I always mute and go off to do something else (meaning, I'm not watching, either). One of my worst hells was when I had to take care of my MIL for 2 months last year and while she watches YouTube non-stop, she does it with all the ads. I hadn't realized how bad the ads there actually are these days. I almost didn't make it.

I never went to the emergency room (was traveling where there weren't doctors of any kind), but I was bitten by a black widow spider and was sick as a dog for days afterwards. Not sure if this counts for the question?

True, true. I also roast mine now, usually with just salt and olive oil. This is true for broccoli, as well. In this case, not boiling frozen garbage broccoli and instead steaming it just until bright green made a huge difference. The only thing that just changed for me was cilantro. Even as an adult I used to hate it but now love it. That one I have no explanation for.

This makes me more likely to actually visit here. I'm sick of reading propaganda and people spouting propaganda from all sides, and I come to spaces like this for funnies, interesting topics, and so on. My political interests go elsewhere. I appreciate not having to wade through them here.

Agreed. Yes, it's important to know what's going on in the "big" world - but I wish all of us more interested in Lemmy, the small web, and so on spent more time and energy on creating, maintaining, and enjoying what we can build/use and less lamenting, bashing, or wishing for what we want to leave behind.

I had no idea how much I enjoyed LibreVox (which - at least for the things I am interested in - goes to archive.org for downloads) and OpenLibrary until I couldn't access them. This morning, still no go on either.

These are also just fun:

• Wilby
• The Useless Web
• Marginalia Search

I also use Mojeek when I want a (serious) different set of results that I'm not getting from those pulling from google, bing, etc. It's not the best but it's getting better over time.