How about sneakers?

This is something I’ve been spending a good amount of time thinking about. The fashion / textile industry has changed dramatically over the past fifteen+ years. Clothing has remained about the same price but, (see: shrinkflation) the quality of garments has decreased per dollar. It’s actually amazing that you can walk into a Target and spend $25 on a really decent t-shirt and a half-dozen pairs of socks.

How long your garments last depends largely on your activity level and how often you wear and wash them. It also depends on what materials they’re made out of. Fabrics made from plastics (practically everything) are not going to last as long as those made from natural fibers - assuming they’re cared for the same way. A lot of cheaper garments are made with thinner fabrics or assembled with poor stitching.

So, where you get your clothing, what you spend on it, how you maintain it, are all going to contribute to how long it lasts.

Honestly, I work from home so sometimes I’m wearing the same clothes for two to three days if the weather’s cool and I’m not seeing anyone. These clothes, regardless of material, are going to wear out sooner than the nicer clothing I wear out of the house and on weekends.

Any time I buy new clothing, I check to see what materials are used. I try to get stuff that’s made of 100% cotton or wool or canvas, etc. I’ve been getting my t-shirts from Solid State in NC and most of my sock are made from hemp or alpaca wool. I have one pair of decent Levis jeans that I’ve only washed once that are over ten years old.

Upfront, I’m spending more. In the long run, I might spend about the same in total on clothing but I’m producing much less waste along the way. I rather spend more money on something decent I can wear more often and have a smaller wardrobe.

To answer the question - if I were to lose 25lbs to fit in some older clothing I still have, the rest of my life, easily.

The only exception to this is shoes. I go through shoes way too fast (<3years) and they’re all trash now.

I’ll admit, the buzz around FB Marketplace has tempted me to sign up again. Mostly because ebay fees are insane. I’ve resorted to either putting things out for free pickup or using hobby-specific websites with buy/sell forums. Plus the occasional sidewalk sale. Life existed before Facebook. It was a slower life. So, just have to be more patient sometimes.

There’s absolutely a need for a public space for friends, businesses, venues, city halls, journalists, et al to congregate. It used to be a literal town hall, radio, newspapers, and weekly periodicals. And then AOL, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. All of these need some sort of funding to operate efficiently - either by tax payers, subscriptions, or advertising. This need for funding is what screws everything up.

There also used to be a time when Instagram was relevant. Then they introduced the algorithmic timeline, which meant I wouldn’t see event announcements for days after they occurred. Advertisers want results so engagement is more important than informing the public. If someone finds what they want at the top of their feed and clicks out of the app, that’s less opportunity to show ads.

Twitter used to be the best way to find out what was happening in real time in my immediate vicinity. Places stopped posting on there, the algorithm took over, then you know who took over. I’m hopeful about Bluesky but I’m not sure how they’re paying the bills.

This might not cover all the venues but you might be able to find booking agents with newsletters you can subscribe to. Promoting concerts should be one of those things where venues are desperate to use all sorts of platforms to get people in the door. Local radio stations are usually pretty good at promoting smaller shows on their websites too. My local newspaper is actually one of my best resources for discovering new venues and pop ups.

One of my local breweries was publishing an rss calendar feed for their weekly events. This was awesome until their “subscription” expired at the end of the year (not sure why they don’t just have a google calendar). I should speak with the owner to see what her reasoning was. My suspicion is that they want to track engagement on Instagram and the newsletters.

On the other hand, we have the essentially donation-funded fediverse. I’ve been wanting to see servers pop up to host certain things. For example, something like montreal-gov.social and montreal-shows.social where there’s dedicated federated instances for public congregation. I’m not sure if there’s a calendar function in the fediverse but it would seem reasonable to invest effort in. I’m really hoping this is the direction we’re going in. It just makes a lot of sense.

The problem is that Facebook isn’t just about keeping up with your friends and family. It’s an engagement platform designed to keep your attention by showing you memes and “news” and videos and ads that it knows you like. Most people have become addicted to this slow and steady stream of dopamine. You’re not going to get people off their crack addiction by substituting it with marijuana.

As these social platforms become more powerful, it’s up to each of us to personally find the strength to wean ourselves away from these platforms that once promised socialization but have quickly become little more than propaganda and influencing and ad-serving machines.

It’s great we’re seeing some alternatives but, aside from a small cohort, most people are not going to find the likes of Bluesky, Mastodon, or Lemmy engaging enough to give them that hit that they’re used to.

All hail the algorithm.

Personally, I used to be the early adopter who was on all these platforms well before most of the public heard about them. In recent years, I’ve either deleted or stopped using my social accounts (or have chosen to use less engaging ones, like Lemmy). This has given me more time to live a life.

Boredom is something I embrace. Rather than turning to a screen to occupy me; I’ll take a nap, make some tea, journal, go for a walk, do some cleaning, build something, practice something, read a book or comic. It’s not as dynamic, for sure, but I get to experience and learn more about myself instead of needlessly observing the lives of others. Boredom offers a renewed sense of self and humanity. Frankly, I’m afraid younger generations won’t know what benefits and beauty boredom has to offer.

I haven’t really been using it but I wanted to throw a shoutout to https://spacehey.com/

I have one that claims “Circulates the air 1x per hour in 743 square foot rooms and 4.8x per hour in 153 sq. ft rooms”. My room is 180 square feet (12x15).

The concept itself doesn’t make sense to me. You’ve got a single box that both sucks in air and blows it out. It would seem to me that this just creates vortex around the box itself with some minimal air movement in the rest of the area.

A proper air purification system would need to be part of your home’s central HVAC system where it’s been engineered to suck in the air from one side of a room, filter it through the system, then blow it back out on the other side of the room. And / or several smaller air purifiers strategically placed within a room.

I’ve done a bit of searching and surprisingly have not been able to find a rally good study. This would seem easy enough to qualify with some knowledge of fluid mechanics. I found this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NinsW8f2ABk The room is about a third the size of my room and the purifier is about 50% larger. The in/out design of this device is dramatically different from mine. I have a hunch that the consumer (Amazon) air purifier market is mostly garbage.

I’m constantly cleaning. I live alone in a 100+ year old building. It’s no exaggeration to say that there’s a coating of dust moments after I get done dusting.

I use a microfiber duster for daily cleaning and a heavily diluted mixture of water, vinegar, and soap for deeper cleaning.

The only thing I can think of, but haven’t tried, to minimize dust accumulation is to run a humidifier. That should theoretically give the dust particles something to cling onto and be less prone to becoming airborne as you move about. Perhaps a daily water misting from a spray bottle could work - I should give that a try.

I have an air purifier in my bedroom. It doesn’t do very much. I don’t really understand how they’re supposed to work anyway. There’s no way it’s going to suck in dust from the other side of the room. I wonder sometimes if it actually makes things worse. I use it mostly for the white noise to sleep with.

Respectfully, you’ve asked the wrong question. The process to create AI started decades ago (arguably, longer).

…capable of rational thinking, that is creative, that it’s self aware and have consciousness.

As you’ve described it, consider how this is any different than human procreation.

The answer is the ability for a ‘computer’ to have instantaneous access and ability to process the world’s information.

Assuming a sentient “cyber” AI is inevitable and you’re wondering about our “own will and desires”, the question should be, who do you think should create the rules for AI to ensure it’s making the right choices today and beyond the time of our species.

Or, to put it another way, who gets to be God and Moses?