Discord is OK for real-time chat or VC, but is awful for forum-like discussions. Comment-specific context is lost in the single-threaded noise and search is borderline useless. The true forum-designed format of Lemmy, Reddit, and predecessors is far and away better. In my opinion Twitter - the legacy, ubiquity and tech - would be a better forum than Discord. That was hard to type and I need to quickly bleach my fingers.

I'm going to suggest possibly irresponsible advice, but step 1 - you need to solve your depression and porn addiction, and ASAP. For that you could try therapy, and/or psilocybin or DMT... Not a heroic dose, but enough to get introspective from an altered POV. Therapy is the obvious long-term recommendation, but the psychedelic route may get you there faster, and you might learn a few things, such as your social obstructions or root causes.

Second, you need a close friend, at least one, preferably one who is also your desired romantic demographic. Maybe not someone who you'd normally "go for", but who you'd be happy spending time with - platonically, romantically, whatever it does not matter. The goal is to ground yourself with empathy for that person, and they for you too.

It's back up now. They apparently use Bing as the backend search and Microsoft fsck'd it for a few hours: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/23/24163094/microsoft-bing-search-outage-copilot-duckduckgo-chatgpt

The delta between fluoride levels considered "theraputic" and "harmful" (per the WHO) is quite small. The most effective use of fluoride is topical (applying to teeth) rather than oral.

Without chlorination people would get sick and possibly die. Amoebas & bacteria can enter our bodies when showering or even flushing a toilet - via aerosolization. Chlorination is also important for the water infrastructure itself, and to prevent buildup within home pipes and appliances.

Should we put multi-vitamin compounds in our drinking water too? It is strange that this one thing is added to water vs the host of other compounds which are shown to benefit human health.

You can't remove fluoride using standard water filters, or even high-end RO filter systems. A specialized fluoride-specific filtration system (multi-stage) is required due to fluoride's chemical bond.

All plans use mm exclusively. Airport blueprints, for example, are in mm. At first blush it seems excessive, but it makes sense from a consistency & accuracy POV - 6.096m takes up 2 more characters than 6096 - they don't even need to specify the units "mm", because it is assumed, and anything else introduces room for error.

Woodworker in US here, and I prefer metric. Also consider the thickness of plywood is actually in metric now - "3/4" is actually 18 mm but they have to market it as 23/32.

I've chosen to join the other 8 billion people on earth.

For anything construction-scale, all supplies sold in the US are based on 4x8' sheet goods and 16-24" on-center framing. I also concede that king George the 74th's foot length is more human-scale when dealing with large measurements: 20 feet vs 6096 mm. I still use metric when possible, however - I find it easier and more accurate.

For EVERYTHING else I've switched to using metric.

Context: I grew up in the US using imperial units and only pivoted to the metric system in 2020. If I grew up thinking in metric and building supplies/standards used it, it'd be superior in every way.

TL;DR I like my imperial/metric combo tape measure.

BTW the adapter I use is Apple-branded but still has the same volume issue reported for generic variants - it must be a limitation of the USB-C spec. I will concede that wireless is nice for workouts, though... I use my wife's when I am in a rare music-while-exercising mood. She's gone through 4 pairs in the past 5 years, though, and the amount of E-waste is very problematic.

If they made nice wireless headphones where the battery lasted longer than 5 years, wasn't at risk in a hot car or backpack, and was also reasonably priced I'd concede they're better. Until then theyre not a better solution (unless during workouts) and contributes to e-waste. The adapter is apple-branded too... I guess something about the usb-c spec doesn't allow loud audio signals to pass through.

My parents aren't even old enough to be boomers. I'm just practical.

I don't use headphones often, but when I do its' via wired headphones. I had to buy a USB-C-to-3.5mm adapter, but the max volume is half of what my old phone with a 3.5mm jack could deliver.

Cheap wireless devices like headphones are way too finicky and prone to breakage, not to mention the battery lifespan is just a few years. I've had my nice wired headphones for 10 years.