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I've tried turning off visibility of things like individual post scores, but that does just risk you changing to focus on notifications, instead. And given the extent twitter has driven people completely bonkers, that might be worse than the karma farming. There's always been worries about the masks we wear molding the face -- and even some theories about using that to improve ourselves -- but having the masks get molded in turn is Not Great Bob. And then what exactly it seems to be driving even the boring people toward is kinda disturbing.
You can do some efforts to de-algorithmify yourself, but that's only going to get the worst of it, and maybe not even that. And it's pretty incompatible with having a career or even a renumerative hobby online. Even some offline small business work is becoming increasingly hard to kick off without it. I'd like to advocate some level of in vino veritas, but a) I don't drink, and b) that doesn't seem to work great for those who pick it up. Trying to actively avoid collecting enough of a following maybe helps? But I dunno if that's just because I wouldn't notice the microscale examples of the trend, either.
The one bright spot is that Flanderization does, at least in part, reflect another trait specific to media, not people qua people. Ted Flanders didn't turn from slightly-religious neighbor into a fundie just because time's arrow flew, but also because the shows writers needed something new for each episode. "Simpsons Did It" is a problem for South Park, but it's also an issue for The Simpsons itself; even if most viewers won't recognize the psuedorerun, the show's staff and a lot of the commentariat will. If you have to get a column out for your tech column the weekend and three videos M/W/F, you start diving into this sorta A/B-to-death-testing because you don't have anything else, and the content doesn't have that much to start with.
For normal people, that doesn't quite work that way. Yes, history rhymes, and I'm probably one of the worst people on this site when it comes to bringing up ancient history from the long-ago days of two years ago. But anyone that hasn't let the mask embed into their skull can and probably will find something new because the world is filled with new stuff. Get a hobby, touch grass, fight the dandelion infestation on your front lawn again (fuuuuuuuuuuuck), talk about cooking.
I've never had a problem with broadleaf weeds. Are you against using herbicide? I find spraying the whole yard is a waist, I spot spray broadleaf's with 2,4-D. Hit the dandelions before they go to seed and I just have to walk the lawn two to three times.
I've tried both 2,4-D and glysophate, using those powered wand things, and giving the base of each plant a two-second count. The dandelions definitely don't like it, but either I'm missing a lot of them or they're springing back after each application. To be fair, the previous homeowner had let it get bad to start with, and I'm not great with or consistent about lawnwork, so they've gotten a lot of opportunity to dig in.
((For how bad, I spent a day with some kneepads on and filled a 5-gallon bucket to the lid fourteen times, and didn't even get through all of a pretty small front lawn.))
It's making some progress, as has switching from a reel lawnmower to a powered one to better prevent them from getting to seed after spraying them, but it's been a lot worse than I'd expected even after bringing out the big guns.
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What do you guys have against Dandelions? They are free flowers.
I don't mind most 'weeds', but dandelions are particularly prone to killing other nearby plants, and then spreading aggressively to any areas that don't have complete grass cover or deep mulch. I used to have some clover I was trying to cultivate in the lawn proper and a handful of local flowering plants in a nearby garden area, but the dandelions have pretty eagerly smothered them out, and sometimes doing the same to grass. If you have near neighbors, it's also kinda rude to give them your problem, too, and even if you're aggressive about mowing and weeding it's hard to get every dandelion before it gets to seed.
Most of my problem is downstream of having irregular hours and not having consistent opportunities to weed. If you can consistently stop seedlings early, they're pretty easy to pull away from any garden crops you want to keep and at least plausible to prevent almost all from getting to seed. If you don't have those constraints (and don't want the clean-uniform-lawn), they're a lot more tolerable.
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For me it's outcompeting the grass and then die back in the winter leading to mud.
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Do you genuinely not understand it? The beauty of the lawn lies in its neatness and uniformity. Random weeds in random places break that uniformity. The result does not good even when the dandelions flower (which is a relatively small fraction of the year).
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I'm waiting for it to stop raining long enough to put down something for the crabgrass currently threatening to destroy the overseeding I did last fall. I feel your pain.
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