I can’t offer a comparison with the other options, but I have a sofa baton U2, and I’m not really a fan. I haven’t spent too much time messing with it so maybe with a little extra setup it might work great, but the scroll wheel seems to skip around when trying to select different devices, a lot of buttons don’t seem to do quite what I’d expect no matter how I try setting it up, the IR seems to have a really narrow beam and is really picky about being pointed right at the device you’re trying to use it with, Bluetooth controls seem pretty unreliable, and I’ve never been able to get it to work work with my PC in a way that feels right.

I think this is the right take. At the end of the day you just can’t change some people’s minds.

Arguably, you can’t change anyone’s minds, they have to change them themselves. You can try to lay the groundwork for them to make that change, but we all know what they say about leading a horse to water.

Like OP’s example of the uncle with lung cancer. The dude already has lung cancer, and is continuing to smoke, what more could you really say or do to convince him to stop? They’re already facing probably one of the biggest possible consequences of their actions and they’re still not stopping.

Sure, you could focus all of your energy into trying to browbeat them into stopping, but do you really think that’s going to get anywhere? Your time and energy are probably better spent convincing someone else to quit or not to start instead.

I only judged people in a handful of cases

If you ordered fountain drinks instead of bottled sodas when we had both available, that’s kind of a dick move.

One lady once ordered a few cups of milk (in her defense, she did tell me when I delivered it that she was injured or her car was in the shop or something so it was an easy way for her to get milk without needing to go to the store. This was before grocery delivery really took off)

And I judged you if you gave a shitty tip or took too long to answer your door.

I’m also in the process of learning Esperanto (there’s actually a decent amount of us on Lemmy)

I don’t foresee it ever being particularly useful on its own, but it is a really easy language to learn, and I think it’s a great way to learn how to learn languages. I feel like after casually teaching myself it for a few years I’m a lot better prepared to learn another language somewhere down the road

There’s a few Esperanto clubs and such out there, I’m not a part of any of them so I can’t really comment on the community all that much.

One thing that does kind of interest me is Pasporta Servo, which is sort of a free Airbnb/couchsurfing thing for esperantists. Seems like that could be a cool way to travel around on the cheap and probably a good way to get more involved in the Esperanto community. Unfortunately most of my traveling is done with my wife and I haven’t been able to convince her to learn Esperanto with me so I doubt she’s gonna want to go hang out with me chatting with someone in a made up language in a foreign land.

Mostly I talk to my dog in it. She knows most of her basic commands in both English and Esperanto.

In a weird way this is almost refreshing

It kind of shows that your mom actually put a little thought into the meaning of the word “woke” instead of just using it to mean “liberal stuff I don’t like”

It’s supposed to mean that you’re aware of the various problems in the world, that you’re “awake” and paying attention as opposed to “asleep” and blissfully unaware while it all goes down around you

Of course she’s dead-wrong about what’s going on, the world she thinks exists around her in just a weird fever dream and she is absolutely not woke

But even that tiny bit of being able to think about the words you’re saying and not just spewing some 1984 duckspeak is so rare among conservatives that it almost feels like it should be celebrated in some small way.

BotW and TotK are such weird games to me

They built these big beautiful worlds, and designed some really cool mechanics

And just kind of did nothing with them.

TotK was a bit better, but still fell pretty short.

Also it’s so weird that TotK is clearly a direct sequel to BotW, but there’s almost no actual continuity between the games. There’s a handful of characters that are missing without much of an explanation, and other characters from the previous game act as if you’ve never met them before. I get that for gameplay reasons you kind of have to start things over from square one in some ways, but it just felt weird.

And the weapon degradation never really felt fun to me. I feel like at the very least once you get the master sword and recharge it to its full power or whatever you should have that as an option that just doesn’t wear down, even if other weapons that do break might be better suited for the task.

And having to go out and farm a thousand different fish and master parts and whatever else to upgrade your armor is just bullshit.

Michelin Stars started out as a travel guide brochure for the best restaurants in France as a sort of advertisement for Michelin branded tyres

It was really more of a way to get people to drive more and so have to buy more tires (hopefully Michelin)

The original guide had things like maps, tire shops, gas stations, and tire repair instructions. Back then, cars were still new to a lot of people, and Michelin figured that a lot of people probably wouldn’t know where they could go get gas or new tires or whatever, but if they had that information people might be inclined to drive more. If you didn’t know where you could get gas along your trip you may not want to take that drive after all.

