I recently read that rather than “global south” and “global north,” some people opt for “global majority” and “global minority.” I like that, it reflects how I’ve always tried to think of it.

What do you use for TTS? I’m interested in both a service that’ll turn a PDF into an audiobook and that reads a document line-by-line. I use Librera for the latter but the FOSS voices available on F-Droid leave a lot to be desired.

Why were there trackers initially?

I’ve always wanted to learn to sing, ever since I was a kid. I even started taking lessons before I went through a major life change that pushed all of that aside. I meant to come back to it but I realised recently it just doesn’t matter to me enough to pursue it compared to other things I want to achieve. And it really never became fun for me: it seems like the only way to improve is to 1) make it a team sport, which isn’t an option for me, 2) start improving from when you’re young enough that you’re not self-conscious, or 3) painfully just listen to yourself be awful until you improve as an adult. Which is totally 100% doable, but pretty joyless & not worth the time investment for me rn.

Good for others but doesn’t work for me as it’s not on mobile sadly. There are several mobile translation extensions but they all rely on Google/Microsoft/DeepL & I don’t know how to assess the privacy consequnces of that.

Not too good. I had a half hour long conversation with a friend on the phone recently & I realised it’s the first time I’ve had a phone conversation with somebody I actually wanted to talk to in months, except for that time I called another friend freaked out bc I was scared of my neighbour harrassing me. Not exactly the same giddy energy. This phone friend and I tried to meet up and got foiled multiple times. Shit’s exhausting.

My first edit to this post was “maybe I should take up gardening or sth but where to start” bc I want to be able to interact with and get feedback from just about anything besides my coworkers once in a while.

Sorry, I can’t hear you over my sitting down and standing back up repeatedly xD

Lol no doxxing but in broad terms which lemmy communities did y’all meet in? Interest-based?

One of the recent Facebook whistleblowers said her version of social media was her & her friends sharing news articles in a Signal group chat. That’s, like, my wet dream.

But I have no reason to believe Discord is even an iota less evil than Facebook.

I wish I could loosen up and enjoy malicious tech but like I said, I just can’t unring that bell, even though it makes my life meaningfully worse. Iykyk

Good bot.

Antidepressants can have serious side effects that can persist even after stopping. Look up the Surviving Antidepressants forum. That doesn’t mean don’t use them, but it’s just a truism that all pharmacological intervention has risks. To see randos diagnosing & medicalising someone for a lemmy post that isn’t an obvious cry for help is…objectionable, and in poor taste, and imo diagnostic of some much larger problems, but I don’t have the time to spare to argue that point. But people promoting what could be life-altering compounds as no biggie demands a response. (Again, my position isn’t ‘don’t use antidepressants,’ it’s ‘messing with your brain chemistry demonstrably can have serious consequences and is a serious decision.’)

edit: rephrased