Speed or mallrats depending on what kind of vibe you’re going for

edit: upon reflection I will change my Sandra bullock movie to “the net”. Terrible, but strong 90s vibes

You’re both wrong for speaking in absolutes. It could be pica but it’s impossible to fully assess such a situation based on a literal sentence description, you would need to know the context, frequency of behavior, occurrence with other items (eg is it solely soil). It could be soil eaten out of desperation to alleviate symptoms related to iron deficiency but again, impossible to know from a single sentence but a child eating soil would be grounds to evaluate for pica unless the child was specifically instructed or something (eg folk medicine)

brought to you by someone who spent 5 years doing neurodevelopmental evals of autism and intellectual disability in children, where pica came up a decent amount of the time (especially for the kids with ID)

it was so good. I saw Ben folds, bright eyes, Tom petty, common, blackalicious, beck, Radiohead, Dresden dolls, clap your hands say yeah, bela fleck, and sonic youth. Maybe others but that’s what I remover looking over the schedule and lineup. The first night we showed up late and mainly just watched the comedy tent which was patton Oswalt and some others, demitri martin was there. I had planned it out and it went fairly well, thankfully I had been once before so I had some familiarity with the grounds. I was also in my early 20s which helped me with the whole “just keep going” and I slept till noon basically everyday which also helped. At some point I had a mild fight with my friends that I came with because they just wanted to spend some time camping and that felt like such a waste so I broke away and watched several acts alone

I remember being really frustrated because I also wanted to see medeski, Martin, and wood, cypress hill, and golden but they played at they same time as beck, all overlapping each other to some degree, and all on stages that took a bit to get to. It was rough but I chose to get a good spot for beck and plant there for Radiohead after

Now that I’m almost 40 though? no thanks. My max festival is 1 day and realistically I’m not going unless prices start coming down. 2024 bonnaroo lineup was decent but not amazing and was like 400-500 for the 4 day pass, minimum (although iirc resale eventually saw the price fall down a decent bit. Hope a lot of scalpers ate shit lmao). not even gonna start about the $1800 “vip packages”

The lineup was pretty solid, especially if you look at the full lineup, but that price is a bit much for a single day festival.

We just keep getting fucked. I paid 160 for bonnaroo 2006 tickets because I got the first wave, I think the final wave was 190. That’s with fees and all. Adjusted for inflation thats $250-290. But that was a 4 day festival with Radiohead headlining, beck, tom petty, god tons of sick bands. It was imo the peak of bonnaroo

Now this is $300 for a single day? It’s more after inflation for 1/4 the festival? I get that there’s savings in running a festival for multiple days so it’s not like cutting a 3 day to a 1 day means costs are cut by 2/3rd, but from my perspective as a consumer it looks like I am paying ~300% more than I did 18 years ago even after adjusting for inflation because I just don’t get nearly as much value for my dollars.

I remember that bonnaroo and being like “Jesus this is so much money” and here we are with a show that’s 53% more expensive in raw dollar amount and 1/4 the length. Sigh.

Was worth it though, that Radiohead set was insane. They played for over 2 hours. Also a few months later I got tickets for daft punks alive 2007 tour - $50 plus fees (which were like $14). At the time I thought it was the most absurd shit, so expensive. I almost didn’t go. I’m glad I did because it was the most insane concert I’ve ever seen in my life. But it’s funny because nowadays finding a major act that puts out tickets for $65 with fees is actually fairly tough.

there are almost certainly people propagandizing on chans, especially 4chans /pol/ as it has a fairly large user base and has proven to be very influential with dozens (or more) of academic papers written about its culture and dynamics.

https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/11075/11269/83226 this paper shows trends in pol posting surrounding major news events (mass shootings). Specifically after the Pittsburgh shooting they see a significant change of a small number of pro trump links circulated hundreds of times immediately in the aftermath, more so than before the incident. There are similar papers and many more describing the culture to help potential actors assimilate as quickly as possible

Again, the causal nature is impossible to prove (unless Hiroyuki starts leaking ips and they can be linked to someone somehow, I guess), but it appears someone(s) has been using that forum to make a concentrated effort to promote certain ideas, mainly pro trump propaganda and antisemitism.

Based on estimates 4chan gets anywhere from 20-60 million visitors per month. /pol/ alone sees well over 100-120k posts per day right now per 4stats.io, 4chans official stats. It’s by far one of the most active boards, running about the same as /vg/, dedicated to general gaming, and also full of bullshit but the whiny gamer kind (which is a well established pipeline to places like /pol/). whereas core 4chan boards like /b/ (random, the original board, where kind of anything goes), and /a/ (anime, probably the earliest board once it split from just /b/ for everything) being the next most active see barely half this, 40-50k posts per day.

