One time I was working as a customer advocate in a hosting company and I had one supervisor that never wanted to concede and refund the clients. It wasn’t an issue with other supervisors, I was following policies and he was kind of an asshole.

At one point I told him he was wrong and he replied with the French expression “you will not live on love and water alone”, meaning do what I say or you will be fired and won’t have money to live.

Well, as this happened before lunch break, I went to lunch, wrote my resignation letter and sent it via email. When I got back at the office he was incredulous and asked if I was joking. Nope.

I didn’t have the monetary meams to quit and I had to go back to my previous job, that I also didn’t like, but at least my old supervisor was not such an asshole.

I had the same experience as OP when I tried Matrix a few years ago. No hate on it but it was not easy and I gave up because I already had a simple IRC setup that’s working for me and my friends.

Some IRC clients are now web based and it’s been enough to keep a few of my friends there instead of Discord. We use The Lounge. It can keep a history, display images, videos, play mp3s, and show previews of most URLs. Like, we can simply copy/paste images into a channel and they are uploaded on the server and displayed in the chat. There’s also push notifications and it’s mobile friendly.

Convos also does something like this. Apparently it can also do video chat but I’ve never got it to work.

I’ve recently been thinking about giving Matrix another try but I’m pretty sure my friends are going to stay on “modern” IRC anyway.

Especially Carl. But luckily for whales, Carl is a bastard because he shot a harpoon in the captain’s face.

Oh yeah, otherwise don’t hesitate to go faster than the speed limit and male a bit of noise with your sports car, cuz it impresses everyone.

I can’t say I hate everyone, but its more of a “I don’t like people” in general kind of vibe.

When I was a teen in the late 90ies I was depressive and suicidal. I have had several episodes since then but I’m curious and so far I go on, just to see how cruel, dystopian and fucked up the world will become. So far it’s one part that is not disappointing.

But then you learn more about them and realize that the “fine specimen” are as damaged as the rest of us.

Some can be super nice to you yet very mean or cruel with other people.

I always at least try to give the benefit of the doubt but I very often end up disappointed.

EDIT: Quote from Quark

Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They’re a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people… will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon.

Sorry to hear about that person’s psychological state.

Odds about living nearby are low but sometimes the world can be pretty small. Let’s see. I’m in a high rise near PdA in Montreal, 7th floor, so the person I can hear yelling is probably on the 6th or 8th floor.

I have a neighbour like that, I think. I’ve been living in the same place for years but a few months ago I started hearing someone yelling through the walls/floors. At first I thought it was a couple arguing because I kept hearing "“FUCK YOOOOU FUCK YOOOU FUCK” and “HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO ME?”

Then the same thing again a few minutes later. Maybe he was watching sports.

But he also yells the same things randomly. Sometimes at 2AM, sometimes at 2PM. Sometimes a few times in a row, sometimes just once. So I think he’s probably playing video games and just can’t help himself.

Close! But those lines are from the second one: Everyday Normal Guy 2

Anecdote about how this song is still fresh in my mind: I went to Saint Martin last winter. There are hiking trails on a private property called Loterie Farm, leading to Pic Paradis, the highest point of the island. They also have pool parties with loud music, kids playgrounds and stuff like that, but I went for the hike. Depending on your angle on the hill, you can clearly hear the music at the bottom. So there I was, hiking in a tropical forest, when all of a sudden I hear this remix of Everyday Normal Guy 2. I had forgotten this song for years and now my brain associates this specific remix with this moment.

I’m not disregarding electric cars. However they are not presented as an imperfect solution but rather like what everyone that has a car needs to do. Just swap for an electric car and don’t change anything else!

Don’t change habits. Dont talk aboout the other problems created by cars. Let’s forget about the millions of animals and humans killed by cars. Worldwide, there is one human killed every 30 seconds by a car. Electric or not.

But people just want to continue their current lifestyle. They will buy anything they are told will do that. Anything as long as they can all continue just as they are doing right now, but green!

IF you have to have a car, of course, the electric one will be better for the environment. But they are hyped and presented as a simple easy solution for everyone. They’re like Stanley cups. Everyone wants one, or two. They are objects of consumption.

Buying a car is not good for the environment in any way, shape or form, yet people are eager to do so.

Humanity is not running to ruins. It’s taking a car.

🎶Yo, what can I say? It’s just a day in my life.

I’m up early in the morning, in bed early at night.

To be productive at work, I gotta be well rested.

Yeah, motherfucker, you heard what I just said.🎶

Don’t worry if you can’t get in the electric car (EV) club right away. The important thing for the economy environment is that you are planning to buy another car, but electric!

Or just ditch the working car for an electric one. Nobody gives a fuck if it’s ecological or not. They just want to continue using a car and ignore all the other problems like microplastics from tire shedding, heat islands, or using a two tons metal box to move 1.5 person everywhere.

