Same. I tried once, bounced off because I just hated how the ship flew. Gave it another honest shot recently, found a couple of the explorers but really wasn't enjoying it. Ended up watching the rest in a Let's Play. Honestly not a bad way to experience it if the gameplay is just not vibing with you.
It's suprising because "ancient progenitor civilization" is one of my favourite tropes in media, but this one really just did not do it for me.
A base of vegetable glycerin and propylene glycol with additional additives for nicotine and flavour.
I bought my VG and PG from a local vendor, but those are readily available basically anywhere because they have a lot of uses outside vaping. I ordered pure liquid nicotine (in a PG suspension) online. Flavour additives also ordered online from a fairly reputable vendor that was well known in . I have no idea what policies about sharing vendors are here, but I am happy to give recommendations to anyone if they are looking to make their own juice to save money/be safer.
I mostly made fairly simple flavours, nothing too fancy. I had a friend who actually just vaped VG/PG with nicotine and no flavours at all.
I said this in the other comment, but vaping is the one thing that helped me successfully quit smoking.
Is it healthy? No, at the absolute best it would be neutral. You shouldn't be breathing anything other than clean air. However, I have little doubt that it is better than smoking. My lungs are in great shape now, and I feel just generally much better. If people want to continue to do research on longterm effects of vaping, great!
Are there issues about underage vaping? Sure, but that is a regulation/enforcement issue and shouldn't be used to punish adults with. I have friends that went back to smoking because of vaping being made illegal where they lived, and you cannot convince me that is better for their health.
A lot of the issues we have had about vaping are regulatory issues with stuff like the Vitamin E incident, not a problem with the underlying concept.
When I was vaping I always mixed my own juice, so was very sure of what went in. There's always the chance of buying from a sketchy vendor and getting something weird in your mixes, but most were fairly benign. Vaping liquid is actually pretty simple in composition.
As somebody who vaped for a long time, I kind of disagree with this one. Of every method for quitting smoking, vaping was the easiest and most effective. It let me titrate down to eventually 0 nicotine juice, which let me stop altogether. I only very rarely vape anymore, I keep my mod around in case I am ever out drinking and get an urge, but it is definitely the reason I was able to quit smoking.
The popcorn lung thing is kind of an urban legend, there is no case of any vaper ever getting it from vaping, but diacetyl (the additive in question) has been discontinued in basically all juice just in case anyway.
The usual mantra in vaping communities was always to tell people that if you weren't a smoker already, don't start vaping. Is it better than smoking? Almost assuredly, but it's still not going to be better than just breathing cleaning air. The recommendation was always as a transition away from smoking. It's one of the few hobbies we would congratulate each other over leaving.
If you don't vape or smoke already, don't start though.
My country is exceptionally bad about this.
Buy a plastic package of crackers? It will be filled with smaller packages of crackers all wrapped in plastic with a plastic freshener pack for each one. I am not exaggerating. I am not sure I have ever bought something that didn't have at least two degrees of plastic wrap.
We did stop giving plastic bags out at cashiers unless requested, but that means shitall when everything you buy is triple-wrapped to begin with.
People on lemmy.ml thinking we just really enjoy Mali.
It's actually been super refreshing to, generally, be able to say I am a Marxist-Leninist and not immediately get downvoted into oblivion. There are still some of the kneejerk reactions to the CPC, but even then people seem more willing to engage on good-faith even with disagreements.
Despite being an extremely diverse country, nobody is going to try to tell you that China has magically solved racism, they haven't. You hear stories like that horrible washing machine ad that went out, but the government also cracks down on things like that. I feel like there is a lot ignorance-based racism as opposed to malice-based racism. Still an issue, but people are usually more willing to change in the former case.
I have black friends that left the US to live in China and I can say that they definitely feel safer. To be totally fair, that's just a few anecdotes and not a wide study or anything like that. I don't think that is exclusive to China though either, I have heard nearly the exact same things from people who have come from the US to my country.
Be wary of anyone telling you that a government that has historically been horrible TO ITS OWN PEOPLE is for some arbitrary reason better than the west
The government that has lifted more people out of poverty than any other government in the world? How dare they not imprison people and force them into slave labour. There's a reason that the CPC is overwhemingly popular amongst the people.
The government that hasn't been at war with another country in over forty years, and builds railroads and hospitals instead of bombing them? Ask Laos whether the US or China has been better to work with.
It's not really arbitrary reasons, there are a lot of concrete reasons. It's not perfect, they are still working on a lot of things, but most things are constantly improving and it isn't hard to see why people might prefer it.
If you are advocating others use critical thought, I would argue the same. Step outside the "China bad" propaganda for just a second.
long look at Assange
I have never really liked talking on the phone, even before the advent of cell phones. The fact that it seems to be fading more and more as a common communication tool is something I am honestly pretty happy about. Sure it means I have like 4 messaging apps on my phone, but I don't really mind. Even work is all text via Teams.
It has probably been at least a year since I have made/received an actual audio call on my phone.
It's the only browser we can use in my office, so have gotten pretty used to it. It's honestly not that bad, they've come a long way since the IE days.
It's not my home-use browser, but it's absolutely serviceable.