FriendOfDeSoto

I would personally put excessive gun ownership and exaggerated desire to make use of them above Fahrenheit. The current administration as well. Obesity and addiction to opioids also, come to think of it. And I have a feeling I’m forgetting a few other issues.

You could make an argument that the cultural undertones of hardcore individualism and striving for selfish monetary success lie at the bottom of a lot of those issues. And maybe a desire to want to go their own way informed the opposition to Celsius and the metric system as a whole. I would not make this choice the poster boy for what’s wrong with the US though.

Both temperature scales are made up. Both are workable. Both come from Europe. Where if it wasn’t for enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Napoleon (events far away from the New World) we might still also measure in cubits, pounds, and regional tworps. Horses are still measured in hands, deer in points (I think, not sure about that one). The Brits still delight us with mph speed limits on their motorways and body weight measured in stones. Worldwide the more commonly used calories are a member of team imperial, not metric. Bicycles and screen sizes are more commonly measured in inches in Europe as well. Celsius had put 0° as the boiling point of water initially so we’re all using it wrong, I say with tongue very much in cheek. The US opposition to going full metric is a bit dumb but not unique at all. The Japanese measure apartments in tatami mat sizes.

What’s intetesting about the US imperial system of measurements is that if you scratch under the surface it is mostly if not all of it propped up by the metric system. Lawful definitions of how long an inch is and how hot 98.6 °F is are expressed in terms of the metric system as the worldwide standard. So they are at the core fully metric, they just don’t know about it.

It’s been a decade since I had to worry about such things. I remember reading that breast milk is - when available and plentiful - the preferred method. Formula is always second best. But this is a numbers game and I think the lab coats don’t say formula child will suffer consequence A as a result. It’s always there is a 5% higher chance of catching this or that (and I pulled that number out of thin air). But this is the margins I think I read about when it mattered.

Child #1 got supplemented with formula 60/40 at first; child #2 never had formula. Child #2 has spent more time in pediatricians’ waiting rooms. It’s a numbers game where you can do everything “right” and still not “win.” Big air quotes on those terms.

If you are a new parent or are about to become one and you’re reading this thread and you’re freaking out: please take a deep breath. You’ll figure this out.

I share to a certain extent your skepticism towards the good book and religion as a whole. I don’t think your letter j argument holds any water though. The first uses of the letter j were as i’s to make them more legible in handwritten words. And it took time until scribes started using it as a separate letter. The sounds they meant to connote already existed. Julius Caesar was just Iulius Caesar. I agree with you that religion can be used as a tool to control the masses. Just don’t make any logical leaps based on English spelling in particular, which makes no fucking sense to begin with.

I think as far as you can attribute the assholery to the parental home, it’s pretty much a bell curve distribution. Most people turn out well most of the time. And the edge cases just stand out more in our perception.

My initial post wasn’t meant to be the definitive comment on the subject. We mustn’t forget that it isn’t just the parents that have a hand in this. The environment where you grew up has an influence as well. And it is my observation that a culture that rewards individual achievements more than any effort towards the collective good will naturally create more assholes.

Provided you don’t live in squalor, keeping most children alive isn’t that hard and most of it is quite intuitive. The harder part typically is making sure they don’t turn into assholes. Most people vibe that as well.

Also, there is no shortage of random people giving you often unsolicited advice, especially if you’re expecting your first kid. You can make up for the lack of direct experience with shared knowledge from others.

I mean, if I’m smelling somebody else’s and I also happen to be holding one in at the same time …

I hold them in much higher esteem than people who randomly capitalize words online.

I heard that there are people who hate Chinese tourists… so is this actually gonna backfire?

I’ve been to a few touristy spots in my life and it is my experience that it is a fairly recent development that Chinese tourists have nudged American ones from the top spot in the annoying tourists category. So regardless which group you’ll pretend to be from, people will probably still find you annoying.

