Should probably check out some of my local ones and see what they have. Thanks for your comment! 🤗

For me: the internet. The internet has done what my country has done and that’s centralization. Collecting everybody in a few big cities and subsequently killed small villages, towns and communities. Ironically, in the case of my government, it was done to save money and in the case of the internet, it was done to make money.

I also enjoyed my time during the years I was taking my degree. The friendships and fun hangouts, the way we helped one another and accepted one another and learned tolerance and humility. I remember that I actively participated in as many things as possible while I was studying, because I wanted as few regrets as possible when I graduated and the next phase of life started. I’m so happy I had the pressence of mind to think of that and take advantage of my time with these people while I still had the chance, because this current phase of life is a lot more slow paced and there isn’t much in terms of socializing because everyone is working and are making babies these years. I don’t mind that those years ended and that we are here now. It was good while it lasted, but I do think that if it had lasted any longer than it did, it would probably have gone stale at some point. We ended on a high note.

Oh, and since last year, my spouse and I have been returning to physical media and have started buying and borrowing DVDs and Blurays again. Recently we watched a 2004 movie that has a scene in a DVD store and I just blurted out to my boyfriend that I miss going to one of those stores and browsing DVDs. Especially Blockbuster-type stores where you’d rent the DVD because they always had a bin with discarded films you could buy for super cheap. These days most of our DVD purchases take place online and it’s so boring. I miss going to a physical store with atmosphere and find some random movie I hadn’t seen before and it was almost free, it was that cheap. Axel Music and Moby Disc were my favourite stores and I totally took that experience for granted because silly me thought that stores like that would always be around. The closest I get to reliving this experience is when we go to the library to borrow movies. The DVD section is shoved away in a sad little corner in my library so it’s not really the same, but it’s still better than nothing at all. I don’t know what I’ll do if physical media is forcefully phased out after the boomer generation passes away. Dx

On the other hand, LPs have made a comeback so maybe there is hope yet.

Honestly… valid. I love Urusawa. Monster and Pluto are both amazing shows. The only reason I even bothered with Pluto was because it was made by him.

I’ll eat my words. There’s at least one person in anime who still makes good shit and actually tries.

Everything Satoshi Kon made was great. I personally lost interest in anime when he died because there is literally nobody else who pushed anime in any worthwhile direction other than him, in my humble opinion. My favourite of his has to be a tie between Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers. Perfect Blue was also waaaayyy ahead of its time. It’s a masterpiece.

I mean, I know a few kids who fit within that arbitrary bracket and they all seem well adjusted. Their parents are all very strict about screen time and encourage their children to join clubs and sports and other social activities. Even all the gen z’s in my own family, and there are quite a few of them, could not care less about social media and most of them live offline lives for the most part.

I think there will of course be a significant number of kids and youths who are attached to the internet in one way or the other, but I think a lot of us in here are the terminally online types who tend to forget that there is a much bigger world out there where a significant number of people live offline lives because the internet does nothing for them interestwise.

I’m the only one in my family who is plugged in and actually knows what the internet is about. I have one other family member who really likes to post stuff on Instagram, but they don’t really know or understand much else about the internet. Not the way I do. But I’m also one of the only socially weird people in my family. I like people, I just suck being physically around them for long stretches of time so I have always leaned towards using the internet for social contact because you can always withdraw when it begins to drain you.

Almost everybody else in my family is a social butterfly who goes out and does things irl. Same with my friends and colleagues and most of my acquaintances. They enjoy offline lives, building communities and spending quality time with their kids. They go to community meetings where they discuss social media usage for their kids and how they want politicians to place more restrictions on children’s and youth’s access to those platforms. They actively work for it.

That’s why I just can’t bring myself to buy in on that whole doomer mentality that the internet loves to circle jerk. There are simply too many people out there in the real world who are too well adjusted and who are too aware of how their kids need to be protected from the internet in ways we weren’t when we were young. Mostly because our parents had no real chance to understand and take charge on the subject.

There are definitely many young people who will end up stuck in the online vortex, who will grow up as iPad babies and be used by their parents to get online attention, but I genuinely think that is a very visible and very loud minority. Most parents today are very much aware and want to give their children their privacy.

And as for all the climate change stuff. Well, that one is harder to change. That has to be a top down decision and it has to be a general willingness among the people to give up conveniences that they refuse to give up. I think that will be up to the younger generations to make that change and I believe in them. I don’t think my generation is gonna be willing to have less, but I don’t know.

In the end, and this might piss some people off, humans have always found a way to adapt and we have always had to adapt to climate change for as long as we have existed. This climate change is one we have contributed to significantly ourselves, but we will figure it out and for the younger generations they will be adjusted to the new normal from birth. It’s not an endorsement of what’s happening. I want us to go full throttle on green energy and green everything, but all the stupid war shit is disrupting the developments a bit. Not stopping them. Just slowing them down. But we will get there eventually.

