You’re probably the only person in the world who now views Brazil as a kind of Christmas movie

Brazil pops up in my Plex feed under the “Christmas” category. I just recently added it to my Plex library, but I still haven’t seen it. I guess I need to watch it today.

Every career I was interested in as a child tied into interests and hobbies of mine. I read thousands of books throughout my childhood, so I wanted to become an author. I loved drawing, so I considered becoming an illustrator. I had been singing in choirs since the 3rd grade (and singing at home while my mother practiced piano before that), so I started studying music theory and composition.

During my teen years in the late '90s, the Internet took off and computer technology became all the rage. A family friend who had just graduated high school decided to forego college because he could get an immediate $75K job as an IT technician. A few years later, he was offered a $300K job from another company, because proficient computer technicians were desperately needed in every business and very few people really understood the technology back then.

I was fascinated with the technology and its future applications and started studying computers myself. I read A+ certification books, tore apart and reassembled the family PC, watched training VHS tapes on how to do administrative functions within the Windows OS, etc. I even dabbled in a bit of programming (C++, BASIC, etc.)

Then came my senior year of high school. Nobody had ever spoken to me about college. I had no idea what college was, except that it was the next school after high school. I assumed I’d just pick a college and start attending; I didn’t know there was an application process, I didn’t know that you had to pick a degree to major in, I didn’t know you had to pay for it yourself. Whomever was supposed to educate me about college completely missed me. My parents expected school to guide me, and my school expected parents to guide their own children.

So here I was, my last year of high school, and I had done absolutely zero research into colleges. But then my family went to visit an uncle of mine whom I hadn’t seen since I was a kid and he became really interested in my future career plans. When I told him I still didn’t have a plan, he suggested the US Air Force. Turns out, he served for 30 years and loved every minute of it. They forced him to retire at 30 years, otherwise he would’ve stayed even longer.

He told me about all the incredible benefits; how you get free college education during your career training, free food, free housing, free medical and dental, free travel all over the world… and they pay you to do it all! Plus, you could retire as soon as 20 years into the service and collect a pension and benefits for life. It sounded too good to be true.

So as soon as I went home, my mother and I went to talk to a recruiter and I signed up. During the application process, I requested an IT job, which they said was a highly requested field at the time, due to the future career benefits when people leave the service.

I ended up spending 20 years serving as an IT administrator, traveling all over the globe and having many adventures and cultural experiences. Made friends all over the world and learned so much about our planet and the wonderful people who inhabit it. It really opened my eyes to the world. American politics seemed so small once I had lived abroad for a few years.

I qualified for retirement in 2022, being grandfathered into the military’s old pension program that they had replaced in 2015 with a 401k-type program. I retired at only 38 years old. And I had gotten banged up enough during my service that I qualified for 100% disability through the VA, which gave me lifetime free medical and dental care, along with a monthly medical paycheck twice as big as my pension. With all that combined, I didn’t really need to work anymore, so now I’m enjoying the quiet retired life, living in my former childhood home out in the countryside.

I’m glad I left the service when I did. I was still there for the first Trump presidency and it was a dark time for us. Things turned around during Biden’s term and I retired then. Since Trump came back though, the military has changed a lot, and not for the best. I’m glad I served when I did, but I absolutely wouldn’t serve now. Not with a fascist Commander in Chief running the show and installing his unqualified puppets in key leadership positions. Fuck that. I’d probably end up in jail before my service ended.

Now that I’m out, I could easily use my IT experience and knowledge to find another job and double my income, but I feel much happier not being tied to a job. The military was a bit intense, taking priority over my personal life for 20 years. And you can’t just quit. You sign up for 4-6 years of service at a time and you’re stuck in that contract until it ends. The easiest way to get out of it is to break the law and go to jail, which is not ideal, so you just have to put up with being in the military until your contract expires. And there were definitely days I wished I could quit.

It’s nice to be able to set my own schedule now. I sleep when I want to, take up whatever projects or hobbies I want, and basically plan my days for myself. I don’t really want to be tied to another career for another 20+ years, so as long as I’m making enough passive income to survive on my own comfortably, I’m just gonna stay retired.

I’ve never used Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok. I’m trying to get away from Facebook currently. I’ve successfully dumped Twitter, which I hardly used anyway. I only use YouTube because I can still block all ads, but if they ever force ads into my videos, I’ll drop it in an instant.

