I admittedly have no personal experience with Pixel; I have observed that people who get Pixels either love them or they’re total shit & they hate them. No inbetweens, love or hate. My BIL got a shit one, but I see lots of happy Pixel owners.
I currently have an Oukitel Titan. It’s a little quirky sometimes but it’s also a beast of a phone, which makes up for any mishaps.
To any & all Android users: you should install Grayjay. But don’t do it from the Play Store because that’s the stupid nerfed version.
The latest cool things they have done: they’ve stopped being whiny little bitches & made their iPhones USB-C, with pressure from the EU. They’ve finally adopted Google’s RCS messaging protocol, which should allow Apples & Androids to play nicely together in texting.
Both of these things were massively overdue; they were being arrogant & childish for years…
Last but certainly not least: iPhones 15 & up (I think) have FREE “satellite messaging”. If you’re out in bufu & you’ve got no signal, simply put your iPhone out with a clear view of the sky…and your text messages will be relayed, received via satellite. This is a safety feature, not everyone knows it’s a thing, and personally I think it’s very, very cool.
T-Mobile should also team up with Starlink so all T-Mo customers should get free satellite text messaging. Should. But modern iPhones have free emergency text messaging here & now; that’s worth more than any “Trust me, bro, it’s totally coming”.
I’m going from Android to Apple soon, because I’m finally totally over all the present day Android BS. Good luck, have fun.
Word to the wise: don’t buy anything less than a flagship. Older flagship if you’re wanting to save some money. Samsung is best. I’ve played around with all kinds of mid-tier Androids & it’s a frustrating experience. The phones just don’t work well for long. Motorola sucks ass, don’t even bother.
Nah but it’s total shit, IIRC it’s mid-tier specs not even flagship. Idk why you’d want to put your name on a mid-tier phone… 🙄
LOL… “Aflicks”. He actually typed that out, and was like YEP aflicks is totally a word, send it! Idiot.
Fuck, the freedom. Root & custom ROM, running your damn device that you paid money for the way you want to. Imagine that. I stopped after rooting your phone killed Snapchat (because 3 idiots use Snap Pay or whatever), killed your tap pay wallet, killed Pokémon Go, etc etc etc. Then they tried telling people oh bro, just hide your root bro Majisk hide root. Like I need one more thing to do. 🙄 If I need to hide it, and most of the benefits of rooting have gone away/are incorporated into smartphones & no longer needed…I’m just going to stop rooting.
Then the microSD card expansion slot. Some try to say it’s for waterproofing purposes, but they can use the same pop-out slot as the SIM card & it’s nbd. Others say it’s because the storage can sometimes be “unstable” & glitch, but over the years I’ve only had problems twice: just once with a Samsung, and then constantly with a shitty Motorola smartphone but that’s on me because I bought a shitty Motorola smartphone. I think they killed it just because they could, because everybody else was killing it off & they knew they were going to get your money regardless. And then either pay a premium for extra on-board storage, or pay $10/mo for the rest of your life for “cloud” storage. Or both! Money, money, money, it’s all about the money.
These guys got rid of everything that made an Android an Android, and if I’ve got problems with mid-tier phones, to spend $1K+ on a flagship Android. For crying out loud, I’m not spending $1K on an Android that doesn’t even have microSD expansion, at that point you might as well buy an iPhone.
I am aware of, and deeply intrigued by, the three sisters method. It’s just not a commercially viable method of growing those crops; I don’t know what the harvest would look like.
We need to grow a lot more industrial hemp, but I’m afraid that’s a bit of a pipe dream unless we change…literally everything.
The general definition of a weed is “any plant growing where you don’t want it to be”. A corn plant in a bean field is a terrible weed.
Okay, yes, this is older technology & cars don’t have infinite, universal backwards compatibility. Cars have Bluetooth & they think that just fixes everything…well…not quite.
Maybe there are other fixes & other workarounds, but you need to employ old(er) technology solutions to fix this old(er) technology problem. You need a (QUALITY) FM transmitter that will plug into your aux, blast the signal as an FM radio station, and you tune your radio to that station & listen. Notice I said QUALITY…most of them are kinda crap & you have to deal with static. I have no specific brand, model suggestions. Good luck.
A better but more expensive solution: upgrade your car’s head unit. Stock head units are shit, anyway. 🙂 Get yourself a nice head unit with 3.5mm aux connection & aux in that iPod, if your budget allows. THEN, you’ll have the best sound quality and also Bluetooth connection, etc.
