Really can’t seem to understand how this works.

Never did any “magic eyes” or whatever books as a kid, so maybe I just don’t have any practice in this, but whether I try to cross my eyes focusing beyond the screen, or “above” the screen, I can’t get the resulting middle image to look like anything other than a blur.

Perhaps my eyes are somehow odd on the other hand. I don’t need glasses though, so I’m a bit skeptical that’s it.

I tried all the guides I found in this thread, including the floating hot dogs, attempting varying distances both with the screen and the finger, then trying the wall-eyed variants too for all of them, none of them work for me.

So odd. It seems it should work. No idea what I am doing wrong here.

Or is this the joke? To get people to squint for minutes on end on their screen?

I still use a few profucts with a similar concept, though the beads are of cellulose or similar fiber as opposed to plastic. I’m not aware if they’re problematic or not, so I thought I’d comment in the hope that perhaps someone who feels strongly about these things might educate me if they are indeed bad for you or the environment or something.

Just as a side anecdote, but I’ve found that having desired outcomes is a surefire way to get disappointed and let down.

I mean that as in a singular desired outcome for any given action. The more specific the outcome or its prerequisites, the better you’d be not to expect anything and just go do the thing without overthinking it. Note: not abandoning or giving up on the doing of the thing, rather just go and do it and adapt to what universe and chance gives you.

Never heard of such a thing. I’d try different brands, does not sound normal that the paper would shed.

But I think just about every bathroom would get regular dust buildup pretty quickly especially if it’s a flat (not a house) where one of the only outward air vents would usually be there.

Just mentioning that because a lot of people don’t seem to clean their bathroom floors — or other surfaces for that matter, that aren’t the actual toilet seat or the faucet — all that regularly. We’ve just recently had this talk with a friend of mine who’s a bachelor and was complaining about how his bathroom is somehow built wrong or faulty because it gets so dusty so quickly, and used ours as an example of how easy we have it because his would need constant cleaning to look similarly decent.

Had to tell them that unfortunately we are cleaning it, out of this very same necessity, very frequently and that’s the only reason it looks like it does as opposed to theirs…

Just a thought: Maybe others just clean it more often and that’s why there isn’t dust visible. You’d be a visitor on other peoples’ homes, so they very likely do some extra scrubbing right before you visit. Maybe you just don’t happen to see the place as it is in an average day, if not actively and frequently kept clean, and that’s why you think others don’t have the same buildup. You witness your bathroom every single day after all, others only occasionally.

Well, it’s been a few years now, but there used to be a fairly active hookup scene in this town, though that wasn’t my scene. It’s all things local at least here. Often people would just message you for various reasons, whatever you post, and sometimes it’d just lead to things once you chat a bit. I don’t think you could post memes or whatever back then, you could only take pictures with camera, couldn’t attach arbitrary images (e.g memes).

They are doing an awful job of it, if that is the case. Most of my last few relationships, serious and casual alike, were from tinder, and those few that weren’t, were surprisingly enough, from jodel. But tinder has been the cultural standard here for a longish while now, and most everyone I know, friends and acquaintances, have met their partners from there. And after passing 30, not many are single anymore, and only very few in casual/serial relationships. So most are in stable committed relationships, of which most were from tinder.

Personally I never spent any money there and I don’t know any that have (though they could just be omitting it or it never just came up, I digress), yet I don’t really know many single people anymore either thanks to it.

So if their intention is keeping people searching, they really make it way too convenient and nice an experience to meet people and fall in love.

Could this maybe be a thing that EU somehow makes better here, versus e.g the US that I can sadly imagine would actually give all the tools for the companies to actively make it an eternal search… it feels to me it’s too good an experience for most I know for our experience to be the outlier. Why would people use it anyway, if it didn’t work?

I am in this picture and I don’t like it

Words to live by. Well put.

I think it’s not about money. It’s the audience.

Maybe this arc leads somewhere better though. He might be big enough to cause a paradigm shift eventually.

