With anything made when 20+ episode season was the norm, I’d recommend just searching for a skip list. I remember the /r/DaystromInstitute skip lists being pretty good: https://old.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/wiki/index#wiki_episode_guides

I’d recommend the same with more modern stuff, because the ratio of good episodes to bad sure as hell hasn’t gotten better despite shorter seasons, but the death of episodic story telling makes it pretty hard to skip episodes.

But the veteran actors and Emperor plotlines are great while the new actors and Foundation plotline are weak.

This is still true, though I’d say sadly Empire isn’t quite as good as it was last time around. It honestly feels like watching two different shows most of the time. If someone ever releases a cut that is just Empire and whatever is needed for that plot line to make sense, then I could recommend it.

I technically started with Lemmy pretty early, long before any of the Reddit exit stuff, but it was hyper focused on politics still and I feel like spending that much time talking politics online is extremely unhealthy. I was really only interested in a hobby forum with the Reddit format that didn’t have the suffocating debate bro culture.

I started lurking since the Reddit exit stuff to see if it would grow enough to support other topics. It has, but I’m not certain if I’ll stay. Unsurprisingly an influx in Redditors has made this place culturally a lot more like Reddit, for the worse.

I also dabbled in Mastodon years ago but I’ve never particularly liked the Twitter format so a federated clone didn’t really gel with me.

At least other systems tend to be cheaper and more condensed. The D&D brand tax is real.

Is there anyway to get translated copies of North Korean fiction? Sounds like it might make for some interesting reading.

I don’t think it’s stupid to have a reaction to stuff that happens online, but the trick is to not get baited into investing even more into whatever it is if there is no likely resolution. It’s kind of vibes based, but sometimes you get someone who you can just tell is a bit unhinged and will never stop posting at you no matter how much they are embarrassing themselves. So I distance myself from whatever it is. Maybe just turn of notifications, other times I need to unbookmark the site to stay away or sometimes I just delete my account and move on entirely.

I’ll also often preemptively disable notifications if I think a take is going to attract weirdos.

bonus points for not answering ‘go outside drink water read a book’ etc etc

I mean I hate to say it but these are still honest, good answers even if you’ve heard them before. Sometimes you just have to touch some grass.

I’ve been using RSS feeds for youtube channels for a few years.

Same. Don’t really follow any kind of content feed if I can’t combine it in my RSS client. I don’t want to check dozens of web pages individually.

D&D. When I got back into it as an adult it was mostly because I could get into it for $0. I was dead broke at the time. I pirated the books downloaded the free basic rules 😉 on my trash find laptop and was good to go.

But man once I had money it turns out I really like collecting books and the D&D ones are not cheap. I do not want to think about how much I’ve spent.