I get that I just thought its supposed to be dead by boomers up there

What is it and why?

That's a great rule "three before me" - worth noting down!

I had a similar issue and two things helped.

1. I once heard that people like to talk more than listen (which was true for me). In addition, a great conversationalist is a person that ask and listens - not the loud, funny outspoken one. People will have a laugh and will listen to you for a little while, but will eventually get bored because they didn't have an opportunity to participate themselves. So what I started doing now is asking a lot of questions, even if I'm not 100% genuinely interested in the answer, but eventually the other person will say something that will bring us closer together and will give us something to talk about. The second rule of this game, is to try as hard as possible not to say anything unless asked. This is the hard part :D But once you catch yourselves giving opinions/story telling unprompted - stop - back to asking questions.

You wouldn't believe how much it changed my life. I used to be extremely nervous about going out 1v1 even with my close friends, out of fear of "What are we going to talk about?""What if there is going to be an awkward silence" etc. Now I thrive and I love hearing from people, what's new in their lives and so on. And I noticed people like to talk to me a lot more too!

2. Realise that "opinions are like assholes - everyone has got one" - and this works in two ways. Respect that your opinion is not definite and final - listen and maybe somebody will say something that will make you revaluate your "truths". Learn. That's the only way to grow. Also, don't give opinion unless asked - sometimes people just need to vent. Not always you need to be there to fix things or correct them.

Just be respectful, wait for your time when called upon and enjoy the conversation. You know your opinions - by saying them out loud you just repeat what you already know. It's time to find out what other people are thinking :)

100% agree - but when did she say that?

Terraria is great! Also kudos to Re-Logic for supporting the industry!

What I meant is a retiree crisis. You have been working for 40/50 odd years, and all of a sudden you loose the one thing that gave structure to your life.

Wow that's great! I don't see myself needing something like this, but it's a cool tech nonetheless! Great job!

So what's up with this novel? Can't find anything obvious about it - only that it's mighty popular among conservatives (which is usually a red flag)

I started my journey to degoogle myself very recently. I'm still to make the transition from Google stuff, but for now I treat it two fold.

1. I treat it as a side hobby - I know it would be more convenient to just stay under the Google umbrella, but I'm interested in the state of FOSS and how far you can replicate gtools. I'm waiting for my Synology NAS drive and hopefully this will cover most of my needs.
2. A personal statement/protest against greedy companies - I know that cutting access to some of my data (I'm not disillusioned - I know they still have a lot of my data and they will still have access to some) won't make a difference, but by switching from WhatsApp to Signal, I created a conversation among my friends and family. They became a bit more aware of the current situation. Same with switching from Reddit to Lemmy. The further I travel on my path, the more people around me are interested in their own privacy.

So if you are realistic about it, as you are judging from your post, I would say it's worth - even if just as a middle finger to the big, privacy violating conglomerates. We shouldn't just roll over and give up our personal lives.

Also, you will have full deniability of any future repercussions of people allowing big corpos doing with their data whatever they want.

Jesus, seeing just a little thumbnail for a second I thought you rode into your bike into water... :D

Lovely bike btw!

There is a reason for my luck of trust. Out of around 6 McDrive orders I have made this year, maybe one or two were on point...