There world breathed a sigh of relief after Russia and Qatar thinking thank Pele the next world cup will be held in nice, non-contriversial countries! And then time moved forward.

I didn’t have any plans to visit in the first place. But if you ask people who organize conferences or other events these days they all bemoan a significant drop in demand from abroad. I think Mexico making the headlines recently with the cartel starring a turf war will not have helped either. My prediction is the highest percentage foreign visitors compared to local spectators will be at the games in Canada. I suspect the US venues will struggle to put butts in all the seats like during the Club WC.

I also think it is very likely that I, personally, will never travel to the US ever again. I have no money - undoubtedly the bigger obstacle - but I lost all interest.

That is what a 🤖 would post.

Encounter at Farpoint was terrible too. If you got thru that, you can stomach 90210 in space as well.

Savor the Trek that is available for I fear there will be significantly less new stuff in the future.

You’ll never know if you don’t watch it.

“Killer feature” is silicon-valley-invrstor-ROI-speak. The fediverse is designed in opposition to central platforms funded by investors looking to make a profit.

I don’t want to go back to reddit because they abandoned third party clients and made another few decisions that made me mad. Lemmy today is - objectively speaking - worse than reddit was circa 5-7 years ago. The user numbers aren’t the same, the way the fediverse is connected reactions aren’t as snappy and the search function is way worse. If I judged this on “killer features” I might be tempted to go back to reddit. I tolerate the shortcomings because I believe centrally operated platforms have a high tendency to enshitify as soon as they realize they need to make money.

I see your bullshit and raise you horse manure. Speaking from an administrative point out view, it is indeed harder to run a program like that spread out over a much larger area with a much larger population to deal with. A complication in the US is also in differing state laws. This probably wouldn’t work EU-wide either.

Also Finland didn’t start from a large pool of homeless people due to mental illness or medical bankruptcies because there were other social safety nets spun before this one to catch a lot of the people before they became homeless.

Blame the US for not trying. I do too. But “economies of scale” are not going to help a program that for it to run well cannot be run like a business.

I only use my head + the clues some streaming services provide marking shit as viewed.

It’s much harder to get large swaths of the public addicted to opioids due to pesky red tape from Brussels. And there are far fewer veterans you can abandon to their battle PTSD in tent camps.

I read about a Finnish initiative to just get everyone they could find on the streets of Helsinki without an abode into apartments, give them money, and help them sort out their lives and get them into jobs wherever possible. That’s socialism bordering on communism to American ears. That’s quite lefty even by European standards, sadly.

In America’s defense it’s easier to do in a country of 5 million people than in one of 340 million. That’s not a reason not to try though.

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.

Fresh off the press of contemporary discourse.

Do you know the TV series Game of Thrones? The nun lady walking by the naked queen in there in one of its most famous scenes is yelling “shame” and ringing her bell to underscore the shame of the naked queen on her walk from the palace. As if being walked down naked wasn’t indicative enough of that.