A lot of things are fucked right now and we get all the bad news at once at every minute of the day to it’s easy to fall into despair, but honestly, I think a lot of things will be balanced out eventually. It just takes time and humans are not very patient when it comes to that part of the equation. Myself included.

I tried to look it up, and apparently there is something called “black heart”

Apparently it’s something to do with how the potato has been stored. Something about a lack of oxygen, but I don’t know anything other than the few searches I found.

a science paper about blackheart

black heart and internal heat necrosis

There probably are other and better sites out there about this topic, but I think it is possible it could be black heart even though the pattern in yours looks unusual, but honestly, what do I know? XD

I think they liked that one. Only one of them was a one piece fan and she mentioned the Netflix one was decent. I haven’t seen it myself, so I trust her judgment.

I once made a list of 7 movies that fit this criteria.

The Room, because duh. This movie is great because it is so terrible and sincerely thinks it is great. The story behind the movie is just as fantastic. If you must, get a hold of The Disaster Artist as an audio book. It is fantastic. Ignore and forget that piss tier James Franco movie that the book was based on. The book is so much better and it is hysterical to listen to in Greg’s own voice + his Tommy impressions are perfect.

Winter’s Tale - a supposed Adaptation of a Shakespeare play or something. In reality it is the most chaotic and hilariously terrible movie I can think of, complete with terrible Colin Firth haircut and Will Smith as an edge lord Devil. And so many more great things. I had a blast watching this one.

Jupiter Ascending. If I remember correctly, it was made by the siblings who made the Matrix and it is the most nonsensical sci-fi turd ever, but man is it funny. Unintentionally, might I add. I don’t remember much from this film other than laughing so hard I was crying.

The Wicker Man woth Nick Cage. I love the original. That one is genuinely great and terrifying. The Nick Cage one is a clown show and no one can tell me that it isn’t funny to see Nick Cage in a bear suit, punching women.

Show Girls. For obvious reasons. A total and utter mishandling of a very serious and at times horrific subject matter, but mishandled so poorly it surpasses being offensive and falls straight into hilarity.

Breaking Dawn Part 2. Martin Sheens laugh. Renesmee doll that was replaced with CGI horror. Grown man imprinting on a baby. Martin Sheen’s laugh. Fakeout fight scene that made all the dead serious fangirls scream and cry in the cinema on release. “You nicknamed my daughter after the loc nest monster??” Also, Martin Sheen’s laugh.

The Death Note Netflix Adaptation. I invited my anime friends to a watch along when this movie came out initially, because I knew what would happen when I did. The anger and outrage was interspersed with bewildered and hysterical laughter and replays of scenes that were so bad, nobody could believe their eyes. I was just there to sow the chaos at the time and harvest the reactions. It was wonderful.

Bonus movie: Velvet Buzzsaw, but it doesn’t count because I genuinely think this one is a great satire and I genuinely enjoy the movie. It’s just that almost everybody else who’s seen it, seem to loathe it with a passion. So it’s a reverse Killers of the Flower Moon for me, where everybody seem to love it, while I think it is total and utter ass. In both cases, I am left confused at the public opinion and I will stick with mine.

Happy birthday! 🥳 may you have a long and happy life.

I was around your age in 2008 and sadly it was the worst and most traumatic year of my life, but it paved the way for the happy life I live today in its own weird way, so it isn’t all bad.

I guess that is what I will give you as an advise in life: no matter how fucked things can get, and trust me they can get really really fucked sometimes, there is always something good that can come from it. It may not happen the next year or even in year five, but the longer you hang in there and work on yourself and the direction you want your life to go in, the more you can use those terrible times as reference points for where you don’t want to end up or how you want to meet the world and it will be so rewarding. ❤️

For me, when things suck in current day, for example, it’s okay to be angry or sad about it, but I always remind myself that I have survived worse and this shit is nothing.

All the best to you, my friend! 🤗 have a wonderful day!

I’m halfway there and not really sure if I want to go the full way. I left social media, bought a bluray player and borrow movies from the library on the regular. It’s been a real bodning experience for me and my boyfriend. He even joins me on movie-hunts in the library now.

I have considered heavily to get a button phone as well, but I literally can’t due to how the social system is set up in my country. It’s all built around the idea that everybody has a smart phone.

My 2026 goal os to get back into reading more and start gardening now that we finally moved somewhere with a garden.

Since January of last year I have felt a lot of stress leave my body by leaving social media and canceling subscriptions for streaming services.

I have been considering taking the plunge into Linux as well and probably will do it eventually when I overcome the fear of fucking it up, but much like you, I have long since accepted that the part of the internet I liked and engaged with is long dead and gone and it will not come back either. I don’t know what the death nail potentially will be for me to go off grid completely. I don’t know. My job is heavily digital and built up around Apple and Google. Can’t really escape it there, which is fine. But at home, I’m slowly inching toward a more unplugged existence and I really like living like that.