My parents don’t speak English, but I learned it as a kid by watching a lot of Cartoon Network. All the cartoons were in English, no subtitles or dub or anything. Somehow I assimilated the language without any external aid, and then learned the rest when we first got the internet and I started communicating with others via games.

So, if I had to teach a kid English, I’d just expose them to as much English as possible with plenty of context and encourage them to express themselves in English when they can. This is also a popular method how adults can learn languages, called tprs

The meaning and ideas of solarpunk are still evolving, but the main themes are freedom, community, ecology and pragmatism. I won’t go over the anarchic organisation of communities since I think you mistook the pragmatism for primitivism.

Solarpunk is not about primitivism and a return to a low-technological era, and neither is it a high tech cyberpunk spinoff, as some others think. Solarpunk is about using practical solutions that are also ethical and egolocially friendly. This often means not throwing stuff away, but fixing what can be fixed and reusing what can be reused, because mass production and consumerism is seen as a damaging force. So instead of trying to make up new tech and produce new things, solarpunk would ask you to first consider whether you can do something already with what you have, which means that a DIY approach is encouraged. However, if new technology can improve our lives without damaging everything else, it’s acceptable.

And it is the complete opposite of thinking about the “good old days”, as solarpunk is looking only towards the future. The ‘punk’ in the name means that when you look at all the doom and gloom in the future (capitalism, wars, global warming) you don’t fall into despair, but instead try to play your part in your community to fight it and promote a lifestyle of mutual aid and a respect for nature, with whatever level of technology can give you the best results.

That was my attempt at a short presentation. We have a wiki and a manifesto if anyone is interested

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it”

And at the end:

“No one keeps death in view, no one refrains from far-reaching hopes; some men, indeed, even arrange for things that lie beyond life—huge masses of tombs and dedications of public works and gifts for their funeral-pyres and ostentatious funerals. But, in very truth, the funerals of such men ought to be conducted by the light of torches and wax tapers, as though they had lived but the tiniest span.” [As if a child had died]

Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

Don’t know honestly. I once ate cold mashed potatoes and peas, like straight from the fridge cold, and it was awful. The thought of eating frozen flat bean soup, the liquid gelatinized, gives me a gag reflex.

I had a colleague that would bring frozen soups/stews, warm them just enough so that he could break through the ice, and he’d eat that. It was disgusting.

About two years ago I stared into the void. I didn’t have any real problems in life, but my job was boring as hell and my colleagues were always constantly negative, depressing and whined about everything, which affected my mindset after months upon months of that.

Freshly out of university, the job (which I couldn’t leave due to contacts) sucked out my every hope and dream of having a fulfilling career where I’d have an impact on the world. I felt so useless. To make matters worse I fell in love at that time.

One day I vaguely felt bad, got home, sat down and started crying like crazy. Life felt so meaningless. Not my life specifically, but life as a concept. I could change my life, but to what purpose? I sincerely felt regret for ever having been born and existence felt like a cruel joke, it was all vanity, pain, and at the end you die without even feeling the relief of it being over since you would be gone. It was a feeling of meaninglessness where even doing something about it was as meaningless as doing nothing.

The next day I had another crying session, didn’t eat anything the whole day as well. And in the evening I remembered how Seneca wrote that nothing bad happens to good people since those “bad” moments are the only time we get to show our virtues. Didn’t really fix the basic problem of meaninglessness, but it did reinvigorate me. Reading Camus’ “Myth of Sisyphus” also got me to handle the absurd better. But the moment I got out of the whole ordeal altogether was about 8 months later when I realized that I was very much pushed to such a state by my colleagues, and that I yearned for some sort of warmth and comfort from others. But nobody has really ever shined for me, I realized that I had to be my own light and that I should not do things to earn other’s approval, but for me (this does not mean being selfish, according to Platonic and Aristotelian ethics, doing morally good deeds is for the benefit of the doer). I’ve been fine since then.

While reading Epectitus definitely helped (externals - out of your control; reactions - your choice, things don’t bother you, you bother yourself), and telling myself that I gain nothing out of anger (mostly lose from it), I ran out of fucks to give. Someone’s blocking the way? Just wait until I can pass them. My delivery is running late? Whatever, it’ll get there. I left the window open during heavy rain and everything is wet? Close the window and mop it.

In a world where nothing really matters, giving your undying attention to stupid things like these is just absurd. Who’s watching your reactions so that you have to put on a show?