Basically /pol/ sees a massive amount of discussion from a giant group of angry impressionable (often young but not always) people who are absolutely willing to campaign, make and spread memes, flood comment sections, etc. you’re foolish if you think that’s not being astroturfed and botted by people with vested interests. like is the trump campaign directly doing it? Probably not, but is one of their pacs kicking some money to some stormfront dudes who are? Maybe. It could also potentially be some weird trump group that spams and is otherwise unaffiliated with the campaign of course. That’s still propaganda, it’s just not sanctioned “officially”.

And this was touched on but the /pol/ influence is seen throughout the boards as well. They’ll spout their talking points on the videogame boards as mentioned like /v/, /vg/, etc to pull in gullible people but also the anime board (/a/), even slow boards like do it yourself (/diy/) which sees like 400 posts a day will get posts about immigration impacting trade jobs as a way to shoehorn in the typical rhetoric

In comparison according to fedidb lemmy has a bit under 400k users (a bit over 1/10th active, around 45k) and a bit over 8 million posts. That’s a footnote compared to 4chan which itself is dwarfed by the giants like reddit, facebook, etc that see monthly visitor counts in the billions. Of the fediverse mastodon would make the most sense to astroturf as it has significantly more users and posts. Unless they see serious growth potential and want to establish trust early on the platform, which would make sense I suppose, but looking at lemmys growth charted out that could be a very long wait for a return on investment. While posting is free paying people/bots to post isn’t. But perhaps they’re hoping it will become like /pol/, a niche forum on the internet that has decent enough traffic to become surprisingly influential. I do think this is unlikely, but who the fuck am I?

Of course, the statistics are not fully accurate here for either. 4chans traffic is estimated and sources vary pretty wildly, 4chans post counts should be accurate as that does come from 4chan. fedidb info is accurate but iirc doesn’t necessarily include all instances. That said it’s unlikely there’s an a few instances that would wildly skew the data and most estimates for 4chans traffic are on the higher end of 40-50 million visitors per month

There’s a theory that says this is the case (I can’t remember the name) but if it was accurate it’s probably been thoroughly destroyed by the modern diet which is laden with foods that push reward cravings (like excessive carbohydrates)

I mean the internet has become a piecemeal existence where you’re expected to add on things like it’s McDonald’s so I guess this is just the next step in the trend

I miss 1997 when the internet and all the information on it was free (save purchasing a computer and the monthly fee for an isp, if you want to be pedantic I guess)

lmao really? so you’re still a non subscribing pleb that gets the “please support our cause and subscribe” stuff but you literally only no longer get targeted ads? Shameless

am I reading this right that you would pay and still get advertisements, just not targeted ones?

Also nontraditional warfare that has technically been seen but not really (at least in an officially acknowledged way, maybe something like stuxnet?) like offensive cyber warfare. If things truly came to trading blows russia does have very talented cyber espionage folks and the us has shown many times that it has pretty shocking vulnerabilities on many critical points of cyber infrastructure. these probably haven’t been attacked because it would be a literal act of war to go after the power grid, weapons systems, water delivery systems, etc but if the gloves come off then you better believe these systems start getting attacked by state sponsored actors who will never come anywhere near american land

I don’t think I’ve ever deleted a contact from my address book for any reason whatsoever

Women are not allowed in this world anymore because they don’t want their husbands and children in this country

what the hell, hitler sounding autocorrect

I am a therapist. I take insurance but it’s a goddamn nightmare

You either join a group practice (goodbye at least 40% of earnings) or you try to go it alone

If you go it alone: hello navigating the maze of bureaucracy that is insurance credentialing and billing. Good luck! No real guidance here. There are some “tutorials” online but they’re super generalized because everything is very different on a regional level. Aetna in Atlanta is entirely different from Aetna in New Jersey. Then you can also play the game of “guess how much money I will make?” Because none of them tell you until you’re about to sign the contract (and some don’t tell you until after!). Or you can pay someone to do all this for you for like $1000. Also it takes months. Then you have to figure it all out again to figure out how to bill. Then you have to figure it all out again to figure out how to bill electronically because you bill on paper the first few times to get payments and then use the payment numbers to set up accounts to actually bill the normal way. Or again you can pay someone to bill for you for like 5-10% of your earnings.

And all of this is while you’re a 1099 worker so no health insurance, paid time off, retirement, etc

Alternatively you can in some places join a hospital system. These will sometimes pay you a salary and benefits but will usually pay a shit salary, crappy benefits, and give you a nightmare quota and ask you to supervise interns. Or work someplace like an IOP and run groups but again you’ll make like 40-50k tops with crappy benefits (and the student loan debt of someone with a masters degree). Plus a lot of those places will still keep you as a 1099, at least around here.

