As a kid in the '80s/'90s, my hair looked exactly like Will’s from Stranger Things. When my peers pressured me to change my hairstyle in 7th grade, I tried a bowl cut. It was the same, just the bottom half was shaved. Looked super ugly.

In 8th grade, I tried a buzz cut, which seemed to be pretty popular with my peers. A little longer on top, tight on the sides, tapered in back. Back then, I think I asked barbers to cut it as a #4 on top, #2 on the sides. It was extremely low maintenance; I could just shower and towel dry and my hair was immediately dry and perfect for the day. My hair was so extremely thick and soft, people joked that I had fur instead of hair. I had a lot of comments that touching my head was like petting a puppy, or a bear pelt. My hair also grows straight out of my scalp, so if I took too long to get a haircut, I started getting a bit of a mini-'fro.

Then I joined the US military at 18 and got the buzz cut professionally trimmed every couple weeks. My hair grows extremely fast and we had military hair regulations that had to be maintained, so I constantly needed to touch it up. I changed my cut to a #2 on top, #1 on the sides, with a little extra length in the front. Of course, still tapered in the back. The military doesn’t allow block cuts, you have to taper the ends.

I spent 13 years with a buzz cut in the military. My wife spent most of those years begging me to grow my hair out, but I kept telling her I can’t; military regs prevent me from having long hair. Finally, she showed me a picture of Captain America from the Avengers movie. Claimed he was technically military, but he had longer hair styled in a way that was still within regs. So I agreed to grow out my hair like Captain America.

Unfortunately, I had started balding a bit in my late 20s. My hair was getting thinner and my hairline was receding. I didn’t have enough hair in the front to style it like Captain America’s, so I combed the front back and over to a side, giving a bit more lift in the front with what thinning hair I had left. I grew out all the hair on top of my head and parted it to one side. On the short side, I buzzed it right up to the part, then kept the sides buzzed short with a taper in the back. I would tell barbers to buzz with a #1 up to the part, then go “skin” on the sides and back, tapered on the back.

It worked fine for the last 7 years of my military service. Then I retired and spent nearly 3 years struggling to figure out a civilian haircut. I had spent so long adhering to military regulations that every time my hair got a little shaggy, I’d panic and get a military haircut again. But I also didn’t want people to immediately look at me as a military guy when they met me. Short hair made me look much older, and as I was just starting my 40s, looking older is not what I wanted anymore.

Finally, I just shaved my head. A complete reset on my hair. I figured, if I’m completely bald, I’m going to have to go through an awkward regrowth period, so I’ll be forced to deal with it instead of being able to fix it on a whim. I was fully retired after my military service, so I didn’t have to worry about looking presentable for anyone. I basically just holed myself up at home; no one saw my bald head except my wife. I should note that I have a wrinkly scalp that looks like a scrotum, so the bald look is really ugly on me.

After nearly 6 months of letting it grow wild, I finally got a trim. I parted my hair to one side and cleaned up around my neck and ears, but left the rest. My hair is still growing straight out of my scalp, so I need a little hair product to comb it down and hold it, but otherwise, it’s been holding a side part pretty well.

I also grew out a beard for about the past 4 months. When I retired a few years ago, my chin had a white spot to one side, and in the 3+ years since then, it’s spread to my whole chin. So my beard is salt-and-pepper with a solidly white chin now. I don’t really care for the beard, but my wife likes it and I get compliments on it from others, so I keep it trimmed neat and maybe an inch long. It definitely helps to hide the fact I was former military, since we couldn’t grow beards while serving. And it adds a unique character to my look.

And they still put the ingredient on haphazardly.

Half the time I need to manually rebuild my burgers because the ingredients are slapped together like they’re assembling a burger from across the room. You’d think this “burger” would be easy to get right.

I was stationed in Germany with the US military once, just 30 minutes from the French border. My American coworkers visited Paris and complained that everyone there were snobbish assholes. Every time they tried to ask someone for directions, they got ignored at best and insulted at worst.

