Like 3 months ago, cleaning out some boxes from the basement. If that counts as using them? I loaded them up, copied some files. Wrote files to a few, lol.

Nothing great on any of them. A couple form templates from my dad or uncle's work, some drivers for hardware my uncle used to have. Maybe a couple clipart collections? Or those might have been on CD.

I put a bunch of blank ones out at the yard sale we had, people ended up buying them. /shrug

Before that, if I ignore other similar cleanout/backup situations, I think I used some floppies for school assignments in middle grades.

I think also maybe at some point in between I had tried to use a boot floppy on an old computer to rescue files or install Linux.

Love it! Don't forget that libraries want you to checkout materials. It's good for their stats and funding, and helps them see what people like.

In my case, it's not just that costs are high, but also that space in my home is limited. Even with several bookshelves, it's apparent that I need to be more selective about purchases because they take up a spot. Going to the library instead is a win/win.

Yeah, I remember seeing that there's no bingo police, it's just kinda whatever. So I'm not sweating it! Just glad I have the extra bit of motivation to read.

Got into my library's summer reading around the same time I found this bingo. So I've got several squares filled, but still a way to go. I've dropped off with my reading habit, so glad there's still time.

So far, going for the second column.

Supplemental material - Dragon's Teeth and Thunderstones, a book I didn't especially like about how past civilizations perceived and used fossils. OR, Professor and the Madman, a fun narrative history of the creation of the Oxford dictionary. TBH, I'm not 100% that they both had extra material, but I believe they did. Non-fiction will usually have a bibliography or something.

Author from a different continent (+translated) - Ogawa's Memory Police. Author is Japanese. Haunting, near sureal atmosphere in a dystopian novel. One of my favorite books actually.

Group forms for a reason - Nothing yet, but I saw The Hobbit as a suggestion for it, and I've been meaning to read that for a while.

Prominent nature aspect - Hatchet. I remember always seeing the cover in school libraries and the bookshelf in my old house. But I never tried to read it. Picked it up since my niece was trying to read it. It's all about a kid stranded and trying to survive in nature.

Author deceased - I, Robot by Asimov felt like a good thing to read in today's world, and I rather enjoyed my time with it.

Started reading some level 2 (Japanese) Tadoku (paperback) books this week. I had received some level 3s last year, but finally saw the 2s on sale a couple months ago. Breath of fresh air going down to stories at my level.

Feeling more improvement understanding podcasts. My attention is kinda shot for videos though. Feels like I get bored too fast with learner videos, but don't get much out of anime or native content yet.

Work hosted a brief primer to American Sign Language this week. I didn't retain much of the little bit they shared, but fun thing to get a taste of.

Think of it like email. We don't exactly worry about degradification of email. Instead we have to worry about gmail, or proton mail, etc becoming awful.

In the same way, it's less that Lemmy might go downhill, more that maybe individual instances could. In which case, there are various degrees of how to avoid an instance. Leave, unsubscribe, block, defederate, etc.

For example, Meta created Threads and tried for a while to integrate with Mastodon. But Mastodon is still pretty much the same afaik. Many instances defederated from it, other people just ignored it, some people I'm sure were happy to communicate with a wider crowd.

Of course, the idea breaks down in a couple ways. Communities and communication on ActivityPub isn't really the same as email. But mainly, email is kinda bad these days because of big actors, bad actors, and just ubiquity. Not sure how to prevent automated spam from clogging up every communication channel.

The Castlevania soundtrack adaptations from The Megas. Or if you're in a classier mood, just classic Castlevania tracks directly.

Brand new account showing a new project. Of course you need to say up front, how much human involvement went into making this? Was this post made by a human?

Idea's not bad though.

I've been doing pretty bad with language learning for a bit, tbh. Just falling out of some good habits, building up review card backlogs, etc. Drifting into other hobbies. That's ok, the interest phases come and go, but I really gotta get my discipline back in order. I think too that trying to spread focus and pick up bits of other languages has really made it hard to feel like I'm making progress in any of them.

That does sound like good reinforcement, good idea!

I still remember trying to read Japanese Pokemon cards when I was a kid. I didn't know how to pronounce it, but I eventually noticed whenever an attack started with コイン it meant you had to flip a coin, lol.

I'm sure they try to dress it up in some palatable way on either side. But if they've ever said AI would save them money, that would mean because they aren't paying as many humans.

I think there are two related concepts that the same word gets used for.

One is the sliding window of things that seem old. I'd put that around 2 gens ago - just long enough for things to go out of print/leave retail, lose media focus, and have adults remembering them from childhood.

The other idea encompasses the foundation era of game history. I think of that as the time when games harshly constrained by the available hardware, with the chunky pixels, chiptunes, low-poly models, etc. I'd cut this off at or after the PS360Wii gen. That's about when tech returns started diminishing, and it's also when the internet started strongly defining design and business models. But everyone looks at it a little different.

Still, the concept of video games is just a baby. There are humans alive that played some of the earliest ones. Maybe centuries from now people will look back fondly on the era where you owned game hardware at all, or didn't control them with your mind.