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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: December 16th, 2023

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  • Reddit has an absolutely massive wealth of community knowledge. If you want to find a community for $thing or gain obscure knowledge on $thing, that’s where you go (assuming there isn’t an old forum post from before Reddit killed forums).

    Twitter is where a lot of people still are. If you’re the kind of person to care what a particular person says, that’s where you probably want to be.

    Instagram is used by young people who have friends on Instagram.

    It isn’t a great system, but it is the system that we have today. This is why legislation compelling Meta/Twitter/whothefuckever to act in an ethical manner is important. Social media is to some extent a natural oligopoly, and unless we get extremely, extremely lucky, the fediverse will always be a niche community.





  • A couple of ideas:

    • Home Ownership. I know condos exist, but it seems to me that we need a solution for home ownership that is accessible and ecologically viable. Traditional houses (and even duplex’s/townhomes) are massively inefficient from a climate perspective, not to mention the space requirements and cost.

    • Child rearing. In college, I learned that children were typically raised by multiple neighbors, in order to lessen the strain on parents. I think it is unrealistic and unhealthy to expect people to nearly kill themselves attempting to raise a child for the first couple of years.

    • Recreation space. I realize this is mostly an American thing, but lawns are a colossal waste of space. To be of any use at all, they have to be at least half an acre, and realistically, there’s no reason every single family needs their own outdoor recreation space. Plus, a tiny minority of people even use them these days.






  • I’ve always saved very aggressively, even when I didn’t have any money. When I first moved out, I ate nothing but rice, lentils, eggs, and lard for several months to save a slush fund. Even today, I make ~15-20k USD below median income for my city, and I’ve managed to save just shy of 10k in the past year and a half.

    Obviously the ongoing coat of living crisis is a big deal that needs to be addressed, but we also need to acknowledge that saving your money is unpleasant, and a significant number of people aren’t willing to do what’s necessary in order to build financial security.

    My friends (I don’t get out much, I only have a couple) all have significantly better income/expense ratios than I do, and have exactly nothing saved. Honestly I don’t think that would change if you gave them all an extra $20k/year, because they will find a way to rationalize something into being a necessity.







  • I live in DFW, a large amalgamation of two cities and a bunch if suburban sprawl in Texas.
    I live in a neighborhood that is considered extremely walkable, as I am directly across the street from a university and less than a mile from city hall.

    Here are my walking distances:

    • To the nearest convenience store: 1.8km
    • To the nearest chain supermarket: 4.3 km (They have a monopoly though, so unless you can afford whole foods, the closest good one is like 22.5 km)
    • To the bus stop: Lol, we don’t have busses. A neighboring city does, so I guess 29 km?
    • To the nearest park: Nearest park is 2.8km. Nearest public space is only 1.5km because I live right next to city hall.
    • To the nearest big supermarket: 8.9 km to Walmart.
    • To the nearest library: 1.5km, again, I live right next to city hall.
    • To the nearest train station: 16km, unless you mean one for intercity travel. We don’t have one of those because Amtrak is slowly being killed.

    Straight-line distance to Big Ben: we don’t have a Big Ben, but we killed JFK and that’s 34km away.

    Bonus fun fact, I commute 42km each day. This is considered far by most people here, 32km would be much more reasonable.



  • “I don’t really get why people get so up in arms about discussing it, but Sex is fun. Be careful though, those swimmers are persistent little fuckers.”

    “Drugs feel good and you think everything is fine until one day you look up and realize it all went wrong years ago. I can’t stop you, but I really hope you’ll choose not to try them.”

    I think both worked out well. I’m sex positive and I generally avoid drugs because it just isn’t worth the risk of finding that one substance that totally ruins my life.