and there are things that I miss, but there just wasn’t enough to hold me anymore. It seemed to increasingly echo every other part of the site.

For the moment, this place is quieter but better. We still get dumb shit every now and then, but it’s not to the same degree and hopefully never will be. As above, I blame the demographic. We’ve grouped all the people with stubborn morals into a little room and it turns out they have things in common. I do miss a couple people I used to see everywhere all the time when kbin first ramped up, but we run in different circles and they’ve gotten lost in the crowd.

And yes, btw, I am also going to name you one of my favorite users to see around. You seem as kind as you are prolific.

Oh goodness, I didn’t know they were turning the book into a movie

Singing to my cat is one of the only reliable methods to make her get up and leave T_T

He’s playing video games at work

Age of Attraction

Uuuunfortunately, that turned out to be an easily-accessible post that was barely chopped up probably for brevity more than anything else. Wasn’t one of their students, it was some 8yr old at their apartment complex.

Dunno if you’re from there or defensively made assumptions, but the MAP community was gonna come out fairly quick regardless and go over just as well.

Wouldn’t it take 79 years to do that to brick, though? Someone would notice

Cat rent is a running joke in my household, because none of us honestly know where the fuck all the loose change is even coming from otherwise. She’s such a thoughtful baby. That, or a little whore.

Oh, that’s interesting. It never occurred to me to think the sound might vary. Does ici mean anything, or is it just a noise?

Never understood the dumbass pspsps thing. It’s annoying and I’ve pretty much never seen it work. What always has worked for me is to chill just a little ways away and completely ignore them. Just as non-threatening as you can make yourself if you were a piece of furniture left out on the sidewalk.

From personal experience, cats hate being made to do things and don’t come when called unless they already know you and like you a lot. But they also loathe being ignored and will snoof right over shortly to the one person being completely indifferent to them.

This would be the same reason they seem to mercilessly hunt anyone with a cat allergy. Your perceived dislike of them shall not stand!

Sonic Spinball

Oh god, I’m so fucking sorry. Do you have like a donation page for your therapy bills or something.

It’s not a bad game, it’s just that it’s full of insta-death, has no pause or save features, and there is no Continue screen should you fail. If we stopped because we were being called to dinner, it meant having to play…the whole…game…again…all the way from the start. Proudly, we did eventually beat it, but mother of fuck

My grandparents were turkish and swedish, respectively, but neither took it upon themselves to teach either language to their children. My mother didn’t even know her mom knew swedish til she was almost an adult, and the disconnected handful of turkish words was a result of trying to sneak ice cream past the kids. We were all 100% americanized and I feel horribly out of place even though I’m technically only second generation.

I do have relatives overseas, but I understand half of them are dead now. Since I was a kid when my own mom was ostracized, I barely even know any names and as I’ve said, I’ve never actually visited or interacted with them in any way. They may not even know I exist, tbh.

I could theoretically message my one remaining second cousin, I admit. You’re correct. I have the sense this would be very awkward and I’d honestly rather speak to a stranger than explain who the fuck I am and why they should care.

Bonus points if they turn out to be super racist hypernationalists like my granpa so I get to be rejected by the one remaining relative that hasn’t gotten around to it yet. Which isn’t a thing that’s physically preventing me, the prospect just popped into my head and makes me really sad and it would add to my therapy bills

If it helps, it only ever seems to be the tankies, which are progressively becoming the minority. I’m sure more dicks will show up in future waves, maybe, but…I’m kinda seeing the point of just the lowest possible entry hurdles.

Actually, hold on, tumblr was talking about ActivityPub a few months ago, so if they ever actually do that and do it functionally, that will change the culture pretty substantially. Much more weeb/sociopolitical. I’m happily fucking out of the politics here by choice.

A low enough priority that the further I get in my efforts, the more it sinks in with me that I’m mostly wasting my time. It’s a hobby more than a skill.

My attempts to learn my family’s native language have hit a roadblock: now that I have a handle on the grammar, there is no one for me to speak to. It’s frankly pretty upsetting and I’m very discouraged about it.

You’re required to know at least a workable amount of English in order to live and work here, so no matter where they were born, there is absolutely no one in what feels like this entire NW hemisphere that I do not already share a language with. And only one time have I ever known before they said. All other times, they’ve just happened to mention they’re from there after I say something about learning it.

Most immigrants I’ve met are perfectly incognito, and they speak more than well enough for us to understand each other casually. The point of language is to communicate. Goal achieved.

Trying to find a language partner in this situation is proving not only impossible, it’s nigh-pointless to even do unless you’re bored. It’s the same online — nearly everyone already shares a language with me, you’d never guess most of the time, and even country-specific subs sometimes post things in english.

There’s literally no one for me to practice on and zero need to practice unless I feel like going halfway around the globe pretty often in order to make the effort worthwhile. At which point they will still speak to me in english unless I’m lost in the super rural areas, and I will simply cry.

I’ve come to accept that going overseas even once in my life is never going to happen. Europeans seem to vastly overestimate Americans ability to afford to do that. Even if we could, we still have an entire hemisphere to get through first. Which costs significantly less, is almost just as fun, and doesn’t take multiple years of work for a skill you’ll only ever use once.

Well, they kinda do. They don’t have to be human to look like users from the outside.

Looking at this screams that they’re planning to cut and run, though. It’s arson for the insurance money. Nobody would look at this longterm and think it was going to turn out well

Ukranians threaten to castrate russian POWs. Russians castrate Ukranian POWs. Now both sides are even and they can turn right around and invade their own country again, instead of thinking they own someone else’s.

Where your own post is concerned, I’m going to have to take an undisclosed amount of time to think about whether I’m going to take seriously a story that seems invariably to hail only from Russian news sources when it says mean things about the country Russia is loudly invading.

The go-to counterpoint being that people come to social media to socialize with other humans. The moment another “human” hits me with “As an AI…” or are otherwise unmasked for any reason is the exact moment I lose a little bit of faith in the platform.

It’s not enough faith to make me stop using it the first time or even the fifth, so long as the promise of almost always interacting with another person is dangled in front of me. But that little bit can’t be regained and eventually it’s going to hit zero and I will leave.

I already have chatbots if I want to talk to myself. Talking to the cat makes me feel less lonely than chatbots do, and given the choice between the fedi forever remaining niche or retaining the bot “activity” of reddit…I’d just move to tildes.

The only halfway good argument is the use of a breaking news bot, but I’ve found I tend to get tired of those very fast for the same reason. They just make me sad and irritated, and I end up blocking them. If the news is interesting enough, I expect humans will spam it.

If they could be programmed to only post when user interaction falls…maybe, in theory, but that feels more insidious to me than anything else. The idea of a company pumping their numbers will never make me like them, and if bots are already posting stuff, why do I have to interact in order to get content? They’re already doing it. 🤷‍♂️

If I’m lurking enough to trigger the theoretical user activity bot, I’d also be fine lurking while “other users” (the bots) give me things to look at, and they’ll never go dormant.