I totally get why you would want to pretend you’re not American these days to avoid questions about the orange, ICE, and the subtleties of international law. Do what feels right and works. I wouldn’t go as far as faking an accent but I wouldn’t hold it against you necessarily.

With as much detail as you require, i.e. what they wear in bed at night, this question is nearly impossible to answer. As there is not a single person alive that has observed all rich people while they’re catching some zzz’s. It also hinges on the definition of rich.

Logically, the answer to your question is probably no. There will be a few rich people who wear non-designer clothes. But in my estimation they will be a minority. If you have the means, the show-off appeal or the perceived higher quality of the more expensive stuff is probably enough to fill your wardrobe over time. Also, rich people get a lot of shit for free.

The only exception is Sting.

I don’t think the author likes mastodon dot social…

I couldn’t get through all of this blog post because it’s repeating the same point 500 times. I get the theoretical threat scenario they are painting; what’s missing are the receipts. Is moderation on that instance actually getting worse? Have we talked with admins on the record how they don’t dare defederate from that alleged wretched hive of scum and villainy? And two other angles are missing: (1) a name brand instance might be a good starting point on the fediverse. It’s still better than Xwitter. And (2) people are not donating enough to their instances, who are then run on dedication and held together by duct tape. The fear of having one’s instance shut down because the admin is out of money and duct tape makes people gravitate towards the bigger instances.

I’m not opposed to recommending people to find other, smaller instances - that is a good idea. It’s just this blog post reads more like a hit piece.

No, they aren’t. No, you shouldn’t care less. No, that doesn’t matter. And unfortunately yes, it is.

I signed up for Ente last fall as a Google Photos replacement. The backup works fine. The Android app is prone to crashing so I don’t use it as my go-to gallery app. The process of moving a big library of pictures away from Google was painful. Ente does a lot in terms of making it easier - but it’s still a pain in the butt. Their desktop app runs poorly on old desktop hardware if you keep their machine learning on. The ML lets you search images content down the line.

I signed up for a year and I’m already looking at another solution. Laziness may win though because transferring the library was a terrible experience.

The German word for what is a cookie in North America and a biscuit on the British Isles is “Keks,” which is a bastardization of the English word “cakes.” It is interesting because “Keks” by itself is the singular noun that retains the plural -s ending from English. To pluralize in German it requires an extra -e.

No, I don’t believe I can achieve absolute anonymity on the internet. But if you’re in continental Europe connecting to the onion via a VPN you are turning the odds in your favor. It’s probably not getting any better than that either.

Because you are new, you should read the forum rules before you post. Your post is in danger of being thrown out because you are asking a question in the “ad nauseam” category. It’s new to you but not to the people who are here already. I think there are also links to finding communities in the rules.

On the fediverse you need to be your own algorithm. That means you need to search on your own and try stuff. The beauty of Lemmy is that there are a gazillion communities for all the niche topics under the sun. What good is me recommending a community about paper airplanes to you when you are not interested in paper airplanes? Also, a lot of niche communities are not teeming with activity.

It takes a couple of months of trial and error, following and unfollowing communities until you’ve created a good timeline for yourself. My suggestion is you don’t waste time looking for random recommendations.

Who are “they?”

Look at it as a semi-creative variation on the theme of “go to hell.”

I would say an issue as complex as this deserves more than a three-sentence shower thought.

But you only know in hindsight which ones were true or not. So there is no value if 50% or more turn out to be bullshit.

Not all old people are wise with age. Most old people can be led down the garden path just like the rest of us.

I think what you experience is hindsight confirmation bias. Granny was right all along about this clandestine network of rich child molesters. That bit was true but there are another fifteen layers of outrageous Q Anon bullshit heaped on top of that, which now fade in our memory, as we have to face the fact that there was some truth to it after all. But without actual evidence and bare chested men in native American getup prancing about, I don’t think we could have known. Like you couldn’t know which story from ye elders turned out to be true.