CerebralHawks

I don’t really downvote. I try to be helpful, so if someone’s just being rude, I typically just block them. Probably more efficient.

The default for Reddit was to hide posts with X downvotes, so people could manipulate that to hide posts they don’t like. Lemmy doesn’t do that by default, so there’s no real utility. Also users can choose to sort by time and ignore vote counts (I do) so your downvotes literally don’t do anything for those users. Thus, I just block people who go out of their way to be rude or offensive.

I upvote people who are helpful and/or kind. Otherwise, I don’t interact with that system.

They say at some point your parents put you down and never pick you up again.

The truth is, the age of a person’s child is the image of them they hold in their heart. It could be a certain milestone, or a certain bonding moment.

For me, it varies from person to person. I’m not a father myself, but I’ve helped raise more than a dozen kids over the years. Many years, some of those kids have kids of their own now. To answer the question, I think of two sisters, who are cousins of mine, and 11 and 13 years younger than me. It seems, from my experience, small girls are either shy or cautious around older/teenage boys, or are drawn to them (not like attracted to, like they see them as bigger kids who can pick them up and carry them, and get them into more fun/risky trouble and maybe deflect some of the blame from them). The younger sister was the former, the older sister was the latter. The older girl was fun when she was small, but got bossy, possessive, and generally bitchy as she got older (like to preteen age). The younger one was shy and reserved, she’d follow her sister around (who would follow me around, or be carried by me), but she wouldn’t let me pick her up, except one time she asked for a shoulder ride, and then proceeded to pour a can of soda over my head. But, she started getting attached to me around 8 or 9, and even cried one time when I had to leave, and my aunt and uncle made me put that fire out. So, to come back to the point, whenever I think about them (or I see them in my dreams), the older one is 3 or 4, and the younger one is 8 or 9.

Now if you mean, like, when do they stop sending you gifts? You might have a ways to go. I’m almost 50 and I still get birthday and Christmas cards from my mother. Not so much from my cousins, though occasionally they send me those photo collage cards with pictures of them with their husbands and kids.

I was just gonna say, I just replied to one, and then I saw who I’m replying to. Yeah, sorry, didn’t mean to call ya out like that. Not sure if I’ve seen others.

I haven’t, but I’ve seen another thread about it. Someone said that PieFed blocks this activity, but last time I looked at the thread, nobody had a good answer for why someone’s using the system like that.

Reposting was basically a business on Reddit, but Lemmy isn’t big enough AND these accounts don’t stick around.

I’ve seen handles in kanji — I assume Japanese, could be Chinese. Some browsers will translate that if they can. At least to something you can say (if you don’t know how to say those symbols, that is). For example, people whose first language is English can say “konnichiwa” — the Japanese word for “hello” or “good day” written in Romaji, which is Japanese using the Roman alphabet — but they wouldn’t know how to pronounce こんにちは — it’s the same word. So you can look at that in my message and say “konnichiwa” out loud, but if you happened upon it in a week and you’ve forgotten I said this, you probably won’t recognise it. But, you can highlight it, long press/right click and search your favourite search engine to find out what it is.

(Side note: I do recognise は which is pronounced “wa.” It’s part of the title of my favourite film, 君の名は。 (Kimi no Na wa., or “your name.”) I also recognise の when I see it. This was the first one I learned — because it looks like a fortune cookie!)

Not necessarily.

You’re kind of talking about two different things that are somewhat interchangeable. First you have a username which is used to log into a network or system. Second you have a forum/chat handle which is used to identify an anonymous or semi-anonymous user (e.g. CerebralHawks for me). I don’t think it’s strictly necessary for a forum handle to be pronounceable, but it’s easy to read mine and call me that, or just “Hawks” or “Hawk.” If it’s not, the mind isn’t going to retain it as long (this could be a good thing) and it’s hard to say, so it’s hard to address.

Usernames absolutely don’t have to be. Forum/chat handles should be, but it isn’t necessary.

“Religion is true to the poor, false to the rich, and useful to the powerful.”

I don’t have a religion, but consider myself to be “religiously neutral.” Either smart men from all over are running the same scam — or there are common bits of wisdom in most religions and there may be something to that. Either way, I ultimately believe in Humanism, I suppose. That humans are inherently good, or want to be, and/or enough actually are.

I do not believe in anything original myself. It’s all academic to me.