Then after a while they started including things like restaurants to give people more of a reason to go driving around.

How did the Michelin stars become so sought after by top restaurants and chefs?

It’s advertising. If you make it into the guide, more people are going to hear about and want to come to your restaurant. And since the guide has such a good reputation, it’s seen as a badge of honor that this restaurant/chef is good enough to be recognized with a star.

Was the head of the Michelin tyre company also a renowned food connoisseur or something?

No, they were renowned tire manufacturers. But they were French and that probably didn’t hurt the branding since French food has such a good reputation. I’m sure subconsciously on some level a lot of people are going to give a bit more weight to a French company rating restaurants than, for example, an American one.

What about other tyre companiee, why didn’t they do something similar?

Why bother when Michelin was already doing it? You don’t need to buy Michelin tires to eat at a Michelin-Stared restaurant. Regardless of where the guide came from it got people driving around more and needing new tires.

There’s other travel guides out there, some focus more on other things besides restaurants, some focus on areas not covered by Michelin, some overlap or compete with Michelin or position themselves as sort of an anti-Michelin because they disagree with the criteria Michelin rates restaurants on.

And I’m sure some of them are or have been in the past published or sponsored by tire companies. But Michelin managed to get into the game early enough and did it well enough that they just became sort of the restaurant guide.

And other tire companies have taken other advertising routes that are maybe a little less obvious. Let’s consider the Goodyear blimp flying over sporting events. I’m sure there’s a small element of “you should drive to sporting events to see our blimp ~and also wear down your tires a bit in the process~” at play there.

Are Michelin Stars still given by the tyre company, or has it been spun off into its own thing?

Yes it’s still the Michelin tire company. I don’t have any real insight into their corporate affairs, so I don’t know how much crosstalk there is between the tire-manufacturing and the guide-writing parts of their business these days, but it is still the same company.

1. A “truckers” (CB) radio is exactly what I was suggesting FRS radios as an alternative to.

2. I suggested them because they are much simpler to use. With a mobile base station you need to figure out where to mount it in your car, where to mount an antenna, tune that antenna, how to hard-wire it into your car’s power (or splice an adapter onto it to power it from the cigarette lighter), whereas with a walkie talkie you just need to turn it on, put it on the right channel and push a button.

(Handheld CBs do exist. I’ve very rarely seen them for sale in a brick and mortar store)

3. It’s probably gonna depend on where in the country you are, but CB radio equipment is in fact not commonly available at gas stations and truck stops around me. It’s something I actually actively look for and take notice of because I’m a bit of a radio geek. In fact, if I needed to tell someone where to get a CB locally, their best bet for that would probably also be the-store-whose-name-you-seem-too-think-that-no-one-should-say-like-its-fucking-voldemort-or-something, and even that would be hit or miss, some TSWNYSTTTNOSSLIFVOSes don’t actually seem to carry them, but every TSWNYSTTTNOSSLIFVOS I’ve ever been in absolutely has at least one set of FRS radios for sale.

Because they’re fucking everywhere, something like 90% of the US population lives within 10 miles of one.

It’s basically shorthand for “this is a common and readily available thing that you can acquire anywhere in the country for cheap even if megacorps have driven all of the local specialty retailers out of business in your areas”

As opposed to something like a HF ham radio which is a specialty item that no big retailers like walmart, to the best of my knowledge, carry, and so you’re probably not going to be able to find it locally.

I keep a CB radio in my car, and have a few friends with them

It is actually really handy when you’re road tripping together in different cars to be able to just grab the mic and say something to the other vehicle when you need to stop for a bathroom break or you’re having an issue with your car or want to give them a heads-up about whatever.

If you’re fairly close together a set of cheap FRS walkie-talkies from Walmart does the job just as well. Probably worth stepping up to CB if you expect to lose sight of the other vehicle though, range is usually a bit better.

It’s especially handy if, like me, you go camping and such in rural areas with unreliable cell coverage.

You do occasionally also get helpful heads-ups from truckers if you’re listening to channel 19 about road conditions, police activity, traffic, etc. but mostly it’s just idiots babbling about conspiracy theories and immature bullshit.

I feel like that’s kind of the point they’re making

When you tie so many of those things to marriage, you’ve created an inherent inequality between married people and unmarried people.

Let the idea of “marriage” be up to you, your spouse(s) and whatever god(s) you think may exist.