My wife and I went to Paris a few times and we had the complete opposite experience. We both took several years of French in high school, so we had an extremely basic knowledge of the French language (thanks, American public schools! 🙄) and we tried to speak to people in French.

Every time we spoke up, they would notice us struggling and immediately switch to English for us. And then they were very helpful. Turns out, my coworkers were just speaking English to French people and expecting a response in English. Which insulted a lot of French people, so they ignored them.

TL;DR: Speak the local language as best you can and French people can be very nice and helpful. Just assume they’ll speak English and you’ll get some rude responses in kind.

Hmm, this looks interesting. And you can’t beat the free price tag. I’ll check it out.

This is why I stopped watching TV. I can only watch a show at a set time period and had no idea if it’d be a good episode or a rerun? I might jump into the middle of a storyline with no context for the characters or the plot? I have to wait a whole week to find out what happens next? No thanks. My ADHD won’t allow for that kind of scheduling, plot confusion, and potential disappointment.

I collected movies and TV shows for a while, so I could watch whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Until online streaming became a thing.

Even then, streaming services couldn’t guarantee access to my favorite movies and shows forever, with streaming licenses being a temporary thing that could expire. So I eventually dumped them all and went back to collecting my own movies and TV shows.

I eventually ripped my whole collection to my computer and set up a Plex server, so I could stream my own private movie, tv show, and music collection. I now have access to my media library anywhere in the world! Better than any public streaming service.

Are you retired or young?

I’m retired AND young… well, relatively speaking. I retired 3 years ago, at 38 years old. I’m 41 now.

I was in the US military for 20 years, earned a pension, plus 100% disability through the VA. With the passive income and benefits (free medical/dental for life), I can afford to be fully retired now. I’m not filthy rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I make enough to live a quiet, relaxed life and have my basic needs met. And that’s good enough for me. Plenty of time to indulge in my many hobbies. And I have ADHD, so I’m always finding new and interesting things to deep-dive into.

I actually started a movie review blog about 6 years before I retired. I ended up taking a hiatus from it shortly after retirement and just haven’t been motivated to get back into it lately, despite all the movies and TV shows I watch regularly.

I switched to reviewing video games sometime last year and have been mostly keeping up with that; although it’s been over 2 months since my last review. I should probably make a new post soon, or declare another hiatus. 😬

I’ve been playing it this morning. Virus scan came back clean, and the game has been interesting so far.

That’s cool, no reviews yet then. Not a problem!

I play a lot of games (over 4,000 games in my Steam library) and I’ve made a hobby of reviewing them here on Lemmy over the past year. I especially love horror games. I would love to give it a playtest and provide constructive feedback.

It’s up to you if you’d like me to also post a review of it here on Lemmy or wait until a finished product is available. You can see my post history to see the kind of reviews I write, or you can check out my blog where I’m archiving my reviews here. Easier to browse the history of posts on the sidebar at that website.

Say what you will about Idiocracy, but President Camacho knew his country was suffering a problem and he found the smartest man in the world, hired him, and put him to work to resolve it. If only we could get Trump to care this much.

I served in the US Air Force for 20 years. During my service, the government went through a shutdown twice. Both times, USAA offered to deposit our paychecks into our bank account, claiming they knew the government would be good for it. USAA has been pretty good to us in times of crisis.

Of course there is Roger Craig Smith from AC II

Roger Craig Smith will always be my favorite Sonic the Hedgehog voice actor. The others are pretty good, but he has a quality that I personally feel captures the character.

I don’t understand, this happened years ago. Both Rocket League and Fall Guys originally came out on Steam, but disappeared from the Steam Store and became Epic Games exclusives. If you still own a Steam copy though, you can still play it.

Is this saying that the game will be unplayable without an Epic Games authentication or something? It’s not like the Steam versions are getting updates anymore, so they should still be playable with other Steam members. Unless the publishers are pushing an update to the Steam version as well.