But as someone said, it takes practice. Being mindful, present, realizing that you’re getting angry, and then consciously thinking “ah whatever” and accepting it. Difficult at first, but as with any skill, the more you do it, the easier it gets.

I listened through all of the songs by Seven Spires and Sascha Paeth’s Masters of Ceremony, but Naglfar - Way of the Rope is in my head often these days

Also Dark Souls. I was confused at first as I mostly ignored the story part since it’s not given to you on a plate and just stopped. Then years later I did a proper run and I’ll never forget it.

Or take the best of both worlds and listen to symphonic metal!

But yeah, playing in a symphonic orchestra does sound cool.

If you want to say that you don’t care about something (as in: “I don’t give a fuck”), in Serbian you would say: “My dick hurts”. And that’s an expression you’ll hear almost daily. A less used variant of that, but still legit is: “My balls are beeping”.

While not insulting, I’ll throw in our way to say: “I’m/You’re fucked”. It’s: “Jebao sam/si ježa u leđa”, which means: “I/You fucked a hedgehog in the back”

I’m on slrpnk.net

I wanted originally to join one of the big ones, but figured that I should distribute the load by going for a smaller instance. I was scrolling through a list of instances and saw the logo and the name. I was already vaguely familiar with solarpunk, so I chose it because it appeals to me (environmental awareness, anarchism, optimism, DIY, upcycling, pragmatism and so on). To be completely honest, I had no idea what “choosing a home instance” entailed at the time.

Pretty happy with the decision though, it’s a themed instance so locally I get stuff you’d expect, and when browsing all I mostly see stuff from lemmy.world and lemmy.ml and the rest.

Not a particularly interesting story, but nevertheless here it is.

Yeah, me too. Though I was taken on by the whole “radical liberal left being oversensitive” thing. I thought of women as equal, but the “femimazis” were extreme. I thought non-heterosexual and non-binary were a bit odd, but they can do what they want, why should I care, but I was the “LGBT propaganda” was too much. I thought people fleeing from wartorn regions deserved another chance, but the “sjws are just letting anyone and everyone in, and they can do whatever they want because otherwise it would be racism”.

I would call myself right wing, but practically all of my opinions were very far from it because my youtube overloaded brain thought that the “left” were just a bunch of idle people getting looking what to get offended by today. Only later at uni did I find out how overblown the whole “SJW” youtube thing was, and how much more insane and damaging the other extreme was.

And I believe that this is very much the case, people in school aren’t “right wing” because they carefully thought about life and society, but because all they hear about the “left” is this comically exaggerated notion that they’re touchy freaks who just want to scream how they’re oppressed by everything. Ironically, what got me out of the stupid right wing youtube company was left wing youtube with hour long videos exposing how that “SJW” narrative is just manipulation. But by the time they make one long detailed video exposing some false story, 1000 more of them pop out.

Honestly, the large portion of the internet is just poisonous, especially youtube. The sooner people learn to think and examine sources (use the internet), the better off we’re all be.

“On the Shortness of Life” by Seneca, if we can call it a book. The claim that “life isn’t short, we just waste most of it” was not by itself that impactful until he started listing examples, among them Caesar Augustus. You can think what you will about him, but nobody can say that he was a lazy man sitting around doing nothing. And yet Seneca shows that Augustus in his “productive” life spent a lot of time complaining how he wished he had more free time, and so he didn’t really “live” all the time, just like someone who wastes their days drinking and gambling and whatnot. And the idea that a man who immortalized himself in history for all times “wasted” most of his life was really not something that ever occurred to me. I recommend it to everyone, it’s short and written in simple language.

It’s all being done by HAARP. When confronted by sentences like that, all words escape me.

“G stands for graphics, so it’s gif with a hard g”

The only thing more meaningless than arguing about how to pronounce gif is using that as an argument, and yet it always gets repeated.

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle and The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić. I always go over two books at the same time where one has heavier material (philosophy/history) and the other lighter that I can read when I’m tired.

I listen to this masterpiece

It depends on the workout for me. When I’m in shape of course, if I’m not in shape then it’s hell.

Running 4-6km is very neutral, nothing special

Running 6-10km is kinda enjoyable

Running 10-15km feels really good for some reason

Then everything above 15km is hell (I only ever ran a half marathon at once)

I find running a bit like meditation, or I just let my mind wander wherever. I can’t really put to words the experience, but I would definitely describe it as enjoyable. Especially in winter, I absolutely love it when the cold bites my skin as I start running, and then when you warm up you don’t feel it anymore.