The culture war has been going on for a lot longer than a decade, it’s just only in the last decade or so that it’s been amped up to 11 in terms of how aggressive it’s being fought. Conservatives are almost always on the losing side of social issues that require a culture shift. Women’s suffrage, civil rights, seatbelt laws, anti-smoking laws, gay rights… the list goes on, and the fight is never quite done for some, but they always lose in the end.

The very fact that conservatives are very pro for things like coal mining that liberals are trying to legislate away create strong reasons for some people to hold their noses and vote Republican regardless of how noxious the candidate is. When their livelihoods are literally at stake and the liberal response is “Well you should have gone to college to learn a new skill or trade” it makes sense that they are corralled right into the arms of conservatives. Economic drivers are the most powerful force behind the conservative movement right now, not culture bullshit that deep down they don’t really care about. It doesn’t help that very few people understand the relationship between “the economy” as outlined by experts and “the economy” as experienced when paying for groceries or filling up their car at the pump. It doesn’t matter that conservatives almost never deliver on their promises to fix the economy and often end up sending the nation into a recession, if bad decisions on a national scale lead to temporary relief on a local scale for some, that’s what they will remember when voting next time.

Liberals need to be doing more to bring disenfranchised voters into the fold. Educating them without being condescending or dismissive would be an excellent start. Turning down the temperature in politics is not possible without also lowering the stakes, backing off of hardline positions in the short term might be the most effective way of undermining support for terrible conservative candidates.

I want someone to drink mead out of my skull after I die and absorb my power. This is my fondest wish.

Social media is probably a very poorly or very narrowly defined term. Either they called out Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, etc by name or they gave some broad description of social media that could apply to everything from Facebook all the way down to somebody’s Vbulletin forum and this will be unenforceable for the vast majority of websites. Compliance is likely voluntary for the little fish in social media. I imagine that they aren’t even aware that Lemmy exists.

I liked the quote from Dr. Hibbert on the Simpsons:

“You know what they say, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!”

“Oh ho ho ho, no… It’s made you weak as a kitten!”

When I first signed up for reddit, the upvotes and downvotes were not only separately tallied, but also showed the usernames of the most recent people who did them if you hovered over the button. Then very shortly after that they changed it so that it made votes private by default, and you could override it in the settings, but almost nobody went to check that box back on. Eventually, they completely removed that feature around the time upvotes and downvotes were combined into one. which along with vote fuzzing was one of the worst changes to reddit comments, imo.

Lemmy feels like old reddit right now, which is a great spot to be in. I don’t think you necessarily need public vote info, but maybe it could be enabled on a per-community basis? I can see some communities like politics not wanting to add additional drama to the equation while other more content driven communities might enjoy knowing who was giving the feedback.

Whenever I think of the answer to this question, I always lament at how many film trilogies or games could have been absolutely immaculate duologies but were, for various reasons, sort of forced into a third installment through fan expectations, studio pressure, or just plain Hollywood/corporate greed.

It usually begins with a film or a video game that is an unexpected success, something that was written off by the execs that turned out to be not just a work of art, but a pop culture sensation. Star Wars, The Matrix, The Terminator, Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, etc were probably never intended to have a sequel. Their original plotlines all tied up the loose ends nicely and made for a perfectly adequate self-contained story. Then the second film/game in the series comes out and it’s another well received installment. Maybe it’s because the second rides a bit on the coattails of the first, or maybe because the first walked so the second could run, it’s hard to say, but in every case the second always sets the bar too high. The third installment is typically the one that sours the soup, so to speak. I’d wager that even a really well written story can’t really live up to the expectations that fans have for the third installment of a well-beloved series. Having the perfect three-peat is a feat rarely seen accomplished, but nobody ever seems satisfied with just two good pieces of media with no plans for a third.

Future time travellers going back in time to the moment the first time machine was invented to figure out how that one worked because in the future theirs suck and are locked down to prevent abuse.

Looks fantastic! That’s a hanger for sure.