EDIT: Upon rereading, I see these games are being ported into another game. Does this affect Steam users at all, since Fortnite is an Epic Games exclusive?

I won’t touch Epic Games, so this doesn’t seem to have any effect on me.

This community is called “Casual UK.” That should help you decipher this riddle.

Do you use youtube mainly?

I use it pretty frequently. I wouldn’t say “mainly.” It’s a source of education and entertainment for me, but not my only one.

Do you care about clickbait?

It’s a pretty large annoyance to me, so yes, I do care about it to the extent that I wish it would go away.

Did clickbait make you stop seeing some creator?

Yes, I’ve purged creators from my subscription list solely because I was getting annoyed at the clickbait titles and/or title cards they used in their videos.

Did you use youtube but clickbait (among other things) made you to stop using it’s platform?

I avoided YouTube for a while, partly because of all the clickbait, but also because of the amount of ads popping up on the service. I only came back when I learned how to block ads. I tolerate a certain amount of clickbait now.

Do you think clickbait is the major of the YouTube’s problems?

One of the larger problems, yes. But not THE major problem of the platform. I feel issues with censorship, AI moderation, and an abundance of advertisements interrupting videos are worse issues that should be addressed.

Clickbait is more of a creator issue; it could be resolved by creators refusing to use clickbait to draw in viewers. Let the quality of their content speak for itself. But because monetized content is earned based on views, it creates an incentive to get people to click on your video no matter what, which promotes clickbait. If you’re using YouTube primarily to make money, then clickbait is the default most content creators go for.

I guess YouTube could fix that by changing their monetization standard. Maybe base it on popularity ranking over time instead of number of clicks or something. But it would take time to phase out clickbait, and I doubt it would ever fully go away.

Do you see something good in clickbait among the bad things? Like, which ones?

I personally don’t see any value in clickbait. It’s just a way to pull your attention in an ever-distracting online world. It’s the lowest common denominator of recruiting views for your content. I don’t hold any respect for anyone who employs it in their content.

Could we see clickbait as a necessary evil?

Never. It’s a tool used by people who don’t know how to market their own content to the general public. It’s using manipulation to draw your attention to content that typically doesn’t live up to the clickbait title. It’s an extreme action in a distraction-filled world to stand out.

With a little effort, creators could market themselves better and not need clickbait. But it’s the easy way out, and most creators would rather go this route than put effort into expanding their audience.

I really hated the movie version of I Am Legend. It completely missed the point of the book and instead makes a generic zombie film out of it.

The whole point is that the “zombies” (virus-mutated humans, to be more accurate) basically evolved into their own unique species and were living relatively normal, if not primitive lives.

The main character, who was still a human, regularly set traps, hunted them, and overall was a threat to their kind. He became their boogeyman; the scary legend that zombie parents told their zombie kids to keep them from wandering too far from safety. Hence, “I Am Legend.”

The movie barely touched on this, instead focusing entirely on Will Smith and showing the barest hint of humanity left in the zombie creatures. If you watched the alternate ending version, at least.

mine is risotto

Rizzo the Rat is unfortunately gone. His original creator and performer, Steve Whitmire, was dismissed by Disney in 2016 and they haven’t announced plans to hire a new performer for Rizzo since.

On the Muppets shows and movies, they’ve fully replaced Rizzo with Pepe the King Prawn. He’s Gonzo’s new annoying sidekick.

Me personally, I’ve always been a Kermit fan. He’s exactly like me, personality-wise. And I’ve definitely dated a Miss Piggy or two over the years…

I have not heard of that. I’ll have to look into it.

Candy corn’s traditional colors of yellow, orange, and white represent […] corn on the cob with the wide yellow end resembling a corn kernel.

This is why it’s called candy corn. Because, when stacked, it starts to look like corn on the cob.