Yes, constantly.

Most people, imo, don’t have a good idea who the scientific community is and what their discussions look like. The scientific community is made up primarily of working class nerds who work at universities and suppliers and contract companies, and they communicate through blog and magazine articles in publications by and for other academics.

If you go to a scientific conference, you’ll see talks and panels on this subject and it’s a routine topic at coffee breaks and drinks in the evenings.

The scientific community has been discussing this topic literally longer than anyone else.

Yeah. I would describe the politics of SpongeBob as extremely mild and offensive to as few people as possible, but that said, the SpongeBob movie made the stress of masculine gender performance a surprisingly central theme, with the core lesson being that people should disregard gender performance anxiety and prioritize self love and authenticity.

I’m as surprised as anyone to say this, but good job Nickelodeon in advancing the gay agenda through subliminal indoctrination of children.

I think it’s easier to find success stories if you ask this question about your town than your country.

A few weeks ago I took my kid to a parking lot by a park so he could practice biking, and when we got there there were nearly a dozen kids biking, and a band was playing etherial middle eastern music next to us to a crowd as the full moon hung over a lake draped in light of the setting sun.

It was gorgeous, and free, both financially and in spirit. It was a beautiful appreciation of people and art from across the world. I thought for a moment that it was a picture of what I’d like America to one day be, then realized that I was in America, and it was already a picture of what America IS. It’s unfortunate that America is also many terrible other things. But America is also this. And that spirit is what brought these musicians or their parents to America, and eventually to that parking lot by the lake under the full moon.

“Is this weird?” is relative, and usually less important than “is this unhealthy?”

I don’t know what’s normal in China, but it sounds like your mom has some kind of problem and the result has not been great for you.

Yeah. Slice it and put it on a sandwich with a fried egg. Or chop it when it’s still firm and throw it in a salad. It’s good, but it’s not really for eating like an apple. They added creaminess and texture to savory things.

This is what I came you say.

Scented candles and nice soaps are the gifts that you can pretty much give anyone to communicate “thank you” without having to give the gift any thought.

I’ve heard it said that a healthy target is around 1 lb per week. Maybe 2 if you’re very obese, but at that point you really should be doing it under medical guidance.

In any case, the best way I’ve heard (outside of drugs) is to get an app that helps count calories, set a realistic daily caloric target and exercise schedule, and stay on it.

My grandparents told me stories of how they’d have regular times and places. My grandpa told me stories of meeting up with his boys on Saturday mornings at the synagogue, and then going out and about. They’d sometimes park cars for folks, and sometimes take them on unauthorized joy rides. Occasionally folks would borrow a car that no one asked them to park, since apparently I guess folks left keys in cars regularly.

This was in Pittsburgh, and from what I gather captures the experience of the life of a Jewish teenager in the twenties and thirties pretty well.

There was a lot of hanging out on street corners and stoops, and just looking for friends at their regular candy shop/soda joint/pool hall, etc.

It sounds fuckin’ wild, tbh. My grandma says she’d take the bus across town in high school to meet up with her boyfriend and I was like, ‘Was that at all seen as daring or risky? For a young unaccompanied woman to be out like that?’ Apparently not. Folks could really hang.

I don’t know how this relates outside of specific cultures, though. Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X gave me the sense that a lot of experiences were different depending on race, but just rolling up to your friends’ houses, places of work, or regular hangout spots seems to have been pretty universal.

Btw, PSA: Grandparents are a treasure. If you have any, call them today and ask them what they liked to do on a Saturday when they were 17. It was probably pretty dope.

It sounds like op doesn’t know what they want. Ultimately, OP, I think you have to figure out that question.

When was the last time you were consistently happy? Are there any people in your lives of whom you’d wish to trade places?

Personally, I do want a common communication platform for people I despise because I want to be able to keep tabs on their public announcements. Also, I don’t want any tech platform to have sole authority over who can communicate, as in the present, that will invariably work against the left more than the right.

