Cognitive dissonance is s real phenomenon.

I like to think I’m right, and really don’t want to be proven wrong. Changing my mind about anything hurts my ego, so that’s why I don’t want to hear about anything that violates my thoughts, beliefs and biases.

I can. Also, the headache is 100% real.

A mobile phone is for emergency calculations only. If your life, job or honor depends on it, you can make it work, but it’s going to suck sooo hard.

A tablet can do much more as long as you have a keyboard. Also, Apple Numbers and Google Sheets are just barely acceptable for light calculations, nothing more.

When you start doing anything even a little bit more demeaning, you really need to use a laptop. Even the browser version of Excel isn’t good enough. You really need to run the actual application.

My thoughts exactly. The number of Linux users and programmers here may distort the picture OP gets from these comments.

I know someone who just started studying game development. No prior programming experience required. I guess that’s not a problem as long as you do your homework properly.

Phones are great when mobility is a high priority. Tablet are great for on the go entertainment. Laptops and desktops are great for everything else.

For example, searching information online is so much nicer if you can ctrl click and you have 15 tabs open in no time. Then you can jump between the tabs quickly to compare sources efficiently.

That’s the first explanation I was able to find, and I still don’t know what everyone here is talking about. Why do Americans love to use so many acronyms for anything and everything?

All these years, preppers may have been right. Having a well supplied fortress of your own can turn out to be very handy.

What did I just watch? Like… educational content, explained by… 🤷 not at all who you would have expected. What a unique mix.

See also: Eschatology

According to some religions, the whole world will come to an end sooner or later. Actually, even physics/cosmology says so.

Absolutely! You just gotta involve blockchain, AI and cloud computing. Otherwise, the investors won’t know how hot Reddit is. Slap on some quantum computing, and you’re all set.

We’re just getting warmed up here! There’s so much to do.

How about we introduce several tiers of premium currency, like copper, silver, gold, platinum rubies and diamonds, each with their unique exchange rates.

You could have limited-time awards purchased with one of the premium currencies. Also, add time-gated features, like temporary access to meme subreddits, or comment and post visibility boosts.

Pay-to-win mechanics should be included too. How about time-limited karma boosters?

Oh, and loot boxes! We’ve got to have those too. You could buy basic loot boxes with copper coins, and in those you could find a few silver coins randomly. With the silver coins, you can buy silver boxes, some of which may contain gold coins, and so on all the way to diamond tier. Now that you have a convoluted assortment of different currencies, you can use them to boost your account, posts and comments in different ways. Oh, and Season passes too, can’t forget those!

Ads. So much ads! Of course, you can get rid of some of them, depending on how much you pay and which currency you use. These are all time-limited features, so you better keep those coins and gems flowing every day.

And subscriptions too! Once you subscribe to something like 1231 copper coins a day, you can’t cancel without climbing the mount Kilimanjaro. The only cancel button is physically located on a computer somewhere up there.

And there’s so much more to come.

Congrats! I didn’t even think that this message could get more NSFW.

Are you supposed to stick this gun in your mouth and pull the trigger?

Sending some pretty interesting messages to kids…

This looks like a dream target for hackers. Imagine all the data you could find here. If there ever was a single point of failure, this is it.

Mobile phones and earbuds solve that problem for the most part.

American supermarkets are a special category, since everything is wrapped in plastic.

In poor countries, plastic bags are a significant contributor to overall amount of plastic waste produced. Banning plastic bags in a place like that actually has an impact, because most things aren’t necessarily wrapped in layers of plastic.

If you wanted to have a similar impact in America, you would need to introduce a plastic packing and wrapping tax. So yes, banning a single product in a place like that is only a very small step in the right direction.

How do you define intrusive in this case?

If your subconscious mind suddenly reminds of that one time you said something stupid and embarrassing… Yeah, that happens to pretty much everyone. Just tell that thought that nobody remembers that day or cares about what anyone said, so carry on as usual. That’s just the human mind doing its thing, making sure we pay attention to social interactions. Humans are social animals after all.

If troublesome thoughts bombard your mind all the time and you’re having trouble living your normal life, consider talking to a mental health professional.

You know, there are third world countries with a more progressive approach to plastic…

Stepped on a sea urchin, and one of the needles got stuck on my foot. Couldn’t pull it out without tweezers, so I asked if the local shop keeper could help me out.

Many years ago, I formed the opinion that protests rarely accomplish anything useful. If the government has decided to pass a particular bill, build a dam, cut costs or whatever, people often respond by protesting. Usually, the bill is passed, the dam is built and costs are cut regardless. The way I see it, protesting gives people a chance to feel like they’ve done their part, while the government does what they wants anyway. From the perspective of the government, it’s useful to allow people to have a channel where they can safely vent their anger. If you make protests illegal, people will form a resistance and start a guerrilla war, and that never ends well.

There are notable exceptions too, so not all protests end up being useless. It’s just that the probabilities aren’t in our favor. You proposed other forms of political activism, and I totally agree.

To me, all of this is rather theoretical, because I’ve never actually participated in any of this. Instead, I’ve just observed these events from the outside, while you’ve seen it from the inside. I’m really curious to know if agree or disagree with these thoughts.