I have to swap out 2 hard drives. One in a new Mac Mini for my wife, and another for a 2013 iMac that I’m seeing if I can use for a Linux desktop.

American here. You are absolutely correct. Europeans need to be calling their government representatives en masse demanding they do everything in their power to disengage from the US. Including evicting the US military.

Another American here. Yeah, we’re not Europe’s friend anymore. I hate it, but it’s true. Dear Leader has made it abundantly clear that unless you are somehow enriching him and/or his billionaire cabinet, he’s not interested in being your friend. You can hold up as many past agreements and treaties his predecessors signed and it won’t mean jack shit to him. Putin is his daddy because Putin loves oligarchs, and wants to be an oligarch sooooooo bad.

TL;DR: Bad Shit that overshadows My Shit happens in the world. But My Shit happens to Me, and my not liking it doesn’t in any way negate the others’ Bad Shit (which they’re also fully allowed, encouraged even, to complain about).

People complain. It’s human nature. The happiest people in the world have complaints. If you feel like you’re seeing it too much, it could very well be a symptom of where you spend your time. Taking some of your points one-by-one:

“… at least from what I can tell on the internet”

This is your biggest problem. The Internet is hardly an accurate reflection of society. Half the people on social media work hard to project what they think is a “perfect life” to others. The other half pretty much do the opposite: complain.

“… other countries have wars… we complain that eggs are too expensive…”

You ever heard the saying “all politics are local?” This, right here, is that, 100%. We can all agree that what’s going on in war zones and third-world countries trumps any thing likely to happen to us in a “these western 1st world countries,” but does that mean I’m not allowed to be upset about the things negatively affecting me, or just that I’m not allowed to voice my frustrations? “Oh, I just got fired and will probably be evicted in a couple months, but people on the other side of the world don’t have food, so I should be happy.” Me being mad at something that angers me doesn’t lessen the tragedies of the world.

“Why do people waste all this time with complaining…”

If you’ve ever dated someone, or had a really close friend, you learn that sometimes when they complain to you, they don’t expect you to fix their problem. They just need an avenue to vent. The Internet is also used pretty widely for this. They’re not “destroying their own life,” they’re venting, or actually looking for help, which is actually pretty healthy!

It’s actually a very simple ploy they’ve used since before I was born (I’m not young). Anything they can paint as sexual, or that actually is out of the sexual “norm,” they will use as a scapegoat. They used it against blacks (coming after their white women), gays, and now trans. Pedophilia and rape are the two Worst Things, and if they can tie the Bad Guy du jour, that equals fear-votes. The best kind of right wing votes in all the land.

This is the answer.

Forgot to add that I’m not saying Lemmy is perfect as is. For sure there are things that can be improved and tweaked. And by all means, people who want to contribute should be encouraged and applauded. I’m just saying that the community that’s grown here is pretty great, and growth coming from slow-ish trickle of new users probably wouldn’t threaten that. Right now, Lemmy has a good late-90s, early 00s community feeling, and I really enjoy it.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think the effort to make joining Lemmy easier has some downsides. One of the nicest things about these communities is how easy it is to have good conversations with internet strangers. I’ve grown to appreciate and hope for Lemmy not trying to be a Reddit replacement. In fact, I’m totally fine with “the masses” staying in Spez’s data harvesting machine. If, one day, Lemmy gets as popular as Reddit, I think it will inevitably have many of the same problems. It just theoretically won’t be selling your data for profit (one hopes, anyway). My wife isn’t super-techy, and I explained the concept of Lemmy to my wife in about 10 minutes. She set up an account in about 5.

To me, it’s not that using or joining Lemmy is hard. It’s that a lot of people have come to loathe change. They’re told that Lemmy is “like Reddit,” so why leave Reddit, all their accumulated Internet points, and their familiar communities/echo chambers? Pretty much all of them also use other data-harvesting social media sites, so they mostly don’t care about that aspect. When I tell my friends about Lemmy I talk about how the size of the communities is really conducive to good conversations from wide enough ranges of opinions and experiences, compared to Reddit’s too much of everything including trolls.

Agreed! I’m actually hoping no more people leave Reddit. I like the community here so much better. For sure, there’s some trolls and echo chambers, but it’s mostly a pretty good place.

This may be overthinking things a bit but…

I mod a desert of a sub for my alma mater, and I’m pretty sure the same person downvotes everything I post there. No comments, just a single downvote. As a mod I would love to be able to confirm my suspicions, but as a user, I like my votes to be anonymous.

As a middle ground, perhaps the software itself could auto-mod a bit. If a single user only ever downvotes content from a community, and crosses a certain threshold, they might be soft-banned for some number of days with a note in the mod log to the effect of “negative contribution.” After some amount of time, the ban is automatically lifted. If a community mod notices that the same user keeps getting soft-banned every 30-something days (the soft-ban limit plus some amount of time for it to kick back in), they can decide if they want to ban the user.

This hits hard after my week. And I get to work this weekend!

Completely frazzled right now. Trying to hold it together. I’m in the US, and to maintain my mental health I’ve sworn off news. Seriously, 10 minutes of the news and my heart rate is up and I’m genuinely worried about my and my wife’s jobs. Shutting it out has allowed me to focus on a Crit Sit at work while I have 3 other customers biding for my time. I know being heavily in demand doesn’t mesh with my previous statement, but my company could be heavily affected by cheeto’s current flavor of “foreign policy.”

Damn I’m really appreciating the cat pics lately!

It feels like Trump is going to be the biggest motivator for people to join BRICS and give him exactly what he claims to want: an isolated US.

I’m waiting for Canada to reach out to Mexico with a diplomatic message of, “Hey, how about fuck our drunk cousin. We just work together and ghost that asshole.”

We either fry everything or drown it in some kind of sugar. If we’re not doing that, we’re doing both.

I mean, if he slaps tariffs on everyone, he may just accidentally bring about world peace when everyone just decides to stop dealing with the US.

Personally, I’ve stopped thinking, “he can’t be that stupid/crazy.” Every time I think that, he proves me wrong!

Adding that all the older Stephen King books are worth the read. 11.23.63 was the last one I read, and I really enjoyed it.

If you’re into science fiction, check out the Wool/Shift/Dust trilogy by Hugh Howey. I also enjoyed the Lattice trilogy by Erik Hanberg. You’ve probably already seen some movies based on Robert Heinlein books. GS Jensen also has a bunch of fun series. Finally, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is what got me into sci-fi as a wee one.

Alternatively, head over to a book community, or the books community on BlueSky is pretty active. Tell them some things you really like and ask for suggestions. If you liked a movie or TV show based on a book, there’s a very good chance the book was a bit different and considerably more in depth.