I’ve never cared for social media except as a way to stay in touch with friends and family, and maybe a way to meet new friends. But modern social media is just garbage content pumped into your feed constantly for clicks and reacts.

The only reason I haven’t let go of Facebook is because almost everyone I know is still there. If I dump it, I lose contact with 90% of my social group. I don’t really use Facebook anymore though, except to contact people.

EDIT: On a related note, I don’t believe children should have electronic devices. Maybe around 10 years old, they should be allowed to carry a locked down phone or something, so their parents can reach them, but they can’t browse the Internet or send photos to people, etc.

It was around 2010 or so when I first saw a friend hand their iPad to their 1-yr old to keep them distracted. That was a $600 device! Which was a lot of money for a personal electronic device back then.

As an IT professional who had to fix electronic devices all the time, I mentioned to my friend that a child probably shouldn’t have unsupervised access to an iPad, and they told me that’s why it has a thick padded case; a lesson they learned when their first iPad got cracked by the child. So the baby broke a $600 iPad and they bought another and handed it back to the kid?! Sheesh…

I always attempt to play a game the way the developers intended the first time through. If I decide to give it another playthrough and I don’t want to put up with the extra grindy parts of the game, I’ll look for legitimate cheats to help me fast-forward through the rough parts.

I mean “legitimate” as in, cheats the developers put in the game, not outside hacks or mods that alter the game itself. I’m not big on mods in general, and I don’t usually use cheats, but I will in rare situations.

Back in the day, Warcraft III had cheats that let you power through each level with stuff like infinite resources, invulnerability, or just letting you automatically complete a level. I used those on recurring playthroughs because each level could easily take 30 mins to an hour to beat, and it was very grindy.

In Satisfactory, there’s a cheat where you can add a single stack of a resource into the back of a factory cart, then deconstruct the cart. You’ll get all the resources of the factory cart in your inventory, plus double the resource you put into the cart.

Do this dozens of times and you can exponentially grow resources without having to wait on factories to make them. I’m pretty sure the developers are aware of this “glitch” because it’s never been patched out, even after a bunch of people started pointing it out on official Satisfactory forums.

I played hundreds of hours of the game and made some pretty massive continent-stretching factories. Upon building a new world, I started to implement this “strategy” to hurry up and acquire rare resources so I could get factories off the ground. Saved me from hundreds of hours of gameplay, waiting on production lines to make basic resources into more advanced resources so I could get to the next step.

A buddy of mine asked to be part of my Steam Family so he could have access to my 4,000+ game library. He regularly streams games online and figured it’d save him tons of money buying games to play.

But he’s also completed all achievements on almost every game he’s played on console and uses some website to automatically complete all the achievements for his Steam games, so he doesn’t need to redo them on PC.

The thing about Steam Family is… if someone’s caught cheating and earns a vac ban, the owner of the family account receives the ban, not the individual player. I told him I was worried that cheating of any kind might affect my immaculate record and/or library of games and he decided to just buy his own games instead of risking my account. Good friend; he didn’t even argue. I was still willing to let him have access as long as he was careful, but he chose another route.

[…] we have so many things wrong PlanetSide that it makes the stars almost irrelevant.

Yeah, this has been my fear lately. As a kid in the '80s/'90s, I had high hopes for humanity. I loved space travel stories; read so many science fiction books, watched Star Trek/Star Wars, loved space films of all genres…

But lately, I’ll be happy if we ever make it to Mars. The one person who had a dedicated mission to get a man on Mars turned out to be a self-destructing billionaire sociopath who seems to have abandoned that dream for political meddling aspirations instead.

If we can get capitalism out of the way, humanity might have a chance at bouncing back. But as long as a few powerful elites maintain control over society, our hopes and dreams will forever be redirected toward financial gains until the collapse of society.

On the plus side, even Rome, the most stable and advanced civilization outside of our own, eventually collapsed. Humanity survived and eventually went on to thrive once again, doing even better this time. By the historical timeline of the birth and death of civilizations, America is long overdue for a collapse. Maybe we’re about to see a global change that will reset our predicament and give us another chance to succeed. If we can learn from our past.

I can’t vouch for all East Asian countries, but in Japan, it’s a matter of formality. When you meet someone, you always refer to them by their family name and an honorific. (Like we would say, “Mr. Smith.”)