A very fundamental part of that is the amount of moving parts. Every person in the chain that is required for the thing to happen, has to either support the thing or otherwise follow through.

This very concept is what has saved us from nuclear apocalypse so far. Very literally so.

Having friends doesn’t necessarily cost anything, or at least I haven’t found that to be the case.

Going to pubs regularly is indeed unaffordable.

But the one doesn’t demand the other. Sober-curious has been a big trend for many years now.

A few years of finasteride (+ minoxidil) here; It likely affects people differently, but for me this combo has very effectively ceased my baldening, or at the very least make it very much slower, but I’ve not got any new growth or return of significant amount of growth on areas that already got very thin.

I’d be realistic about the potential results, maybe a bit skeptical even, just not to get too excited and then disappointed.

Worth mentioning, too, is that as I understand, this is a lifetime deal. Once you drop them, the process is very likely to continue. Not sure about other corners of the world, but it’s not exactly cheap either.

It is slow to finally start kicking in properly, and it’s not exactly interesting. As I’ve come to understand, while this combo is actually somewhat proven to actually be provable/consistent clinically, and can result in new growth or regrowth, most don’t get that. I didn’t, anyway, and that’s just my general practitioners words, not a specialists, so take it for what it is, with a grain of salt.

Edit: I also use ketokonazode shampoo or whatever it’s called infrequently. Not sure if that’s an active part of my own success with stopping the shed and retaining what’s left, so maybe it’s worth mentioning. That and minoxidil I can get without prescription at least around here. Finasterid requires a prescription though.

For whatever it’s worth, I never finished it, as an avid crpg fan. It’s not the hours it takes, it’s the constant feeling that you’ve got so much to do but no real idea where to start, or where to go, or what to do. If it was a world map with clickable places, like the original baldurs gates or even the somewhat intimidating but still much more digestible owlcat’s pathfinders style “railroad” experience, it’d been much nicer. But the free map to roam just makes both decisions harder, and also the seashell collector inside me awaken and suddenly I have to explore each pixel of the map in case I miss something, which is very exhausting on top of the already exhausting freedom.

Well, just an anecdote:

I simply deleted my WhatsApp and moved to signal. Just did it.

People installed the app, at least the ones that cared about staying in touch. Which was most everyone I cared about staying in touch with. A few of my friend groups also moved the group chat to signal, though all of them do have other ones with the people who didn’t care enough to move too, but I hear it isn’t that big a deal, they had multiple groups before and will have in future, doesn’t really feel like any extra hassle they say.

It’s been fine. No problems. I’ve had more trouble trying to explain to my extended family why I’m no longer posting on instagram. Those I never had in WhatsApp either back in the day, so they “stayed in touch” by watching my pictures I suppose. But I just consistently tell people they can reach me always via signal or plain old sms.

I guess the biggest thing to be scared about would be fomo for most, but I don’t really care enough, I’ve got so much going on already that it’s more of a blessing that I don’t have to be involved in every conversation or meme sharing or whatever.

It really gets so easy after simply switching. Just do it and that’s that. The people worth anything come with you, it’s just another app and another group chat or personal chat. Most already have discord and the meta messenger whatever its name is these days anyway. I know zero people with only one messenger/chat app and unsplintered groups across them. It’s not a big chore, and if it is, there’s always sms.

I have a hard time seeing this pov, as someone who likes their fizzy drinks (nay, requires them), but I also chug water frequently for a total of at least 2 litres each day.

It’s not like you need to only choose the one or the other. Some fizzy treats are dehydrating, even, so you kind of need to drink water on top of them.

You can have both! I love my cold water, it’s so refreshing and feels so good to down a 0.5l pint at one go! But I also love my fizzies, I need the stimulation of the fizziness on my tongue and back of mouth, it brings me such joy!

All to say, I find it weird there are so many comments about them being seemingly mutually exclusive.