I wish you well, music makes the driving experience, I hope you get EVERYTHING you need. 🙏
I’d have to look into it more, but my gut tells me the CHIPS act & ‘Build Back Better’ was filled to the brim with pork & bullshit. You’d have to parse through, line by line, and take out all the shit. And hope all the changes get passed & implemented, and of course you’re still touting the worthless name of a project that your people hate that you didn’t even create. Or just blindly trust your opponent’s judgment calls & let it roll through, based on “just trust me, bro”. Nooooo thank you. Why bother?
With stuff like this, it tends to be easier & more expedient to take it behind the shed & shoot it. Replace it with your distinctly different, branded equivalent.
However. If this is true, it appears that Trump didn’t fully raze the CHIPS act & merely revamped it, is taking credit for it. Like you said. CHIPS must have been pretty true to cause.
Probably just lean super heavily on Taiwan, and Taiwan is also pledging to build a chip factory in the US. Georgia area, IIRC.
Batteries fucking suck. Can’t live with 'em, can’t live without 'em…but they’re always saying we’re on the cusp of an exciting new battery technology. Lately, they’re touting the idea of better, more efficient sodium batteries with all organic components.
While obviously it has a ways to go to reach working parity with lithium, there are also some big pros when it comes to safety & the ridiculous availability of sodium. If we can switch to sodium batteries, China takes a fucking massive hit.
…I mean…personally I’d be down for it, I really would, especially if it’s made into idk some kind of luxury experience like bathhouse/coffeehouse with WiFi. Idk just dress the shit up out of it.
But I think with all of America’s social issues & gender fights, random bullshit problems we create for ourselves, it would only be a matter of time before someone, somehow, is discriminated against. Files lawsuit. Sues the ever-loving shit out of the bathhouse. Bye-bye bathhouse. Between the “gay” stereotype & the sue-happy culture, your sentō is all but doomed to fail. Unfortunately.
Unless you could lawyer up & make a sentō that is somehow impervious to ridiculous, frivolous lawsuits.
It wasn’t men (or COVID ) that gave rise to the term “loneliness epidemic”. This issue is older than you realize. I lived through this, I would say mid 2010s this issue was being discussed (but only occasionally) based on men isolating in the late 00s, early 2010s and/or killing themselves. Deaths of despair & such. “Male loneliness epidemic”, “loneliness epidemic” were solidly PRE-COVID TERMS coined by the researches studying these men. Men were “doing the thing”, it was prevalent enough to get noticed, and they’re like hey, this is weird, this is happening a lot. It’s an epidemic.
This is a 2017 Harvard blog post…article…thing. ‘The power and prevalence of loneliness’. It mainly deals with old people but especially concerns men. While I don’t see the term in the article itself, it popped in a search as: “The epidemic — and health dangers — of loneliness”.
This is a 2018 article from Church Leaders (lol), “The Epidemic of Male Loneliness”. Basically word for word.
Psych Central Dec 2017, epidemic of male loneliness
The Walrus, 2018, epidemic of isolation among young men
Stanford, 2017, Loneliness Epidemic talking about men
April 2018, male loneliness epidemic
Etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc…etc. Just do a web search specifying article dates & you will find a plethora of male loneliness epidemic articles well predating the start of teh covidz.
I think woke mind virus is more modern, probably making the scene during Trump’s first term somehow. I can’t quite remember.
I would argue terms like “epidemic” & “pandemic” are simply building on older terms used to describe social phenomena. Like “fever” has been used in that context forever.
Sorry about your car! I hate that.
In an age where people are prone to feeling isolated & alone, for various reasons…this, unfortunately, is filling the void(s) in their life. I agree, it’s not healthy or best.
No, I basically get the same read as OP. Idk I like to think I’m rational enough & don’t take things too far, but I like my car. I like my tools, people just get attached to things we like.
Give it an almost human, almost friend type interaction & yes I’m not surprised at all some people, particularly power users, are developing parasocial attachments or addiction to this non-human tool. I don’t call my friends. I text. ¯\(°_o)/¯
Steve?
I mean I’ve just had a different experience than you, all of you. I have never had a Sony Xperia, but I’ve only heard good things.
I have been concerned about going off of main line Samsung. I did it once for the OnePlus One, which was solidly alright at the time, but then I went right back to mainline. S8 Active, SGS 20 5G FE, then that was failing & I went to Motorola but that was buggy as shit & I went back to my 20 FE until I got the Oukitel Titan.
Generally speaking, I don’t like buying a more niche product with limited support. And maybe the apps don’t work well. All of the mid, cheaper phones have bad batteries that don’t last very long, in no small part because I watch lots of videos & things that eat the battery.
The Oukitel Titan is impressive, a little obnoxiously big & slightly buggy, but not having to plug it in every blessed night makes up for any gripes I’ve got. It will make for a great Android to do Android stuff when I buy the iPhone 17.