The county mayor describes himself as a Rothbardian, and the government here sometimes feels openly hostile to people, but especially to bicyclists. I received a lot of harassment for cycling, it is not supported culturally, and is even viewed as though I am a political enemy of the people. Huge, lifted emotional-support trucks are pretty common here.
Well, those distances use a nearby highway, and there are no bike lanes anywhere (let alone sidewalks). As mentioned earlier, being suicidal means I did use a bicycle anyway, and after a couple years I had a brain injury, was hit by cars twice and ended up with permanent injuries. So… yeah, I don’t recommend cycling (if you feel like being alive and able-bodied, anyway).
What is also not mentioned is that the nearest supermarket is a shitty Walmart, the nearest park is very small and not really worth going to, and the bus is not a practical form of public transit here.
I have to drive 20 - 30 minutes to actually get to stores, parks, or other places I would actually go to. I think that’s pretty good relative to most people, I live in a centralized location and most places are equidistant. I used to live in a nearby more rural town and I had to drive 45 - 60 minutes to get most places, and that was much worse.
I live in a suburb in the U.S.
Notes:
I have run to the park before despite being far away, but I think most people would (rightfully) think I was suicidal for doing so. A lot of the way to the park requires walking on dangerous streets where people drive fast around blind curves and where there is little to no shoulders to squeeze by if there are cars, most of the way has no sidewalks, and I have to cross busy roads where drivers are going 80+kmh.
Owning a car here is considered a part of being an adult, people without a car are seen as childish or immature, and usually suspected of being drunks who have lost their license due to DUIs or felons who cannot have a driving license and aren’t allowed to leave the state. It is assumed everyone drives everywhere, alternatives are unthinkable to most people here.
is that a lemmy feature?
It might just be that I don’t watch TV adverts and I use uBlock origin so I don’t see ads online, so my main marketing comes from native ads (like stories on the radio) or billboards when driving places. I guess I mean the environment determines whether how those associations are built, for example I will forever associate British Petroleum with dinosaurs because my parents taped a dinosaur special on VHS and the big BP oil spill had happened so they were running lots of repetitive ads, so to get through my educational dinosaur show I had to at the very least regularly fast forward through these ads.
sweet - thanks for broadening my perspective!
I wonder what fields are the most networked on LinkedIn.
For example, I know for a while (like 7+ years ago now), Twitter was a place where programmers were networking and jobs could be secured that way.
oh, interesting - yeah, I try not to let the marketing dominate my associations, but tbh it’s impossible to control that; blue does seem to be a corporate favorite.
I usually think about the time I spent as a kid looking at a cylindrical bulb that had a rainbow color spectrum, I loved the color and especially the blues.
I didn’t expect to be most places I ended up.
I wonder if linkedin is actually a way people get jobs (if it ever was) 🤔
I wouldn’t recommend it to cis people, but maybe to some trans folks.
that fade from blue to purple
I use dark mode on my personal devices and light mode on my work devices, that way the screens feel more different and being on my personal devices don’t make me feel as much like I’m at work.
Oh, I love that - greyscale as a warning.
For a while I had my whole phone on greyscale, but I don’t have trouble with spending time on my phone - it’s really the laptop that I have an issue with.
Maybe I should write software to conditionally greyscale my desktop/laptop screen!
Thanks for the link and details, so helpful!
Yeah, I like to get distracted and sucked into things, esp. on the computer. When I get that way I don’t get hungry or thirsty, I don’t realize I need to use the restroom, etc. - just completely ignoring the body (which is nice for me). I’m pretty sure it ruins my posture and creates muscular-skeletal problems, too.
Either way, interesting idea about listening to sounds or music - maybe that would increase enjoyment, but I worry it would reduce the usefulness of the resting (part of what I think helps is that I seclude my senses and I usually lie down in a quiet and dark place). Still, something to explore and see if it wouldn’t make it easier to motivate me to do it instead of rotting on the screen.
hey thanks!
One thing I have noticed is that I sometimes turn to this impulsive behavior when I feel really tired and I just need to rest, and I think of scrolling social media as an enjoyable kind of mental and physical break. So I’ve tried a few times to just set a timer on my phone and lay down and close my eyes for a bit instead, which makes me feel much more rested and works better as a break for my mind and body than scrolling social media.
However, this requires the awareness in the moment that the motivation for the social media impulsivity is that I’m tired and that I need a break, and I need the additional will-power to choose the better and admittedly less fun sounding alternative of actually resting - so as you can imagine establishing that new behavior has been a losing battle.
Anyway - I appreciate your positivity, thanks for your question and comments!!
What timer do you use, and does it lock access after a set time or does it just notify you when the alarm goes off?
EDIT: I found this app: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mind-the-time/
It keeps track of how much time you spend on different websites (so not so much an intervention / reminder as a time tracker).
That is good advice, but I don’t have any apps and I don’t tend to spend much time on my phone. I find the mobile UI annoying, so it’s really desperation when I turn to a phone to browse a place like Reddit. Usually I do it when I have a burning question that I want to explore and I’m not otherwise able to use my desktop or laptop.
I’m trying to find a way to nudge myself away from this impulsivity on desktop, which the redirecting helped do. I keep thinking maybe I could write some javascript and use greasemonkey to load it and do what I need.
yeah, during COVID the mayor became famous for running attack ads against the health department, and as a result of his leadership the state legislature stripped the health department of their ability to implement any policies or directives