You Should Know

This is not an anti-Kindle rant. I have purchased (rented?) several Kindle titles myself.

However, YSK that you are only licensing access to the book from Amazon, you don't own it like a physical book.

There have been cases where Amazon deletes a title from all devices. (Ironically, one version of "1984" was one such title).

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

There have also been cases where a customer violated Amazon's terms of service and lost access to all of their Kindle e-books. Amazon has all the power in this relationship. They can and do change the rules on us lowly peasants from time to time.

Here are the terms of use:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201014950

Note, there are indeed ways to download your books and import them into something like Calibre (and remove the DRM from the books). If you do some web searches (and/or search YouTube) you can probably figure it out.

"Michael Straight, a former jockey paralyzed from the waist down, was left unable to walk for two months after the company behind his $100,000 exoskeleton refused to fix a battery issue. "

“I called [the company] thinking it was no big deal, yet I was told they stopped working on any machine that was 5 years or older,”

Some of the medications include:

• Antidepressants
• Antihistamines
• Stimulants
• Beta blockers
• Diuretics
• ACE inhibitors
• Thyroid medication
• Antipsychotics

Be sure to pay extra attention to any symptoms of heat exhaustion, stay hydrated, and in a cool area indoors when possible during heat waves.

Eating the proper amount is hard. Eating when you have low time, money, mental energy, or education on cooking is even harder.

This book assumes nothing. Do you know how to turn on your stove? You are properly prepared to use this cookbook.

Just want to share it with more folks!

I used sink plungers in toilets pretty much my whole life until i scrolled across a similar diagram one day and discovered the truth.

Why you should know:

Arsenic is a carcinogen and has various other negative health effects; enough to warrant exposure limits in various jurisdictions. A five minute boil-and-discard step before cooking is a simple way to reduce your exposure, especially if you eat a lot of rice.

Details are in the study, linked in the title of this post. Here's a diagram from the abstract:

Already getting sick of seeing 'AI' results at the top of a search when all you want is a link to a site?

I just discovered this article showing a way to not see it (although it doesn't disable it altogether).

TLDR:

• In Chrome open settings menu, choose Search engine on left menu and scroll down to site search
• Click Add button and choose a name (eg Old Google, Google Web or whatever)
• Add a shortcut word (eg web, og, or whatever)
• Add this URL string: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14
• Save that, and now if you search for something and use the shortcut word you set you'll just get proper results, no 'AI' shown
• Or, if you don't want to have to add a shortcut word, you just make that search your default (use the 3 dot menu next to the name you set) and all searches will show that way, no shortcut word needed.

EDIT - meant to add that there are detailed instructions for Edge, Firefox and Safari in the article if you don't use Chrome

Hope that helps someone - I really don't like all that extra nonsense when I just want a link to a site that I know exists!

[Obligatory - "or don't use Chrome/Google...", I know - but people do, so this might be useful]

Why YSK: many countries have issues with weight, such as mine with 74% of US adults being overweight or obese. The global weight loss industry is over $200 billion yearly, with many influencers, pills, and surgeries promising quick results with little effort. These often come with side effects, or don't work long term.

Studies suggest filling yourself with foods low in caloric density and high in fiber, like fruits and vegetables, can help reach and maintain a healthy weight. It's good to have these foods available in our living spaces to make the choice easy. Your taste buds will likely adapt to love them if you're not there yet.

Posting this here as there a few threads popping on the topic

• "Too much US election content on Lemmy?" https://sh.itjust.works/post/23465918
• "This place needs filters" https://lemmy.ml/post/18974148

On the app side, the following allow to filter keywords:

• Voyager
• Connect
• Sync
• Summit
• Mlem
• Boost
• Eternity
• Thunder
• Arctic

On the web interfaces side:

• Tesseract
• Voyager

Feel free to comment with more apps, I'll edit this post later.

For all the links: https://www.lemmyapps.com/

Why YSK: Locking your credit with the main 3 places is not enough.

https://innovis.com/ have grown enough to require locking as providers are using them as a single check source.

There's also https://www.chexsystems.com/ which many banks use for opening checking accounts. They're unique because they handle accounts that don't show up in a credit report.

I’ve seen several people claim that their state’s vote for the US presidential election doesn’t matter because their district is gerrymandered, which does not matter for most states.

Most states use the state’s popular vote to determine who the entire state’s electoral college votes go to. No matter how gerrymandered your district is*, every individual vote matters for assigning the electoral vote. [ETA: Nearly] Every single district in a state could go red but the state goes blue for president because of the popular vote.

*Maine and Nebraska are the notable differences who allot individual electors based on the popular vote within their congressional districts and the overall popular vote. ~~It’s possible there are other exceptions and I’m sure commenters will happily point them out.~~

Edit: added strikethrough to my last statement because now I have confirmed it.

Of the 50 states, all but two award all of their presidential electors to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote in the state (Maine and Nebraska each award two of their electors to the candidate who wins a plurality of the statewide vote; the remaining electors are allocated to the winners of the plurality vote in the states' congressional districts). (source)

Link: https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/

Warning: you will get texted so use your disposal number.

With all the news about citizens discovering their voter status has been lapsed, and new rules for being a voter, everyone should check.

But also, sometimes you forget. I have new neighbors who finished moving a month ago, and when I asked if they changed their mailing address and checked their voting status, we discovered they weren't.

Owncast is a free and open source live video and web chat server for use with existing popular broadcasting software.

