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!movies@piefed.social !television@piefed.social
!animation@piefed.social

Getting old I guess. I can vaguely recall her face, though barely. I didn't think I'd ever forget such a thing. Not suffering from acute memory issues afaik. Just father time gradually erasing the paths travelled in the sands of time.

Where else are you a lot?

I have been particularly miserable lately, just quit using nicotine altogether, and also been moving away from subscriptions. I need distractions that aren't gum and Altoids. I've been into these songs lately: Whatever You Want - Sports, Zen Automaton - Pond, Bicep - TR/ST, People in the Streets - MGMT, and We Control - Hyper.

it seems like lemmy has a thing for fireflies (aka lightning bugs). It's sad to think of them being driven away by our actions, or not even just us not being able to see them again.

Well my yard/neighborhood is covered in them. Literally hundreds dancing in the grass of every yard, every evening and night. Like they cast light into my home with their blinking by my windows, making me look for a coming car or something. At least one gets into my home every day, much to the delight of my cats.

I get it. I love them. These things have always been special to me, and I spent 10+ yrs living in places w/o them. So now being in an area with a healthy Fire Fly population feels like such a blessing to me.

I figured it'd be cool to share some of that with those of you who miss them. I'm trying to take some pictures and video, get some good closeups, etc. I got one video of two fireflies fucking. Just gotta figure out how to organize the media I guess.

But is there anything else you'd want? Requests or something? I dunno where this is going, look, I'm just saying: you all seem to like Fire Flies. I got Fire Flies. What's next?

Weather dotcom has premium gatekeeping and Accuweather just kinda sucks

EDIT: i just remembered not everyone is ND and doesn't get really super into every topic enough to care about things like meteorology :[

For me, it's Argaï: La prophétie. It is about a medieval prince who got transported into modern world on a mission to save his fiancée. DVD copies are no longer available AFAIK. Luckily, you can easily find all episodes on YouTube.

Good evening, everyone. It's 18:36 here, and the sun is down right now, but the weather was very clear. My activity helping my mum was not interrupted and was successful. I helped them drive the car and lift weights for processing gardening materials for sale, the family business. I created, deleted, and recreated Lemmy accounts because I wanted to try firsthand installing self-hosting front-ends like YunoHost, Coolify, Runtipi, Cloudron, and so on. I found that YunoHost and Runtipi are the easiest for me to try as an IT student who is currently stuck in semester 2 of college diploma studies, mainly for financial reasons. How was your day?

Edit: I am not sure why I am not allowed to choose English or even Interlingua for this English post. I'll find out what the exact problem is, and whether this is only applicable to this post or a larger issue.

I’m not Netflix or a struggling screenwriter. I just read an offhand prophecy of how the year pans out and thought it would make a good chat.

Pitch this years Christmas movie to me based on the the crazy year we have had and how it’s going to impact the lead up to Christmas. For simplicity state the genre and maybe around 300 words. Go as crazy as you fancy, the world is a bit bizarre at the moment and Christmas does not have to always be sickly sweet.

Gonna be stuck on a train for the next 3 hours so I'm looking for something to pass the time. Books, articles, comics, all is welcome!

EDIT: thanks y'all! looks like i won't be bored in the train tonight!

Sooo... yeah! I don't really have IRL friends to chat about this so I figured I'd make this post. Didn't want this to be super consequential like hosting an AMA or anything since it's just me going back to where I was born but yeah

A few funny observations and maybe conversation starters:

