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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • It kind of merged into a couple things, from what I’ve seen: “wellness” (you know the kind, antivaxx mommy blog crap, Joe Rogan raw meat diets, supplements), “preppers” (people ready for a race war and living off the grid a la The Turner Diaries), and the “tradwife/MIGTOW” stuff. There’s the splinter adherents from various right-wing influencer podcasts thinking JFK or whoever is going to reemerge at Dealy Plaza, but those invariably fizzle out. The integration into broader movements is where it’s thriving. You get lured in with yoga, then next thing you know you’re canning beans because you won’t be the one eating bugs because that’s what the democrats want.









  • Removing all distractions, which takes a bit of work. Covering every single source of light. Little indicator on my charger? Slapped electrical tape on it. Blackout curtains. Noise machine. The hardest one: Never using the bedroom for anything but sleeping. Not even a little peek at the phone and YouTube for a relaxing video. I have an analogue non-illuminated clock for daytime, and if I need to check the time in the dark, a Timex I can hit the glow button on. If I really can’t sleep, I get up and go into another room to read or listen to something.







  • Yeah, about that: I have a horror story.

    Tl;dr Apple Store repair techs are crap, right to repair all the way.

    I had an iPhone XS that was behaving weird. It was about 84% on the battery scale, which we all know is bullshit. I did all the usual stuff you can do before bringing it in (soft reset, hard reset, various settings, deleting apps, wiping and starting over, etc.). I was hoping their diagnostics would say something but would just as well get a new battery for a fee. They said it was perfectly fine, so they took it back to do a regular non-warranty swap. They said maybe an hour.

    One hour later, “come back in 15 minutes.”

    30 minutes later, “we’re still working on it.”

    30 minutes later still, someone comes out and tells me that while they did replace the battery, they broke two screens trying to get it back on, and for liability reasons, couldn’t try again. They’d send me a refurbished phone. But they needed my fucking phone number so Apple support could call and set it up. This was said dead-faced, broken phone still in the employee’s hand.

    They also needed a $1,000 hold on my card for a then-6 year old refurbished phone to be shipped to guarantee a return, and it would be 2-3 days.

    Don’t get it done at the Apple Store unless you can afford the risk. Go support your local repair person who isn’t a fucking klutz.