Electric cars only exist so the car industry can continue to sell cars. So don’t worry and consume. Greenwash your conscience.

Millennials are starting to get a bit old to have futire kids. Not impossible obviously, but wouldn’t that apply more to zoomers?

What warms your house in the winter?

Electricity, like the vast majority of people here. About 94% of which is hydroelectricity. Other ways to heat buildings are slowly getting banned anyway.

Where is dirtier snow? In your fathers homestead or in the city?

What? The snow is dirty where there are particles in the air that ends up on the ground. It’s not a contest of city vs countryside. If you live in a place that snows and walk around a house that is heated by wood burning, you will see black particles and specks in the snow surrounding the house. It’s the same at my cabin. When I get there the snow outside is impeccable… until I light the wood stove inside, and then it slowly turns grey all around the cabin. It doesn’t matter if the snow in a city is even dirtier.

Where is more generaly more particless in the air? In the countryside or in the city.

Funny thing, in winter during smog episodes, the air quality can be worse in the countryside because of people burning wood. Anyway, it’s banned in bigger cities because of how horrible this is in dense population centers. So, ironically, the air is more polluted when I go to my parents’ place in the countryside where they are burning wood to heat their house, than around my apartment in the downtown of a major city. Again, sometimes the air quality is worse in the countryside or in suburbs during winter, in large parts because of wood burning.

Thanks for the tips. I’m kind of stuck with the choices I’ve made in the past and I don’t want to upgrade or change before it’s really needed, in order to prevent waste. One is just a cabin where I go maybe a dozen times a year. The other is a sugar shack used in the day for only a few weeks during the spring so it just has a 3000W 24V inverter. It’s enough for the lights and the water pump once in a while. We really don’t need that much power for now but I’ll certainly switch to 48v when we’ll need to upgrade.

As for the ideal temperature, I’ve pretty much given up. The average temps in January are around -10°C and it sometimes goes in the -20°C. I thought about multiple ways to insulate and heat the batteries but in the end, I don’t want to leave this unattended in the middle of a forest. So far my solution in winter for the cabin is to carry a portable power station that was sitting in a heated place.

I’m trying and doing experiments. I have a cabin off grid on their land and it’s mostly solar, but I do need to burn wood during winter even if I don’t really like it. He has a sugar shack on another corner of the land and he’s also using solar, except the stoves and boiler. I bought him an inverter and he prefers this to the noisy generator.

However he pretty much hates everything else with batteries. My mother has an electric golf cart and he whines every time the lead acid batteries need maintenance or need to be changed (because of lack of maintenance). I could swap them for lifepo4 batteries, but they’re still going to lose capacity over time and we’re getting to the same point of “but I don’t have to put a $1000 worth of batteries in my tractor every few years”! Same “issue” with an electric ATV for the kids. He hates it because it needs to be charged and the lifepo4 battery had to be changed once. But apparently the cost of gas and diesel doesn’t register.

But yeah. So far at the latitude we’re at, solar power input and consumption varies a lot depending on the seasons. The solar setup is fine for the sugar shack because it’s used during the day in the spring, when there’s no leaves. But in the cabin, it’s been more complicated. I’m not there year-round and it works well in summer, but in winter the lifepo4 batteries need to be heated for hours if not days before I can charge them via solar, and get acceptable performance. It’s a work in progress.

Forget the chainsaw. Just burning the wood like we did in the past creates smog over a whole region. Wood burning is banned in my city and I can literally smell it when I go to the next city where it’s allowed.

Where I live winters are brutal and most people switched to electric heating over time. If everyone would go back to wood burning, we’d have really bad air quality and smog in winter, even in the countryside and over small villages.

My father claims the simple life on a homestead is way closer to nature and pollutes less than living in a city.

He cuts his wood with a chainsaw that’s using a mixture of gas and oil. This gas and oil certainly doesn’t come from the trees. Its imported. But it’s apparently the traditional way.

Then in winter he burns the wood to heat the house and it creates a circle of soot in the white snow all around it. But it’s all natural. On certain days, when you go outside around his house, you can taste the wood burning in the air. All natural!

If we all go back to owning our plot of land and exploit it like settlers, surely this is going to be good for the environment.

I was kind of expecting it. The question is “What car do you drive?” and not “If you have a car, what’s the one you’re driving?” because it’s to be expected that everyone has or wants a car. So those without cars are not being asked, and saying you don’t have one is “not the question”. Worse if you don’t like them. I’d bet that saying I don’t have one but wish I had a specific one would have gained more sympathy.

As a North American that doesn’t like cars, I’m just used to that type of reaction. A car is status and prestige. A car defines who you are. If you don’t have a car, you’re not normal.

None. I don’t have one and do not want one. They are a blight. I want them gone.