• Everything I read in the US seems to talk about how China is simultaneously a futuristic paradise and an authoritarian hellscape... both seem fairly overblown. There are a lot of public transit and the food is amazing though
• The rumors are true, in China they really use Wechat for everything. Wechat is used for payment (almost no one uses credit cards or cash), booking tickets, ... and all of these are tied to your national ID and your face recognition. It's a bit terrifying
• There are sooooo many ads everywhere! Heck my parents' apartment building has an ad billboard right in the elevator, and this is apparently the norm. On the app store the Microsoft Edge browser literally got a 5-star rating and was praised for not running ads... it's that bad.
• My god the internet is atrocious compared to the US, and having to do half of the stuff I need to with a VPN doesn't really help. It's so bad that I was missing my Gentoo days of compiling packages from source...
• I thought there would be a ton of anime stuff, especially since I had the impression that Mihoyo games (the company that developed Genshin Impact, Honkai series, etc) is a topic of national pride... I think I have made a mistake. I have met three cosplayers just walking on the street so far though, so the culture definitely is there
• I like rhythm games and I'm delighted to find out there are maimai DX cabs everywhere, this thing is impossible to find in the US. Haven't found SDVX or IIDX cabs, or even CHUNITHM cabs though... Also China apparently has their own Pump It Up clone (not DDR, PIU) with four more outer arrows. Imagine the five PIU step keys and four more outside...
• Lemmy.world is somehow not blocked by the Chinese internet firewall. Not that I feel safe browsing Lemmy with the type of posts I make... On that topic, my own little web domain isn't blocked lmao I can still use SearXNG as usual

But I haven't tweeted since 2014, and I logged out a few years ago and deleted the app. I just left my account behind so nobody took my name, but Twitter says I'm banned for inauthentic behaviour. Is Space Karen a little bored without his orange rapist bestie?

Someone you don't have a relationship with, or even know their name... What was your most recent selfless thing you did for other people?

I’m having a can of chili beans with an egg and some shredded cheese mixed in while it was heating up.

I'd only become aware recently that it's become less common for newer cars to have a spare tire. It was a bit of a shock to me.

The norm I'd been accustomed to was that a lot of cars would include a "donut" spare tire; a smaller, lighter, cheaper-to-manufacture thing. It would shave some cost off of the car, probably let the manufacturer increase their MPG rating a bit. However, it was only rated for something like 50 miles (80km) at a limited speed (say, 55mph or 90km/h) before it should be replaced. It was really designed to let a driver reach the closest tire shop and get a regular tire replaced.

What my dad always did, and recommended, and what I'd done, was replacing the thing with a full-size tire. That way, when you have a flat, it's not all that much of a problem. You just swap in the new tire, and next time it happens to be convenient, you get a new full-size tire. In my experience, spare tire wells included the space for a full-size tire; the manufacturer just didn't provide you with one.

However, in 2025, the situation doesn't look like that much anymore.

A number of spare tire wells don't appear to have enough space for a full-size spare tire. This seems, in my quick skim, to be something more common with hybrids or BEVs than ICEs, I assume because the battery is space-constrained and the tire is competition for space (and in the case of BEVs, range).

Some vehicles apparently ship with "run flat" tires. These can be driven for a limited distance, and appear to have about the same capabilities as a "donut" spare tire

they can go about 50 miles at a reduced speed before they need to be replaced, and I assume are aimed at letting one reach a tire shop.

A number of vehicles don't have a spare tire or storage space for one or a jack at all; for example, the 2025 Corolla Hybrid. The manufacturer provides a pump and a goop kit, and the idea is that if a flat is only a slow leak, one can hopefully nurse the car along well enough with that to reach a tire shop.

As best I can tell, full-size spares are only common today with pickups or off-road oriented vehicles.

I assume that part of this is because cell phone coverage is more widespread now, and the idea is that one should just call for roadside assistance and have them bring and change it. I saw some discussion on Reddit talking about how a lot of younger people don't know how to change a spare tire.

I'm not entirely sanguine about this. While I'll agree that it can save a bit of space, I really prefer knowing that even if I get a flat, the worst that can happen to me, even if I'm outside of cell range, is that I go swap in a new tire. I've only rarely gotten flats, but it's something that I'd certainly rather have.

I guess that one could just put a tire in a trunk or hatchback/crossover/SUV's cargo space as long as one is willing to expend some cargo space, but especially with a hatchback/crossover/SUV, I'm not entirely enthralled about the idea of having something large and unsecured crashing around the cabin in the event of a crash; normally, a spare tire well prevents shifting around and has a system for securing the tire.

Thoughts? Is a spare tire something that you want to have today in your vehicle?