So then the community mental health/medicaid agencies cry about why they can’t keep staff and the mental health crisis facing low ses communities (hint: it’s because you pay $30/hr as contract workers to people with 100k+ student loan debt)

Then people run from those places to group practices and stay there for a bit but eventually bail because they take 40% of earnings

Then they go independent and panel with insurers and it’s okay but also a fucking headache. They work 25 hours a week seeing clients and 15 hours a week unpaid doing paperwork to bill for said clients. All well and good except what the article wrote is all true, eventually you get a clawback where an insurance company is like “you wrote 90847 and you meant 90837, you could just correct and resubmit but we won’t allow that. You did it 15 times so we are demanding you return $8,000 thanks” also your quarterly tax payment is due tomorrow. Oh and your insurance billing has to be submitted timely but Aetna is 3 months late in paying you and owes you 6k. It will come, eventually, probably

Also all that admin stuff they refuse to pay you to do? They pay grow and headway and alma and all those other vc backed tech bro companies that started during Covid to “revolutionize mental health” lmao. They pay them $30-40 a session to do it. Shoulda made a website milking off other therapists with a sob story about how you were depressed and had trouble finding a therapist bro, you could’ve been a multimillionaire instead of some dipshit making 65k with no retirement savings

I genuinely think I just can’t get into guitar. I played piano from 4 years old, I played drums from 4th grade, i played marimba and synth in wgi and dci, so playing for long hours and practicing hours on end is not something I’m not accustomed to, but for whatever reason I just can’t get into guitar.

For posterity my guitar is an epiphone les Paul clone. I don’t remember the exact model off hand. You are certainly correct that it’s crappy, it literally cost me $100 (back in like 2014 or so), but I think it’s serviceable, at least

Ibanez gsr200. Got it used locally for $150 in really good shape, basically never played. But new they’re like $200. Yamaha tsr/trbx was the other option I was looking at, similar price range. Both had pretty excellent reviews as long as you kept in mind they’re beginner basses but they’re very solid.

I did go to a shop and played them both before buying. Pretty comparable. Main differences were Yamaha was a bit heavier and Yamaha has 24 frets vs 22 on the Ibanez. The Ibanez is also not a passive bass, it has a bass boost circuit. It’s the smaller 4th knob on the front of the bass. This means the bass needs a 9v battery which some people may not like. Also means you can give the sound a bit of texture/growl when you want, or you can just leave it off for a clean tone.

I do like Yamaha gear a lot, my primary workstation/synth is a Yamaha and it’s been a workhorse for me since literally 2007, played almost daily and been on several tours. I also have a Yamaha marimba I got cheap from one of the corps I marched in like 09 or so and it’s held up great despite the fact that it was certainly abused in its former life, played hard, and toured constantly (plus I still play it regularly). But the Ibanez was a sweet deal and I didn’t want to spend too much (as you can see I’ve already spent way too goddamn much on music gear in my life)

Also shoutout to rocksmith, which has been so awesome

A cheap beginner bass guitar. I was like man will I play bass even? I’m a drummer mainly but I also play a decent amount of piano bc my main drum things are drum set and marimba and I played synth for 1 season in drum corp. I got a bass because I wanted to actually try playing bass parts for songs instead of clicking them in. It does sound better (well, eventually it did) but it’s just really fun to play. Like I had also bought a $100 used guitar and I just find playing that a chore. I can play a few songs but I’m a permanent beginner and have no real interest in growing. The bass though? I play that like an hour a day and it’s actually cutting into my drum and piano time

More like sponsored ”Product” for the first 8 results

I watched until he made the implication that pop2 by charli xcx isn’t a great album. ridiculous

I moved to a rural area a few years back and there’s a lot of farms here. Thus, many of the people I’ve met are farmers or have worked on farms. After a year or so of asking people what they raise/grow on their farms it finally happened and I met someone who said they grew soybeans. I asked him if he was a soyboy and he was really not amused.

I’m pretty sure he saw it coming too, when he said soybeans I had to have a huge shit eating grin on my face. I was waiting for that day

I worked in a setting where we had to use them because people had to get audio prompts but still needed to be able to hear for situational awareness. They definitely work and work pretty well. You can even use them underwater. They can’t match the sound quality of actual headphones though. But for voice stuff or if you’re not super picky about audio quality they’re great, you can easily hear everything going on around you much more clearly than any of the “transparency modes” that modern noise cancelling headphones have because they don’t block your ears at all