And let people sort all the rest of it out for themselves.

For example

You can have your spouse and kids covered under your health insurance that you have through work. You don’t necessarily need to live together or even be on good speaking terms as long as you have that piece of paper that says you’re married.

So why shouldn’t you be able to share those benefits with someone else of your choosing? Maybe you’re single and would like to make sure that your best friend and their kids who you see all the time and think of each other as family can go see the doctor when they need to. You probably have a closer relationship with them than someone with an estranged wife and kids they never talk to, why shouldn’t you be able to add them onto your health insurance?

No, I think I got you figured exactly right. You’re a whiney loudmouthed asshole who wants to complain.

You weren’t offering any solutions, you weren’t encouraging people to do more, you were just bitching that what they are doing isn’t enough without any advice on what they can be doing better.

Now I’ve managed to tease some of that out of you over the course of this conversation, but it sure as hell wasn’t what you were doing when I started, and I doubt that you would have ever bothered to elaborate on your own. You’d just be another nuisance around Lemmy making everyone’s day a little bit worse. Hopefully you’ll keep that up in the future instead of just spouting sarcastic whining like

Forgot all about how that happened and then nothing happened… again

And

Not in the United States of Obedience.

Complaining about a problem is only useful if you’re following it up with at least an attempt to find solutions if not offering them up yourself. Otherwise you’re just a whiney, loudmouthed asshole.

No, because your tactics are actively harming my attempts to bring more people into our fold.

It’s already an uphill battle getting people to do anything without assholes like making them feel like since they’re not yet willing to go all-in on a revolution that they might as well not do anything at all.

Be less of an asshole, so that we can get all hands on-deck instead of just a few loudmouthed assholes who won’t be able to get anything done by themselves.

There is a huge difference between asking people to help, and being an asshole like you have been. Give examples of what more people can do to help don’t just poo-poo what steps they’re already taking.

And no, I’m not a fed, and I live in Pennsylvania. And before you start on why I’m up at 2am, I work night shift.

I really like that he seemed to think it wasn’t an effective tactic, but it sure seemed to keep him busy all day instead of bothering other people.

Not a fan of people shitting on you for how you’re trying to contribute to a movement? Gee, I wonder how that feels.

And dude, if you think this is harassment, you’re probably way too thin-skinned for the kind of action you’re trumpeting for, I think you need a little warming-up yourself before you’re ready because the kind of actions you want to see come with consequences you can’t just block or log off of Lemmy to avoid like you can with me.

Tell you what, if you agree to knock off being an asshole to other people on our side, then this is the end of it from me, that’s all I’ve wanted from this conversation from the very beginning. But if I log on tomorrow and see your name pop up pulling the same shit in the comment section of the 2nd or 3rd post I open tomorrow like I did today, I’m gonna pick it right back up again. Deal?

First your asking for a date now you want me to slide into your DMs to tell you how naughty you are, you really are enjoying this, aren’t you?

I certainly don’t claim to be perfect, when I’m wrong, which I often am, I’m happy to be corrected.

But when I see someone being a prick for no damn good reason and hurting causes I care about, I’m gonna say something about it.

Say something constructive or hold all criticism until 7/12/2178.

You’re posting on a public forum, every comment you make is directed at everyone who can see it. If you don’t want people inserting themselves into a conversation, take it to their DMs.

Good for you that you’re doing those things elsewhere, now stop shooting yourself in the foot by being counterproductive and scaring people away on Lemmy.

For starters, if you want to find your new message, just stop being an asshole to people who are trying to be more engaged and celebrating the steps that people are taking

What you want to be doing is basically the old improv technique of “Yes, and…”

"It’s great that you showed up to protest. If you want to do more to help these causes you can…

Help put up these posters

Hand out these pamphlets near home Depot

Use these resources to report ICE sightings

Make sure you show up to vote

Boycott these companies

Show up to the next protest and bring some friends so that they can start helping too

Etc.

As far as people not considering criminal activity to be peaceful protest, consider, for example, sit-ins or Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat, etc. I don’t think anyone would consider those to be anything but peaceful, but yet those were criminal acts, trespassing for example. When you provide that sort of context, it helps people open their minds to other ways

But seriously, start by just not being a disagreeable prick. You’re not helping anyone.

If you’re exhausted, you can stop anytime you want.

Those are examples of peaceful protest. They’re a necessary escalation from where we are now, but we still need to warm people up to taking that kind of action.