I appreciate the detailed response! Definitely food for thought.

I tried my hand at HVAC but I absolutely cannot stand not having a schedule, nothing worse than getting home and getting a call that I have to go back out for… that and I live in an overpopulated area so driving in traffic every day was just adding to the stress. I was never more miserable than when working that job. :/

Probably not exactly what you meant, but not going to college with my group of friends that did. They went for computer science because they were interested in it and are now doing very well for themselves. I was never that interested in it and am more “hands on” with physical stuff so I didn’t feel like I should “waste” the money on that degree and figured I would spend time trying to figure out what I could do.

I never “found myself” and am currently living in someone’s garage making not much money working in a factory that’s going to be over 90°F today with 75+% humidity… So in my case the financial mistake was not taking out a loan. :/

At the moment it’s Zani

She’s tired and overworked, but she cares about doing something and doing it right. Plus she has a super hot “Italian-ish” accent lol

This is what absolutely kills me about the people around me in this country…

The owner of a company has an idea of your total value, your “compensation.” They factor in the cost of healthcare in that calculation, so we’re still paying for the insurance and yet so many people see it as “their company pays for it, if we had universal healthcare then I would have to pay a tax!” … mother fucker you already pay the “tax” for a much worse, more expensive system where people still aren’t covered…

There’s a flat 5€ fee for prescription meds and 10€ per day in a clinic

Jesus… As an American, we already pay $1,200 a month for the privilege of paying $50+ just to walk into the doctors office. Forget prescriptions or testing…

It’s sort of like “if I keep quiet, they won’t know how stupid I am!”

I can be the quiet “mysterious” (idiot)!

Or just a creepy weirdo. Whatever works Lol

Knowledge is knowing how to make french fries.

Wisdom is to know when to stop eating them.

I’m not very wise.

Stop putting yourself down. Seriously, it’s not fucking helping you. AT ALL.

I’m almost 40 and this has been literally the hardest thing in the universe to do for my entire life. It doesn’t help to do it, but to deny it feels like I’m lying to myself anyway.

I have the absolute worst double standard with this. You drop a pencil and “it’s ok friend, it happens, no one is perfect.” I drop a pencil and it’s “wtf butterfingers jackass, you can’t even hold a pencil properly no wonder you’re still single.” Lol

The United States is a righteous, fair, and just country.

This one really fucked me up as I got older. In school they just brainwashed us into believing we were always the good guys and we always got into wars to help save people from oppression… Then you find out we only ever get into wars to stop people from choosing the wrong kind of government that won’t let US businesses exploit their resources or people… We never act out of kindness or solidarity.

The way I like to say it now is: your age describes how many times the earth has circled the sun after you were born. That’s literally it.

Maturity and wisdom cannot be assumed from multiple trips around the sun.

It’s a failure of terms used in US politics. When we say “left” and “right” we pretty much exclusively are talking about their position in respect to one another as opposed to the actual policies the parties hold.

Republicans are much more “conservative” (right wing) than Democrats (liberals) are, so the Republicans are the right and the Democrats become the “left” as they aren’t as conservative and therefore they are “to the left” of Republicans.

If you were to look at global definitions as to what it means to be a left wing party, Democrats really don’t fit there.

I don’t know how I’d feel about reoccurring dreams, but I’m definitely envious of the constant lucid dreams! Lol

The type of dream I enjoy the absolute most are called “lucid dreams.” It’s when you actually recognize you’re dreaming and can take control of it. I could be dreaming of walking down the sidewalk and see a cool car, realize I’m dreaming, and then just say ok I’m going to get in that car and drive it lol

Unfortunately they’re super super rare so I think I’ve only had like 4 that I remember.

Whales shelling out thousands to their OnlyBots?

Jesus Christ that’s a genius idea…

Make an onlyfans page, hook up an LLM to respond to comments and emails. Have the LLM input prompts to generate images based on subscribers requests…

…don’t give me ideas lol

Lemmy obviously is “smaller” so there isn’t as much breadth of content, but I like it. I just don’t like that the smaller community makes me feel like I’m more likely to be “recognized” over time, I prefer to be “just another voice.”

How I resist reddit is easy: fuck spez.

I wouldn’t consider myself hardcore for it, but yeah I only use Lemmy. Nothing else lol

Used to use reddit until they pulled their bullshit with 3rd party apps.

Edit: another answer made me reconsider what it means to “use” reddit, so yeah if I’m searching for information on Google or something and there’s an answer on Reddit I’ll read it, but I don’t log in or communicate on there at all.

Second this. I even put it in coffee instead of just sugar. It’s so good!

I always make cold brew so I can’t say how it is with “regular” hot coffee lol

Yeah sorry that’s my fault. I literally started to learn to code 2 months before all the articles started… Then all the YouTube videos were “no one will ever hire JR devs again!” and so I stopped. Since I’ve stopped it looks like the consensus has gone back to “learning to code is still a good idea.”

I’ll let other people enjoy a good life, so I won’t try to learn it again and ruin it for everyone I’ll stay in this shit factory lol

I have a deep connection to willows.

40% pussy willow, 40% weeping willow, 20% banana.