Libb

Replying to myself, in the hope of being read by the people downvoting my first comment: you realize silently downvoting doesn't help me understand the slightest why you disagree with what I wrote and where I may be mistaken, right?

I get that but, no matter their strategy, aren't they still competing against one another for the same resources: a (better) ranking in the leaderboard?

As someone without the human instinct to reproduce that 99% of all humans seem to experience, it has always felt a bit like I am an alien from a different planet. Or like I am born without one of the lesser senses or something.

You're not. Or you're not alone.

My spouse and I (50+ year-old) have been together for 25+ years and have no children — be it by making them the good old way, or by using some medical help, or by adopting them (to remind the OP there is more than one way to 'reproduce' as human beings).

We never had any drive/urge to have and raise children, so for us it was a question we tried to answer in a calm and non-emotional way: will we or will we not have children? Also, we were still a young couple when we realized the absolute shit world they would have to live in as adults, which did indeed help us a bit in deciding to not have children.

25 years later, I don't think we ever regretted it. But, who knows, maybe people like us do indeed lack of something important? I doubt it, though.

But thanks for this. It was an interesting read.

You're more than welcome.

Thx for the clarification.

I'm one of those persons that (tries to) shut their computer off every time they're not using it — waste less energy, you know, stuff like that ;)

I hope you won't mind my beginner question: would that have any advantage for a single home user like myself? I mean would it help to do backup easier (I backup my home folder already) and accelerate a restore in case I have to reinstall Linux? Or is it just a seemingly great tool for sysadmins, for some specific use cases?

• MullvadVPN, and a free and privacy respecting OS is another good idea.
• So is using privacy respecting apps: LibreOffice instead of MS Office, Codium instead of VSCode. And so on, with many FLOSS alternatives to the usual proprietary ones.
• Services also matter, imho: I'm using ProtonMail for my email (Tuta would be another clever choice, imho, and there are probably others). I've very recently switched from iCloud to filen.io for my cloud storage needs.
• Using one's phone as little as possible. I've almost nothing on mine, I mean only stuff I'm required to have (banking and IDs, stuff like that), no email, no social, not even music or games (the game I enjoy the most play I also I enjoy it the most when I play it offline: chess ;))

And then... I also started using analog tools much more in the last two years. This helps a lot maintaining one's privacy. Amazon can't track my reading habits when I read a printed book (even less if I do not buy it from them), Goofle cant'" track my writings when I use pen and paper instead of their apps, Apple (or Google or Microsoft) can't track my paper agenda or my paper notebook. And the NSA or whomever is playing that role in my country can't ask any corporation to install backdoors in my IRL encounters with people so they could spy on me. At least, they cannot do that for now ;)

What was a time that two adversaries had such different objectives...

Then, would they be adversaries in any meaningful way? I mean, fighting against someone means both must be competing for the... same objective, resources, whatever. If they aren't they aren't competing.

Joining with the other sex and reproduction is literally the main purpose of all living beings

I would say that survival is the main purpose. For which reproducing is one of the available 'tools' like is eating, fighting, and running away.

Reproducing doesn't require having to join the other. I mean, gametes exchange can be done without mating (ask plants) and you also have asexual reproducing. Mating is the way human beings are doing it, like many living species but it still is just one way.

When you don’t have that as your adulthood passes you feel like a failure, regardless of what anyone else thinks.

At the individual level, reproducing is not a necessity (a far less urgent one than is eating and surviving, ie get a shelter, get away from trouble,...). It's only a necessity at the species level. At least, as far as I understand it.

Many people do not have sex or have sex and do not reproduce. They are fine and not unhappy and their choice is fine at the species level — it's not like human species is on the verge of extinction because of the lack of humans: we've never been that many on teh surface of the planet (most probably even a little bit too many ;)

Edit: even among other species, reproducing is not the aim of all individuals. Just look at bees: the queen is the only one that will lay eggs (other bees are either workers/fighters/nurses, even though they can switch role during their lifetime they won't ever have a baby bee) and the males... well, the one that gets to mate the queen die just after that.

That's not a bad idea, thx!

Yep. Like I said, videos are great and legit. They just can't replace a book, like today's trend seems to be.

Even as far as using an how-to go. Like everybody else I enjoy watching someone doing it while explaining how/why they do it. But I would also rather use a text file when I need to quickly find any specific step of said how-to than using the limited playing control video is giving us. It's no wonder YT added chapters to videos in order to make the situation somewhat better: chapters are just text ;)

• Lemmy, wanting to believe more people will come here from reddit, like I did ;)
• Discord, for the few online courses I'm following that offer Discord salons.
• I have a mastodon account but almost never think about using it.
• I quit Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,... and have not looked back. I miss them as much as I would miss, say, being spat on in the face by strangers in the street.

/me dutifully write this down.

Never tried that, thx for the suggestion.