Yeah I feel the same. I would love to get a really good and nostalgic tv series out of this, the movies were a big thing in my youth and I liked them, and while I can now see it and some of its themes and portrayals in a very different light even ignoring Rowling themself, I would argue the problematic stuff are in line with other cliche fantasy that have very similar problems. There seems to be a baseline of problematic stuff pretty much everything includes, likely there from naivety or ignorance rather than intentional malice, but there nevertheless. I can live with that small baseline amount as long as it’s clearly sensible, in that I can understand it’s probably not intended to do harm, and ultimately does not do much of it even unintentionally. And I can’t say I haven’t yearned a little bit to play the rpg situated in the world either.

BUT, and this is important to me, I can’t, unless Rowlings no longer benefits from them. The IP, if bought by HBO for example, leaving no royalties to the transphobic bigot, I could see myself even enjoying again. But the cutoff would have to be complete. Even if they managed to cut off Rowlings just for this show, they would still benefit from it in merchandise and the IP recognition in general, so I could not allow myself to enjoy the show even if it did not directly benefit the bigot.

But that’s not very likely, is it, to entirely cut them off? If anyone using the IP truly want to get the full potential, they should find a way to entice the bigot to sell off any and all rights and benefits regarding them and the franchise. But that’s not going to happen, because the hateful bigot needs the money to wage war against minorities.

It’s expensive to be hateful and oppressing. You need a money making machine to support such a campaign. And the bigot knows that.

The sad thing is, this will likely be a hit still. Most people don’t seem to care, and I guess that’s valid. But it’s harmful. Just like the game. People find ways to justify their consumption even if they are aware and agree with the problems.

Can’t do much else than try and educate the few people we face in our lives.

But if it was ever possible, I would do much want to try the game and ultimately watch this show too, if it ends up being decent in production terms. Just can’t see that happening, which is sad.

Outside of the more usual “microing” (not in English though, sounds a bit wonky in English but less so in our language), we do use “nuking” a lot.

I have personally never experienced this. The pizza around here is perfectly well balanced with pineapple too. No sogginess, and the pineapple is amazingly juicy still, not dry or hard.

You might have encountered someone using the usually tossed inner parts of a pineapple, that are more fibrous? I bake a lot of homemade pizzas and even I have never managed to dry out the pineapple in the short time the pizza visits the oven

Yeah, it’s a very common thing here in Northern Europe too! At least my corner of it. Even growing up in a very remote and small village in the Lappish wilderness a burger with pineapple was one of the more common ones at the local (and the only) grill-kiosk.

However, for whatever reason, pineapple in a burger seems to be almost always paired with a fried egg. I think it’s great but not really sure why exactly that’s so common a combo.

As one comment already mentions, you could always meet in the middle, making the burden of transport shared, and neither has to do the very long round trip.

With no money, the options are limited, but things like walking in a preferably beautiful park and just talking about stuff can be very good for mental health too as a bonus.

What I do a lot is just grabbing a few (can be surprisingly cheap!) drinks from a grocery store, then sitting by the docks or in some green park or other nice and beautiful surroundings, shooting the shit so to say, drinking and enjoying the view and each other. Of course this is entirely doable without beverages, or the beverages can be non-alcoholic, but I’ve found it just gives the gathering a little bit of an extra purpose kind of. It’s better and more natural if there’s more of you, but works for two too.

Also, bonus if either can play an instrument (a portable one), and you bring it with and if either needs some time off social stuff, it can be good to play a bit and the others listen or let it be background music and continue just chatting. As a neurodivergent myself, that’s what I do. I need a lot of pauses from social stuff, but they need not be long pauses, as long as I can escape for a bit. For me it’s playing and singing with an acoustic guitar, but can be pretty much anything I suppose.

Oh, and one thing we’ve been doing in recent years, is bring one or two chess boards with us and just casually play while we talk about stuff and/or drink. Other board games too, but they have to be portable and minimal in moving parts to work. We have a few of those small magnet chess boards that fold into a case for the pieces. They’re fun side activity at a pub too, but that’s generally a lot more expensive so maybe not something for you guys.

Just a few things from my pov. Hope they help, if not directly, at least inspiring new ideas otherwise.