Basically it's Twitch, or any streaming platform such as YouTube Gaming or whatever it's called now, that you can run on your own hardware. Control your platform and your content where you make the rules as to what you can/can't do.

There's a growing community and you can find folks streaming all kinds of things in the directory:

https://directory.owncast.online/

I know some folks think it's not possible to run something like that as it'd require tons of PC resources, but I've run an Owncast Stream with 70+ active open connections to the server on a $8/month VPS.

The install can be as simple as a VPS that will spin up an Owncast instance for you, or as "difficult" as pulling the Owncast script and running it and it just automatically sets everything up. It's probably the easiest software installation I've done in a long time and I've been in IT for 15 years.

I also run the [email protected] community so if anyone has any questions please don't hesitate to poke me there or Matrix or come check out a stream, I'm usually hanging out on someone's stream somewhere. :-D Or don't hesitate to ping me on any one of the platforms in my bio.

Why YSK:

You may like these features or find them creepy, but the app doesn't have direct network access.

Android System Intelligence is a system app on Android that is responsible for a whole host of smart features, including Live Caption, Live Translate, Now Playing, Smart Auto-rotate, and more. The app can be disabled or uninstalled at the cost of losing these features.

Personally I don't enjoy having a Google app watching and listening all the time, so it was easy to disable it and ease my anxiety. (This doesn't stop Google from being Google, but it does turn these features on or off, depending on whether they are useful or not)

Why YSK: some very dangerous people and organizations use love bombing as a strategy to manipulate and recruit people. Love bombing is often an early warning sign for a traumatizing relationship, so it's helpful to be able to spot the signs.

What it Is

Essentially, it's when someone showers you with love and attention. It often includes a lot of reassurance that you belong with someone or in a group. It can include gifts, flattery, praise, and it usually includes a lot of excitement about your future together or with a group.

The catch is that the love bomb goes away, and you become devalued after the love bomb. This is usually followed by a "discard phase", where if you try to confront the behavior, you are rejected and made to feel at fault. After you've become upset by this, they will often start the cycle again to keep your loyalty.

There are some really key warning signs to look out for:

1. They give you gifts, especially random gifts
2. They want all of your attention
3. They're desperate for commitment from you
4. You feel pressure to not tell them no
5. They constantly talk about how much they love you, how special you are, etc.
6. You feel flattered but uneasy around them
7. They want to know a lot about you very quickly
8. They emphasize how much better everything is when you are with them

Where can I spot it?

Love bombing is very common in abusive and manipulative relationships. It's also often noticeable in cult recruiting, when members are trained to shower you with love and affection.

What can I do about it?

It can be good to seek help from a mental health professional if you're already hurt from the effects of love bombing. If you're in crisis, consider contacting a local crisis or emergency line.

If you notice signs of love bombing, there are some strategies that often work to keep people safe:

• set firm boundaries early
• stay grounded (i.e., take their praise with a grain of salt)
• ask, "what might they want from this interaction?"
• end a relationship if it's not working
• give as little information out as possible at the start of a relationship
• ask an objective 3rd party how they feel about your relationship with this person or group

More resources

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/love-bombing https://www.choosingtherapy.com/love-bombing/

If you are facing or have recently faced a renoviction by a flipper or merchant housing dealer, you may not understand the reason: greed. I recently went through a renoviction and it took me some time to see the reason why: the commodification of housing.

Better put as how to double your return on idle money by simply evicting the vulnerable and artificially inflating housing costs.

Big shout out to the conservative faction of "god what's you to be richer at any cost" for bolting a moral veneer of piety to this cruel and commandment breaking (#8, #9, & #10) approach.

Almost 3.5 million manuals scanned in.

Pointing this out as I noticed in a few comments that some people where not aware of this tool

Also, you can configure your home instance with the button on the right to access a community being logged in:

Why YSK: fiber is important for optimal human health. It helps us avoid diabetes, heart disease, colon cancer, obesity, and other diseases. This is particularly important in developed countries such as mine (USA) that are suffering greatly from these diseases.

The recommended daily fiber intake is 25g for women and 38g for men in the USA, and 95% of us don't meet this amount. This suggests an urgent need for us to increase our daily fiber intake, which can be achieved by swapping out ultra-processed foods and animal foods that are void of fiber with whole plant foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and seeds.

Go to your uploads on your profile and delete anything you don't want. Very helpful in case you upload anything sentitive by mistake (I remember an issue on github about this).

Over half of women who have had abortions have had a previous child.

https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2007/05/repeat-abortion-repeat-unintended-pregnancy-repeated-and-misguided-government-policies

The name of the article is "The Measure of Online Disinhibition (MOD): Assessing perceptions of reductions in restraint in the online environment"

It's essentially a study of the drop of human inhibitions while communicating with people online and the potential causes and impacts. It highlights that people tend to treat others more harshly on the internet

I personally feel this is important because witg enough studies and attention, we as internet users can begin to change how we treat others

It will play local files, SoundCloud files or you can just have it listen to the music you're listening to via your microphone and do visualizations based on that. It does all three very well. Some of the visualizations I've seen would have made me believe in magic back when I was using Milkdrop.

We all know that content discoverability can be challenging on Lemmy.

[email protected] is a space dedicated about new and active communities.

We started a weekly thread yesterday about active communities (the requirement is to have at least one post in the last week), feel free to have a look at it and see if there are communities that might interest you!

This community has also been highlighted on Lemmy.world to increase its visibility