I mean, if you want an answer to that you could just stop using your smartphone for a few weeks and see what your brain comes up with. Here’s a short list of some examples that were popular when I was a kid and smartphones did not exist yet:

Magazines, the daily newspaper, books, going out and exploring, shopping at malls, doing a hobby or craft, personal projects, television, chit-chatting with friends or even strangers, video games, puzzles, play with your pets, exercise, play sports, sitting quietly and being alone with your thoughts.

I’m bisexual man, but I lean mostly towards women as my preference. Occasionally, I feel the pull to fool around with some guys, but nothing ever too serious.

I had just gotten out of a 5+ year relationship with a girl that I really liked, but the relationship was extremely unfulfilling sexually. She was a dead fish in bed and I had become bored with run-of-the-mill sex and I wanted to experiment a bit while I was single. I downloaded Tinder, set my preferences to any, and started swiping.

I was honestly just really horny and looking for anybody, male or female, who wanted a quick one night stand and I happened to swipe on a dude’s profile who had such a sexy butt pic as their profile picture that I was convinced it was a girl and didn’t bother to check. We talked a bit and he clarified that he was actually a guy, but that didn’t deter me. I agreed to meet him at a motel he was staying at for work and we could fool around a bit.

To keep a really long story short, I met the guy and he did not look as advertised in the photos. He was much uglier, and did not have a cute ladyboy body. Looked like a stereotypical redneck, complete with mullet and trucker cap. I was disappointed, but I didn’t want to be rude so I stayed. He offered me a drink, which I declined, and then he asked me to take off my clothes so we could start (he was already pantless when I walked in the motel room).

I then had the roughest, most uncomfortable blowjob in my entire life. He was really into giving head and deepthroating. I have climaxed once before during a blowjob so I know what a good one feels like and this guy was not very good at giving them. There was a lot of slobber and gagging involved which kind of took me out of the experience. Had to ask him to be more gentle and use less teeth a few times during the act. Eventually, mercifully, I came in his mouth and I went into the bathroom to wash up and I swear I could not get all the slobber and goop off of my junk. I went home after declining more sex with him, took a 45 minute shower, and tried to scrub my cock clean again. Took like a whole day for it to feel less gross.

He texted me the next day asking if I could “feed him another load” and I blocked him. Absolutely the worst sexual experience of my entire life that I didn’t want to repeat. Really put into perspective all the dead fish sex I had been having with my ex girlfriend and I realized that it wasn’t so bad after all.

Dunkey hasn’t released a funny video in years. His new material is just so flat.

Well, we survived him once, we can do it again.

I’d still prefer to not get set back another decade by having him in office, and the danger of him never leaving office by way of dismantling all of the safeguards that prevented his coup in 2021 can’t be ignored.

If there are ways I can resist, I will. If there are people I can help just by reaching out, I will extend my hand to them. I won’t let Trump’s hateful rhetoric poison my humanity or turn me against my fellow man.

If things get bad enough, my girlfriend and I have a “bug-out” plan that we discussed and agreed upon that basically amounts to - withdraw everything from our financial accounts, sell everything that isn’t nailed down if we can or abandon everything in place, round up the family and buy plane/boat tickets to head somewhere that has low requirements for citizenship or will accept American petitions for political asylum if things get desperate enough. This is in the worst-case scenario where the U.S. descends into a full fascist/totalitarian state and there is a clear and present danger of us getting killed just for being political dissidents.

Ideally, we’d like to stay here and hope that things get better, but every year things seem to get worse and worse. The American Dream is dead and rotting, and we can just barely see a pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel for us to be able to achieve a life, but we’re both left wondering if we’re even going to be able to hold on to that if we do manage to seize it given how much the economy is backsliding each year.

tl;dr: the plan is to keep our heads down, but our spirits as high as possible, and always know where the closest exit is in case of an emergency.

You guys need couples therapy, not advice from internet strangers on Lemmy. This is an issue that’s going to take some serious unpacking and that requires a professional’s help.

Typically in LDRs you take every opportunity (within reason) to see each other. If he’s saying he doesn’t want to see you when you are able to, I’d consider that a red flag for sure. At the very least, it demands some explanation beyond just that there would be nothing to do.

