Top Left: Bilbo snaps while trying to get the ring from Frodo in a moment of weakness at Rivendell in Lord of the Rings.

Top Right: The ghostly bodies under water in the Dead Marshes where Gollum is leading Frodo and Bilbo in The Two Towers.

Bottom Left: Galadriel refusing the ring from Frodo while freaking out and explaining how she’d become evil if she took it in LotR.

Bottom Right: Part way through Smeagol’s transformation into Gollum in The Return of the King.

Probably closer to 2000 forgotten. But I collected them all goddammit!

That could very well be true, I could very well be in “good old days” haze mode because I remember being quite enamoured with the concept of it and content on it, as it felt like there was literally a thriving community around everything you could think of and it still felt “safe” compared to places like 4chan and web-sites like ogrish, etc.; places which intrigued but felt “dirty” in comparison. I think I also grew to hate it as I suddenly felt the reality of other people’s hate hit. I also learned basic photoshop among other things due to the communities there. I guess they still exist and I’ve become more bitter and triggered by the slightest indication of the socio-political blind spots that I perceive in people.

I guess there is a similar positive vibe I feel here too, as it feels like the whole decentralisation thing is worth a lot.

I think it started in the comments, it felt as if the self-reflexive nature of the humour became less self-aware and what once were jokes in the voice of and at the expense of more bigoted philosophies were becoming actually serious comments propping up those laughed-at philosophies.

The left-wing echo chamber became a right-wing echo chamber and as such there was a lot more blatant racism and way way more cryptoracism directed at minorities and people of non-white origin.

Where before I felt that (on the whole) the news and temporary-culture subreddits (memes and the like) abhorred non-acceptance, suddenly that became the norm and the accepted tone shifted to one tinged with a heavily closed-off and conservative outlook; white elitist liberalism was as left-wing as it suddenly went.

My perception is that the voting and karma system where once felt egalitarian and more democratic was suddenly found to be a tool to show where the power seemed to lay.

Dissent was met with hordes of downvotes and basically snuffed out. Whether it was a shift in the userbase or bots suddenly becoming very active, it really shifted up the confidence of the more single-minded user.

I think the best thing about reddit was the comments and the ability to see how people in the actual industries and in the know of articles and posts would give great and insightful info, this felt lessened.

I feel the thing that was least effected were the smaller but active niche interest and hobby communities, and what I hope lemmy starts having more of.

So was reddit a long long time ago. I watched and felt it shift to the centre the heavily to the right. Conservatives destroy everything in the world. I don’t doubt your favourite communitues will start heavily skewing right soon enough.

I was looking for Captain Marvel movie content way back when it came out and accidentally clicked on one of those pitiful right-wing, woman-hating nerdbro videos and my suggestions suddenly became quite heavily peppered with similar horrible content. It feels the same thing doesn’t happen with non-conservative content quite so much. I wonder if there’s just so much right-wing and liberal content that the algorithm’s percentage calculations don’t know how to compensate for this sort of political nuance, or is it something more insidious?

This is kind of my biggest fear with all these digital games platforms. I have over 2100 games over most of the platforms, it just became so easy to finally be able to get all the games I grew up salivating over. What’s to stop Valve or GOG suddenly “having” to make similar, or competely new changes of unbeknownst fuckery due to pressure from the spooky all-knowing investors?

Okay Einstein…

Piracy is part and parcel of the global economic system, and since that system hasn’t changed since time immemorial, well it always has been too.

I truly hope this type of hierarchical thinking can stay fun and not create the kind of grating pomposity that pervades every bloody animalistic thing. I want us to grow beyond childish competitiveness.

Cheers for the response!

The Vapor Genie definitely looks less intrusive to an environment with its woody sherlock pipe form, and using a normal lighter probably helps it not feel like a crack pipe, which is my main worry with butane portables. If I was gonna get a portable now and money wasn’t an issue I think I would get the Tiny Might 2 (or 1). I bought 1 electronic portable years ago (the xmax v2 pro) and I did not enjoy it at all, the newer generations of electronics are looking pretty ok though. There is one electronic portable ball vape too! The Yllvape Angus, though I think we still need a couple more generations for my liking. But things are moving super fast!

I also came from smoking and my first one was the Dynavap M, I have heard of the Vapor Genie but haven’t tried it. It looks like it may be similar to the Vapocane or the Sticky Bricks which you use with a butane jet lighter. As far as I have read, the Dynavap is a much better engineered device than the Vapor Genie and works a lot better too. Though, again, I think ball vapes are in a completely different league to any other type of vaporiser. They are a relatively new phenomenon and extract much much more efficiently and hit infinitely harder than almost any other option. If you’re looking for portable there is actually a butane portable ball vape called the Stunner available, which looks awesome too. The next iteration of Dynavap style vapes are the Anvil and Danivape, and there are also heavier caps for Dynavap’s too. The Anvil is pricy but you can get a Dynavap on sale for around 50-60USD.

Edit: Is this message visible? I keep getting error messages.

tl;dr: Get the O’Connell TKO (though I haven’t used it, conceptually it is a logical improvement to the current baller head injector/diffuser lineup across the board, the way it is built the plant material is closer to the heating element so you can get similar effects at lower temperatures, which means less harsh vapour).

I personally went the aliexpress route, with some DIY bits and bobs, mainly because I am in Europe and am on a budget. My favourite head I own is the Tiodw Mini, which is a titanium enclosure. I prefer a lot of airflow so I use the larger 4mm balls. The store I buy from is b2cvape, their newest head is the Tiodw Mini 2.0 (which is a hybrid injector and diffuser baller head). It will probably be my next purchase. But with this route you also need to buy 3mm or 4mm rubies (made from corundum), a 20mm coil, a PID and a bowl (the new head is both an injector and a diffuser so getting 2 types of bowl is a good option), a handle (not 100% necessary) and some sort of bong. Excluding the bong you can get all of this from that store for around 150USD.

However, if you’re in the US or have no budgetary issues, you should look into Cannabis Hardware products. Their entry level B0 is a tried and true daily driver for a lot of heavy duty users. They also released a similar double sided (diffuser and injector) head attachment recently called the Tomcat, and 2 new more budget oriented heads the F16 and F22 (one is a diffuser and one an injector, you use the Tomcat to stick these together).

Another great option is the Malaysia based Qaromashop, they have great glass and ceramic baller head options. Their Qaroma heads are glass (its weaker but has better flavour), Ceroma are ceramic (really great budget option, the aliexpress store also has a ceramic option which was my first ball vape and is also great for taste). Their Taroma Lite Plus seems like the good budget option they offer.

There is a company called gophase3 which sells smaller baller heads which fit 14mm bowls, they look very interesting and use zirconia for some of their baller heads which I have heard tastes great and hits as hard as larger baller heads which contain more balls.

The O’Connell TKO seems to be a favourite among serious vaporists (lol), their design moves the plant material and the heating element closer to each other so you can have great effects at lower temps. I think this would be the one I would get if money/delivery wasn’t an issue.

If you like flower at home, you need a ball vape.

My guess is their calculations are that they’re not necessarily being unfavourable to their more casual users. Which are probably the majority. People who have digested the idea of ads, don’t create content and casually scroll around for a laugh or for some biased news and surface level discussions probably don’t feel that much has changed.