It’s a bummer because reddit used to be really cool. It’s like when you discover a cool little cafe or something that you love going to. Eventually more and more people discover it, and it becomes a bit more crowded, but you still go. Then it gets written up in some magazine or something, and the crowd becomes nuclear. It becomes a tourist trap flogging merchandise, and they turn it into a chain, with the food semi-preprepared for mass consumption. The experience sucks and what was a special spot is ruined.

I’ve noticed that the lemmy front page has a much greater turnover than the reddit front page, which is nice.

Anyway, like I was sayin’, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey’s uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that’s about it.

Honestly, reddit drove me away. I got tired of being hounded by engagement bots asking inane questions, and in the wake of reddit going public, the comment police regularly were nitpicking my comments, reading into them intolerance that simply wasn’t there. I was just sick of it all. Reddit has a much bigger userbase, but lemmy is more friendly. There are occasions where it would be nice to post something niche and have a robust discussion, which requires a site with more mass appeal, but I’m not interested in all the drawbacks of dealing with reddit.

‘Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.’

Benito Mussolini

As soon as Elon Musk builds his Hyperloop, we’ll be traveling from NYC to LA in just a few hours. /s

There is no good answer, and you have to find what is right for you. I’ve been around too many toxic people for too long, and at this point I feel like I don’t owe anyone my time or attention, family or not. Setting solid boundaries has worked wonders for my mental health. While I would love to have a good, healthy relationship with my family, I cannot make that happen by myself. They have to meet me halfway, and when they engage in behaviors that I wouldn’t tolerate from anyone else, it reminds me that I shouldn’t tolerate it from them either. People get so hung up on “but he’s your father” or “it’s your family,” but the people that say that have no idea what I’ve been through and no frame of reference. It is absolutely 100% the right thing to minimize or eliminate contact with abusive people, even if they are your family.

I feel for you. My parents also drank the Koolaid, but my mother is dead now, and my father has slipped even further down the rabbit hole. He’s also a horrible person in general, and while I used to engage with him if he were behaving himself, I’ve effectively gone no contact now. I’ve only spoke with him once in the last few years, and when he launched into a racist anti-immigrant tirade I told him not to be a coward his entire life and hung up on him. It was on my birthday.

Meal Team 6 couldn’t keep up!

He’s just looking to fight crime.

I think we must have had the same mother.

Being mature for your age is a marker of childhood trauma.

Lol at “filthy phil”.

As an insurance coverage attorney, I can’t tell you how disturbing the use of AI is with respect to claims handling. In State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company v. Campbell, litigation that lasted over two decades, it was shown that State Farm’s claims handling system was effectively designed to low-ball claims, with the court noting that State Farm created “a national scheme to meet corporate fiscal goals by capping payouts on claims company wide.”

You can absolutely 100% expect that there will be insurers that use AI trained on data sets that will cause them to disproportionately deny claims by design. Insurer profit margins lie between the premiums they take in and the claims that they pay out, and the goal of all corporations is to maximize shareholder profits. Those who do it will gain a competitive advantage, which will incentivize others to follow suit and U.S. healthcare will get even worse.

I live in San Diego, one of the cities getting its grant money pulled. San Diego is a near ideal place to have a bike-centered transportation system. Inclement weather is rare, and I use a bike for my daily transportation. I bike more miles per year than I drive. There is a decent bike path network, but there is lots of room for improvement, so it sucks that the money is being pulled. Cargo bike and ebike adoption could make a lot of sense for so many people, but a lot of people are rightfully afraid of dicing it out with cars.

As someone that grew up with detached parents with whom I never had the relationship I wanted, I’ve come to recognize that it will never happen. My mother is now dead, and like my father, she lacked the capacity to engage in healthy relationships. The monologue in the “Free Churro” episode (S5E6) of Bojack Horseman really hits home for me, this point in particular:

I have this friend. And right around when I first met her, her dad died, and I actually went with her to the funeral. And months later, she told me that she didn’t understand why she was still upset, because she never even liked her father. It made sense to me, because I went through the same thing when my dad died. And I’m going through the same thing now. You know what it’s like? It’s like that show Becker, you know, with Ted Danson? I watched the entire run of that show, hoping that it would get better, and it never did. It had all the right pieces, but it just—it couldn’t put them together. And when it got canceled, I was really bummed out, not because I liked the show, but because I knew it could be so much better, and now it never would be. And that’s what losing a parent is like. It’s like Becker.

For anyone else in the same position, recognize that it is exceptionally difficult for people to change, and a necessary prerequisite is that they see change as necessary and want to change. Most are afraid of change and will never do it, to their detriment.

“I moved on her like a bitch. I couldn’t get there and she was married. Then all-of-a-sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”

Is this why Kanye likes fish sticks?

There are lots of places you can go, especially if you are flexible in how you do it. For example, it is fairly easy to get a student visa in most countries, and that will cover you for at least 4 years. Socially liberal countries like Finland, Iceland, and Germany have universities that are free to attend, even for foreigners, and a student visa will typically allow you to work to cover living expenses. Moreover, as the political climate in the U.S. deteriorates, and it is sliding quickly, I expect asylum avenues to open up. If you’re already in country as a student and not causing problems, and you’re in the first wave seeking asylum, odds are pretty good that you’d be accepted. Yes, there will be language and cultural issues to navigate, but most people in these countries speak english and they’re part of the western world, so the cultural gulf will not be that big.

I am about as “normal” as you get. I am a middle-aged white male, and I use a Pixel 6 Pro with Graphene OS installed. I switched to Graphene OS for security in the wake of an ugly divorce involving a campaign of stalking and harassment when I began to suspect my prior phone had been compromised.