Once you start to get more friendly and familiar with an individual, you’ll move on to more intimate honorifics, until you’re allowed to call them by their direct first name, no honorifics. That’s a sign that you’re very close with someone.

It allows people to refer to you without being too direct and familiar until you’ve gotten to know them well. And you can tell what relationship two people have by what names they use to call each other. Heck, really close friends will probably make up nicknames for each other too.

When I was in the US military, it was kind of the same mentality. Everyone was referred to by rank and last name only. As you got to know someone of the same rank or lower than yours, you could refer to them by last name alone, no rank required. But only the closest of friends would refer to each other by first name.

I just wish I could see how life goes on without me. How our world changes in the future beyond my limited time on this planet.

I think about people who lived hundreds of years ago. How they couldn’t even imagine the scientific and technological advancements that we have. And then I think about hundreds of years into the future. What changes will be so extreme and advanced that I can’t even imagine it today?

I wish there was some way for me to glimpse into that future and see where society is heading. Will we expand out to the stars? Will we be extinct long before we leave this planet? What’s the ultimate future for humanity? These are questions I want to know, but will never get a chance to find out, unless everyone but me dies out in the next 30-40 years. And I highly doubt that’s gonna happen.

I keep a wishlist of things I want/need with their regular prices marked. On Black Friday, I check that list to see if anything got discounted. More than likely, nothing is, because discounted products are usually cheaper variants, or already-expensive items marked up in advance, then dropped to regular price for Black Friday.

Nothing on my list was discounted this year. So I bought some games through the Steam Black Friday sale and called it a day.

Depends on how much milk you add to it. Personally, I see it as more of a breakfast stew; more solid food in the bowl than liquid.

I have a Google phone, which has YouTube embedded on it. I can’t remove it. I had to disable it, then tell my phone to redirect all YouTube links to my browser. Now I can block ads again!

deleted by creator

As a kid in the '80s/'90s, my hair looked exactly like Will’s from Stranger Things. When my peers pressured me to change my hairstyle in 7th grade, I tried a bowl cut. It was the same, just the bottom half was shaved. Looked super ugly.

In 8th grade, I tried a buzz cut, which seemed to be pretty popular with my peers. A little longer on top, tight on the sides, tapered in back. Back then, I think I asked barbers to cut it as a #4 on top, #2 on the sides. It was extremely low maintenance; I could just shower and towel dry and my hair was immediately dry and perfect for the day. My hair was so extremely thick and soft, people joked that I had fur instead of hair. I had a lot of comments that touching my head was like petting a puppy, or a bear pelt. My hair also grows straight out of my scalp, so if I took too long to get a haircut, I started getting a bit of a mini-'fro.

Then I joined the US military at 18 and got the buzz cut professionally trimmed every couple weeks. My hair grows extremely fast and we had military hair regulations that had to be maintained, so I constantly needed to touch it up. I changed my cut to a #2 on top, #1 on the sides, with a little extra length in the front. Of course, still tapered in the back. The military doesn’t allow block cuts, you have to taper the ends.

I spent 13 years with a buzz cut in the military. My wife spent most of those years begging me to grow my hair out, but I kept telling her I can’t; military regs prevent me from having long hair. Finally, she showed me a picture of Captain America from the Avengers movie. Claimed he was technically military, but he had longer hair styled in a way that was still within regs. So I agreed to grow out my hair like Captain America.

Unfortunately, I had started balding a bit in my late 20s. My hair was getting thinner and my hairline was receding. I didn’t have enough hair in the front to style it like Captain America’s, so I combed the front back and over to a side, giving a bit more lift in the front with what thinning hair I had left. I grew out all the hair on top of my head and parted it to one side. On the short side, I buzzed it right up to the part, then kept the sides buzzed short with a taper in the back. I would tell barbers to buzz with a #1 up to the part, then go “skin” on the sides and back, tapered on the back.

It worked fine for the last 7 years of my military service. Then I retired and spent nearly 3 years struggling to figure out a civilian haircut. I had spent so long adhering to military regulations that every time my hair got a little shaggy, I’d panic and get a military haircut again. But I also didn’t want people to immediately look at me as a military guy when they met me. Short hair made me look much older, and as I was just starting my 40s, looking older is not what I wanted anymore.