I do not want to share close proximity to them on a network graph, or regularly engage with their supporters, though. So I agree that federation is crucial. But to be clear, it’s not because I want to ban them from a platform, it’s because I want managed distance and better moderation.

I don’t mind Bluesky verifying them, but I’m glad that on Mastodon I don’t have to share the same giant server as them.

Yes. It’s free and open-license. It’s free as in speech AND as in beer.

I’m a big fan of tabletop RPGs, and I like sci-fi, so a few years ago I moved from playing standard-issue cyberpunk to a homebrew solarpunk game instead.

It was such a radicalizing experience that my friends and I eventually released it as a totally free game, along with a ready to run starter campaign. It’s called Fully Automated! Solarpunk RPG.

If you’re a fan of TTRPGs and looking for a fun, social way to get better at believing in a better world, go download it. It’s a blast, and really makes you want to go out and overthrow fascism.

Respectfully, I think this is a naive myth.

Ask yourself this: if Bernie won and began executing his agenda with the brash disregard for criticism of Trump, do you think he could do it and people would say the same things we say about Trump? Or do you think we would see the collective power of congress the supreme Court the state governments and the corporate world come down on him in 100 different ways?

I think the more honest truth is that there are people with power who like what Trump is doing, and the people who don’t like what he’s doing don’t have power.

The federal government is sending masked agents to brutalize and terrorize people is cities that are adversarial to their agenda.

It’s bad.

I wrote a long answer and then accidentally hit the back button and don’t have the patience to retype it.

The short version is that Vladimir Putin is responsible for the invasion of Ukraine. I don’t want any confusion about that.

NATO’s influence was that the US has been advancing against Russia for decades even after their country collapsed, and it was obviously nakedly escalatory. Combined with the US is overall foreign policy, which has always been imperial, we’ve acted as though putting a gun to someone’s head and telling them to stay cool was an actual way of calming things rather than the exact opposite.

I’m not saying that a version of NATO couldn’t have done what it claims to do. But that’s never been the version that has existed.

Yes, 100%. That’s more than a red flag. A red flag is a warning sign of a problem. That’s just a problem.

GoddlessCommie’s take is valid.

Nato is the core organizing instrument of western imperialism. Nato is like Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense shield. It’s easy to look at it and say, 'Well how could anyone object to a tool of defense??’ But if you know anything about war then you know that establishing an unbreakable defensive capability is what allows an imperial army to slaughter their weaker targets with impunity.

I’m not co-signing GodlessCommie’s point. But we gotta ask: did you like Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan? Korea? Venezuela? Nicaragua? Georgia? Libya? Ukraine? Gaza? Because arguably, all of this shit rests upon the conditions established by NATO and US imperialism. So… It’s not unreasonable to ask whether NATO has actually fostered peace or just fostered peace for the people who wage wars.

I think that if we want new folks, it would make a big difference is we organized the equivalent of a new member drive.

Currently, look at a default front page for your home instance and ask how enticing it is to a total newbie. There might be some good stuff, but it’s foreign and overwhelming. You feel out of place.

Now imagine if the first Friday of January had been “new subscriber day”. People on Reddit and Bluesky are taking about the fediverse and if it’s any good. And on Lemmy there’s a bunch of posts about finding the best instances and memes about being new on Lemmy. That’s a much more inviting beginner experience, and it makes it more likely for folks to come back the next day.

I really think planning for bursts of new folks is the way to welcome people.

This. Put another way: mammals use our mouths for sensing and manipulating. Note that people naturally use their mouths and noses to kiss and smell babies and pets on places other than their mouths.

If we instinctively use our mouths to kiss things, it’s natural that when two people want to do this at the same time they’re going to both do it to the other person’s mouth.

For what it’s worth, I just asked my sommelier husband, and he independently answered Billiecart-Salmon, Runart, and Krug.