I think if you press him on this, he’ll come clean and admit that he wants to break things off for whatever reason. Maybe he’s lost interest, or maybe he is ashamed of being gay, I don’t really know, but there definitely seems to be more to it than what you’ve already been told.

There’s definitely some variance out there. Some managers care about their employees and have a conscience, which would make them more likely to sympathize with a hungry dude who can’t pay. Others are the typical Scrooge McDuck caricature and go out of their way to be cruel to others.

I think generally in my experience chain restaurant managers tend to get promoted from within the company and start at the lowest position, so they have more perspective on what it’s like to be at the bottom rung of society and have a bit more empathy for those who have unfortunately sunk even lower than that. Private business managers on the other hand, it depends. Some are guided by their own morality, while others have a chip on their shoulder about how they made it without help and so can everyone else (which is total nonsense, in order for there to be winners in capitalism, there must also necessarily be losers, so not everybody is going to make a success of themselves in that way no matter how much effort they expend).

As much as people hate to hear the “it’s complicated” answer in regards to anything regarding Israeli affairs, well, it’s pretty complicated… But to name a few reasons:

Religious fundamentalism/Zionism in the United States has been forcing politicians to take sides or else alienate their constituents - Christian fundamentalism is bizarrely in favor of a Jewish state because it fulfills their own doomsday prophecy, not for any logical reasons or out of a genuine desire to help the Jewish people.

Weapons manufacturers and arms dealers are lobbying to keep Israel as a partner considering they are almost always mired in some kind of conflict. It’s a multi billion dollar industry and the people who make guns, bombs, artillery shells and ammunition are not keen of giving up their cash cow.

Consider of course the historical ties and diplomatic agreements, which if flippantly broken send a message of unreliability to other allied nations (I’m not sure I totally agree with this one, as the USA is basically a schizo nation flipping back and forth once every 4-8 years between isolationism and globalism depending on which party holds office).

Lastly, since the Cold War, the USA has kept Israel close to project their own influence in the middle east. Countries like Egypt or Saudi Arabia would have to think twice about provoking the United States considering who their neighbor is. Great strategic location bordering the Mediterranean Sea that makes it easy for USA to get soldiers on the continent if it ever comes to that.

A lot of restaurants end up throwing out food that would otherwise be perfectly edible.

If you’re a polite and patient individual, you might be able to build up some rapport with the owner or the workers. When my friend was in college, he could barely afford to feed himself most of the time. He was friendly with the cashier at a local fast food place and asked if they could set aside any orders that get sent back (due to being wrong) and give them to him instead of tossing them in the garbage. Not everybody will do this for you, but it’s worth asking. I think generally store employees and managers are sympathetic enough to not care about what happens to product that was destined for the garbage anyway so they typically agree.

You need to learn how to forgive yourself first. Do you think a minor detail like that would have been something that would have convinced your partner to leave you? It sounds like you two worked everything out and built up that trust again. Bringing it up now only serves to clear your own conscience at the cost of opening up old wounds.

Look, you acknowledge that you made a mistake, you’ve atoned for the bad things that you’ve done and made amends with your partner, and you’ve found a blissful happiness. It’s time to let that baggage go and forget the past. It won’t be easy, but the first step is to realize that everybody is fallible and that sometimes we make mistakes and we can’t always rely on having our guilt absolved by another.

This is well timed considering the TikTok ban timeline. Loops will have enough time to sort out any bugs or issues right now with a slow trickle of traffic and then probably grow exponentially in the power vacuum left behind when TikTok vanishes from the various app stores.

My dog passed away many years ago now, but “Oops” is one that I hear really commonly because I would drop stuff off the counter when cooking. Just saying “Oops” would have the dog come running to see what good stuff hit the floor.

Also, not exactly a command, but that dog’s hearing was so exceptional that he could hear the jangling sound of me picking up his leash while I was inside the house and he’d come running from the back yard across the whole house.

Of course, his hearing was always selective. The things he loved to do he could hear perfectly, while things he dislikes such as obedience training it was like he was deaf lol.