Finally, I just shaved my head. A complete reset on my hair. I figured, if I’m completely bald, I’m going to have to go through an awkward regrowth period, so I’ll be forced to deal with it instead of being able to fix it on a whim. I was fully retired after my military service, so I didn’t have to worry about looking presentable for anyone. I basically just holed myself up at home; no one saw my bald head except my wife. I should note that I have a wrinkly scalp that looks like a scrotum, so the bald look is really ugly on me.

After nearly 6 months of letting it grow wild, I finally got a trim. I parted my hair to one side and cleaned up around my neck and ears, but left the rest. My hair is still growing straight out of my scalp, so I need a little hair product to comb it down and hold it, but otherwise, it’s been holding a side part pretty well.

I also grew out a beard for about the past 4 months. When I retired a few years ago, my chin had a white spot to one side, and in the 3+ years since then, it’s spread to my whole chin. So my beard is salt-and-pepper with a solidly white chin now. I don’t really care for the beard, but my wife likes it and I get compliments on it from others, so I keep it trimmed neat and maybe an inch long. It definitely helps to hide the fact I was former military, since we couldn’t grow beards while serving. And it adds a unique character to my look.

Hmm, this looks interesting. And you can’t beat the free price tag. I’ll check it out.

Are you retired or young?

I’m retired AND young… well, relatively speaking. I retired 3 years ago, at 38 years old. I’m 41 now.

I was in the US military for 20 years, earned a pension, plus 100% disability through the VA. With the passive income and benefits (free medical/dental for life), I can afford to be fully retired now. I’m not filthy rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I make enough to live a quiet, relaxed life and have my basic needs met. And that’s good enough for me. Plenty of time to indulge in my many hobbies. And I have ADHD, so I’m always finding new and interesting things to deep-dive into.

I actually started a movie review blog about 6 years before I retired. I ended up taking a hiatus from it shortly after retirement and just haven’t been motivated to get back into it lately, despite all the movies and TV shows I watch regularly.

I switched to reviewing video games sometime last year and have been mostly keeping up with that; although it’s been over 2 months since my last review. I should probably make a new post soon, or declare another hiatus. 😬

I’ve been playing it this morning. Virus scan came back clean, and the game has been interesting so far.

That’s cool, no reviews yet then. Not a problem!

I play a lot of games (over 4,000 games in my Steam library) and I’ve made a hobby of reviewing them here on Lemmy over the past year. I especially love horror games. I would love to give it a playtest and provide constructive feedback.

It’s up to you if you’d like me to also post a review of it here on Lemmy or wait until a finished product is available. You can see my post history to see the kind of reviews I write, or you can check out my blog where I’m archiving my reviews here. Easier to browse the history of posts on the sidebar at that website.

Say what you will about Idiocracy, but President Camacho knew his country was suffering a problem and he found the smartest man in the world, hired him, and put him to work to resolve it. If only we could get Trump to care this much.

As a pansexual, intellect is the #1 most attractive trait I find in a significant other. I need someone whom I can have a solid productive discussion with. Intimacy only takes you so far; if you can’t bond on a mental or emotional level, then I can’t stay engaged in a relationship with you.

Empathy is a close second; without empathy, I can’t necessarily trust that your conversation or personal morals/goals are coming from a good place. And I will quickly start to doubt every choice you make in the relationship.

Physical attractiveness is always a bonus, but not required. I am happy with any gender, any body type. I have preferences, but they won’t make or break a relationship. My wife used to worry because she has the opposite body type to some of my preferences. But I informed her that her differences gave me a new experience and helped me to better appreciate her body type. There’s no such thing as a bad body type in my opinion.

I married my wife, not because of her looks or gender, but because she’s my best friend in the whole world. The one person I can talk to about anything and not hold secrets from. We understand each other, wholly support each other, and can agree on most things. And the few things we disagree on doesn’t hurt our relationship. You shouldn’t blindly agree with everything anyway. It’s good to have some conflicting opinions in your life so you don’t get sucked into confirmation biases.

Again, discussion is key. If someone just accepts what you say without any personal thoughts or opinions, then I don’t feel like they’re able to make informed decisions or use critical thinking skills. And that’s not attractive at all to me.

If you were a member of ISIS, you would be considered a member of ISIS regardless of whether you were a janitor or secretary or worked in the cafeteria or you were a combatant.

By this logic, all Americans are terrorists, since they exist under the rule of the US government and haven’t risen up to overthrow it. Therefore, complicit in its actions.

