And if you do put in the planning, resources, sacrifice and work and earn money, the unmotivated (and jealous) people around you claim you’re “lucky”.

True! I sorta did that with The Matrix. I read reviews for the second movie and multiple people were regretfully saying they wished they had stopped at #1. So I’ve never seen any of the sequels.

Link appears to be dead

Happy endings. Although I like them anyway, because I’m trying to escape from reality a bit by watching.

Two cousins kissing? Now I’m kinda tempted to create a TS account…

I seriously don’t understand some people’s logic downvoting for no reason on a site where votes are public.

I was just scrolling and haven’t followed the thread so please be aware that I’m responding in isolation, out of context to whatever situation you’re referring to.

Sometimes I’ll disagree with a part or most of a comment that someone made, however I’ll also recognize that my opinion on it doesn’t align with what the echo chamber thinks. Perhaps I’ll just respond anyway, but often I don’t want to deal with the expected dogpile and personal comments which I find emotionally taxing, so I’ll just downvote instead. In those cases it might appear I’m downvoting for no reason, but there are definitely reasons.

And “culture war”.

Don’t really drink beer anymore but I’ve gotta make those mugs in my freezer worthwhile!

No need to stop at just pants.

Ah so that’s how this ends…

We’re all born into our various countries each of which places demands on us. And often that’s under threat of imprisonment or even death and with little of value in return. Yet people are patriotic and support that system. Even if some of us might say it is better that countries couldn’t do that, the fact that it’s widely supported means that there’s some basis for it that humanity recognizes.

Then compare that to a parent who selflessly loves and gives and gives. It’s very reasonable to say that parents are owed something.

Didn’t realize the anime resumed! These were special furigana versions of the books for children. Picked them up on vacation in Japan. Searched everywhere but couldn’t find them in Akihabara, instead they were in a random bookstore in a giant mall next to the Tokyo Skytree. Sad to say I don’t know Japanese except for a few tourist and anime words and I’ve not yet put in the work to try to read them.

Oh nice, is that Myne in your profile? I really need to re-read Bookworm and start the Hannelore series.

You might enjoy the light novel series “Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement”.

I agree with you that online conversations are rare these days. Just my personal opinion but social media isn’t usually great for conversations. It’s better for shallow comments, drive-by’s, and echo chambers. Social media also tends to steer toward blind comments, so there is a lot of repetition. Forums seem to be better for conversations because there’s often a emphasis on reading the entire thread before commenting, there is more moderation, and also because they tend to accrue replies more slowly. However if a thread becomes too long then forums break down too, so nothing is perfect.

Thanks! I think I prefer startpage.com (which I only just learned about due to this thread) because it doesn’t redirect to google.com. But this is also good to know about just in case.

I’m trying to get real, specific examples.

Asking for unnecessary specifics and details is usually a sign not that the person wants to be helpful but that they disagree and are looking for ammunition to argue and feel superior. Ultimately the exchange becomes a waste of everyone’s time, as the person inevitably becomes rude, condescending and argumentative. Basically, some people online think they’re smarter than everyone else, or at least want to project that. They believe they have the only valid argument and they’re going to prove it to the world and probably think that they’ve won because they had the last word when in reality everyone left because they realized the person was not arguing in good faith. I’m not claiming you’re that type of person, but I suspect that’s why nobody is giving you specifics.

Wouldn’t have mentioned anything but you did ask.

I’ll have to try out !g, thanks a lot!

EDIT: Tried it and it just redirected to google.com. I was hoping it would have kept me on DDG for privacy and just presented a first page of results or something like that.

EDIT 2: Startpage is great! This will be my go-to when DDG doesn’t work out.

I had no idea what it was. When I saw the mention of US bans I decided it was safer not to search the term.