Which, by the way, is the mentality I was regularly exposed to while living abroad. There are some countries that judge our entire nation based on the actions of our government and persecute any citizens of that country because of it.

The world isn’t black and white. Real life is complicated. You can’t make blanket statements against an entire group of people based on the actions of an organization. That’s just encouraging hateful and biased rhetoric toward people you don’t know anything about.

That’s a life lesson I learned while traveling the globe. Some people treated me like a hero when I arrived; some treated me like a terrorist. None of them actually took the time to know me. I was judged based on the actions of the organization I associated with instead of taking the time to witness how I was trying to influence that organization.

And the same could be said of other countries. We’d receive reports of terrorist cells embedded in the populations of third-world nations and be told not to trust the citizens. Yet most people I encountered in that nation were grateful for our presence and glad that we kept the local crime and violence at all-time lows, simply by being there.

I worked with Iraqi citizens who begged us not to leave their country because they hadn’t known peace until we arrived; there was so much violent and murderous infighting between the Shia, Sunni, and Kurds. And having a foreign military power in the area, especially one with our reputation, prevented a lot of deaths and gave local citizens a chance to rebuild and get back on their feet.

I don’t believe in violence. I don’t believe in supporting rich powerful elites. I joined the military to help empower the working class; to give them the tools and resources to rise up against dictators and take back their rights as human beings.

And during my 20 years of service, I had a net positive result in that regard. I never had to raise a weapon against anyone. Never had to violate anyone’s rights while supporting their oppressive government. Never had to compromise my own morals for my job. I accomplished my personal goal of being a positive influence on this world.

You talk about Iraq as if it was a one-off, an outlier.

This was the largest conflict during my time in the military, so it was the first example I defaulted to. Yes, I’m aware that the US has involved themselves in foreign conflicts that it doesn’t have any right to be associated with. Heck, I’ve been protesting our direct involvement in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and the poor way we’ve handled the Russo-Ukraine War so far.

I am but one man. I can’t stop the US government from making bad decisions. But sitting on the sidelines and protesting something I don’t have any experience with hardly made a difference. I chose to be directly involved so that I can influence positive change from the inside.

While serving, I made sure my subordinates were educated on our military’s current actions. I made sure they made informed decisions when ordered to do something, so they would use critical thinking skills when given orders and not just be “yes men.” This was not only to protect them, but to ensure they made choices that helped people instead of pushing ruling party objectives.

The military is a propaganda machine, I won’t deny that. But by being directly involved, I could use that propaganda to push its members toward wholesome choices. The military claims they’re a humanitarian service? Fine, let’s do some solid humanitarian work! Let’s get outside and actually help struggling citizens.

Community volunteer service was a requirement in military life, and I made sure myself and my subordinates were actually affecting positive changes in communities instead of just going through the motions for the publicity. We rebuilt low income neighborhoods, set up organizations to house and feed homeless and/or abused people, created safe spaces for people to receive free mental health services, etc. I did my best to ensure we weren’t just showing up to a single public event to “help out” and then abandoning it the next day.

Change comes from within. You can shout and protest the government’s actions from the sidelines all day, but what are you doing to actually change them? Until you’re directly involved and have hands-on experience with that organization, you can’t really claim to be doing something positive. This is why I joined the military, despite my friends and family thinking I wasn’t the kind of person to do well there. I didn’t join to shoot people or spread hate and fear. I joined to use their power and influence to help out citizens. And I’d like to think I succeeded in that regard, while also positively influencing other military members to do the right thing.

My hope is that the “butterfly effect” of my actions permeates through the organization and continues to positively influence members. Heck, I’m still mentoring some of my old subordinates, several years after my retirement.

One of my friends is currently working for a unit stationed in Germany that is filled with pro-Trump members, and he claims it’s getting hard to see any opinions besides their view. We’ve had lengthy discussions on the destruction and harm Trump has been up to here in America. I’m hoping he can turn around and be a voice of logic and reason in his unit and spread some reality instead of the fascist propaganda that’s already settling in. If I hadn’t served, there would be at least one unit in Germany who is falling for that fascist propaganda. Every little bit helps.

If you’re a US citizen, I’d recommend getting involved yourself. You don’t need to join the military, but we need positive voices in local and federal government positions to fight against tyranny and oppression in our own nation. Our human rights are already on the chopping block and we need everyone we can to speak up against it from positions of authority. Even being on the board of your local town hall is better than nothing.